Engaged Sustainable Futures

Books

Cairene Neighborhoods Reimagined:
Towards a Sustainable and Resilient Communal Superblock in 2050

Sherif Goubran, Amal Hamdy and Islam Mashaly

With Jana Gaafar and Mariam Bechir, 2024

A compilation of reflections from young designers on the future of Cairo Neighborhoods. Set in 2050, the collection uncovers the future of four neighbourhoods in Cairo, in the face of climate change risks, and urban, social, economic, political and cultural challenges. The proposals were developed to explore how the service locations embedded in these locations can serve as community centres that address the predicted needs of the residents. The book presents the context of the work, documents the design proposals, and analyzes the outcome to inform practitioners, policymakers and educators.

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Artificial Intelligence for Sustainability: Innovations in Business and Financial Services

Editors: Thomas Walker; Stefan Wendt; Sherif Goubran (editor) and Tyler Schwartz

In light of the climate crisis, businesses are expected to embrace sustainability to reduce their negative impacts on the environment and society, while at the same time strengthening their organisations’ positive impacts. Managing this alongside the traditional requirements of business requires careful handling, and it is small wonder that some are heralding the advantages posed by artificial intelligence (AI) as the missing piece of the puzzle. This edited book aims to present a balanced discussion of the benefits and costs of using AI for the natural environment and society, including an analysis of its potential to help meet the UN’s Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. Researchers, practitioners, regulators, and entrepreneurs at the forefront of sustainable AI solutions share insights into the different sustainable applications of AI and highlight how these new developments may affect and contribute to our fight against climate change and address further environmental and social challenges. This volume will be of great interest to scholars and students of digital business and new technologies, sustainability, and strategy.

The Role of Design, Construction, and Real Estate in Advancing the Sustainable Development Goals

Editors: Thomas Walker, Carmela Cucuzzella, Sherif Goubran, and Rana Geith

This edited book brings together insights from scholars and practitioners from many different fields to uncover the role of the construction and real estate sectors and how they align with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It follows a lifecycle-based approach to the topic, addressing the design, construction, management, investment, and regulatory dimensions of projects in the area. It expands the reader’s understanding of the built environment beyond the design and construction phases, which enables the collection to explore the links and transitions between different project phases and uncover new methodologies that aim to tackle systemic sustainable development challenges. The chapters’ comprehensive coverage allows the collection to capitalize on the strengths and weaknesses of the building industry, highlight emerging trends, and uncover some critical gaps that need to be addressed to attain the 2030 vision. This puts into perspective the interconnected nature of the SDGs and highlights the importance of multi-stakeholder collaborations in achieving them.

Sustainable Practices in Higher Education: Finance, Strategy, and Engagement

Editors: Thomas Walker, Khaled Tarabieh, Sherif Goubran, and Gabrielle Machnik-Kekesi

This edited collection presents, reviews, and critically analyzes sustainable practices and long-term-oriented decision-making in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Campus closures and the quick transition to hybrid or e-learning as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic caused HEI stakeholders, including students, faculty, and staff, to swiftly adopt new ways of learning, teaching, and administering that were unfathomable only months before. This radical and challenging shift left many in academia with a sense that there is tremendous potential for HEIs to take the lead – both from an educational and practical standpoint – in fostering on- and off-campus sustainability and combatting climate change. In this book, the editors and their contributors systematically highlight current challenges that are slowing or derailing HEIs’ finance-related initiatives and practices geared toward sustainability. The case studies collected in this book provide a holistic overview of the ways in which financial and other long-term decisions can lead to more sustainable practices in higher education.

Imagining a Fossil Fuel Free Future: Transitioning Gas Stations to Local Resilience Hubs

Sherif Goubran and Khaled Tarabieh

With Hagar Ibrahim, Nadine Shaker and Shahd Aly, 2022

A compilation of reflections from young designers on the question of repurposing and reusing gas stations in a fossil-fuel free urban future of Egypt - set in 2050.

"Thirty years from today, it is safe to assume that private gas-fueled cars no longer occupy our roads. Instead, citizens commute primarily via clean public transit or electric vehicles. The design studio asked students to imagine an architecture that adapts to the dynamic changes in the environment and energy sources. Their design plan should strongly emphasize cutting emissions and moving away from fossil fuel-centric design thinking by proposing a pathway to a completely sustainable energy supply. Each student’s design was expected to propose a new form of sustainable repurposing of gas stations. When utilizing the existing structure, no parts were to be wasted, but the students could dismantle parts and reuse them in their projects."

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Business and Policy Solutions to Climate Change: From Mitigation to Adaptation

Editors: Thomas Walker, Stefan Wendt, Sherif Goubran, and Tyler Schwartz

This edited book aims to ignite both an academic and practitioner-oriented discussion regarding the question how the business and government sector can adapt to today’s fast-changing climate. Specifically, the collection seeks to explore how businesses and policy makers can prepare for a world where freshwater is scarce, extreme weather events are common, floods and wildfires are frequent, and global sea levels rise by more than two meters. In addition to assessing incremental approaches, it explores strategies that employ interdisciplinary and innovative solutions to climate change adaptation. The chapters included in this book examine and propose business and policy solutions for climate-induced economic, technical, urban, and societal challenges. It draws on an international range of prominent authors and, therefore, will be of interest for academics and practitioners working in the field of sustainability management, sustainable finance, sustainable operations management, food management, strategy, and environmental management. It can also serve as a valuable guide for practitioners and policymakers in those fields.

Arquitectura Sostenible: Entre Medición y Significado

Editors: Carmela Cucuzzella & Sherif Goubran

Cada día, nuevos artículos, libros e informes presentan nuevos métodos, estándares y tecnologías para lograr la sostenibilidad en arquitectura. Además, los nuevos materiales, dispositivos tecnológicos y datos se consideran cada vez más los elementos básicos del futuro de la arquitectura. A medida que adoptamos cada vez más este avance tecnológico, debemos ser igualmente conscientes de que podemos estar empujando la arquitectura hacia una ciencia administrativa y alejándonos de sus preocupaciones centrales, como la expresión, la contextualidad, la funcionalidad y la estética. La arquitectura sostenible que se centra en las medidas abstractas de consumo, energía y emisiones pierde de vista el papel vital que tiene la arquitectura en nuestro mundo: es el campo que crea nuestros espacios públicos y nuestros lugares de vivienda, de negocio, de producción, del ocio y la creación. Además, no comprende la dimensión humana de los edificios, como elementos que están profundamente conectados con los contextos históricos de sus lugares, y que juegan un papel clave en la definición de nuestras relaciones sociales y nuestra conexión con los espacios que ocupamos y utilizamos. 'Arquitectura Sostenible: Entre Medición y Significado' da un paso atrás para reflexionar sobre cómo la sostenibilidad en el entorno construido puede teorizarse y practicarse críticamente. Este libro expone que la arquitectura sigue siendo una ciencia humana y social que se encuentra en la intersección de medidas y significados. Revela que la arquitectura sostenible todavía puede operar en un espacio dialéctico de expresión, en lugar de servir como un manifiesto de los extremos técnicos o socioculturales. Pretende que la intuición, los sentidos y las habilidades humanas todavía tienen la clave para desentrañar futuros alternativos de espacios construidos sostenibles. Y lo más importante es que los humanos todavía tienen un lugar en la arquitectura sostenible. Este libro será de interés para estudiantes, académicos que inician su carrera, investigadores establecidos y profesionales que estudian la sostenibilidad en el entorno construido. Puede usarse como referencia para aquellos en los campos del diseño, arquitectura, paisaje y diseño urbano, estudios urbanos, geografía, ciencias sociales e ingeniería.

Reimagining Waiting for The Bus: Design Principles for Spaces Surrounding Bus Shelters

Authors: Carmela Cucuzzella, Jean-Pierre Chupin, Emmanuel Rondia, Sherif Goubran

This creative guide, the result of an international competition, is a synthesis of the best ideas in the form of a free resource aimed at stimulating citizen discussion and community group engagement around the improvement of small urban environments connected to bus stops.

This richly illustrated, educational guide presents ideas that encourage appreciation of urban spaces by emphasizing the importance of nature, art and design. Reimagining Waiting for the Bus invites citizens to think about creative approaches, neighborhood by neighborhood, bus stop by bus stop, that would energize these public spaces in an interactive, poetic, critical and meaningful way: shifting the immediate environment of bus stops from a merely functional spatiality to a multi-purpose spatiality.

This is not about redesigning the bus shelter, but about making waiting for the bus more pleasant, in various ways, encouraging citizens to use the bus instead of their car, all year round, including during hot summer days and long periods of freezing winter.

Download the book in open Access (Through LABORATOIRE D'ÉTUDE DE L'ARCHITECTURE POTENTIELLE – CANADA)

Innovations in Social Finance – Transitioning Beyond Economic Value

Editors: Walker, T., McGaughey, J., Goubran, S., Wagdy, N.

Our world is experiencing increasingly complex social and environmental challenges. The prevailing business models and, to some extent, capitalism per se, are frequently blamed for these problems due to their neglect of social and environmental values in favor of financial returns. Within this context, social finance has attracted the attention of governments, organizations, entrepreneurs, and researchers as a means of mobilizing resources and innovation with the goal of establishing effective long-term solutions.

This edited collection summarizes, discusses, and analyzes new innovative trends in social finance. It features contributions that aim to highlight emerging trends (products, tools, and processes) in social finance, present a series of case studies related to the development, deployment, and scaling of social finance innovations, offer an understanding of how non-economic externalities are being incorporated, managed, and assessed in recent innovations, reveal the disruptive potential of social finance innovations by analyzing how they are redefining mainstream finance, analyze the scales – of operation and impact – of different innovations, and explore the complex relationship between social finance and social innovation.

Sustainable Architecture: Between Measurement and Meaning

Editors: Carmela Cucuzzella and Sherif Goubran

“Sustainable Architecture – Between Measurement and Meaning” takes a step back to reflect on how sustainability in the built environment can be theorized and practiced critically. This book exposes that architecture remains a human and social science that lies at the intersection of measurements and meanings. It reveals that sustainable architecture can still operate in a dialectic space of expression, rather than serving as a manifesto for either the technical or socio-cultural extremes. It purports that the human intuition, senses, and skills still holds the key to unravelling alternative futures of sustainable built spaces. And that most importantly, humans still have a place in sustainable architecture.

This book will be of interest to students, early career scholars, established researchers and practitioners studying sustainability in the built environment. It can be used as a reference to those in the fields of design, architecture, landscape and urban design, urban studies, geography, social sciences, and engineering.

Environmental Policy and Legislation: An Economic Perspective

Editors: Walker, T., Goubran, S., Sprung-Much, N.

Environmental Policy: An Economic Perspective offers readers a comprehensive examination of the ever-broadening scope and impact of environmental policy, law, and regulation. Editors Thomas Walker, Northrop Sprung-Much, and Sherif Goubran walk readers through a variety of subjects while maintaining a global perspective on the expanding role of environmental law. Subjects such as: Climate change legislation, Water conservation and pricing, Biodiversity of the marine environment, Wildlife ranching, Emission trading schemes, Green job strategies, and Sustainable investing.

Engaged Sustainable Futures offers a platform for interdisciplinary ventures that aim to uncover the many possible sustainable futures of the built environment. Based in the Department of Architecture at the American University in Cairo, ESF MAM-BE achieves its vision through research, pedagogy, and creation.

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