Sustainability in the Middle East by Karim Elgendy
The rapid growth of cities specifically in the Middle East over past decades has overlooked the need for creating sustainable and resilient cities. In today’s ArchiNet talk Karim Elgendy, an award-winning architect and sustainability consultant, guides us through the history of climate change, urbanization, the rising sustainability challenges; planning, mobility, buildings, water, and urban resilience challenges.
Starting 8000 years in the past global climate change began with the shift in earth’s equator leading to the transformation of grasslands into deserts; Arabian and Sahara are one such examples, resulting in uninhabitable conditions except in specific locations of desert edges and coastal lands where human civilizations thrived and sustained with the resources available in hinterlands. Climate in the coastal cities was moderated by water bodies, access to rivers, streams, ground water and natural ports whereas climate of Inland cities was moderated by high altitudes, ground water, streams and navigable rivers giving them trade and economic advantage, example the city of Taif.
Development of famous trade routes like frankincense, silk and maritime of the 11th and 12th century saw the onset of urbanization in diverse Middle Eastern regions. As the cities prospered some of the best forms of traditional urbanism emerged that were organic, environmentally responsive remaining within their ecological boundaries. However the recent Industrialization and globalization has transformed the city’s consumption levels and globalized their hinterlands enabling them to import deficient commodities, over extracting natural resources from neighboring lands and exporting fossil fuels resulting in exponential economic growth within a few decades. This conveyed a false sense of resource abundance which masks the fundamental environmental conditions within which these cities came to light. Metropolis development adopted a less environmentally appropriate and imported urban form abandoning the traditional organic urbanism. Creating visually attractive cities that led to internal dynamics and agglomeration effects causing migration of massive population from rural to urban regions. Over the last 60 years urbanization rapidly grew in the MENA region, 2/3rd of the region’s population now lives in truly urban areas. Theoretically growing cities tend to have more effective resource consumption be that economical or environmental; unfortunately the cities of this region didn’t reap the benefits that were promised by this urbanization process.
At core of these failures lies a number sustainability challenges which can be categorized as planning (density and land-use), urban mobility, buildings and water. The first core challenge is planning. The core of all planning decisions is density and land-use. Annually the global urban density rate decreases suggesting a faster growth in urban areas than urban population. Most of the Middle East region cities, the GCC, large or small fall below the standard urban density threshold. The issues with reduced urban density are it reduces economic viability of mass transportation systems, discourages non-motorized mobility people are less inclined to walk, reduces energy efficiency due to increased cooling demand (as buildings become small Islands that need to be individually insulated and conditioned) and increases the use of material resources of roads and utilities. Single use zoning adaptation is the best example linked to low density new urban developments. The second core challenge is urban mobility. The region's mobility network and infrastructure are designed for private vehicles. Such infrastructure limits the use of energy efficient public transportation networks and does not support walkability or bike riding ability. The region's lack of reliable and efficient public transportation systems limits networks with the exception of metro networks in some cities. Lastly the subsidized fuel prices also disincentives transition to an energy efficient public transportation or to electric vehicles. The third core challenge is buildings. The building of the cities tends to have a range of heating and cooling conditioning of spaces inside the building. Annually buildings of some cities on one hand require more cooling while some neither cooling nor heating, on the other hand some need more heating. Temperature moderation of extreme outdoor conditions for acceptable thermal human comfort is often undermined by the building stock of the region. Decades of poor building codes and standards have produced poorly insulated homes, fully-glazed offices and hundreds of thousands of inefficient air-conditioning units and applications. Yet again subsidized electricity bills remove the financial incentive for energy efficiency. The last core sustainability challenge is water. Need of desalination plants due to water scarcity in parts of the region leads to increased energy use and carbon emissions with a huge environmental footprint. Secondly, direct and indirect water subsidies limit our ability to integrate water efficiency into the cities.
One method to measure all the said issues is to analyze the carbon emissions. It allows us to gauge to what extent some of those metrics have materialized in terms of the ability of cities to capture those economic and environmental benefits promised by urbanization. Countries of the MENA region don’t emit significant amounts of carbon; most of them are under global emission percentage with the exception of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey. Historically the region did not contribute much to carbon emission as compared to today. Adding to it, the most alarming trend seen over the past 40 years is the rapid rise in carbon emission levels in the MENA region as compared to the global average. This suggests the inefficiency in the economy during urbanization stages, proving the cities didn’t reap the benefits that were promised by the urbanization process.
Sustainability is unfortunately not the only challenge facing the cities of this region. The cities of the region are also susceptible to a range of external shocks and stresses that undermine its operation today and highly at risk with climate change which threatens its future. The reasons the cities are more susceptible to these issues is the lack of resilience system. Most urban systems lack diversity and flexibility i.e. 1-2 primary energy sources for electricity, 1-2 sources for their freshwater and 1 mobility mode such as private vehicles. Informal urban settlements are more at risk to shocks and stresses. The social conditions are fragile with rapid population growth, internal and external migration and further urbanization. The IPCC reports classify the region as highly vulnerable to future climate change; rise in water levels, temperature for example.
To conclude, we need a hybrid approach to solve the issues; regional cities need the ability to manage shocks and stresses (resilience) in a way that would trigger change to a more sustainable state. Urban sustainability strategies also need to ensure their long-term urban resilience. Synergies between urban sustainability and urban resilience are the key.