The impact of urban compactness on the possibility of generating energy from sustainable urban form elements applied on Elsheikh Zayed city in Egypt

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of Urban Planning, Faculty of Engineering, Al Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt.

2 Department of Urban Design, Faculty of Urban and Regional Planning, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt.

Abstract

It is well known that the seven sustainable urban form design concepts revolve around the following: compactness, mixed land uses, diversity, density, sustainable transportation, passive solar design, and greening [1], they are also fundamental pillars relied upon by urban designers in producing sustainable urban form.
This research aims to introduce another important concept to the previous seven elements, which is energy production based on one of the urban form elements; that element is a building mass. Since building clusters with compacted form and mixed land use are the primary manifestations of compacted cities [2], such as in many locations in Egypt, it is important to study the extent of their ability to produce energy under the umbrella of compactness for adding more sustainable value to the compacted urban form layouts.
Achieved by selecting a project distinguished by compact urban form, then calculating the amount of energy produced throughout the year by generating energy from building mass faced by using a vertical transparent solar cell.
The research is important because it seeks to prove that the concept of energy production from the elements of urban form is not less important than the rest of the concepts of sustainable urban form design; therefore, it will be proven that renewable energy production based on one of the elements of sustainable urban form is an eighth element of the design concepts of sustainable urban form, which is one of the expected research results.

Keywords

Main Subjects

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JES. Journal of Engineering Sciences
Volume 54, Issue 1
January 2026
Pages 96-121

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