Highlights • To ensure systematic analysis of the key aims and objectives, this research adopts an 'explanatory research design'. • The study focuses on a 'case study' approach in order to carry out analysis of the most representative housing typology in Famagusta, Cyprus. • The possible sustainable green urbanism features and architectural measures in the scope of local land use policy requirements were evaluated. The feasible scenarios were devised by adding the topographical characteristics of selected case study locations of all designed maps were undertaken. Abstract Problems in mass housing estates in Famagusta, Cyprus, have been an issue for research on urban planning and policy interventions for many years. Neighbourhoods were designed featuring modernist residential tower blocks and suburban row houses with insufficient green areas and no consideration of either the climatic features of the built site or of urban planning, regulations or law. This study discusses ongoing, uncontrolled construction trying to change the contemporary urban environment, based on the features of housing and urbanism. It investigates whether the natural landscape and extensions to topography have played decisive roles in the construction of mass housing estate developments and uses of the rural periphery of the city. The study develops a base case of urban transformation models representing the morphological characteristics of buildings from three distinct construction eras (the 1970s, 1990s and 2010s). The information collected is enriched and verified by a site survey. Through three case studies, the types of buildings in each era are analysed and evaluated in relation to a number of environmental factors, including an analysis of the different context layers, to ascertain the existing strength of the urban block development configurations as well as to evaluate their shortcomings under the threat of urban sprawl. The findings not only provide ground research for developing urban retrofit scenarios but also employ sustainable planning tools based on those urban processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]