When Nouran Marsafy was a small child she would stand under the shade of a jasmine tree and wait for the bus that would take her to school in the sprawling Egyptian capital of Cairo.

As someone who is still sensitive to the sun, she appreciated the refuge the shade provided.

It was the first piece of nature that Nouran connected with and years later
when the tree was cut down she felt the loss acutely.

Even further down the road, when Nouran was studying architecture and urban planning at university she remembered sheltering under that fateful tree and how her experience could help the whole city, which had somehow become even hotter due to global heating and poor urban planning.

Cairo has always been huge, but it’s still expanding.

“There are new urban expansions in the desert and inter-building spaces are really tight. This increases the impact of the urban heat island, making these places really hot,” she said.

Now as an architect and urban planner, Nouran is using her influence to provide re-leaf efforts across her home city to help make the searing heat manageable.