The Row Housing Typology as a Framework for Resilient Urban Development: Lessons from Historic Cairo

Contemporary city regions face growing uncertainty, including demographic pressures, housing shortages, environmental challenges, and socio-economic instability. These conditions have renewed interest in historical urban models that support resilient forms of urban development. Among them, the row housing typology stands out as one of the most enduring and adaptable residential forms in the history of city building, generating compact, walkable, and socially cohesive urban environments across different periods and geographical contexts. This paper investigates the row housing typology through the case of Historic Cairo, where the Rabʿ emerged as a distinctive form of collective housing accommodating low- and middle-income residents within a dense mixed-use urban fabric. Originally associated with commercial complexes such as the wikala, the Rabʿ evolved into an autonomous residential type characterised by high density, environmental responsiveness, and strong integration with the surrounding urban structure. Through a morphological and typological analysis of selected examples, the research examines how row housing functions simultaneously as a dwelling type, an urban tissue, and a generator of urban form. The study combines archival research, analytical redrawings, field surveys, and research-by-design developed within architectural design studios at the German University in Cairo. Historical precedents are analysed alongside contemporary student projects that reinterpret the spatial principles of traditional row housing in present-day housing contexts. The findings suggest that the enduring relevance of the row housing typology lies in its capacity to reconcile density, environmental performance, social interaction, and urban continuity. By revisiting the spatial logic embedded in Historic Cairo's collective housing traditions, the paper argues that historical housing typologies can provide operative frameworks for designing resilient, compact, and socially cohesive urban environments.