City-region as a Regenerative Development Level in Egypt’s Planning System

The city-region in Egypt is experiencing regenerative growth, which goes beyond sustainability to preserve the entire ecosystem and natural resources, whilst other emerging nations struggle with unsustainability. The main issue is that there isn't a framework that emphasises the planning aspects needed to accomplish regenerative development in Egypt. These aspects are meant to serve as examples of concepts such as water management, regenerative tourism, renewable energy, sustainable transportation, sustainable agriculture, and smartness promises. Twenty-four experts tested the framework; while they all agreed that it should be applied generally, their assessments of its key components varied. Based on SPSS software, the relative significance index (RI) is applied. The RI result showed that aspects like controlling urban growth and legislative amendments for incorporating the city region as a planning level are very important, in addition to aspects like reviewing the linked regional strategies, analysis of spatial relationships and determinants, the proposed city-region’s vision, and adding the norms of sustainable agriculture, while others are unimportant, like smartness promises. Some recommendations were given to make the framework more cohesive, such as identifying special indicators to follow up on the outcomes of the proposed plans in the city region and supporting rural development by promoting urban-rural links with city regions, and those recommendations were linked with the sustainable development goals to measure its suitability for the proposed framework.