Civil Engineering and Architecture 10(5A): 313-338, 2022 http://www.hrpub.org
DOI: 10.13189/cea.2022.101415
The Resilience of Egyptian Cities against Health Crises
'Egyptian Pandemic City Tool'
Engy Ramadan Mostafa
1,*
, Hesham Mohamed El-Barmelgy
2
, Kariman Ahmed Shawky
1
1
Department of Urban Design, Faculty of Urban and Regional Planning, Cairo University, Giza 12613, Egypt
2
Dean of Faculty of Urban and Regional Planning, Cairo University, Giza 12613, Egypt
*
Corresponding Author: engy_ramadan_1993@cu.edu.eg
Received April 12, 2022; Revised May 17, 2022; Accepted June 13, 2022
Cite This Paper in the Following Citation Styles
(a): [1] Engy Ramadan Mostafa, Hesham Mohamed El-Barmelgy, Kariman Ahmed Shawky , "The Resilience of
Egyptian Cities against Health Crises ‘Egyptian Pandemic City Tool’," Civil Engineering and Architecture, Vol. 10, No.
5A, pp. 313 - 338, 2022. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2022.101415.
(b): Engy Ramadan Mostafa, Hesham Mohamed El-Barmelgy, Kariman Ahmed Shawky (2022). The Resilience of
Egyptian Cities against Health Crises ‘Egyptian Pandemic City Tool’. Civil Engineering and Architecture, 10(5A), 313 -
338. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2022.101415.
Copyright©2022 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the
terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License
Abstract The world today, recovering from a
pandemic crisis, has witnessed a complete change in
everyday challenges and routines. Following the
COVID-19 crisis, the world was forced to face the
challenge of preserving human life. Today, city planners
and urban designers have to establish cities that can
mitigate the impact of health problems; in other words, the
city's urban product must be more resilient against health
problems. The condition of completely shutting down
urban areas and transforming them into infirmities has led
to great economic and social crises. Economically, the
world has lost at least 3.7 trillion dollars, equivalent to
4.4% of the Global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The
present paper aims at developing a tool that has the ability
to measure the resilience of the Egyptian urban settlements
against pandemic crises; thus, helping planners and urban
designers to establish and promote pandemic cities. Based
on profound theoretical and analytical studies, the concept
of pandemic cities was studied and analyzed composing a
list of indicators that illustrate the ability of existing urban
settlements to face pandemic crises. Then, based on the
findings of an empirical study that targeted Egyptian
experts, the most relevant indicators were identified. Using
relative importance index (RII), the relative weights of
indicators were calculated and utilized as a tool that can
measure the resilience of Egyptian urban settlements
against pandemic crises.
Keywords Epidemics, Post-Pandemic City, Urban
Health City, Sustainable Cities, Urban Crisis Management,
Urban Resilience
1. Introduction
Throughout history, viruses and epidemics have killed
millions of people, resulting in major crises that have
lasted for many years. One of the most difficult aspects of
studying epidemics is predicting future trends as: What
policies and actions will be required to deal with epidemics?
Hence, the urgent need is to establish pandemic-city design
and management abilities in order to combat infectious
diseases and mitigate health crises.
Corona, the new virus that terrified the whole world,
caused unsettled global concern. Since the detection of the
disease, schools and universities have ceased teaching
activities on their premises, moved to e-education. States
have closed their borders and prevented internal movement,
travel, as well as domestic and foreign flights. Laboratories
have opened their doors and intensified their research and
studies. Hence, urban areas have proven their failure to
mitigate the impacts of the corona health crises all over the
world.
As in many countries of the world, COVID-19 has
brought extensive damage in Egypt, the national statistical
agency, revealed that 73.5% of families have suffered from
a decrease in income, the unemployment rate has increased