atmosphere Review A Review and Insights for Eleven Years of Urban Microclimate Research Towards a New Egyptian ERA of Low Carbon, Comfortable and Energy-Efficient Housing Typologies Mohammad Fahmy 1,* , Sherif Mahmoud 1, Ibrahim Elwy 1 and Hatem Mahmoud 2,3 1 Department of Architecture Engineering, Military Technical College, Kobry El-Kobba, Cairo 11662, Egypt;
[email protected] (S.M.);
[email protected] (I.E.) 2 Department of Architecture Engineering, Engineering Faculty, Aswan University, Aswan 81542, Egypt;
[email protected] 3 Environmental Engineering Department, Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology E-JUST, New Borg El-Arab City, Alexandria 21934, Egypt * Correspondence:
[email protected] Received: 6 January 2020; Accepted: 24 February 2020; Published: 28 February 2020 Abstract: Since the mid-1970s, urban development in Egypt has sprawled far from the distinguished compact arid built environment, as the court-yarded housing typologies that completed the vernacular picture of desert architecture have been discarded in the early 20th century. This has motivated urban microclimate research in Egypt. The main objective was initially to improve outdoor thermal comfort. Therefore, Egyptian research started with assessing different existing patterns for the sake of climate responsive and sustainable urban design practice characterized with low carbon, thermal comfort and energy efficiency in such a hot arid conditions. That is why the review workflow of this article has followed a design progress workflow that led to solving design complexities with regard to generating housing urban forms on a microclimate basis rather than an article regular review workflow in order to extract the research gaps and conclude insights.