Abstract
The slums surrounding the main cities in Egypt suffer of the environmental pollution indicated by the high disease ratio related to air, water, and soil pollution. There is a relationship between the current urban spatial structure and the environmental pollution.
This phenomenon is clear in the slums that spread rapidly in the last few decades surrounding the out skirts of Egyptian main cities. Those slums have unique local urban characteristics, permanent well structure buildings with infrastructure supply including water and electricity and in some cases sewage system and showed that the main cause of the environmental pollution is not the absence of infrastructure or good construction buildings, but the main cause of environmental pollution is the urban spatial structure.
The study found that the future up-grading plans for Egyptian main cities slums should regard some reviews for the current urban characteristics of those slums.
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- 1.
Within the Egyptian context slums have been known as ‘Ashwa’iyyat’, which literally means ‘disordered’ or ‘haphazard’. It refers to informal areas suffering from problems of accessibility, narrow streets, the absence of vacant land and open spaces, very high residential densities, and insufficient infrastructure and services (World Bank, 2008).
- 2.
Urban spatial structure refers to a cluster of concepts concerned with the arrangement of urban public space, the way that urban public space is arranged affects many aspects of how cities function and has implications for accessibility, environmental sustainability, safety, social equity, social capital, cultural creativity and economics (Wikipedia the free encyclopedia).
- 3.
The other two types are: Type C: Deteriorated Historic Core (Islamic Cairo) and Type D: Deteriorated Urban Pockets.
- 4.
Urban thermal plume describes rising air in the lower altitudes of the Earth’s atmosphere caused by urban areas being warmer than surrounding areas (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).
- 5.
Urban dust domes are a meteorological phenomenon in which soot, dust, and chemical emissions become trapped in the air above urban spaces. This trapping is a product of local air circulations. Calm surface winds are drawn to urban centers, they then rise above the city and descend slowly on the periphery of the developed core (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).
References
Egypt State of the Environment Report (2009), Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs, September 2009, Egypt
Fatma E-Z et al. (2004) Greater Cairo Slums, a profile based on the 2003 Egypt demographic and health survey, March 2004
IRIN and UN-HABITAT (2007) Tomorrow’s Crises Today: The humanitarian impact of urbanization, Chapter 8: Cairo: sheltering the urban poor. Available at: http://www.irinnews.org/pdf/in-depth/TomorrowsCrisesToday-Chapter8.pdf
Khalifa MA (2011) Redefining slums in Egypt: unplanned versus unsafe areas. Journal of Habitat International 35-2011:pp. 33–34
Rouviere C, Williams T, Ball R, Shinyak Y, Topping J, Nishioka S, Ando M, Okita T (1990) Human settlement; the energy, transport and industrial sectors; human health; air quality and changes in Ultraviolet-B radiation. In: Climate Change: The IPCC Impacts Assessment 1990 Chapter 5. Available at: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_II/ipcc_far_wg_II_chapter_05.pdf
The WB (2007) World Development Indicators Chapter 3.13: Air Pollution p. 174–175. Available at: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/table3_13.pdf. Retrieved 2010-08–29
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Elewa, A., Taha El-Garhy, W. (2013). The Roles of the Urban Spatial Structure of the Main Cities Slums in EGYPT and the Environmental Pollution. In: Rauch, S., Morrison, G., Norra, S., Schleicher, N. (eds) Urban Environment. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7756-9_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7756-9_15
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