UNSUSTAINABLE DESERT SETTLEMENTS IN EGYPT
The Product, the Process and Avenues for Future Research
Aboul-Fetouh Saad Shalaby, Egypt, Urban Planning This abstract aims to locate the researcher’s current studies within the context of the 2002 IHDW and make use of the diverse ideas discussed in it. The first part discusses current Egyptian desert settlements (as a product) and its negative impacts on humans and the environment. The second presents a conceptual framework for the process behind the development of this product and briefly points to where the researcher’s current research focus lies. The third explores potential avenues for future research. The Urban Product It is widely agreed that the spatial strategies adopted by the Egyptian government in new desert settlements, recently triggered to combat social and economic problems in the Nile Valley, are not environmentally sustainable 1. The new settlements have detached dispersed housing blocks that heat up under the intensive solar radiation or consume excessive quantities of e nergy for cooling. They have wide grid street networks that work as good channels for hot dusty winds. They require high use of cars, not affordable for the majority, that potentially emit an excessive amount of pollutants and heat. They impact on a lot of land and disturb the fragile ecosystems. The urban form of these Modern settlements ignores traditional design principles for desert environments, which have been established in the development of settlements in the area over many centuries. These traditional settlements are compact and small in size; they integrate under- with above- ground spaces, and hence have a minimal impact on the environment. Their buildings are inward-oriented towards small vegetated courtyards with good ambient conditions and a low in height to help re create better compactness and prevent wind drafts. These settlements also have narrow winding streets that minimise heat gain and loss and escape the hot sandladen winds. In previous work, the researcher developed, with a special reference to these traditional desert settlements, a model of environmentally adaptive urban form design principles towards establishing sustainable desert settlements2. The Process Ignoring these principles is not primarily a technical problem. The urban form of the new settlements may be defective but securing a better one depends upon a critical examination of the process through which it is produced3. When comparing the urban development process, defined as the decision making process and mechanisms that lead to the production of the physical urban form, in contemporary and traditional practices, a significant difference was again found. While the contemporary process is found to be a top down process with virtually no role for potential residents and with a rigid set of exotic regulations, the traditional process was a bottom up process with minimal state intervention and a proscriptive rather than prescriptive code of laws (i.e. a code which only states what not to do).
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See for example FURP (ed.) (1999); O'Reilly (ed.) (1996); Gabr (1990); Mohammed (1987); Steinberg (1984); and Hassan (1979). 2 See Shalaby (1995); and Shalaby (2000) 3 In support, Abu-Lughod (1987) stated "Cities are processes, not products." (p. 172)
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An answer to why the current urban development process with its product have taken this shape lies in the political, social, cultural, economic, environmental and technological forces, operating at different scales, which shape a complex societal process. This complex societal process sustains and shapes the urban development process which leads to the current urban product. In order to understand the current urban product, therefore, we have to develop an understanding of the nature of this complex process. This is a major task, and in the researcher’s current work only a first step towards this goal is being attempted through a focus on “planning education”, as one force that contributes to the current urban practices. Future Research Inspired by the diverse ideas discussed in the IHDP workshop, the following represents some potential avenues for future research. On the product level: 1. Quantifying the negative impact of the current built environment on people through studying the Heat Island Effect in one of the new desert settlements. 2. Investigating the health hazards that such a built environment promotes by leaving its residents vulnerable to the harsh desert climate. 3. Quantifying the positive role played by traditional built environments in alleviating negative environmental impacts. 4. Investigating the contribution of vegetation and water elements to alleviating negative environmental impacts, and how they could efficiently be used in a desert environment with limited resources. On the process level: 1. Monitoring the change from the traditional development process to t e current h process, looking at how different forces variably contributed to this change over time. 2. Investigating the contribution of the governance system on the global/national scale to the current built environment, as one important force in the Egyptian context. 3. Investigating how the environment is perceived, or socially constructed, by the government, professionals and other stakeholders.
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