AZZA KAMAL PhD, LEED AP ND
URBANIST I RESEARCHER I EDUCATOR
Dr. Kamal is an urban planner, architect, and research consultant. She is currently an Instructional Assistant Professor in the Urban & Regional Planning Department, and the Sustainability and the Built Environment (SBE) Program at the University of Florida's College of Design, Construction and Planning (DCP). She is also the coordinator of Geodesign curriculum and an Affiliate Faculty in the UF Center for European Studies. Dr. Kamal specializes in housing policy, anti-displacement strategies, equitable planning, sustainable and resilient development, and homeless programs. Before joining UF, she was the Director of Research at SARAH [The US Department of Housing and Urban Development's Continuum of Care Agency in Bexar County/San Antonio, TX] and an adjunct professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Texas State University.
Dr. Kamal is a practicing architect and urban planner, and a visiting Planning and Architecture studio critic in Texas, Florida, NY, and Canada. In her local municipalities experience, she led the City of San Antonio’s 2019 ordinance that allocated $1M Emergency Assistance Program and developed a geospatial equity tool for the $10M budget of Home Repair Programs. As a consultant, she was funded by Edwards Aquifer Authority and San Antonio River Authority, where she and her students created a geospatial intervention toolkit to retrofit engineered water management sites into Low Impact Development community hubs in Bexar county, TX. She was also commissioned by the national nonprofit, NALCAB, to assess HUD’s Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) in Phoenix, AR and Denver, CO; and led a regional study for the workforce housing demand in six counties impacted by Eagle Ford Shale oil/gas fracking in South Texas.
In April 2022, Dr. Kamal was named to the prestigious Fulbright Specialist Roster for a four-year tenure (2022-2026) and is the Fulbright Specialist to Germany (Spring 2023). She is the recipient of the 2016 University of Texas at San Antonio Faculty Award for Service to Undergraduate Research and Creative Inquiry. Her research is published in the Journal of Urban Planning and Development, International Journal of Architectural Research, Camino Real Journal, Computational Urban Planning and Urban Management (CUPUM) proceedings, and other international publications. She is currently working on two research: 1) A review of the integration of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in various pedagogies and degrees, and 2) an evaluation for permanent supporting housing (PSH) programs in Bexar County, TX.
At Cairo-based Shehab Mazhar Architects, she led the design team of Phase-V of the master planned community El Gouna - in the Egyptian province of Hurghada. The community was awarded the 2014 UN Environment Program Global Human Settlements Award for global human settlement. Dr. Kamal earned a PhD in architecture & Urban Planning from Cairo University, M.Sc. in architecture from Texas A&M University, M.Sc. in architecture from Cairo University, and a five-year professional B.S. in architecture from the same University. She holds two graduate certificates (in GIS & Geodesign) from Penn State and is a LEED ND Accredited Professional.