Abstract
Urban areas are both contributors to climate change and victims of it. Major urbanization activities take place in the Global South, where informalization is synonymous to urbanization. Aspiring to be equitable, cities should balance the needs of their various inhabitants, securing the prosperity of both affluent and vulnerable groups. For many years, slums and informal areas have been seen as geographies of blight and despair. However, these areas efficiently provide needs, amenities, and affordability to vast groups who, otherwise, were not addressed by their governments. This paper studies informal areas and highlights their hidden green characteristics through analyzing their compliance with the principles of sustainable urbanism. Furthermore, the paper investigates the green performance of such areas according to rating systems focusing on energy performance. Additionally, the paper explores what quality of life these areas provide according to criteria defined by a number of indices that also measure prosperity. Four informal districts in the Greater Cairo Region are investigated as case studies to validate results and provide practical insights. The paper then deduces several strategies that can assist informal areas to be more resilient in the face of climate change with its associated increased heat stress and improve quality of life.
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Notes
- 1.
Khalil (2012b) provides an extensive survey of sustainability indicators.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the data support of Prof. Sahar Attia, the consultant preparing Local Area Development Plans to the four case studies and commissioned by the participatory infrastructure program (PIP), GIZ.
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Khalil, H.A.E.E., Gammaz, S. (2020). Supporting Informal Areas Resilience: Reinforcing Hidden Green Potentials for a Better Quality of Life. In: Moore, J., Attia, S., Abdel-Kader, A., Narasimhan, A. (eds) Ecocities Now. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58399-6_2
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