Urban Sustainability and Expansion Organization in Middle Eastern City Regions: The Case of Cairo and Amman

Abstract

Major Middle East city-regions have experienced considerable physical, economic and social transformations during the past three decades. The rapid pace of globalization and economic restructuring has resulted in these city-regions receiving the full impact of urbanization pressures. In an attempt to ease these pressures, city-regions such as Dubai, Masqat, Beirut, Amman, and Cairo have advocate expansion organization approaches giving particular interest to urban sustainability. These approaches promote efforts to achieve the triple bottom line sustainability by balancing economic and social development, and environmental protection, and putting (more emphasis on compact and optimum development of urban forms. This paper evaluates the case of two Middle East city-regions, Cairo and Amman, and assesses their experiences in managing their urban forms whilst promoting sustainable patterns of urban development. The findings show that sustainable urban development initiatives employing a top down approach has yielded encouraging results in these case study city-regions. However the need for a more concerted effort towards the overall sustainability agenda still remains vital.

Keywords: Sustainable urban development, expansion organization, compact urbanization, city-regions, Cairo, Amman, Middle East