New Cities and Community Extensions in Egypt and the Middle East

Al Alamein New City (ANC) is located in a site named after a battle that took place during the Second World War (WWII 1942).The Egyptian Government selected a prestigious site on the north western coast to host the new city, which is expected to set a new benchmark, and a model for the new generation of sustainable cities in Egypt. In fact, the site is rich with its natural, and historical resources; however, achieving sustainable development in Egypt implies overcoming multiple challenges. The most pressing challenges are institutional, financial, and managerial. The site has a waterfront on the Mediterranean that extends 14 km. It includes the WWII cemeteries’ historical site. The desert expands to host the new city, and its activities, and a possible agricultural hinterland.

Although new cities have had long history in Egypt, yet the challenges to build a successful, sustainable, and an attractive new city are debatable. The author stresses on good governance being the most relevant challenge to achieve sustainability. Hence, governance will join the three well known sustainability pillars: Social, economic, and environmental aspects. The author will tackle major issues that will constitute the elements of branding New AL-Alamein City.

This chapter is the first authentic published material describing the city master plan. It is structured in three main parts. The first part consists of the vision development derived from the regional context. The second part deals with the strategy of sustainable development in the city, its pathways, its pillars, and the major guidelines to achieve sustainability. This part ends with the development drivers, that serves as the base for the forthcoming part. The last, and third part visualizes the planning concept, and its relevancy to achieve sustainability, in addition to the master plan, the design concept, and related details including the use of attractive public spaces, strong public realm landmarks, effective connectivity between public buildings, and vibrant neighborhoods. Moreover, the chapter pinpoints key aspects in the master plan related to how to create a unique identity in new cities, while providing a better life quality for Egyptian citizens, together with establishing an international attractive venue for cultural, and leisure tourism.

As rapid urbanization continues to transform the landscape of the cities around the world, subnational governments are under great pressure to address negative externalities associated with poorly-designed and informal expansion. The global trend persists as the rate of growth in unplanned or poorly-planned expansion outpaces that of the planned expansion. The lack of coordination between spatial planning and economic development planning widely observed in subnational governments aggravates the current unsustainable urban expansion. This chapter proposes an innovative approach to urban development planning which harnesses transformative force into an inclusive, equitable, productive and sustainable form of urban development. By integrating spatial analysis with value/supply chain analysis, it assesses the importance of mobility, connectivity, and inclusivity for industries. Upon the analysis, the methodology highlights a strong interrelation between urban layouts and productivity of cities and presents itself as an alternative approach to planning cities. The chapter introduces the case of Al-Alamein, a new city under consideration for development in Egypt, to showcase the government’s systematic approach to meet new challenges arising from rapid urbanization and presents a model for future new city development for Egypt as well as for countries around the world, utilizing comprehensive approach to sustainable urban development.

The story of NEOM city starts when the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced the launch of NEOM, the futuristic megacity, on the conference “Future Investment Initiative” in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, at 24 October 2017.

The Project’s promoters aspire to brand a new land where a plethora of unique development opportunities that could contribute to make NEOM a global hub for trade, innovation, and knowledge. The creative class around the world has been invited to participate in creating NEOM, with promises of a new life in a beautiful nature free place, and an independent economic zone with its own laws, taxes, regulations, and no restrictions. Future technology in transportation, growing and processing food, healthcare, internet of things, and digital air all should contribute to providing NEOM’s residents a unique lifestyle.

The project that starts with a fanfare might face a number of challenges, whether at the present or in the future such as the abstention of investor’s participation in such a current economic situation in KSA after the decline of world oil price, resistance of conservatives, the neighbors countries’ supporting, in addition to the time challenge. There is also a fear of repeating the failed experiments as Saudi kingdom will not be able to bear its costs.

The shortage of literature and references has been a big challenge when to write this article in such time, four months after the formal announcement of launching NEOM. However, this article raises several questions and inquires that help to predict future challenges that might face the decision makers and can be addressed if recognized early.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is one of the strategic countries in the Islamic worlds, and one of the top oil producers. KSA has formulated its 2030 vision, that expresses its long term goals, and expectations; reflecting the country’s strengths, and capabilities. The vision aims to increase the investments in real estate and infrastructure projects, as they will help the Kingdom build a strong industrial base to sustain its economy in the future, when oil reserves shrink. One of the basic development concepts is to build new cities, in an attempt to shape a better urban future for all, by generating and scaling new interventions through events, research and urban innovation projects.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has started on building four new economic cities, that resolve the housing and employment crisis, resulting from growing population, together with supporting economic diversification. King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) is one of Saudi economic cities that is located in Rabigh. It is mainly established to represent an inclusive, connected, healthy, and vibrant city, that comprehensively satisfies all community needs, while sustaining good life quality standards.

In this Chapter, the author will present King Abdullah Economic City, and the main objectives, and principles of its development. In addition, there will be a brief about the challenges tackled, and methods of resolving them. Moreover, there will also be an elaboration on the opportunities offered by the KAEC for the community, while highlighting its future capability to become one of the largest sustainable cities in the Middle East.

The public transit financing methods in Egypt are mostly dependent on governmental entities, which increase national economic burdens, without any correspondent impact on the quality of service provided nor their provision. An alternative way of financing must be integrated without an increase in fares, and general budget, or dependence on foreign loans, and grants. This funding problem has further become a spectacular challenge, to link the new cities with existing ones. From another perspective, public transit eventually poses economic influences on land values surrounding their context that increase incrementally. Yet, this increment is commonly captured by landowners and private developers, and can be rationally used to cover the initial public transit costs if the construction phase which is preceded by a pre-planned framework to capture this increment in favor of the community through related governmental authorities and decision makers. This mechanism is referred to as “land value capture: LVC.”

From this view, the objective of the study presented in this chapter is to generate a new sustainable funding mechanism for public transit development using land value capture methods in the Egyptian new cities. Accordingly, this will be achieved through the analysis and the review of several relevant international case studies in an attempt to deduce the LVC mechanism criteria and stakeholders’ role that can successfully manage this framework. The deduced criteria will be used to test the applicability of using the land value capture mechanism in Borg El-Arab new city. The chapter results end up with highlighting how the ‘LVC’ methods could serve as a two faceted mechanism that meets the community and low-income groups’ needs, while benefiting from the high-end landowners, and private developers without having the government as the main economic funder.

Lately, the world has been witnessing universal challenges; such as social, political, cultural & environmental. These are affecting the economic policies worldwide. At the local level in Egypt, the economic conditions are critical, due to the world trade movement leading to the increase the inflation rate and the continuous decrease of local currency value with respect to foreign currencies, in addition to the reduction of saving rates for local currency. The Egyptian central bank & the Egyptian government did not offer saving rates for local currency that can adapt with the increase of inflation rates that exceeded 30%, which did not comply to the wishes of the citizens to increase or keep the value of their savings. On the other hand, investing in real estate is more reasonable to balance the increase of inflation rates. Accordingly, citizens and small investors had to invest in real estate as an alternative for saving rates provided by Egyptian central bank. This chapter discusses the run-up of real estate prices fuelled by demand of citizens and small investor with respect to limited supply; causing a real estate bubble in the future due to fake demand and the unbalance between supply, and real demand.

Egypt is embarking on an ambitious National Strategy of new urban development, which includes the establishment of many new settlements. History has shown, here, as with many other developing countries, technical plans are formulated, without effective mechanisms for implementation. Instead, the plans end up gathering dust on the shelves of national agencies or local government with limited improvements on local economic or environmental well-being evident on the ground. This is attributed to the difficulties in understanding competing interests, and the lack of effective contribution of diverse stakeholders in the planning process. Current plan-making processes can be characterised by a central government monopoly in decision-making. This combined with fragmented government agencies lead to multiple, and often conflicting spatial plans for the same location. This chapter seeks to highlight such deficiencies through an exploration of recent ecotourism development proposals in Egypt. By drawing upon a critical documentary review of specific case studies, and semi-structured interviews with 56 ecotourism experts, and stakeholders, the analysis suggests that stakeholder engagement was tokenistic, with a particular central government agenda still dominant. If the aspirations of Egypt’s new urban development are to be fully realised, then more effective collaboration between stakeholders, at all levels, is crucial.

Planning for future urban development usually pursues a comprehensive understanding for complex city systems with all its diversities. The balance of these systems depends on their interchanging dynamics when they contribute in city’s generation, and stabilize its development momentum. Since formal and informal systems integrate within market dynamics; development policies should be inclusive for both. In this chapter, development management in Egypt is investigated through assessing effectiveness of decision making ideology on success of informal settlements’ upgrading policies. This chapter discusses the integration level of upgrading policies within Egypt’s agenda for sustainable development, and constructs a correlation analysis between growing informality and the upgrading policies implemented; tracking down deficiencies and poor practices. The findings assist in establishing a platform for evaluating the applicability of ‘Good Urban Governance’ within the Egyptian legislative and institutional frameworks; putting into consideration the poor institutional setup, the poor legislations’ understanding, and the poor steering structure for city development management.

President Abd Al-Fatah El Sisi declared that more than 50% of urban, and rural agglomerations in Egypt are informal (Youm 7, 2016). In addition, arbitrary urbanization, and rapid population growth of urban, and rural agglomerations have increased the demand for housing, especially for low income groups. It is estimated that Egypt’s population has rose over the past decade from 72.8 million people in 2006, to 94 million people in 2017, an increase of 21.2 million people (CAPMAS, General statistics for population and housing: population census. Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, Cairo, 2017). This population inhabited around 6% of Egyptian territory. If this trend is continued, Egypt’s population will reach more than 183 million by the year 2050, by which we will need at least one-fold of the current urban, and rural agglomerations to be added for meeting future housing demand, and various social amenities. Also, if the current housing policy, and planning trends are to be continued, it is expected that more than 50% of the future urban, and rural agglomeration will be spreading informally on adjacent agricultural land on the periphery of urban areas. This brief background leads to question the future of Egyptian urbanism, and how to tackle the spreading of urban informality. It is the time to understand how the urban poor formulated urban informality in which they secured their land tenure. If the urban patterns of low-income groups are to be remodeled, and if the informal process of cooperation among the urban poor is to be formalized, it would enhance the Egyptian built environment, and meet the official planning processes.

This chapter is an attempt to shed light on hidden potential actions of urban informality, as a cooperation/participation process among the urban poor, and to understand how they formulated the informal urban expansions that met their requirements, and their needs. Potential actions of the urban poor, and their relative impact on the housing production are defined as the priorities of the participants (government, professionals, and the poor) and their ability, liability and willingness towards the production of housing being supplied. Three important themes are explored, those of preferred, effective, and actual actions. This research applies a deductive methodology to test theoretical concepts, and patterns by using new empirical data. The potential actions, among the urban poor, are examined in relation to land plots with security of tenure, and its relationship to the housing process as a use and/or an exchange value, and the way it had been created, developed, and invested.

This chapter utilizes the above arguments through two sources; first; the examination of reports of the General Strategies Urban Plan’s (GSUPs) for selected Egyptian cities. The second is information based on practical studies, previous researches, participant observation, and the exploration and understanding of complex issues of urban informality in which the author was involved. The main arguments are driven by investigating the informal new urban expansions in Benha city to explore the three themes of potential action, and to deduce the main lessons learnt from such development (Soliman 2017). The aim is to reach a practical, and applicable housing policy, and to remodel the current planning ideas to serve the immediate and future population needs for housing and various social amenities in a cooperative way in order to alleviate poverty.

The findings of the study would change concepts of the current housing policy for the advantage of the urban poor. They are diverse, and multifaceted based on the history of potential actions, and the development patterns of the informal urban expansions. Throughout Egyptian cities, informal security of land tenure has been the preferred methods for safeguarding the interests of disadvantages groups. A form of legalization among users based on collective land tenure is highlighted.

The city is one of the greatest products of human civilization that has been built to provide services; safety and comfort. However, uncontrolled urban growth caused some anonymous, and unsightly images of the cities among which are underused, abandoned, or deserted urban space. Public space in cities reflects social life, and hosts community interaction; the absence of social interaction changes the public space to wasted and lost spaces. Wasted urban space leads to the discontinuity of the urban fabric creating meaningless unstructured landscapes within the city’s urban fabric. Wasted space is the unrecognized areas of land that are in need of redesign; their value is derived from their potential in vitalizing and connecting their surrounding urban context.

The research significance lies in recognizing the importance of community urban open spaces, their value and impact. The research also addresses the reuse and the regeneration of lost urban spaces in order to enhance the physical and social quality of life in urban open space. In addition, the reuse of in-between left over space is an incremental process that is addressed in building totally new cities which follow phasing development plans; as well as vitalizing the land of already existing cities.

Connecting or stitching the discontinuous urban fabric, represents an exploratory process in the relationship between infrastructure and the urban fabric and seeks to establish an architectural solution to leftover spaces within the city. In doing so, the research establishes a framework (criteria) for reuse of lost urban space by implementing an inductive and deductive analytical methodology applied to relevant examples and case studies of lost urban space.

The study presented in this chapter aims at deducing a new operational framework model for safety existence in urban real estate grounded on risk management. This expanded vision is based on the concept of ‘Man’ as the core of study, his aspirations, needs and his relation with the surrounding communities. As real estate deeply affects communities, and enclosed urban spaces physically and psychologically, security is also a key aspect among that domain, that can also affect its life quality. Here comes the role of project management widely, that incorporates risk management specifically.

Social Protection’s view emphasizes the double role of risk management, as it should particularly support poor societies, against all expected risks. The study in this chapter focuses on safety risk management through the project operation stage, to build up an operational model manipulating different safety risks (high/low probabilities, and impacts) affecting different stakeholders in urban spaces of real estate.

Furthermore, safety elements should be integrated within the design of the different urban spaces, which are included in the operational model, as measuring indicators for safety risks vs. stakeholders’ vision.

Empirical study is conducted on residential middle-class compound in Egypt to apply the operational model, in an attempt to explore safety risks in spaces. Accordingly, this model shall act as an effective tool in decision making during project management phases, to ensure safety and thus enhances life quality inside these urban spaces.

In accordance with the urban expansion taking place around Greater Cairo since Sadaat’s open economy policies, questions have been raised related to the sustainability of the new settlements. Ranging from New Cairo City to the East and 6th of October to the West the same urban design strategies of low density and horizontal expansions have been applied. However, those urban design strategies did not fulfill the need for alternative independent communities and the vast open spaces are either privatized by real estate companies, mega malls or left vacant. Mega malls- investigated in this research- play the role of the public space in several cases to be investigated here. From one point of view, the mega mall provides services both social and commercial to its customers who can afford to use the facilities. However, this leads to a great dilemma of privatization and branding of public space in new cities. The question raised here is the validity of branding new cities via mega shopping malls. This debate re-questions Jacobs’ theories applied to the Cairene case. The methodology is based on qualitative analysis of two selected case studies for mega malls focusing on the urban setting of the mega malls within the new expansion and its architectural character. Following that, Jacobs’ theories will be briefly reinterpreted according to the urban setting surrounding the mega malls in addition to contemporary theories of social resilience. The conclusion is a group of recommendations to enhance the social vitality of new cities.

Within the context of Knowledge-Based Economy, many cities around the globe are working on magnetizing the global talents of professionals, students, academic staff and researchers for joining their local markets. Numerous studies revealed that university campuses could play a substantial role in boosting the innovation within communities and reinforcing the mission of developing human resources aligned with fostering competitive technological advantages. In new cities, societies tend to maximize their competitive benefits to attract more talents and investment. Thus, reconstructing the relationship between campus and the new city is becoming more substantial for the survival and foolishness of these new communities. Therefore, this study is organized based on two premises, the first straightforward is, hypothesizing that both, urban and spatial characteristics and configurations of university campus may increase or decrease the possibilities of innovation to take place within the city. The second attribute is more holistic, assuming that there is a kind of correlation between community or campus-scale planning, and space-scale setting in fostering interaction and thriving innovation. Accordingly, the research is a trial to articulate the design framework which may control the efficiency of this relationship to promote innovation within a broad ecosystem. In this chapter, the authors used qualitative research tools to consolidate the final findings and planning consideration of new innovative communities by deploying a target group questionnaire and analyzing a distinctive case study of MIT University Campus, USA.

Design facilities for new cities is a mission with a responsibility towards both human resources and advancing the quality of life in these cities. Healthcare facilities (HCF), in particular, are regarded as a necessity in a rapidly developing world of new communities and cities. The main target of (HCF) is healing; failing to achieve this target is a crucial predicament that needs to be investigated. To attain healing, a design that cares about the welfare of occupants must be provided. To successfully create an effective healing environment, public participation of occupants, specifically cancer children, is required to accommodate their psychological, physiological and emotional needs- or needs that are necessary for their healing and recovery. According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an increase from 14.1 million to 21.7 million new cancer cases from 2012 to 2030 respectively is estimated. Three times increase in cancer incidents relative to the year 2013 was estimated in Egypt. Therefore, healing design approaches for the physical environment of such facilities play a major role in patients’ well-being and health. The objective of this article is to identify the basic approaches and factors affecting healing environments in existing health care facilities through literature review and the analysis of case studies. The utmost aim is to deduce lessons learned in order to assist in creating HCF that are adaptable and suitable for the future. The study concluded a number of guideline criteria for the design of efficient health care facilities that are user-friendly and that would fit within new cities.