The development of a methodological framework for local and institutional sustainability assessment can be helpful for planners and urban governments. The aim of this research is to develop an approach to local and institutional sustainability assessment (ALISA). It is designed to assist in the clarification, formulation, preparation, selection, and ranking of key indicators to facilitate the assessment of city sustainability at the local and institutional level in the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) cities. The ALISA methodological framework is developed using joint documentary and analysed data in the two case studies of Benghazi and Amman. The data for this also includes focus-group discussions, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaires that reflect the approach required in order to develop a combined framework that assists the development of sustainability indicators. The initial list of proposed sustainability indicators for Benghazi contains 37 indicators. This list was developed based on logical information and procedure which has been supported by consultants and specialists in sustainability and urbanization from the University of Benghazi in the form of workshops as well as searching through the literature on sustainable development. Similarly, with support from consultants and specialists in sustainability and urbanization from the Applied science University a list of 36 indicators was also developed in Amman. Both lists were given to the local communities in Benghazi and Amman to be ranked based on priority to identify two final lists of sustainability indicators. The results indicated that economic and social indicators were highly ranked in Benghazi and Amman, respectively.

As a result of changes in the society, such as the increasing mobility, increasing spatial demandindgness of inhabitants and the onset of digital technologies, the architects and urbanists have been searching for new ways of urban housing developments. One of these ways is densification, i.e. an intensive use of the urban space. An intensive urban structure uses up the potential of a place to its maximum, solves several issues simultaneously and is a functional hybrid, the home of potential suburbanizers and a place of social contacts. It comes from the efforts to solve the particular issue of an over-populated, collapsing city. The aim of the thesis is to show contemporary approaches to the issue of intensive urban structures and to map out both the built and unbuilt projects. The thesis creates a system of their categorization and taxonomy. There is always a mixture of functions in play from the functional perspective. One can distinguish five categories according to the spacial conception. These categories are as follows: multiplicity, porousness, hybridity, connectivity and verticality. The public and semi-public spaces thus move to the higher levels of the city, into the city level, urban balcony or the hybrid landscape. The built projects usually tend to be impulses, in relation to the original city, to develop and revitalize the devastated city areas, brownfields, even urban sprawls. Based on the findings of this thesis, diploma and pre-diploma project assignments have been created at the architecture department at FAST VUT in Brno and the approaches to the issue have been tested in the pedagogical process. The survey in the second part of the thesis looks for the answer to the question of whether the potential inhabitants of an intensive urban structure exist, and who these people might be.