الفهرس 
Chapter 1: IntroductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Global south cities are expected to be the fastest growing in the coming decades while also being subject to various climate change consequences and pressures where green infrastructure may be of high relevance. Despite the continuous growth of green infrastructure scholarly and practice in recent years, green infrastructure inquiry is lagging in global south contexts and specifically African cities. Place-based inquiry is being advocated as a means of a deeper and integrated understanding of the social, political, and bio-physical processes that shape cities and their green spaces. In this regard, this research is proposing an integrated understanding of placemaking and green infrastructure as an iterative process that would accommodate the different contexts’ dynamics.
The research is adopting an interpretivist case study approach to unravel and understand the complexity of the case of Cairo, Egypt as an example of a rapidly growing metropolis in the global south. Placemaking as a people-centred concept is utilized for an in-depth understanding of the current provision and governance dynamics of green spaces in the city. The research involves extensive documentary analysis of planning policy and greening-related material in the Egyptian context. The investigation also involves the analysis of semi-structured interviews with 25 interviewees from the public, private, and civil society sectors in addition to 9 interviewees from the local community who are involved in green spaces stewardship experiences and processes.
The thesis provides original empirical and theoretical contributions to knowledge. This is achieved by presenting a critical interpretive analysis of green spaces governance dynamics in a context where attention to local meanings, perspectives, and values is largely absent in academic literature. The research identifies, examines, and discusses the influential roles played by planning rationalities, motivations, nuanced understandings, and networks in attaining (or not) the wide-range integrated benefits of green spaces in the Egyptian context. Thus, it contributes to green infrastructure scholarship by including variant meanings and processes that would pave the way for the adoption and implementation of green infrastructure in non-western semi-arid and arid contexts. The thesis also provides a broader contribution to the theoretical understanding of placemaking and green infrastructure as an ever-evolving living approach responsive to the dynamism of needs and values of cities’ stakeholders that may shape the future of green infrastructure scholarly.