Aspirations and expectations vis-à-vis sustainable communities are being raised dramatically in Egypt and worldwide. This requires revolutionising the way of thinking and planning to proactively address local, national, and regional challenges taking into consideration the international perspective. Nonetheless, the global climate change phenomenon and the sustainable building agenda represent a major challenge not only for developing sustainable communities, but also more importantly, managing the development of the socio-economic landscape.The goal of SB13 Cairo is to redefine urban challenges in light of the democratic transition of the society and to capture knowledge and best practice with the target of prioritising and mapping innovative solutions to local, regional, and international challenges. This is achieved through four main subthemes to investigate integrated planning and implementation policies, to explore potentials for incorporating new/alternative energy technologies on the urban and architectural scale, to govern the successful implementation through local governance and capacity building; and finally to demonstrate state-of-the-art knowledge through real life innovative practical solutions for disseminating and sharing lessons learnt.The anticipated outcome of the conference aims to join forces between theory and practice and find common grounds within the regional and international context.