Professor Emeritus of Architecture and Urban Planning

Acknowledgments Working on this thesis was a joyful and successful venture which could have been never realized without a group of generous and kind people. They all have been extremely supportive and influential, and I want to acknowledge their efforts in helping me complete this work. My small family in Egypt: my father Kamal, my mother Ebtisam, and my brother Tarek. They have warmly and unconditionally supported me under all circumstances: most exceptionally, when I decided to postpone my education at MIT to stay in India for a year-a decision that, at the time, did not look very practical. They also continued their moral support while I wrote this thesis, which would not have been completed without them. My advisors, John de Monchaux and John Fernandez, and my reader, Yung H