Abstract:

Since 2000, a host of highly interactive and popular websites has developed that allow Internet users to share information, form communities, and interact in new ways. These websites share a common dedication to simplicity, usability, and interactivity. Collectively, they allow groups to communicate and collaborate online. The technology offers a menu of tools well suited for planners’ long-standing goals of sharing information, interacting with the public, and fostering community.

In 2009, Ain Shams University of Egypt (ASU) has performed an interesting cross-cultural collaboration project with the University of Southern California (USC) through virtual world. The K2C program (from Kansas to Cairo) was inspired from president Obama’s speech to the Muslim world in Cairo in June 2008. His vision as outlined in the speech was to “invest in online learning for teachers and children around the world; and create a new online network, so a young person in Kansas can communicate instantly with a young person in Cairo.”

The students of the third year of urban design & planning department in ASU were instructed to collaborate with their colleagues in the USC to prepare a master plan for a specific site using Second Life (SL) application. The site was an urban space next to the Great Pyrmaids of Giza. The goal was to explore SL’s potentialities to design the public space in the virtual world. The team worked together in the virtual world without being in the same physical space. This made the communication much faster and the work much more enjoyable.

Though Second Life cannot be used as a building design tools in the way that Rhino and other programs like Revit can, it gives one the unique opportunity to experience a 3D model in a new way, to literally walk though the project. Visual tools help to envision a realistic plan. Technologies used to analyze consensus, incorporate feedback in the plans and show the result to the participants provides power to citizen in a planning process as they can see their input has made a difference.

Since the beginning of the Millennium, the virtual world has been an attractive environment that encouraged numerous users to build regenerated historic building and world heritage sites. Al Masjid Al Haram in Makkah al Mukkaramah, the tomb of Tutankhamun, the historic Roman cathedrals and the old city of Venice are a few examples of hundreds of historic buildings that have been built in Second Life. These became living built environments that anyone from around the world could enjoy and learn from. Documenting the history is only one of the many benefits that are being offered by the virtual world. Participation in finding additional layers of meanings and educating the world of how important human heritage is to our future are other facets that may add to unlimited possibilities of recreating worlds as replication of lost past or unreachable physical historic core which will open venues for reviving knowledge of historic cities. These possibilities will also form social networking within the realm of the virtual that can contribute to the physical historic core.

Short Profile:

Dr. Amr Attia is an academic and practitioner in the fields of architecture and planning. He has more than 20 years of academic experience as a Faculty at Ain Shams University in Cairo. Moreover, he has more than 20 years of professional & practical experience from working at PUD Consultants, which is a multidisciplinary design office that has successfully completed several planning & urban design signature projects in the Middle East and internationally since its establishment in 1966.

Amr has specific skills in strategic planning, visioning, design management, spatial planning of new and existing built environments & planning for sustainable development. This enables a strong contribution to the realization of urban development projects from conceptualization through spatial design, policy development and implementation. Amr's skills are complemented by teaching, consultation, project coordination and managing partnership projects between the government and the private sector.

Amr was the coordinator of the Technical Committee for Planning & Landscaping for the urban renewal schemes for the area surrounding the New Grand Egyptian Museum next to the Giza Pyramids and was involved in organizing and managing the International Architecture Competition of the museum which was sponsored by UNESCO & under the patronage of the UIA.

Amr was the managing director of the Consultancy Unit for Planning & Urban Design (CUPUD) of Ain Shams University from 2001 till 2006. He was actively involved in the preparation of strategic plans for Egypt’s urban and rural settlements. He was the authorized representative of Ain Shams University in the implementation of the “National Programme for the Development of Rural Strategic Plans” which is a research action‐oriented project sponsored by the General Organization for Physical Planning with technical cooperation from UN‐HABITAT in over 400 Egyptian villages.

Amr has extensive experience in training where he has been giving short courses in urban planning and project management to professionals and municipality managers in Egypt and to SCECO's staff in Saudi Arabia.

Amr was selected as an Eisenhower Fellow in the Common Interest Program on the Challenges of Urbanization in which he visited more than 25 cities in the United States of America and attended extensive workshops and seminars with several decision makers, city managers, academics, developers and consultants. Later he was an active participant in the leadership seminar at the Aspen Institute In the US.

Amr is the co-founder of the K2C (Kansas to Cairo) project which is an on-line studio of architectural collaboration in the Virtual Worlds between Ain Shams University and USC (University of Southern California).

With a PhD in planning for sustainable tourism from the University of London and a Masters degree in economics from the Development Planning Unit of University College London and a Bachelor degree in architecture & urban design from Ain Shams University in Cairo, Amr brings 20 years of professional and academic experience in urban planning, structure planning, master planning, strategic planning, sustainable development & project management.