The Nile Delta is considered one of the deltas most vulnerable to climate change worldwide. Apart from the immediate threat of sea level rise it is additionally facing water scarcity, agricultural and ecological degradation in parallel to an unprecedented population increase and the vast urbanization of scarce agricultural land. The urbanization of the Nile Delta, which may be considered an even bigger threat than climate change, is dominated by informal building processes mainly for the lower income sector while the formal sector is planning new cities in the desert. To overcome the pressure of land scarcity in the Nile Valley and Delta, which make up only 4% of the country, the ongoing governmental strategy since the 1970s also for the delta’s fringes has been land reclamation in the desert, for both agricultural, industrial and settlement purposes. Yet, up until today “New Urban Communities” have not been able to attract the designated number of inhabitants as they fail to meet the needs of a large part of the population. Instead they have become market-steered recluses to a growing middle class that longs for a suburban life style and can afford it. Apart from offering a privileged lifestyle, desert developments are investment objects for the private sector. In the formally organized planning processes, sustainable design remains vanguard. As low-rise, high-density and mixed-use neighborhoods, informal developments evolving along canals and transportation nodes in the delta, meet a number of sustainability criteria. While these neighborhoods often lack proper infrastructure and safe accessibility internally, it is their location on scarce agricultural land that proves to be their main deficiency in the light of an increasing geographic vulnerability of the delta. In summary, currently both formal, market-steered developments on reclaimed desert land and informal developments in the Nile Valley and Delta lack ecological awareness. To become more resilient, how can ecological intelligence of people and places be incorporated in this spectrum of formal and informal settlement processes? Water scarcity and quality stand at the top of the list when looking at Egypt today. An overview of current social and spatial conditions in the Nile Delta region and of planning practice in Egypt today depicts a highly complex condition. This paper proposes Water Sensitive Urban Design as a tool for both formal and informal urban developments to negotiate between social and topographical extremes to increase resilience of the Nile Delta and its adjoining desert developments.