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Application of GIS to describe historical urban development of Kharga city, Egypt
Arch. Ashraf M. S. Mahrous
Assistant Lecturer, Department of Architecture
Faculty of Engineering AL-Minia University, Egypt
mahrous71@yahoo.com
Prof. Eng. Mojmir Kyselka, Ph.D.
Faculty of Architecture, VUT Brno, Czech republic
Assoc. Prof. Peter Spica. Ph.D.
Arch. Dept. faculty of civil Slovak technical University
Arch. Ashraf M. S. Mahrous
Assistant Lecturer, Department of Architecture
Faculty of Engineering AL-Minia University, Egypt
mahrous71@yahoo.com
Prof. Eng. Mojmir Kyselka, Ph.D.
Faculty of Architecture, VUT Brno, Czech republic
Assoc. Prof. Peter Spica. Ph.D.
Arch. Dept. faculty of civil Slovak technical University
Introduction
The cities liken the trees; both of them grow under the natural limits. These limits effect in the formulation of the city master plan. The Historical urban development of cities is usually used for defining the main direction of city’s development. One of the objectives of any master plan is to guiding urban development by study the natural properties of the city borders and determines the suitable direction of city growth. (Antar Korain 1997, P. 153). Rodgers has suggested that the second part of master plan must be historical background of the city; this background aims to define the effective factors in the urban development. (A. K. Alam, 1983) the historical background concludes the general information to understand the effective factors on the city’s form. (Antar Korain 1997, P. 157). The need for GIS is driven by factors such as population growth and urbanization, which in turn create various types geo-referenced data. Information of this kind lends itself well to the analytical capabilities of GIS. (Henk J. Scholten and John C. H. Stillwell, 1990, P. 30) GIS has ability to create, store, edit, visualize, analyze, and present the data which is needed for carrying out the historical urban growth of the city.
Objective
This paper aims to support the master plan of Kharga City by defining the main direction growth of Kharga City by reading the old and recent historical urban growth.
The old historical growth
The oases area, in Egypt's western desert, has played a significant role over various ages of the old Egyptian history, Kharga long history and ancient civilization is described in several monuments which had registered many ages starting from B.C. until the Islamic age.
The 2nd dynasty (5000 B.C.) had registered in Gabal El-Tayer monuments that Kharga was famous for agricultural activity.
Kharga oasis in the Pharaonic era was called "plough ", Dakhla oasis was termed "southern oasis", while Farafra oasis was named "cow", which clearly speaks of welfare, as such areas were fully cultivated. Kharga and Dakhla oases, in the Pharaonic era, were one region affiliated to "Thani" region near Suhag considering it the vital defense front-line of Egypt to stand against any offensive either from the west or the south. Pharaonic 26th dynasty had constructed in Kharga Hebas temple since 660:565 BC, the 27th dynasty had constructed Ghewata temple since 522 BC.
Persian Qambiz invaded Egypt in the 6th Century BC, King the first Dara had finished the engraving of Hebas and Ghewata temples which was castle looking at any invaders coming through the Darb AL Arbaen.
In the Greek-roman era, the agriculture had developed, Romans had dug wells in such fertile lands which were known as “Roman eyes”. The Romans also had created in architectural field, during Antonus’s reign at the beginning of the 2nd century many monuments had been built such as AL-Nadoura temple, EL-Dear fortress, Qaser AL-Zian temple. (Ashraf M. S. Mahrous, 1998)
In third and fourth centuries BC, when Roman suppression towards Christians increased, too many of Egypt's Copts (Christians) fled to such oases, EL-Bagawat cemetery and church, Aen Mostfa AL-Kashef monastery, AL-Monera monastery, and Shams AL-Dean monastery are indicates a Christian presence on Kharga in the advent of Islam to Egypt.
Since the Islam entry into Egypt the life had start to be stable and safety. The oases were under the light and the simple life was the main feature of the oases, which were considered separated for the life in Egypt, it was named “nomads life” until beginning of the domination republican on Egypt.
The recent historical growth
It was clearly that the old history has been preserved on the walls of temples and monuments. But the recent history must be preserved on computer systems as a digital form, which is the modern view. The next context explains how to create comprehensive historical background and define the main direction of urban growth of the Kharga City using GIS techniques.
Methodology
Creating base-map and database for Kharga City. The base-map has been created as a themes maps- each one describes different land-use. Totally the base-map consists of 7322 land parcels, each of them has been joined with its attribute record in the database that contains for each parcel tabular data such as ID-Cod, Land-use activity, Parcel’s area, parcel’s Perimeter, Number of floors, Total floors area, Construction state, Registration number in governorat cadastre, Building collection method, Ownership, Construction material, Number of People in building, and year of construction,…. etc.
Experimental Work with ArcView GIS
To perform a historical growth of the city using GIS techniques, we use the following procedures: -
Merging all themes each other to carrying out land-use map for whole Kharga City.
“Merge themes together” operation in “Geo-processing” tool has been used to merge all land use themes. This operation appends the features of the merged themes into a single theme, the attributes has been retained because the attributes of each land use themes have the same names. The output file of this operation is the all land-use theme, which named “Kharga Land Use (KLU)”.
Dissolving features of land-use map
Construction time of each building is the individual indicator for knowing the historical growth of the city. Therefore, dissolving features of KLU theme based on “Year of Construction” attribute is the used operation -in Geo-processing tool- to create the Historical Land Use (HLU) theme with carrying out some additional fields in the output tabular data file such as average, sum, minimum, maximum of each field attribute, etc.
This theme is presented by the “Graduated Color legend” type according to the classification of the Construction Year attribute field. The range of construction field has been divided into 10 grades, each grade of them is presents one decade starting from 1900 to 2000, in addition to two grades present the constructed buildings since b.c. and the under construction buildings.
Querying and summarizing data
The table attributes data of KLU theme has been summarized to perform the development of Land use areas, and people activities shown in fig. 1, and fig. 3 respectively. The summarizing operation depended on the Count of parcels, Sum-Area, and Sum-People in each land uses activity. This operation has been repeated for each decade, which has been selected by querying operation.
Presenting the result as charts, tables, and figures
Figures 1 and 3 have been performed using Microsoft Excel software with the result data of querying and summarizing operations in ArcView GIS. Figure 2 has been performed using ArcView GIS as a layout of achieved maps.
Result and discussion
Historical Land use development: Fig. (1) shows that -according to the registration of cadastre- the largest area of total land use is used for palm agriculture and agriculture field during Twentieth century however, these land uses had been developed only during the fourth and the seventh decades of the last century. This fact because at 1958 the first construction caravan had arrived to Kharga, then it has been changed into capital city of the new valley governorat. At that time the urban area of Kharga was limited in the old-Kharga site. Aen AL-Dar well was the main water resource for agriculture and drinking in addition to some wells were resource for agriculture such as Aan AL-Shakh, Aen AL-Gadida, Aen AL-Malek, Aen AL-Kalaa, AL-Berba, and AL-Khalefa well. This construction caravan developed the wells and doubled the agricultural land from 2 square Km to 4 square Km.. In addition increased the palm land from 3.8 square Km to 4.3 square Km. Since 1970 until now, the extension development of agriculture and palm Standstill and the Kharga oasis has began to change to city form. The curve also shows that the land use of public services has been developed more than other land uses, the reason also is the arriving of construction caravan. It is quite clear -in fig. (1)- that since 1910 to 2002 the area of houses land uses is nearly equalize the area of streets land uses. In addition the development of such houses or streets land uses is more homogenous than other land uses where the individual affecting factor here is the rate of increasing population. Fig. 1-A -is an enlargement of the lower right corner of fig. (1)- shows that emergency, educational, and management land uses had been growth as well as the others.
As shown in fig. (2) each color degree in the legend of historical land use map indicates to one decade, each color in the legend of Kharga Land Use map shows one of land use.
Since 1900 to 1920 the Kharga oasis was divided into two parts, (see 1) the first part is agricultural land beside the monuments at the northward of the city, the second part is residential land with agricultural land in the southward of the city. This fact explain that since 1900 to 1920 the people had continued farming the cultivated area –which was occupied since B.C. till beginning of nineteenth century- using the wells beside the monuments and started farming the land beside the residential site. It means that the people activity was only farming during this decade.
Since 1921 to 1940 rresidential neighborhood -named now “Old Kharga”- had been built in between the two parts of city (See 2) using clay as an appropriate material for the hot climate. The houses are assimilated each other. This neighborhood is going failure now residents replace the houses by new limited-story building without any planning principles
Since 1941 to 1960, with the first construction caravan, great changes had been occurred in land use areas. Agriculture land use had been extended to northward and southward of the city (see 3). The management buildings had built in between the two parts of city (See 4), In the same time the new residential site for caravan of construction had been selected near the management buildings (see 5). The old Kharga neighborhood had extended in all directions (see 6)
Fig. (1): Development curve of land uses areas
Since 1961 to 1980 Kharga pattern began to be urbanized area, it started to take the city form where the local government developed and create public services, heath, luxury, religious, etc. in addition to the residential sites had been grown on all direction of the city (see 7).
Since 1981 to 2002 the land had registered, as a government owns. Therefor the residential growth had limited on roles of the governorat and the residential society in different administration. In another words, the governorat builds the houses by the financing from housing bank, then the people dwell and pay the cost of buildings as installment monthly. This system has applied on AL-AMAL, AL-Zohur, and AL-Marwa sites (see 8). The second system, the governorat specifics an area for every residential society, then the society divides the area and specifics parcels for each member who pay the price of parcel as installment monthly. This system has applied in Engineer’s land, farmer’s land, AL-Slam’s Land, and AL-Mohafza’s land (see 9).
The authors thank everybody whom, by discussion, advice, review, or assistance with preparation of this paper or the Ph. D. thesis of the first author, have helped.
Ao. Univ. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang feilmayr gave help and advice in connection to the library of, faculty of architecture and planning at Technical University of Vienna.
Similarly the first author acknowledge advice from Obrat. Dipl-Ing. Leopold Riedl, at faculty of architecture and planning at Technical University of Vienna, who help him during learning the techniques of GIS.
Also authors thanks Assistant Prof. Dr. Antar A. Korin at Minia University, Egypt, for sending references, comments, and helpful advice.
The cities liken the trees; both of them grow under the natural limits. These limits effect in the formulation of the city master plan. The Historical urban development of cities is usually used for defining the main direction of city’s development. One of the objectives of any master plan is to guiding urban development by study the natural properties of the city borders and determines the suitable direction of city growth. (Antar Korain 1997, P. 153). Rodgers has suggested that the second part of master plan must be historical background of the city; this background aims to define the effective factors in the urban development. (A. K. Alam, 1983) the historical background concludes the general information to understand the effective factors on the city’s form. (Antar Korain 1997, P. 157). The need for GIS is driven by factors such as population growth and urbanization, which in turn create various types geo-referenced data. Information of this kind lends itself well to the analytical capabilities of GIS. (Henk J. Scholten and John C. H. Stillwell, 1990, P. 30) GIS has ability to create, store, edit, visualize, analyze, and present the data which is needed for carrying out the historical urban growth of the city.
Objective
This paper aims to support the master plan of Kharga City by defining the main direction growth of Kharga City by reading the old and recent historical urban growth.
The old historical growth
The oases area, in Egypt's western desert, has played a significant role over various ages of the old Egyptian history, Kharga long history and ancient civilization is described in several monuments which had registered many ages starting from B.C. until the Islamic age.
The 2nd dynasty (5000 B.C.) had registered in Gabal El-Tayer monuments that Kharga was famous for agricultural activity.
Kharga oasis in the Pharaonic era was called "plough ", Dakhla oasis was termed "southern oasis", while Farafra oasis was named "cow", which clearly speaks of welfare, as such areas were fully cultivated. Kharga and Dakhla oases, in the Pharaonic era, were one region affiliated to "Thani" region near Suhag considering it the vital defense front-line of Egypt to stand against any offensive either from the west or the south. Pharaonic 26th dynasty had constructed in Kharga Hebas temple since 660:565 BC, the 27th dynasty had constructed Ghewata temple since 522 BC.
Persian Qambiz invaded Egypt in the 6th Century BC, King the first Dara had finished the engraving of Hebas and Ghewata temples which was castle looking at any invaders coming through the Darb AL Arbaen.
In the Greek-roman era, the agriculture had developed, Romans had dug wells in such fertile lands which were known as “Roman eyes”. The Romans also had created in architectural field, during Antonus’s reign at the beginning of the 2nd century many monuments had been built such as AL-Nadoura temple, EL-Dear fortress, Qaser AL-Zian temple. (Ashraf M. S. Mahrous, 1998)
In third and fourth centuries BC, when Roman suppression towards Christians increased, too many of Egypt's Copts (Christians) fled to such oases, EL-Bagawat cemetery and church, Aen Mostfa AL-Kashef monastery, AL-Monera monastery, and Shams AL-Dean monastery are indicates a Christian presence on Kharga in the advent of Islam to Egypt.
Since the Islam entry into Egypt the life had start to be stable and safety. The oases were under the light and the simple life was the main feature of the oases, which were considered separated for the life in Egypt, it was named “nomads life” until beginning of the domination republican on Egypt.
The recent historical growth
It was clearly that the old history has been preserved on the walls of temples and monuments. But the recent history must be preserved on computer systems as a digital form, which is the modern view. The next context explains how to create comprehensive historical background and define the main direction of urban growth of the Kharga City using GIS techniques.
Methodology
Creating base-map and database for Kharga City. The base-map has been created as a themes maps- each one describes different land-use. Totally the base-map consists of 7322 land parcels, each of them has been joined with its attribute record in the database that contains for each parcel tabular data such as ID-Cod, Land-use activity, Parcel’s area, parcel’s Perimeter, Number of floors, Total floors area, Construction state, Registration number in governorat cadastre, Building collection method, Ownership, Construction material, Number of People in building, and year of construction,…. etc.
Experimental Work with ArcView GIS
To perform a historical growth of the city using GIS techniques, we use the following procedures: -
“Merge themes together” operation in “Geo-processing” tool has been used to merge all land use themes. This operation appends the features of the merged themes into a single theme, the attributes has been retained because the attributes of each land use themes have the same names. The output file of this operation is the all land-use theme, which named “Kharga Land Use (KLU)”.
Dissolving features of land-use map
Construction time of each building is the individual indicator for knowing the historical growth of the city. Therefore, dissolving features of KLU theme based on “Year of Construction” attribute is the used operation -in Geo-processing tool- to create the Historical Land Use (HLU) theme with carrying out some additional fields in the output tabular data file such as average, sum, minimum, maximum of each field attribute, etc.
This theme is presented by the “Graduated Color legend” type according to the classification of the Construction Year attribute field. The range of construction field has been divided into 10 grades, each grade of them is presents one decade starting from 1900 to 2000, in addition to two grades present the constructed buildings since b.c. and the under construction buildings.
Querying and summarizing data
The table attributes data of KLU theme has been summarized to perform the development of Land use areas, and people activities shown in fig. 1, and fig. 3 respectively. The summarizing operation depended on the Count of parcels, Sum-Area, and Sum-People in each land uses activity. This operation has been repeated for each decade, which has been selected by querying operation.
Presenting the result as charts, tables, and figures
Figures 1 and 3 have been performed using Microsoft Excel software with the result data of querying and summarizing operations in ArcView GIS. Figure 2 has been performed using ArcView GIS as a layout of achieved maps.
Historical Land use development: Fig. (1) shows that -according to the registration of cadastre- the largest area of total land use is used for palm agriculture and agriculture field during Twentieth century however, these land uses had been developed only during the fourth and the seventh decades of the last century. This fact because at 1958 the first construction caravan had arrived to Kharga, then it has been changed into capital city of the new valley governorat. At that time the urban area of Kharga was limited in the old-Kharga site. Aen AL-Dar well was the main water resource for agriculture and drinking in addition to some wells were resource for agriculture such as Aan AL-Shakh, Aen AL-Gadida, Aen AL-Malek, Aen AL-Kalaa, AL-Berba, and AL-Khalefa well. This construction caravan developed the wells and doubled the agricultural land from 2 square Km to 4 square Km.. In addition increased the palm land from 3.8 square Km to 4.3 square Km. Since 1970 until now, the extension development of agriculture and palm Standstill and the Kharga oasis has began to change to city form. The curve also shows that the land use of public services has been developed more than other land uses, the reason also is the arriving of construction caravan. It is quite clear -in fig. (1)- that since 1910 to 2002 the area of houses land uses is nearly equalize the area of streets land uses. In addition the development of such houses or streets land uses is more homogenous than other land uses where the individual affecting factor here is the rate of increasing population. Fig. 1-A -is an enlargement of the lower right corner of fig. (1)- shows that emergency, educational, and management land uses had been growth as well as the others.
As shown in fig. (2) each color degree in the legend of historical land use map indicates to one decade, each color in the legend of Kharga Land Use map shows one of land use.
Since 1900 to 1920 the Kharga oasis was divided into two parts, (see 1) the first part is agricultural land beside the monuments at the northward of the city, the second part is residential land with agricultural land in the southward of the city. This fact explain that since 1900 to 1920 the people had continued farming the cultivated area –which was occupied since B.C. till beginning of nineteenth century- using the wells beside the monuments and started farming the land beside the residential site. It means that the people activity was only farming during this decade.
Since 1921 to 1940 rresidential neighborhood -named now “Old Kharga”- had been built in between the two parts of city (See 2) using clay as an appropriate material for the hot climate. The houses are assimilated each other. This neighborhood is going failure now residents replace the houses by new limited-story building without any planning principles
Since 1941 to 1960, with the first construction caravan, great changes had been occurred in land use areas. Agriculture land use had been extended to northward and southward of the city (see 3). The management buildings had built in between the two parts of city (See 4), In the same time the new residential site for caravan of construction had been selected near the management buildings (see 5). The old Kharga neighborhood had extended in all directions (see 6)
Fig. (1): Development curve of land uses areas
Since 1961 to 1980 Kharga pattern began to be urbanized area, it started to take the city form where the local government developed and create public services, heath, luxury, religious, etc. in addition to the residential sites had been grown on all direction of the city (see 7).
Since 1981 to 2002 the land had registered, as a government owns. Therefor the residential growth had limited on roles of the governorat and the residential society in different administration. In another words, the governorat builds the houses by the financing from housing bank, then the people dwell and pay the cost of buildings as installment monthly. This system has applied on AL-AMAL, AL-Zohur, and AL-Marwa sites (see 8). The second system, the governorat specifics an area for every residential society, then the society divides the area and specifics parcels for each member who pay the price of parcel as installment monthly. This system has applied in Engineer’s land, farmer’s land, AL-Slam’s Land, and AL-Mohafza’s land (see 9).
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Fig. (2) Historical land use map (HLU) and Kharga land use (KLU)
Most of these sites are under-construction. The industrial and workshops crafts areas have been specified in west direction around the Kharga-Dakhla road, some of the parcels have been built, and most of them are under-construction (see 10). In the tourist field, the governorat and private companies have built hotels such as AL-Kharga Hotel, AL-Waha hotel, Hamad Allah Hotel, AL-Dar AL-Bidaa Hotel and AL-Rouad Hotel. Regarding the transportation, the governorat has created a railroad joining Kharga with Safaga on the Red Sea beach for export the phosphates from Abou Tartour. Also joining the Kharga City with its villages for people traveling.
People activites development: Fig. (3) shows that since 1900 to 1960 the main activity of people was in the agriculture field until the change from oasis to city happened. then the administrative jobs became the main activity of people, morever the people that working in the educational services became more than whom working in agricultuer field since 1980s.
Conclusion and recommendation
Through this paper we conclude that: not only although urban planning has used computer model and information system the local governorat use traditional methods for planning process but also it depends on few inexpert engineers for urban planning of Kharga city. The GIS technique is a powerful tool for performing the historical urban development, 1958 is mainly the change point of Kharga City where all land use of the city has been developed as well as before.
On 1958 the construction caravan developed the wells and doubled the agricultural land from 2 square Km to 4 square Km.. In addition increased the palm land from 3.8 square Km to 4.3 square Km. The main growth direction of Kharga City is the northward – southward, Kharga City grown around two centers (the agriculture land and the archaeological monuments). During the twentieth century the area of houses land uses is nearly equalize the area of streets land uses. Since 1970 until now, the extension development of agriculture and palm Standstill and the Kharga oasis has began urbanized since 1970. Urban planning management of Kharga City doesn’t obey to any planning principles where land parcels specialization process can be considered a random method of land distribution. Thus we recommend strongly the local government to conveyance the urban planning process to the specialists such as National Planning institute or the universities of planning
Fig. (3) Development curve of people activities in Kharga City.
References
- Ahmad K. Alam , 1981, panning of cities. Cairo, Egypt.
- Anter A. Korin, 1997, fundamentals and theories of urban planning. Minia, Egypt.
- Ashraf M. S. Mahrous, 1998 planning and urban design principals of tourist villages. Ms. C. EL-Minia University, Egypt.
- Ashraf M. S. Mahrous, 2002, Using GIS Techniques In Urban Planning Of Desert Cities. Under preparation. Bratislava.
- Henk J. Scholten and John C. H. Stillwell, 1990, Geographic Information Systems for Urban and Regional Planning. Vol. 17 Kluwer Academic Publishers, Netherlands.
- Michael Batty, Martin Dodge, Bin Jiang, and Andy smith, 1998, GIS and urban design. Center for advanced spatial analysis, London.
The authors thank everybody whom, by discussion, advice, review, or assistance with preparation of this paper or the Ph. D. thesis of the first author, have helped.
Ao. Univ. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang feilmayr gave help and advice in connection to the library of, faculty of architecture and planning at Technical University of Vienna.
Similarly the first author acknowledge advice from Obrat. Dipl-Ing. Leopold Riedl, at faculty of architecture and planning at Technical University of Vienna, who help him during learning the techniques of GIS.
Also authors thanks Assistant Prof. Dr. Antar A. Korin at Minia University, Egypt, for sending references, comments, and helpful advice.