Elsevier

Progress in Planning

Volume 78, Issue 4, November 2012, Pages 151-206
Progress in Planning

Desert reclamation, a management system for sustainable urban expansion

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.progress.2012.04.003Get rights and content

Abstract

Urbanisation is occurring at an unprecedented scale worldwide, with developing countries claiming the biggest share. Developing countries are increasingly facing enormous pressures to manage their urban and rural areas challenged by limited resources, exploding numbers of population and rising expectations for a higher quality of life. Sustainability is central to the management of existing and newly developed areas. It can offer a comprehensive discourse for understanding the functioning of cities and their hinterlands, with an aim to achieve a balance between environmental, economic and social issues for current and future generations. Managing the urbanization of newly developed areas requires innovative thinking and an ability to predict and evaluate the impacts of possible futures. As the new map of Egypt is redrawn and much hope lies on the development of its deserts constituting 95% of the total land area, an efficient process of directing and facilitating urban development is urgently required. This paper presents an Urban Sustainable Management System (USMS) using the process of Integrated Assessment to assess three possible development scenarios based on different economic bases for new developments on desert reclaimed land. Indicators of a quantitative and qualitative nature are used to describe environmental, social and economic capitals of three scenarios as well as setting targets towards the aim of sustainability. Pressure points hindering the sustainable development of reclaimed land are drawn under the three different scenarios. The USMS provides an urban management system that overcomes difficulties of data availability, combines interdisciplinary knowledge and deals with uncertainties of future developments; struggles decisionmakers confront across the divide but more so in developing countries.

Highlights

► The paper provides an Urban Sustainable Management System for new developments on desert reclaimed land in Egypt. ► Similar areas in the South can find the targets and methodology useful because of the identifiable measures and transparent method of reasoning and informed judgement. ► The USMS has contributed to the paradigm of sustainable urban management in three significant ways. (1) It has provided a consistent set of indicators, prioritised according to settlers’ needs and local issues. (2) It has overcome data unavailability by using comparable national, international and local figures. It has overcome the obstacle of knowledge sharing by collating and synthesizing different forms of knowledge (expert, sectoral and tacit). Using scenarios creatively and varying the economic base is a departure from other studies. (3) The USMS not only measures, it provides an evaluative framework, implements it and engages with questions of sustainable levels and values. ► When applying the USMS to the study region the magnitude of the pressure points was far greater than expected, providing valuable information for decision makers. ► The low priority accorded to the environment is clear under any economic base, where the economic dimension is the most influential. ► The concept of urban sustainability in a southern context remains relatively vague. The study shows that provision of basic needs, equitable distribution of resources, and the priority accorded to the economic dimension largely shape the understanding of sustainability.

Introduction

In the next 50 years the world population is projected to reach over nine billion (DESA, 2009, WRI, 2006) with virtually this entire growth taking place in developing countries (El Araby, 2002, Population Reference Bureau, 2007), with as many people living in urban areas as outside them and the projection of 60% of Africa's population living in cities by 2050 (UNHABITAT, 2010). Cohen (2005) warns that if current trends are assumed poor countries will have to build the equivalent of a city of more than one million people each week for the next 45 years. The World Development Report (2003) estimates that the demands for energy, water, housing and education will be enormous. We can thus look ahead to an unprecedented age of urbanisation and city-building. A century during which the vast majority of the world's population will have to live in cities cries out for images of the good city (Freidmann, 2000), especially when continued spatial expansion and growth of cities result in social segregation, increasing unemployment, environmental deterioration and declining quality of life (Rotmans et al., 2000, Yigitcanlar, 2008), trends cited in most cities around the world but are more intense in developing countries. As a solution to the overcrowding and congestion of old cities and towns and subsequent trends, the policy of constructing new cities and towns has been rediscovered in developing countries, decades after losing its popularity in the North (Stewart, 1996). A striking example is that of Egypt which is expanding into its vast desert land. This policy has been adopted since the 70s yet a few of the new cities have sustained due to bad management and unbalanced development which neglect social and environmental aspects. As the policy of new developments on desert reclaimed lands is revived on a much larger scale, it presents an opportunity to planners and decision-makers to plan on a clean slate avoiding problems of existing areas (Golany, 1976) and adopting principles of sustainability, however, problems of operationalising the concept remain.

Urban systems and structures have been dramatically affected by rapid urbanisation in the last few decades (Yeung, 2000), increasingly challenging planning bodies worldwide to control urban growth in a comprehensive and sustainable manner in an aim to decrease adverse implications. This has been attempted by the use of urban frameworks and models where important progress has been made. The result is two bodies of literature; that focusing on planning questions of land use, transport and housing and another, in which attempts are made to integrate the environmental dimension. Very few attempts have been made building on the concept of sustainability which emphasises the importance of the three pillars; the environment, the social aspects and the economic, despite a wide suggestion at the international level that urban sustainability is the best approach to guide present and future growth of urban areas (Drakakis-Smith, 1995, Myllyla and Kuvaja, 2005, Rees and Wackernagel, 1996; Rodriguez, 2007; Satterthwaite, 1997; Spangenberg, Pfahl, & Deller, 2002). The methods deployed in frameworks and models have been largely analytical or for the sake of monitoring as will be shown in the second part of the paper. There has been little exploration in the field of sustainability evaluative frameworks. This paper focuses on the development of an evaluating tool for new developments, departing from the focus of most literature; namely analytical frameworks, into producing something workable on the ground. An Urban Sustainable Management System (USMS) is proposed that builds on an integrated approach. The aim is to assist planners to make comprehensive decisions that take into account all dimensions of sustainability when planning for new developments on desert reclaimed land in a southern context.

The paper is organised in six parts. Following the introduction, the second part presents the study area, a region in Upper Egypt which has been scheduled for major development activities. The third part is dedicated to discussing the notion of urban sustainability reflecting on the concept and on challenges faced in its implementation. The fourth part, which constitutes the largest part of the paper, presents an Urban Sustainable Management System following an integrated approach to tackle the challenges and limitations facing sustainability in developing countries. The system is then applied to the case study area. In the fifth and sixth part, discussions and findings highlighting pressure points in new developments are presented followed by conclusions.

Section snippets

Desert reclaimed land – a revived agenda

Urbanization has occurred in many parts of Egypt partly as a result of industrial and economic growth, and mainly as a result of rising expectations of rural people who have flocked to the cities seeking prosperity and escape from low quality living standards. This accompanied by a significant rise in population growth has exacerbated the problem, where urban expansion is at the expense of an annual 25–30 thousand feddans (1 feddan  1 acre) of cultivated land (Abou-Kourin, 1999, El-Hefnawi, 2005

Sustainability and the planning of urban expansion

The paradigm of sustainable development has been a popular concept and a named challenge in the discipline of urban planning in recent years, where policies and strategies have emerged from the discontent and concern with urban expansion (Ancell and Thompson-Fawcett, 2008, Egger, 2006). It has triggered discussions about the sustainability of cities, the parameters and forms of a sustainable city which led to the development of a range of initiatives, strategies and plans. Models of different

An Urban Sustainable Management System

The Urban Sustainable Management System (USMS) developed in this paper is theoretically based on sustainability at large and more specifically on Integrated Assessment. Extension of environmental assessment processes to include the three pillars (economic, social and environmental criteria) has been labelled integrated assessment (Pope, Annandale, & Morison-Saunders, 2004). Eggenberger and Partidaro (2000) and Schreider et al. (2001) explain the term integration or holism where the whole is

Findings and discussion

The final stage of the system; namely the assessment and evaluation, revealed the pressure points in capitals of each scenario, provided insights into possible impacts of different scenarios and highlighted the tensions and conflicts emerging with varying economic bases. In the following section the most prominent pressure points shall be outlined, and a brief of findings of each scenario.

Conclusion

Building a Sustainable Management System that would assist planners and policy makers to reach a sustainable city is a major challenge due to the diversified range of environmental, economic and social elements yielding to the complex nature of urban developments and due to the many functions and aims of a sustainable city. Rotmans et al. (2000) confirm that city management has become a complex undertaking due to processes such as economic and political globalisation, technological development,

Acknowledgements

Special thanks go to Prof. Heather Campbell and Mr. Peter Bibby of the Dept. of Town and Regional Planning, Sheffield University, UK, for their continuous support and insightful remarks.

The author is a lecturer of Architecture and Planning in the Department of Architectural Engineering and Environmental Design (AEED) at the Arab Academy for Science and Technology, Egypt. She acquired her PhD from the Department of Town and Regional Planning (TRP), Sheffield University, UK. Before assuming her current position at AEED, she worked as a University Teacher for two years at TRP, during which she was part of a winning bidding team delivering international experience with urban

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    The author is a lecturer of Architecture and Planning in the Department of Architectural Engineering and Environmental Design (AEED) at the Arab Academy for Science and Technology, Egypt. She acquired her PhD from the Department of Town and Regional Planning (TRP), Sheffield University, UK. Before assuming her current position at AEED, she worked as a University Teacher for two years at TRP, during which she was part of a winning bidding team delivering international experience with urban intensification to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, New Zealand. Her teaching career spans over 13 years. Her publications are concerned with sustainability in developing countries, social concerns and urban form and design.

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