Abstract—This paper focuses on a hybrid sustainable design methodology for desert settlement development on a microclimate thermal impact basis. In a 4% inhabited hot arid country such as Egypt, there should be a new development model that stresses on the effect of climate conditions within the sustainable design process. As a development type of desert settlements, the concept of country desert villages is viable as it lies between both urban settled communities in north and south Sinai and the unsettled population in mid-Sinai. Such settlement planning ideas has succeeded in some adjacent countries through combining the interdisciplinary cumulative applied research of different fields such as: desert physical planning, passive solar architecture, prefabrication and low-cost construction methods and materials, building physics and climatology, desert agriculture and renewable energy systems. In order to select pilot development spots around the existing communities in Med-Sinai (which zero energy low-cost housing development can be applied on a microclimate basis using a hybrid passive design methodology), the regional development concepts have been addressed. The suggested Planning methodology focuses on generating a character for patterns in different regions by accommodating people in socially acceptable houses via public participation, economic activity support for village jobs, maintaining acceptable services with outdoor social places, diverse and compact fabric form, prefabrication with low-cost materials and construction, and low or zero energy community. On the other hand, numerical impact assessment for village forms using building simulation tools solves complex aspects of these intersected fields in different locations on a microclimatic basis. Index Terms—Sustainable development, microclimate, desert settlements. I. INTRODUCTION As a moral duty for the future generations the expression “Sustainability” which refers to the balance between consuming natural resources and the capability of environment to replenish [1]-[4], has been issued in 1987 by Bruntland [4]. Consequently, urban sustainability definition is a composition of its goal and concept. The Concept refers to the needs of users whereas goal refers to the development scale at which needs are designed and resources are either consumed or replenished. From this standing point, the basic triangle of sustainable development concerns how to maintain urban communities performing socially, environmentally and economically balanced via Manuscript received August 28, 2017; revised November 11, 2017. M. Fahmy and M. Mahdy are with Architecture Engineering Department, Military Technical Collage, Cairo, Egypt (e-mail: md.fahmy@mtc.edu.eg, mmahdy@mtc.edu.eg). M. F. Abdelalim is with Architecture Department, Prince Sultan University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (e-mail: mabdelalim@psu.edu.sa). three motors: 1) University, 2) Industry and 3) Government [5]. Same authors presented a development for this triple helix motors model to cover the weak connection between principles and applications since sustainable development concepts are still far from reality. Triple helix model had three other motors: 1) Knowledge, 2) Learning and 3) Market which promote close connection between stakeholders but needs more time. This might not be available in an urban degraded environment and overwhelmed politically transient country like Egypt (after 25th of January 2011 revolution considering the wide ranges of related studies/surveys/public participation) [6], [7] prior to the design stage particularly through radically oriented urban planning system. Urban planning has been always the cumulative protocol of constructing communities. At a time of climate change, lack of resources and such radical Egyptian protocol needs revision to cope with people's welfare ambitious. Globally, population is estimated to reach 7billions, 60% of them will be living in urban areas and 9 billion by 2050 70% of them in urban areas [8]. In Egypt, the population exceeded 80 million in 2008 [9] occupying 4% of the Egyptian lands which means to retake the control of population density; not only informal urban areas has to be regenerated [10], [11] but also deserts cannot be abandoned. Desert settlements are not comparable with urban development due to harsh climate and scarcity of water and energy. Consequently, a site of no foreground nor underground water source shouldn’t be considered for settlement development even if a renewable energy source is guaranteed which means a huge regional approach has to take place to help appropriate site selection. In this concern, the physical landscape planning of settlement patterns has to follow passive design discipline to provide shelter from harsh conditions and to save energy [12], [13] along with providing economic base as well as social acceptable housing typologies with social mobility feature induced by re-creational places which in turn deliver sustainable forms [14]-[16]. Exampling fabric physical planning, previous work [17] discussed the cluster as a mid-latitude fabric unit which hybridizes the concepts of solar sheltering while allowing wind access, on the other hand conclude urban diversity [18]. This could be suburban or rural areas development, but cannot be desert as the cluster closure ratio was a bit large to prevent sand storms. Further studies are then needed towards avoiding the canopy layer plum [19] from entering clusters/courtyards of residential groups. Sustainable physical design of fabric has been translated through three approaches of research: 1) revivalist which focuses on passive design principles in vernacular architecture, 2) the progressive gathers technology and traditional neighborhood development, 3) and the hybrid Mohammad Fahmy, Mohamed M. Mahdy, and Marwa F. Abdelalim International Journal of Environmental Science and Development, Vol. 8, No. 12, December 2017 804 doi: 10.18178/ijesd.2017.8.12.1061 A Proposed Methodology for Planning a Sustainable Village at Mid Sinai Arid Climatic Zone, Egypt