Towards more pedestrian-friendly streets in Cairo

This research explores the factors that make the streets of Cairo better places for walking, more inviting, and adaptable to be used by pedestrians. In order to closely examine how far Cairo streets are pedestrian-friendly, walkable environments, the research investigates one street in Cairo as a case study. The case study uses qualitative research to investigate the street characteristics through participants’ observation technique, while the local pedestrians’ needs and perceptions towards the street’s walkability are explored through interviews. In addition, an in-depth interview is conducted with an expert in order to have deeper insights into the issue of pedestrian-friendly streets from a professional perspective. The existing models reviewed through the literature have contributed to the development of the proposed conceptual framework. The study’s empirical findings have shown that safety and cleanliness of streets are the main factors that influence people’s walking experience. Besides, pavement and sidewalks conditions, street furniture and lighting, along with other street user’s behavior, such as car drivers and shopkeepers, are other factors that implicitly and/or explicitly affect street walkability. The analysis of the findings contributes to the limited qualitative research on walkable streets and pedestrians’ walking experience specifically in Cairo. Thus, this study offers a set of recommendations for policy makers and city managers in terms of conducting further research that covers other geographic areas in Cairo, adopting a participatory planning approach, enforcing laws and regulations on street occupancy, applying people-oriented planning paradigms, and raising public awareness on walkability

Mitigating the Impact of Climate Change on Egyptian Cities: Sustainable Building and Construction as a Strategy/ التخفيف من أثر تغير المناخ في المدن المصرية: استراتيجية البناء والتشييد المستدام

Egypt faces a wide range of challenges, including the high increase in population, the Nile water crisis, desertification and the issue of solid waste and encroachment on agricultural lands, and the current negative impacts of the natural and built environments. The construction sector consumes 28% of the total energy produced in Egypt. The high energy consumption and rise in energy prices along with the aforementioned issues are few of several key factors that urge the need to study how consumed energy could be reduced in the construction sector and consequently limit the sector’s impact on the environment (Navigant Energy Germany GmbH, 2022). The paper calls for establishing sustainable cities through sustainable construction and building approaches and practices given the high significance of the construction sector, the excessive wasted resources, and the increase in construction waste, in addition to the deterioration in people’s health and the continued population growth. The paper sheds light on the need to join forces with experts amongst stakeholders in the construction sector for adopting assessment tools that exist globally on environmental performance within the Egyptian context. This adopted tool should be available for both the private and public sectors to enhance the performance of their construction operations and services and the identification of materials that lead to environmental hazards and affect the population’s health, safety, and productivity. Egyptian policymakers should thus consider sustainable building and construction as an interdisciplinary strategy to establish sustainable cities and hence the mitigation of the impact of climate change. The findings of this paper formulate three proposed policy options in an integrated strategy that are not standalone policy options but simply divided into stages of implementation. Policy option A is a long-term type of ‘greening’ existing building laws and developing national standards for sustainable construction materials. As for policy option B, it is a kind of short-term implementation and of rapid impact for providing finance and awareness campaigns to promote sustainable construction. The third and final policy option C is a medium-term implementation framework type that proposes establishing a national Sustainable Construction Working Group under the National Council for Climate Change (NCCC) to have representatives of the different stakeholders from the private and public sectors as well as key players from the construction sector and the community