Page 510 - Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

Sustainable Development Cases in Africa Chapter j 23 479

The curriculum includes “literacy, numeracy, business math, personal and
environmental hygiene, income generation and recycling, computer literacy,
principles of project management, bookkeeping and simple accounting, along
with recreational theatre arts (SWEEPNET, 2014).” Providing the Zabbaleen
the skills needed to improve their business model as well as incorporating
them into the overall SWM strategy will not only help alleviate the pressures
of poverty in the Garbage City and the surrounding areas but also improve
health, and aid even more in Cairo’s SWM in the long run (DAC, 2014;
SWEEPNET, 2014).
Although SWM has been the city’s foremost sustainability concern, Cairo
is also exploring other options as part of its sustainable development. There
has been a push for green architecture and urban rooftop agriculture as ways to
both improve the urban quality of life and their carbon footprint. The Amer-
ican University of Cairo (AUC) is pioneering green architecture in both Cairo
and in Egypt as a whole with the first ever green rooftop on the AUC faculty
housing building. The same building is currently pursuing Leadership in En-
ergy and Environmental Design certification from the US Green Building
Council and is a model of green architecture for the entire country with its
green roof for urban rooftop farming, solar water heaters that account for
100% of the building’s hot water, non-chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants for air-
conditioning, and light-emitting diode bulbs. The faculty building was built
not only to be environmentally conscientious but also to be an educative tool
that is socially and economically responsible. Given the government’s focus on
culture and heritage in its Vision 2030, efforts are also being made to research
the possibility of historic preservation mixed with green architecture within the
city. Of course, green architecture is not without challenges. AUC Assistant
Professor of Sustainable Design, Khaled Tarabieh believes the major chal-
lenges to be twofold: education and affordability.

People are resistant because they lack education. They want to do the same thing
they have always done, or they don’t know about the technology or they don’t
think they can maintain it.
Khaled Tarabieh, AUC (2015).
Tarabieh believes that education is the best way to enhance public opinion
and support of green architecture. The issue of affordability, on the other hand,
is a little more challenging. Green architecture, like renewable energy in-
stallations, has a high initial cost. However, as seen with distributed generation
and solar panels, the materials and technologies are available, which has
helped costs to decrease. Tarabieh believes that as green building techniques
become more mainstream, innovation will be incentivized and the costs will
fall even more (AUC, 2015).
Along with sustainable architecture, Cairo has held public panel discus-
sions regarding the use of urban rooftop farming as an option to help alleviate
poverty and naturally cool city buildings. The most recent discussion in