Cairo -
“A dead city by 2030,” Egyptian government officials described the fate of Cairo, if the government did not implement new road and housing projects to save the capital from high population density, high rates of pollution and random construction.
The government’s description came in an attempt to demonstrate the importance of the new projects that it is implementing, including roads, bridges, and new cities outside the capital, as well as the readiness to move to the new administrative capital located east of Cairo, which has sparked great controversy over the past years, especially from opponents who saw that the authority was profligate in constructing roads. And cities for the rich at the expense of many priorities, especially in the areas of education and health.
The Minister of Housing and Urban Communities, Assem El-Gazzar, said that Cairo has become a deaf urban block crowded with activities, movement and random construction, with a decrease in the percentage of green areas and open areas, and the absence of requirements for planning and construction.
Last week, during the inauguration of projects in the housing and road sectors in the presence of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, El-Gazzar cited the expectations of the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) that Cairo will be a dead city by 2030, which means that the speed on the main axes will drop to less than 10 kilometers in the hour.
In his speech during the same activity, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly confirmed that the official in charge of the Japan International Cooperation Agency told him in 2010 - at that time Madbouly was head of the General Authority for Urban Planning - that he would not prefer being in Cairo during the period between 2020 and 2030 because it would become a closed city. and dead.
Madbouly added that the possible solutions to save Cairo were not commensurate with the state's capabilities at that time, praising at the same time the projects implemented in the housing and road sectors in recent years, and that it succeeded in implementing solutions that the Japanese expert ruled out Egypt's success in implementing, years before 2030, he said.
Late last year, the Egyptian government announced the start of the gradual transfer of the headquarters of ministries and official bodies to the new administrative capital, which is about 60 kilometers away from Cairo.
The reality of Cairo
The Egyptian Minister of Housing went on to explain the reality in his country's capital, as he said that the percentage of construction exceeded 70% of its area, while the percentage of roads does not exceed 20%, which results in severe overcrowding.
He explained that the population density in the Greater Cairo region amounted to about 11,000 people per square kilometer, compared to 2,800 people in Mexico City, the capital of Mexico, and 5,000 people in Paris, "meaning that the density of Cairo's population is twice the nearest urban region in terms of area in the world." According to him.
Al-Jazzar pointed out that the area of the capital in 1970 did not exceed 52,000 acres and inhabited by 5.6 million people, and after 45 years - specifically in 2015 - its area became 140,000 acres and inhabited by 16.8 million people.
On the other hand, the percentage of green areas and open areas decreased with the increase in the rates of slum construction and the absence of planning and building requirements.
The government official indicated that non-residential uses inside Cairo range between 30% and 35% on average, which means an increase in the percentage of non-productive activities, "meaning we are facing a consumer society," as he put it.
All this led to an increase in the thermal stock of the urban blocks and an increase in pollution rates to 50 degrees in some areas, according to Al-Jazzar, which explains the lack of air movement in some areas, because the thermal condition is greater than the natural sensation indicated by the declared temperature.
According to the report of the Central Agency for Mobilization and Statistics (a government agency), issued last August, the unplanned urban areas in the country amounted to about 152,000 feddans.
Development work was carried out in 53 areas with an area of 4,616 acres, and development work is underway in 79 areas with an area of 6,941 acres, at a total cost of 318 billion pounds (about 20.3 billion dollars) to raise the efficiency of the infrastructure in those areas, according to the government report.
#Hanger_Fi_Love_Egypt
Hear what the #Japanese expert said about #Egypt in 2010..‼️ # Cairo will be a dead city, imagine where
we were and where we stayed ⁉️ Oh my
brother # Long live Egypt and Sisi lived 100 million times 💪🇪🇬 pic.twitter.com/jOf5l1zTjo
— 🇪🇬 Millad 🇪🇬 (@Millad_El_SiSi) March 3, 2022
Housing Minister / Dr. Engineer Essam El-Jazzar.. He told you the problem and compared Cairo to cities like Paris and Mexico City.. He tells us the scientific solution studied by an expert..
God be upon you,
Egypt..
— Ashraf (@USAOUS) March 2, 2022
usual praise
As usual, politicians and media professionals loyal to the authority in Egypt, their statements praising the interaction of the presidency and the government with the reality of Cairo were launched by implementing projects in the road and housing sectors to save the capital from what it is.
The journalist Nashat Al-Daihi said that the government dealt according to a comprehensive plan to restore and treat a random cement block that lacks any aesthetic features in order to create human life opportunities for citizens.
He added, during the presentation of his program, which is shown on the "TeN" channel, that the images of Egypt's cities from the plane are frightening, as they are deaf concrete blocks that are not worthy of citizens or the state.
Al-Daihi carried what he described as the randomness of city planning to previous governments, which left citizens to construct buildings without any oversight, which eventually led to exhausted homes that are terrifying random blocks.
The broadcaster, who is close to the current authority, praised its intervention to rid the country of randomness through numerous well-organized and planned housing projects, as well as road construction, describing them as new arteries in the state body aimed at opening up prospects for social and economic development.
In the same context, the head of the Generation Party, Naji Al-Shihabi, considered the housing projects and roads adopted by the state as saving historic Cairo and its extension from what he called complete paralysis.
Al-Shihabi added, in a press statement, that the capital has become characterized by severe overcrowding in a limited population area, which made it one of the most crowded capitals in the world, noting that these projects are appropriate spending that saved the historical capital of Egypt and its extensions from complete paralysis and clinical death.
El-Shihabi praised what he described as the planning policy of the Egyptian state, which set new planning and construction requirements for urban governance and control, especially in the Greater Cairo Region, with the expansion and construction of roads that contribute to linking existing urbanization with new urban communities.
random urbanization
In her book, Unplanned Urbanization, urban planning specialist Jalila Al-Qadi tried to root the crisis of random planning in the city of Cairo, considering urban encroachment on agricultural lands and encroachment on endowment properties and state-owned lands in a squatting manner, as the basis of the crisis.
In her book, which is a research study submitted by Al-Qadi to obtain a doctorate from the University of Paris, she pointed to the role of the former ruler of Egypt, Muhammad Ali and his family (the Alawite family) in restructuring and planning Cairo according to modern planning theories during the 19th century.
That planning led to the emergence of new neighborhoods such as Shubra, Helmeya al-Jadida, Abbasiya, Downtown, Helwan, Maadi, Zamalek, Heliopolis, Hadayek al-Qubba, and Hadayek al-Qubba, to attract the upper and middle class and the upper segment of the lower class, from the old neighborhoods such as Jamaliah, Darb al-Ahmar, Khalifa and Sayeda Zeinab.
According to the study, the real displacement to Cairo appeared with the start of the First World War in the early 20th century, when factories were established to meet the requirements of the armies, which necessitated the recruitment of labor from rural to urban areas to meet the needs of factories.
The urban planning expert indicated that the workers of the new factories began searching for places to live, and had to live on the outskirts of Cairo neighborhoods after being excluded from the center, as they were unable to provide the conditions for housing there.
These conditions created complicity between the new displaced to Cairo and what the judge called the “agent class,” which facilitated the establishment of housing on the agricultural lands surrounding the capital as well as state-owned lands, so that these areas became random cities linked to the capital.
She added that the newly displaced people found in what the agents offered them an opportunity that corresponds to their financial capabilities, other than the capabilities required by the formal housing pattern.
She explained in her study that "due to Cairo's inclusion in most economic and service activity, it has become the most attractive city for residents, as it includes 45% of industrial establishments and employs 40% of the total workers, and the migration rate to it reached about 60% of the total immigrants from the countryside to the city." Between 1960 and 1966, the number of immigrants currently reaches 1,000 immigrants per day.