Today marks the return of the UN-sponsored World Habitat Day, an annual event launched roughly 20 years ago to promote a better urban environment.
Rethinking urban planning globally has become an urgent priority. Half the world's population–some three billion people–currently reside in towns and cities and that number is constantly on the rise.
World Habitat Day 2010 is primarily concerned with five major strategic steps that need to be taken in order to address the key challenges urban proliferation poses. First, improvement of the quality of life for an estimated one billion people living in slums and sub-standard housing around the world. Second, investment in human capital by empowering people through more equitable distribution of the urban advantages. Thirdly, the UN seeks to expand sustained economic opportunities. Fourth, enhancement of active political inclusion. Lastly, the UN emphasizes the importance of cultural inclusion–reinforcement of the sense of belonging in communities–that will protect both heritage and minority populations.
But today there are no organized lectures or seminars here in Cairo to highlight the major challenges Egypt faces due to its fast-growing urbanization.
“We are still in the process of opening a regional office for the Arab States in Cairo, and we lack the infrastructure to organize proper events this year,” says head of the UN Habitat Office in Cairo Muhammad Khadim.
Egypt's UN Habitat Office became official a few days ago, according to Khadim.
“Nonetheless we published the letter from the UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon on the theme “Better Cities, Better Life” for this special occasion,” he says.
Khadim is confident, however, that next year his office will organize events to mark this day. The UN World Habitat Day falls on the first Monday of October every year.
The incipient UN Habitat Office in Egypt currently has three projects underway in the country. They offer technical assistance to the General Organization for Physical Planning (GOPP) which is developing the Greater Cairo 2050 project. They provide technical assistance for strategic urban development in 50 mandated cities all over Egypt. And lastly, they are trying to enhance decentralization in the country by developing three pilot governorates–Luxor, Ismailia and Fayoum.
“We do take environmental aspects and sustainability very seriously in all our projects,” says Khadim.
“Each consulting team we recruit has to study the environmental conditions because environmental sustainability feeds in all the final decisions we take concerning planning, funding and development in these areas,” says Ihab Chaalane, the Project Manager in charge of the development of these 50 cities in Egypt within the UN Habitat Office.
These teams study the levels of pollution, solid waste management systems as well as whether the sanitation conditions.
“We try to come up with solutions to improve, or at least mitigate, the environmental challenges we face in these urban areas, the mandated cities and other non-mandated cities,” Chaalane says.
Chaalane draws particular light to one of the biggest challenges, yet most important initiatives, Egypt faces: urban expansion on agricultural land.
“This expansion is happening very fast and responds to an immediate need from the people. We have big difficulties catching up with the dynamics of this expansion that is already causing major trouble in Egypt,” says Chaalane.
