In the global economy, cities compete to attract talent, investors, events and tourists. To meet these challenges, cities are engaging in marketing and branding to improve their image and position themselves on the international scene. City branding improves marketing of the city image in various ways by converting the visual image of the city into a brand image. City developers are faced with a multitude of new questions: What is a city brand? How should it be developed and with whom? Which communication tools should be used? What should the brand strategy be? This Thesis presents the key elements of the city branding and assesses the factors that increase the city branding strength. It is also analyzing the urban image of different capitals that have strong city branding to conclude a guideline of the main elements that increase the urban image strength of cities and so increase the strength of their branding. Finally drive a proposed mathematical model for evaluating the urban image of cities.

Smart materials are materials that receive, transmit, or process a stimulus and respond by producing a useful effect that may include a signal that the materials are acting upon it. Some of the stimuli that may act upon these materials are strain, stress, temperature, chemicals, electric field, magnetic field, hydrostatic pressure, different types of radiation, and other forms of stimuli. The effects produced can be a color change, a change in index of refraction, a change in the distribution of stresses and strains, or a volume change. This ability to produce a useful effect to respond the stimulates has rendered smart materials a considerable material to the architectural design since buildings are always confronted with changing conditions. The characteristics of smart materials can be grouped into: property change capability, energy change capability, discrete size/location, and reversibility. Using smart materials in architecture moreover dramatically reduces the energy and material cost of the buildings, enables the human to design of direct and discrete environments that providing better conditions in space for human occupants. In a hot arid climate, due to problems such as overheating and high solar gain, intelligent design strategies and technologies for buildings such as using smart materials are necessary.