Toward Sustainable Urban Development in Doha: Implementation of Transit Villages through a Multiple-Layer Analysis

Abstract

Scholars argue that the efficient integration between public transportation systems and potential transit villages is the best strategy to be adopted to achieve sustainable urban development and manage the expansion of cities. Thus, across the world, large funds are invested in developing public transportation systems with metro operations to address sustainable urban development and shift toward transit-oriented development (TOD). Since the discovery of oil and gas in the 1940s, Doha, the capital city of Qatar, has been exposed to accelerating urbanization, which, in turn, led to arguably unsustainable urban development. In response, the Qatari government, aiming to manage the urban expansion of Doha through the pillars of sustainable urban development, has (1) released planning policy documents (QNV2030 and QNDF 2032), (2) amended the national master plan, and (3) launched the construction of Metro Rail project (in 2013). This research study investigates the extent to which the ongoing urban expansion of Doha aligns with the developed framework for sustainable urban development as envisioned by national planning policies through a multiple-layer analysis of maps for five critical nodes: (1) Doha metro transit nodes, (2) megaprojects, (3) malls, (4) stadiums, and (5) green spaces in metropolitan Doha. The findings reveal that (1) transit villages can be created at metro stations located near shopping malls, followed by green spaces and megaprojects; and (2) the proposed set of guidelines favor the development of economic transit nodes that comply with the key characteristic of TOD.