Towards Liveable and Sustainable Egyptian New Cities: Learned Lessons from Columbia, Maryland

Abstract

After more than thirty years of their establishment, 26 New Cities in Egypt are attracting less people than the informal areas. The main objective of this paper is to form a new vision for liveable sustainable Egyptian new cities that attract people to live in, using the descriptive, analytical, deductive methodologies to achieve the research goals. The research starts with discussing the “NCs” definition and its dimensions, and then it explores the major features of sustainability, explains the relationship between the economic, urban, environmental, and social forces shaping the sustainability in developing the new cities. Afterwards, the research focuses on presenting the current situation of the Egyptian experience in developing new cities in the desert areas and the major pertinent impediments, and then analyses the international experiences of sustainable New Cities, Columbia, Maryland in USA. In addition, the case study analysis is a part of a field visit and surveys done by the researcher during Winter and Summer 2015. Finally, the research draws from the previous analyses, the lessons learned from the American experience, the implications for developing Sustainable NCs from inception through completion, in addition to managing the following on-going operations.