Adaptive Landscape Design for Urban Microclimate

Abstract

Climate Change has been a global reality, cities are particularly vulnerable to its impacts. The emergence of industrialization and urbanization are the root cause for this phenomenon: the release of Green House Gas emissions; and Urban Heat Island (UHI). It negatively affects the quality of urban environments and threatens the human health on top. Cascading Climate change (CC) impacts and implications from a global to local level; Egypt is a typical developing country vulnerable to CC. Numerous threats to its economic, social, and environmental sustainability including energy, water, and food security. Egypt’s share to GHG emissions does not exceed the 0.7 % from the global quota share. Moreover, Egypt lies in the hot desert zone which is prone to higher heat waves that can exceed 50°C due to its climate nature, stated by couple of research. Yet, since 2019, Egypt extensively is taking stricter and major actions towards mitigating and adapting towards climate issues i.e., “Egypt Climate Strategy 2050” and the updating of “Egypt’s 2030 vision” which inline with the Sustainable Developed Goals SDGs initiated by the United Nations. We examined diverse relevant literature for Cairo’s climate situation and concluded the following: Cairo is affected by high Land Surface Temperature LST which results in an increased UHI , particularly in the eastern region of the city; additionally, in urbanized areas higher temperature rates 2 to 4 degrees Celsius in day and nighttime ; low to nearly very limited presence of vegetation which acts as an urban cooler; High thermal discomfort which hinders human activities in comparison with rural / less urbanized areas. This discourage using the outdoor urban areas and creates a surpass cooling demand for indoors that in turn fosters UHI and CC – the vicious cycle. The absence of climate design and application in the field is one of the main factors towards these findings.