Sustainable Urban Public Landscapes: A Study of Water as a Sensitive Landscape Element in Design Of Cairo Public Landscapes | ||||
| Journal of Urban Research | ||||
| Article 6, Volume 15, Issue 1, January 2015, Page 95-126 PDF (2.75 MB) | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/jur.2015.95367 | ||||
 View on SCiNiTO | ||||
| Author | ||||
| Mohammad H Refaat | ||||
| Department of Urban Design-Faculty of Urban & Regional Planning- Cairo University | ||||
| Abstract | ||||
| Urban public landscapes are an area of land or body of water to which the public has physical and/or visual access. Its importance has been known for centuries, lately, more comprehensive knowledge has become available on the wide range of benefits they provide. Good quality public landscapes contribute to individual wellbeing, and through their social, economic and environmental values. It has been settled in Egyptian minds for several years that Egypt is not facing a water problem since we are blessed with the Nile that is providing us with our needs and even more. Based upon these settled ideas, the careless usage of water is not a case that was thoroughly studied. In the past few years, few studies and research tackled the idea that we are facing the problem of scarcity of water. According to governmental meetings and conferences, the problem of waters scarcity is getting bigger and constructive interventions and initiatives are crucially needed. Apart from the normal uses of water, irrigation is considered a large aspect that is consuming very large amount of water without much of notice. Very limited attention is given to the reuse, recycle of water. There are even deeper concepts that are barely discussed which are: water consumption of plants, definition of hydro-zones, the aesthetics of limited water usage landscapes and control systems applied to the irrigation methods providing the efficient consumption of water. The aim of this research is to, examining the efficiency of water as a sensitive element in the landscape design process in general and come up with some guidelines for sustaining the future public landscapes in Cairo. | ||||
| Keywords | ||||
| Landscape Design; Sustainability; Irrigation; water management | ||||
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