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Passive Climate Control and the City
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Climatic Portrait. Cairo, Egypt
AUTHOR: Dalila Ghodbane
CONTEXT: Lecture in the Seminar "Theorizing the Urban Passive House," USI Mendrisio, 08.03.2016
KEYWORDS: City climate, Cairo, thermal practices
Urban territories share specific weather properties, compared to a less dense environment, for example the presence of heat islands, typical for city centers. That is a characteristic of what we call the city climate. It is a complex ecosystem – it is influenced by its environment climate, and it reciprocally changes it in many ways, including by recreating (micro-)climates in its heart using fossil energies and technologies. However, we are definitely not all equal when coping with the consequences of the city climate. In the case of Cairo, characterized by the tremendous inequality between its 20 million inhabitants, what does the city climate mean?