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ARKAT Crafting sustainable, human-centric urban landscapes

This week at LIVEX, our Co-Founder and CEO, Fatma Al Khayat, represented ARKAT in a debate asking whether the 15-minute ...
02/10/2026

This week at LIVEX, our Co-Founder and CEO, Fatma Al Khayat, represented ARKAT in a debate asking whether the 15-minute city is the best idea in urban planning, or simply its most appealing.

Her take: Proximity matters. But minutes alone don’t tell us enough, especially in the Gulf.

A few of the points she raised:

On land economics. Making a neighbourhood complete makes it desirable, and desirability creates value. The opportunity is to ensure that this value supports a diverse and resilient community, with different housing choices, uses and people able to participate in everyday neighbourhood life. The ambition should be as much about creating socially diverse communities as mixed-use ones.

On social patterns. In the Gulf, daily life extends across the city: family, the majlis, places of worship and work. Some travel comes from poor planning and should be reduced. Other travel is chosen, and it connects us. Proximity where possible, connectivity where necessary.

On climate. Fifteen minutes at 47°C and high humidity is nothing like fifteen minutes at 27°C. The question is less about the number of minutes and more about the journey. Is it shaded, continuous and safe? Does it work for a mother with a pram or someone over 65?

And perhaps the real test for our region is this: how do we retrofit proximity into the city we already have, without erasing what makes our neighbourhoods ours?

Her closing thought:

Proximity is the input. Accessibility is the outcome. And accessibility is what we should be measuring.

Thank you to LIVEX and our fellow panellists for a genuinely sharp conversation.

Would your city pass the test if we measured the journey rather than the minutes?

We used to live closer.For generations, Gulf life was built around proximity. Grandparents, parents, children and cousin...
24/09/2026

We used to live closer.

For generations, Gulf life was built around proximity. Grandparents, parents, children and cousins within the same house, compound or fareej, usually a short walk apart.

Then we designed our cities differently. The villa became an island: big plots, high walls, deep setbacks and wide roads, with almost everything reached by car. We gained privacy and space, and slowly lost the closeness that used to come for free.

Here is what is easy to miss. The Gulf family never shrank. Emirati households in Abu Dhabi still average around eight people, yet our housing keeps organising itself around separation, and every household ends up needing its own of everything.

So the question we keep returning to: would you live two minutes from your family? Not in the same house, just close enough that seeing them doesn’t take planning, driving and three days’ notice.

Maybe the future of Gulf housing looks a little like its past, socially if not architecturally. Homes close enough to connect, with space to stay private. Shared courtyards and shaded streets. A private home, a family cluster, a walkable fareej.

And it is already starting. Dubai’s 2025 Home First changes let families grow within their own plots to stay together. The real design question is how we take that further, from the house to the neighbourhood, and create privacy and proximity at the same time.

Would you want to live closer to yours?

22/09/2026

Urban Interventions, Episode 02.

Most streets in our neighbourhoods are built to do one thing well: Move cars. Yet there is usually far more space than the traffic actually needs.

In this episode, Ahmed walks a typical residential street and shows how a few targeted moves can rebalance it. Reclaim some of the asphalt for shaded pavements and safer crossings. Turn the central median into a green, shaded spine. Use the empty corners and larger plots for pocket parks, cafes and kiosks. Keep the frontages calm, with more trees, a walking and cycle track, and small places to sit.

Same street, same neighbourhood, now working for people as well as cars.

That is the ARKAT approach. Read the context first, then make focused changes that improve everyday life.

Would this work on your street?

People naturally gravitate to good public space. Give them shade, somewhere to sit, and a little life around them, and t...
19/09/2026

People naturally gravitate to good public space. Give them shade, somewhere to sit, and a little life around them, and they will stay. William Whyte spent years filming how people actually use city spaces, and found that attracting them is not the hard part.

The hard part, as he put it, is how often we manage to design spaces that push people away. Empty plazas, blank edges, nowhere to rest. Getting it right is usually about the basics.

Say density and most people picture crowding, traffic and towers. Yet some of the most liveable neighbourhoods anywhere ...
16/09/2026

Say density and most people picture crowding, traffic and towers. Yet some of the most liveable neighbourhoods anywhere are also some of the densest. The difference is rarely the number itself. It is how that density is arranged.

In this edition of Urban Terms, we break down the language of density, from floor area ratio and setbacks to the missing middle and mixed-use. Across much of the Gulf these are the quiet decisions that shape how a place feels for decades, and whether more homes in one area feel crowded or feel alive.

Which of these does your city get right?

Our Co-founder and CEO Fatma Alkhayat is taking the stage at LIVEX, the Liveability and Investment Exhibition.29 Septemb...
15/09/2026

Our Co-founder and CEO Fatma Alkhayat is taking the stage at LIVEX, the Liveability and Investment Exhibition.

29 September, 13:15-14:00
đź“ŤADNEC Abu Dhabi

She’s joining a debate on one of the most talked-about ideas in urban planning today: the 15-minute city. The promise is appealing, bringing the essentials of daily life within a short walk of home, for healthier, more connected and more convenient neighbourhoods. The harder question is whether that model can work fairly across cities with very different scales, densities and communities.

It’s a question that matters especially here. In the Gulf, distance, heat and car-oriented growth make “close” much harder to achieve than it sounds.

Join this conversation on 29 September at 13:15-14:00. Registration link is in bio.

Great places don’t happen by accident. They happen when the right questions get asked early.At ARKAT, we work with devel...
11/09/2026

Great places don’t happen by accident. They happen when the right questions get asked early.

At ARKAT, we work with developers, public-sector teams, and institutions across the region to plan places that are people-first and built for our climate. Sometimes that’s a full masterplan. Sometimes it’s a second opinion while a decision is still open and easy to get right.

If you’re shaping a development, a public space, or a policy, we’d like to hear about it. Start a conversation: [email protected]

Take a guess before you swipe.Most people say one, maybe two. The real answer is ten.A single healthy tree cools the air...
09/09/2026

Take a guess before you swipe.

Most people say one, maybe two. The real answer is ten.

A single healthy tree cools the air around it like ten room-size air conditioners running 20 hours a day and it does it two ways: shade, and evapotranspiration, where water evaporating from the leaves pulls heat out of the air. No electricity, no emissions.

In the Gulf, where cooling is one of the biggest energy loads a city carries, that makes urban trees real infrastructure, cooling streets, cutting AC demand, and making places walkable. But only if we plan for them properly: the right species, enough soil and water, and shade where people actually walk.

How close was your guess?

07/09/2026

This was a forgotten strip beside the road. Now it’s where the neighbourhood meets.

Not every fix has to be a megaproject. Some of the biggest changes to how a place feels come from small, deliberate moves: shade, a few trees, somewhere to sit, colour underfoot, and a reason to stop.

Add a pop up vendor or kiosk, some evening light and a place to leave your bike, and leftover space becomes a place people actually choose to be, even in the heat.

In our cities, where so much sits unused between buildings and roads, this is some of the highest-value work there is. Small moves, big shifts in daily life.

Got an overlooked space in your project? This is exactly what we do. Contact us: [email protected]

When people picture a “well-planned city,” they rarely picture who it was planned for. A few cities decided to plan for ...
04/09/2026

When people picture a “well-planned city,” they rarely picture who it was planned for. A few cities decided to plan for the people usually left out and women’s daily lives became the starting point.

Vienna rebuilt around the school run, the caregiving trip, the walk home after dark. Barcelona handed its streets back to people with its superblocks. UmeĂĄ designed public space so women feel safe moving through it at any hour. In every case, the city got better for everyone.

The Gulf hasn’t written its chapter yet. But with family life already at the centre of how we live, and cities still taking shape, we’re well placed to. If we plan it in from the start, and add the shade our climate demands.

Which of these would you learn from first?

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