Peri-Urban Green Areas and the Landscape Transformation in the Case of MENA Region

Peri-Urban greens are defined as transitional zones where the rural areas of land located outside the densely populated urban areas transform into urban forms of lands where it becomes more populated regarding the change in the land use which are mainly located between the outskirts of urban regional centers and rural environments. The study of the Peri-Urban greens takes place in the MENA region which refers to the Middle east and North Africa where countries share similarities in the culture, economic and environmental factors. Looking back through history, the MENA region has been suffering from an uncontrolled growth of the urban expansion that tackled the transformation of the land use and threatened the rural areas which remained as an ongoing issue until today. In order to fill this gap, this study investigates a structured review of evaluating and comparing the landscape transformation based on two main pillars of analysis: 1) Investigating the landscape transformation through studying the development of the lands and 2) identifying the landscape change by studying the socio-cultural identity of the lands using examples of mapping system methodologies. All pillars of analysis are applied on areas of study with different scales of assessment; the regional scale which compares the impact of urban/rural growth on the landscape state between two selected countries (Egypt from the North African side and Jordan from the Middle Eastern side) and the city scale which is based on comparing two categories of cities; the comparison between the capitals (Amman and Cairo) and two selected cities located next to water resources (Luxor in Egypt and Aqaba in Jordan). This research paper detects the urbanization dynamics of the four selected cities and its impact on the land use and land cover transformations and the effect of changing the scales of analysis on the result of the comparison. The study contributes and results in implementing the level of landscape change in relation to the rapid urbanized areas by reinforcing the cultural importance of the city center and observing the urban sprawl moving toward the rural areas. Moreover, studying the nexus between the city and the water surface and enhance the quality of natural and green spaces. It is essential to study the percentages of green spaces, agricultural lands with the urbanized areas