Long before our reliance on air-conditioning, Dubai's old town kept people's homes cool using a combination of clever techniques to lower the temperature. The same basic techniques are being revived again today.

There's no heat like the heat of a Dubai afternoon. It is relentless – and often reaches deadly temperatures. But there's a little-known part of the city where you can cool down, and do so the old-fashioned way, without air conditioning.

As I step out of the heat and into the narrow lanes of the Al Fahidi Historical Neighbourhood, part of Old Dubai, I find refuge from the midday Sun. The shaded alleys here, with their high walls, seem to conjure a cool breeze from nowhere. A kind of merciful magic. Desert winds cooled and somehow tamed. The people who built this place really knew what they were doing.

Above me, I see four storey-tall wind towers rising against the sky – ingenious structures that once cooled dwellings below. Today here in Dubai, they are home to pigeons. In this calm, more modest part of the city, luxury gives way to creativity and functionality. In the architecture of the streets, you can read the environmental wisdom of a people who worked out how to survive the desert.

Parts of the Al Fahidi Historical Neighbourhood date to the 1700s. But the passively cooled, heatwave-resistant designs of buildings here are only becoming more relevant today. They are inspiring contemporary architecture – and even entire cities. Urban planners are turning to places like Old Dubai for inspiration as they rush to respond to climate change and the threat of rising global temperatures.

And no wonder. If clever architecture can keep people in Dubai cool, could it help keep the rest of us cool too?

Last year, temperatures in Dubai reached a scorching 51C and outdoor "feels like" temperatures – which take humidity into account – were as high as 62C. Air conditioning is widespread in the United Arab Emirates' (UAE), accounting for more than 70% of electricity consumption in the country during the summer months. However, proponents of traditional, passive cooling techniques say these tried and tested approaches to shading buildings and managing air flow could help people beat the heat without racking up massive electricity bills.

"The Emiratis built houses that were completely desert-proof," says Noor Ahmed, my tour guide. "Wind towers were used to catch the cool air from outside and drive out the hot air from inside," he adds. Gesturing at the labyrinthine alleyways of the old town, Ahmed points out how the high walls protect pedestrians from the blistering sun.

After Old Dubai emerged from the sands of time in the 1700s, it became a popular residential area when the ancestors of today's Emiratis transitioned from a nomadic to a more settled lifestyle along the Dubai Creek, a natural saltwater inlet that runs through the city.

The city's original inhabitants designed ingenious homes that could withstand the harsh climate of the Arabian Desert. They used technologies such as wind towers or wind-catchers known as barjeels, enclosed courtyards, latticed windows called mashrabiyas, coral stone houses, and narrow walkways called sikkas.

"The beauty of Al Fahidi's architecture lies in the fact that it uses several passive cooling techniques that work in tandem to keep the neighbourhood cool," says Ahmed Al-Jafflah, senior cultural speaker at Dubai's Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Centre for Cultural Understanding, a nonprofit organisation that promotes Emirati culture and history. "Our ancestors built a........

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