1. Integrated Case Study - Analysis of Ezbet-el-muslemin area in Heliopolis, Egypt

MSc Integrated Urbanism & Sustainable Design (IUSD)

The Integrated Case Study The Physical Dimension.

Phase 2 Analysis “Medan El-Gamea and Ezbet El-Muslimeen area Cairo - Egypt 2019/2020

MSc Integrated Urbanism & Sustainable Design (IUSD)

Disclaimer ‘The Integrated Case Study - Informal Areas' Development Approaches in Egypt - Process & Roles’ is produced as a part of the Integrated Case Study (ICS) module.

© IUSD Masters Program, 2019 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form of by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of IUSD-ASU, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt.

All rights reserved

Contacts: MSc Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design www.iusd.uni-stuttgart.de Ain Shams University

Faculty of Engineering El Sarayat street 1, Abbassia, Cairo-Egypt Fax: 0020222728225 Email: iusd@eng.asu.edu.eg

Phase 2 - The Physical Dimension Pamela Gil Mridula Garg Ishika Alim Azeemah Owais Dina Alaa Sara Abu Henedy Hassan Mohamed

Ain Shams Teaching Staff Prof. Dr. Mohamed Salheen Assistant Prof. Mohammed Ezz Ain Shams Assisting Team Eng. Mohammed Fawzi Eng. Wesam El-Bardisy Special Thanks to the support of Associate Prof. Marwa Abdellatif

Introduction

Problem Definition

The site of study, Ezbet el Muslimeen is located close to Medan-el-Gema in the El-Busten area of Heliopolis. While Heliopolis itself is unique within the socio-spatially fragmented fabric of Cairo, the site is an interesting anomaly even within Heliopolis. It was primarily planned as the residential quarter for the workers of the Heliopolis Company in 1900s. In its existence over the course of a century, it has transformed its identity several times but always safeguarding space and interests of a wide range of socio-economic groups.

Through urban sprawl, the scarce economic and ecological resources of the country are drained and social segregation and spatial fragmentation is perpetuated. An approach to systems thinking is taken to understand the cascading effects of the problem on various scales.

driving question: What will be the impact of Urban sprawl [in the form of Desert cities] on the existing city fabric of Cairo?

Diagram 1: Urban Transformation // Engulfing of agricultural and desert land over the 20th century by urban sprawl with reference to Heliopolis..

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Diagram 2: Urban Sprawl // Heliopolis, often considered a model example for urban planning practice, was the first desert city as a suburb of Cairo. It boasts a very high density and smaller ecoligical footprint.

“For Cairo and Giza governorates, over 70% of the local 2015/16 Budget for Built Environment was spent on New Cities”

(Source: The Built Environment Observatory)

Methodology Conceptual Framework Systems Thinking highlights a multi-scalar, multi-objective and multi-functional approach with cascading effects that act on a system. For that reason, the impacts of urban sprawl are considered simultaneously as: a) Systemical and b) Scalar.

The issues which affect the site (micro scale) are identified by branching out the key problems that impact the city system (macro scale) and that derive in a set of points to analyze the site.

For example, the analysis of “green, open and public spaces” is linked to the problem of lack of

recreational spaces on the micro scale and poor health on macro scale. The different segments of analysis are further co-related in two focus themes 1) Morphology and 2) Mobility.

Data was collected through site observations, interviews and literature review. One of the challenges during site surveys was skepticism from the locals in letting us click photographs or revealing information regarding house rent or income status.

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Diagram 3: Systems Approach // Physical-Urban System is linked to and supported by Ecosystem Services which are part of the Socio-Ecological System.

Diagram 4: Analysis Matrix // Framework for deriving analysis parameters for the site from systemical and scalar effects of the problems.

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Diagram 5: Integrated approach to planning and transportation for establishment of Heliopolis by entrepreneur Baron Empan in 1900s

Diagram 6: Looking at the evolution and disconnect between transport modes and urban sprawl over a century in Cairo

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Diagram 7: An overview of the green spaces as essential for socio-ecological systems in Heliopolis

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The Site BUILDING REGULATIONS

Protection zones Zone A: high protection area Zone B: Medium protection area Zone C: transition area between protection areas (high and medium) and the normal areas

URBAN TRANSFORMATION

1908

1912

Based on the unique architectural and urban features of Heliopolis, The National Organization of Urban Harmony classified several zones to be protected in many ways. Basically, Heliopolis is divided into four zones, high protection, medium protection, transition area and normal area.

Each one of those zones has its own regulations and rules , aiming to prevent any damages to the unique and historic nature of the area.

1923 Source: Heliopolis, City in a city These regulations cover several topics starting with urban fabric, buildings, open spaces, sidewalks and streets, greeneries etc. Our site is located partially in Zone B, while mostly in Zone A. To be able to understand the importance of the area and why it needed to be protected, a glimpse of its urban transformation starting the early 19 Hundred is shown in the figure above, highlighting our site in red.

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URBAN ANALYSIS SOLID & VOID

Heliopolis

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LANDUSES

GREEN SPACES

Site

Heliopolis

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Buildings

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Buildingswith details Villas

BUILDING HEIGHTS

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This section acts as an introductory section for the site, giving basic urban background information to help in understanding the nature of the area and to deeply analyse each layer on its own to be able to conclude certain relationships and linkages between the different systems.

The first map represents the solid and void map, showing the footprint of the built up area in contrast with the streets and open spaces in our site.

The percentage is 40% solid and 60% void, which directly almost mirrors the same ratio of both elements in whole Heliopolis As for the green spaces, they consist of small parks/gardens, courtyards, private gardens and street island gardens. These take up 1% only of the void space in our area, while in comparision with heliopolis the greenery takes up 15% of the void spaces. This clearly shows a lack of greenery in our site and surroundings.

Coming to the landuse map, it is very clear that the area is offering a variety of services, mostly in walking distance from one another. The area consists of a mixed use area with a dominant commercial strip in Al Haroun street.

STREET HIERARCHY

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250m

Like mentioned before, the area has unique architectural features, mostly represented in buildings.

These buildings are one of the reasons why our area is located in the protected zones. In the listed buildings map, these buildings are highlighted, showing a diverse distribution of them, while (like the commercial activities) also condensed in Al Haroun street.

Coming to the building heights in the area, the minimum heights are 1-2 storey buildings (villas or factory pavilions) and maximum 9-10 storey buildings, which mainly are the newly built buildings. The old typologies that were built in the era of the Baron are between 3-5 storey height.

Based on the building regulations mentioned above, the allowed building heights in the area is 1.5 times the street width, with a maximum of 20m.

The street network of the area has a grid nature and is divided into main streets, which are on the boarders of the surrounding area and have all the transportation services, secondary streets, which mainly surround our site and inner streets that take up the rest of the network.

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The Scope

Diagrams 8 & 9: A multi-scalar and multi-objective approach for establishing relationships between socio-ecological and physical-urban systems. The focus of analysis is narrowed down to two strands- Urban Morphology and Mobility.

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Commercial FOCUS ON THE USE OF SPACE: COMMERCIAL & ECONOMIC This part of the analysis is based on Jane Jacob’s idea of ‘cities functioning as economic incubators’ and ‘self-generating economic culture of cities’ (Soja, 2000) of how the organisation of urban commercial space provide a conducive urban environment.

As cities develop overtime in a kind of a branching process so you may start with one or two economic sectors but overtime they diversify into many different sectors. Looking at the spatial development of “Medan El-Gamea and Ezbet El-Muslimeen area, the interdependency is quite visible and is facilitating for the businesses to adapt and also appropriate the built environment to encounter the market and innovate the services incrementally.

The dense commercial and economic activity zone provides diversity of other types of activities going on around, which enables others and new businesses to put their product with other sectors, providing an on-going incubation for new ideas and encountering path dependency of supply chains (of goods, services, labor sharing networks and customer).

This analysis highlights five main types of business units’ settings in Medan El-Gamea and Ezbet El-Muslimeen area; Type 1: Units facing the street frontages in linear arrangement, with modular setting allowing isolated individual but similar economic activities, for example gold jewellery sellers, bakery, and patisserie shop.

Type 2: Units facing the street, and spilling out their business over the pedestrian walkway, giving the customer a direct open access to selling goods.

Another physical adaptability we see here are the niches and set backs provided by the buildings now appropriated and giving a shop two frontages and entrances, and also providing space for vendors to set up their goods.

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Type 3: Business units inside the secondary streets; these ground floor units usually have a back alley or upper floors for supporting economic actives or warehouse and workshops.

Type 4: The fourth set is an accumulation of the previously defined all three types. These have well-connected business units with shops frontage towards the main streets yet also connected to the secondary street and courtyard, developed partly because of going back yards of adjoining buildings.

These spaces works as support for these economic or commercial activities, such as workshops, warehouse, similar business but lesser demand, and also the courtyard provides for the space of loading and unloading of goods.

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Residential PHYSICAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE SITE

Physical transformation typology

The site was significantly shaped up during 1902 with the construction of the garden houses for the working community. These very few significant establishments are unique not just to the site but also in the context of greater Cairo. Over the period of time, some more garden houses were constructed up until 1930’s. The site was significantly densified and most of the open spaced were consumed when Sadat’s open economy got activated during the 1970’s. Moreover, even though there are three big parks in walking distance, they do not serve as public space for the residents because of the regulation, fencing and entrance fee as discussed before. Although no significant transformation of the built space was detected through the study of the map over the period of 1972 till 2019.

However, significant findings indicating the physical transformation of the spaces and built forms were identified through on-site documentation. It was noticed that the site itself have been through and still going through several transformations.

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Such transformations took place informally through the usage of the very limited spaces that the site has to offer to meet the increasing demand of the residents and also through the various extensions of the built forms. The first one can be identified by the usage of the limited open spaces like courtyards, back yards, in-between spaces and any residual spaces that the site has to offer.

The later can be identified through the transformation of the existing buildings itself such as the extension of facades, balconies, roof and also the increase in the floor heights which directly contradicts with the existing building code regulations for Maidan el Gamea.

Identification of building typology and correlation between the open spaces.

House typology and use of space From the survey five typologies of residential houses were identified. Fours of these types are built during the Barron period serving as the residences of the working community. These typologies were made based on one important aspect, the usage of the open spaces (ie: backyard, courtyards etc) to understand how the space has been transformed over time. Moreover, it also aims to understand how the interaction happens in these places, identify the important features of these historic buildings and the spaces for social interaction.

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Type A: Gallery House The three-story corridor style building is the oldest building in the site, built during 1902. There are two clusters with four buildings and every cluster has a big open green space in-between which is divided into 8 private gardens which are owned by the ground floor residents only. This is the typology that got affected by the open economy policy strongly. Since the location of this cluster is just behind the shops of adjacent to the Harun el Rashid street, the owners started selling off part of their garden to the shop owners for storage facility. The roof of the newly built storage rooms is extensively used by the kids, elderly and residents of the building. It did not just turn into a place for relaxing in interacting with other residents but also transformed into a small playground for the kids during evening time. The corridor and the staircase also are intensively used for the same purpose. Moreover, the buildings facing each other having the courtyard in between also provides a scope for visual and verbal interaction, instilling a strong community bonding among the residents though some extensions in the form of screenings were added for visual privacy in some part of the buildings.

Typology A : Cluster plan

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The apartments of this typology have access directly from the road without offering any buffer inbetwwen the public and private. Appropriation were done in front of some of these apartments in the form of low height walls on the streets just infront of the entrance to cut off the visual access from the streets. Vertical expansion of this typology could not take place due to the unique curved roof which is a special architectural feature of this typology. Regarding the maintenance, some of the gardens are in a very poor condition due to lack of maintenance which directly relates to the low-income situation of the community. Also, since the residents from other floors do not have access to the private gardens, there is no sense of ownership which makes them more reluctant to keep it clean and ends up dumping wastes. Future recommendations can include proposals to find a common ground to share the private gardens with the vertical residents and thus share the maintenance cost together. This could result into building more cohesive and strong community with a shared interest.

Typology A : Section

Type B: Garden Houses The three-story garden house typology were also built during Baron period and still has the old rent system. In this typology, each of the ground floor apartment has its own garden at the back of the apartment. Similar to the typology A, only ground floor apartments have the access to the gardens.

However, the most important feature of this typology is that the clusters face each other and share a common entrance axis giving a buffer from the street. This aspect made it easier for the residents to use this axis and stair cases for various purpose such as engaging in social interaction, kids playing, vendors selling etc.

Typology B : Unit Plan

Typology B : Cluster plan

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Type C: Belbeis Alley House This typology is by product of the open economy law implementation. During this time the owner of the houses with gardens started to sell off part of or all of their backyards for houses. This eventually resulted into having a series of houses at the back facing a very narrow alley. Most of these apartments have two rooms with a kitchen and a toilet.

The 8 feet narrow alley which terminates with a shoe shop provides a access buffer from the Harun el Rashid street. This aspect and the scale of the alley gives makes it more convenient and comfortable for the residents to use the alley for various activities including sitting, relaxing, having a chit chat over a cup of tea. The axis is mostly used by the female residents though it also provides space for storing and display shelves for selling cigarettes, lighters etc to the residents.

Typology C: Cluster plan

Type D: Aswan House The house of the people from aswan started as one family house three generations ago which still has the old rent control. Later on the family started to expand and the house started to get more fragmented. The two story house have eight rooms. At present, each room is shared by one family while the daily services like kitchen and toilet is shared among 4-5 families living there. The most important aspect of this typology is the mastaba in front of the house along the walkway. This is a special architectural element of aswanease architecture which has been copy pasted here in the site. This mastaba is intensively used by the women of the family also the men as a space for social interaction. The women of the families also run their small vegetable cart business in front of the house from 10am to 6pm. The tree right in front of the house also provides with visual screening and shading making it more convenient for the users.

Typology D: Ground Floor plan

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Type E: New Typology The fifth typology refers to the generic typology that are ongoing in the site which has the maximum footprint leaving no setback or open space around. These are 5-8 story high buildings. These typology is not only widely seen in the site but also very common in all around Cairo.

Typology D: Front elevation

Overview of all the typologies

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Streets FOCUS ON THE USE OF SPACE: STREETS In Egypt, sidewalks are considered more important than green spaces. As sidewalks are parts of Egypt’s public space, they can be used either for formal or informal activities according to the street’s width and importance. Through observation, we recognized certain patterns occurrence due to the different activities that happened in different streets in our site which are interlinked to streets morphology. To understand these dynamic activities in a relation with the street’s morphology, we started to focus on the use of space with correlation with urban transformation and mobility as well as appropriation which means how people change and adapt the streets which are public areas according to their own needs. The street morphology in our site encounter people to the place. There is a lot of nodes, crossings that have been developed especially places between buildings into economic spots. As a result of this transformation people started to use the sidewalks to serve their commercial and economical activities therefore, the streets were classified according to their width. According to the typologies observed streets were categorized into four categories: main streets, secondary streets, sub-secondary streets, and alleys. Each typology has its own activities pattern and people movement. The main street typology (Haroun Al-Rashid) which varies in width between 15 to 17 meters, it has the largest sidewalk among all the other typologies although it is used by the shops merchandises and street vendors. People have around 80-100 centimeters of walking area as well as the existence of street vendors act as obstacles during walkability.

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Typology 1

Second typology represents all the secondary streets in our site. This typology exists whenever the street width varies between 10 to 15 meters, and it is related to the existence of a café or a vegetable market which occupy the whole area of the sidewalk so people have to use the vehicle lane instead (Fig.2).

Typology 2

Third typology represents the sub-secondary streets which illustrates around 30 percent of the streets in our site. Sub-secondary streets mainly accommodate the different workshops and warehouses as well as residential buildings. This typology has no sidewalk at all, just 50 centimeters act as a building border so that people, kids playing, and cars have to use the same lane.

After analyzing the typologies we have in the site, we figured out that around 90 percent of the informal practices take place in typology 1 and 2. these informal practices are represented in shops merchandises which include vendors, food carts and kiosks and shops extension, services including shoe polishing, leisure facilities as cafes, and street furniture as lighting poles, trash bins, signs..etc.

Typology 3

The final typology is a representative for the different alleys in the area, Nubian alley for instance. It consists of a 2 meters pathway used by pedestrians especially residents and those kinds of alleys are used by women at day and men, kids at night. percentages of areas consumed by each typology on Haroun Al-Rashid sidewalks. Source: Salsabil Fahmy

Typology 4

Differences between the four typologies

Another factor that affects the dynamic and pattern of activities is the sidewalks paving. Paving as finishing material has the power to identify the kind of activity on the sidewalks. Each shop extends in front of its entrance a different kind of tiles than the ones used on the sidewalk, kind of appropriate a part of the sidewalk for their ownership. And in fact, pedestrians stick to the change in tiles marked on the sidewalk, they only use what the shops marked for them. You can recognize the importance of each street not only by its width but also with the kind of paving used for it.

The less important the street is, the more unpaved it will be

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Bridge BridgeConstruction Construction BRIDGE SCENARIO Al Mahkama Sq.

Al Mahkama Sq.

Bridge Construction

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Future Future

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Following a national plan to

- Less traffic at intersection - Removal of green and open spaces enhance Egypt’s International - More regulated traffic- Change of street/neighborhood - -management Less traffic at intersection Removal of green open spaces inand road quality, several Less traffic at intersection - Removal ofRanking greenand open spaces identity infrastructure projects are being ---More regulated traffic- -Change Faster connectivity between More regulated traffic-- Lack of visual connection Changeofofstreet/neighborhood street/neighborhood streets - Negative effect on surrounding constructed all over the country, management identity management identity uses (shops, residential) from new regional or highway - Creating negative-space under - -Faster ofofthe visual connection Fasterconnectivity connectivitybetween between -Lack Lack visual connection roads to the development and bridge streets Negative effect on maintenance of existing internal streets - investment Negative effect onsurrounding surrounding - Misplaced economic roads and bridges. (cars as a priority) uses uses(shops, (shops,residential) residential) This direction

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leads to rethinking the street - -Creating space under the Creatingnegative negative space under the connections in several cities in W bridge bridge Cairo and thus turning squares - -Misplaced economic into two wayinvestment streets by introducMisplaced economic investment T ing fly-over bridges, with the aim (cars asaaapriority) (cars priority) - Abu Bakr street turning intoas

- Proper shaded pedestrian crossing option under the bridge high speed street - Use of under the bridge space - Affecting safety of drivers and for cultural or mobility purposes pedestrians - More usage of cars

SS O O

- -Proper Propershaded shadedpedestrian pedestriancrosscrossing ingoption optionunder underthe thebridge bridge - -Use Useofofunder underthe thebridge bridgespace space for forcultural culturalorormobility mobilitypurposes purposes

6th of October, Juhayna Square after bridge construction

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of a better traffic management solution.

Currently, Egypt managed to rise in the ranking from 118th to the 75th place globally.

- -Abu AbuBakr Bakrstreet streetturning turninginto intoaa high highspeed speedstreet street - -Affecting Affectingsafety safetyofofdrivers driversand and pedestrians pedestrians - -More Moreusage usageofofcars cars

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Movement TRANSPORTATION Public Transport Coverage (GCR) accessible within 15 mins walk

The data used was created by Transport for Cairo ’TfC’ with DigitalMatatus and Takween for Integrated Community Development, under the Digital Cairo Project supported by ExpoLive 2020

Public Transport Network connecting to and from the site

The data used was created by Transport for Cairo ’TfC’ with DigitalMatatus and Takween for Integrated Community Development, under the Digital Cairo Project supported by ExpoLive 2020

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Public Transport Users Profiles Locals Visitors

Private Transport Reachpolygon within 15 mins

$

5/7/10LE

MM 5 LE

CTA 5 -7 LE

CTA

15 mins

5 LE

Micro 3.5 - 6 LE

Pedestrian connectivity accessibility to services

Part of the mobility is the movement of people, which represents the transportation system. In general we have two types of transportation means, public and private and thus these two types are available in our area as well.

Looking first on the public transportation system, we need to identify its coverage and thus efficiency to move people to and from the site. In illustration at the top left, the public transportation trips such as CTA buses, Microbuses and MM Buses, are represented using the yellow lines It is clearly visible that the public transportation network, which is accessible within 15 mins walk from our site, covers most of central Cairo, as well as connects to several New Urban Communities. In addition to the lines shown in the figure, the metro lines cover south of the GCR. Zooming in to our site, it becomes clear that there are no public transportation within the site itself or directly surrounding it.

The bus network operates mainly on the main and

secondary streets, leaving the inner streets. Balancing with this, there are two metro stations and two bus terminal in walking distance to our site, making the public transport system accessible.

Based on a survey with the aim to identify the convenience of the available public transportation modes for the locals and visitors, we concluded that most locals use active mobility like walking and microbuses the most, while visitors prefer coming to the area by car or metro.

Coming to the private transportation, when comparing all modes of it using a reachpolygon generated by estimating the reach of each mode in 15 mins journey time, it is obvious that the active mobility has a potential to flourish if the adequate infrastructure is available.

When comparing Heliopolis and especially our site to other areas in the GCR in terms of walkability, it is obvious that Heliopolis stands next in line to Downtown.

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WASTE MANAGEMENT

informal and formal collecting nodes system

Al Gamea square waste management cycle

Through observation and interviews to analyze the waste management system in Al Gamea square, we figured out that around 80 percent of our focus area use “the collecting node system� which is a well-known node in which people threw their garbage at and wait for the company cars to collect it. Those nodes are well for the company as well therefore they pass by 2 times per day. Within the borders of our site there are 3 collecting nodes, two formal nodes created by the company by placing large garbage bins and one formal node was created due to the people need and the existence of a vacant land within a residential area. The orange lines represent the areas where people threw their garbage by themselves at these nodes, whilst the brown lines for the areas where the residents prefer waiting for a garbage collector to do this process but they have to pay him extra money especially for the small alleys. The process of waste management in our focus area does not represent the waste management cycle of heliopolis. For the shops and workshops there is a law which was published in 2015, obliged shop owners to put trash bins in front of their shops.

Although most of the shop owner closes their trash bins not to be accessible by anyone, by asking them we knew that the government sets a fine for each shop that disobey the rule despite that there are no company cars that pass by these shops to collect the garbage. Shop owners have to throw the garbage by themselves at the streets whether at formal or informal node to oblige the company to collect their garbage.

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Stakeholder HELIOPOLIS STAKEHOLDERS High Power

Cairo Gov. Ministry of Transportation

Heliopolis Company

Police Station Low Interest

National Organization for Urban Harmony

Elderly Residents

UNESCO Middle-Aged Residents

High Interest

Shop Owners Street Vendors

Youth Residents Clients Low Power

Commercial

Organizations

Residents

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Conclusions concluding question: How can we approach infrastructure and builtenvironment holistically in the coming future?

Diagram 10: Morphology // An anthology of spaces in Ezbet El Muslimeen defying the duality of private-public ownership

Diagram 11: Mobility // An overview of the cascading effects from the national to the site scale that affect human and environmental connectivity

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On 22nd October, a few hours of rain in Cairo left the transportation system paralyzed. The only fully functional commute mode was the metro. Heliopolis’ vehicular tunnel was one of the key nodes for aggravating the problem. Events of untimely

rains have become frequent in the past years and pose pressing questions regarding the negligence towards addressing environmental challenges.

These have magnified through urban sprawl and highlight misplaced resources and focus.

Diagram 12: Considerations // Future urban transformations will impact the socio-ecological systems if left unchecked

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Š IUSD Masters Program 2014 Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permissssion in writing from the publisher.