ancient cities

Infrastructural projects like bridges across the
Nile and a new tramway (1896, Ataba to
Abassiya) accommodated the construction frenzy
as more distant lands were opened up for construction.
Heliopolis, Garden City (guided by Ebenezer
Howard’s model), and Maadi were created as suburbs
for the colonial elite. Lower-class foreign
residents (craftsmen, shopkeepers) swelled the
population of the neighborhood of Shoubra, north
of Cairo’s main train station. Middle-level colonial
bureaucrats moved to new apartment buildings on
the Nile island of Zamalek. The new national university
(today’s Cairo University), planned and
constructed by the emerging anticolonial nationalist
movement, settled on agricultural land in Giza
in 1914. Many members of the emerging Egyptian
professional elite settled in the 1920s and 1930s in
the new neighborhoods north of the university.
In the first decades of the twentieth century,
Cairo’s modern infrastructure was rapidly extended
to serve the colonial quarters and the outposts of
an emerging global touristscape. The nascent
tramway system was extended in 1900 to connect
downtown Cairo to the Pyramids to allow for a
comfortable ride for the local elite and tourists,
and yet older quarters and villages (on the west
bank) had no water, electricity, or phone lines. The
Mena House Hotel, located at the foot of the
Cheops pyramids, had a swimming pool in 1906,
but there were still some households in 2006 in
older Giza quarters without their own water tap.
Postcolonial Metropolis
After Egypt’s full independence from British rule in
1955 to 1956, the government under Gamal Abdel
Nasser (1954–1970) embarked on a course of rapid
modernization and industrialization. His populist
politics included the construction of vast tracts of
public housing in Cairo and Giza. The quarter of
Muhandessin was designed for bureaucrats and
functionaries. Medinat Nasr was similarly designed
for army officers and private construction. The
downtown Mugamma, a megasize administration
and public service building located at the southern
end of the central square of Midan Al-Tahrir, and
the TV building on the Nile in Bulaq best symbolize
Nasserist popular architecture and projects. Political
(1967 Six Day War) and economic problems and
the sudden death of Nasser in 1970 ended this
Cairo, Egypt
99
populist phase. President Anwar Al-Sadat quickly
ushered in a new era of economic liberalization
and capitalist global integration. Cairo’s face
changed. Tourism increased, and the number of
international five-star hotels increased along with
it. Import and export businesses started to flourish,
many of whose proceeds were invested in local real
estate and construction. These developments are
best symbolized in the dramatic changes in
Muhandessin. Many Nasserist villas or small
apartment buildings were replaced by apartment
towers that were 20 or more stories high. Sadat’s
assassination in 1981 brought Hosni Mubarak to
power; Mubarak continued Sadat’s policies. Real
estate speculation boomed, yet little housing was
built for low-income groups. The economic liberalization
of the 1970s had allowed growing numbers
of Egyptians to migrate to the oil-rich countries of
the Arab Gulf. When they returned with their
remittances, many started to construct “informal”
housing on the city’s outskirts on agricultural land.
Since the late 1970s, older quarters and villages,
like Dar As-Salaam or Bulaq Al-Dakrour, have
thus grown into densely populated urban quarters
that today house millions of residents. Built without
permits, these quarters were provided with
public services only after they filled up. These quarters
continue to grow.
In the early 1990s the government put considerable
tracts of desert land surrounding the metropolitan
area up for sale. This triggered a
speculation and construction frenzy in the process
of which the area of Greater Cairo (or the area to
be built up) quintupled. Gated communities and
other upscale developments started mushrooming,
in particular around the planned desert city
of 6th of October west of Giza, but also in the
Muqattam area east of the city. Lower-middleclass
condominiums were built in the quarter of
Sheikh Zayed west of the Pyramids. Private clubs,
amusements parks, and ever more glitzy malls
were built at a rapid rate. Cairo’s neoliberal face
of the early twenty-first century is a new one: a
high-density core (34,000 square kilometers in
the city of Cairo) interspersed with fortresses of
leisure and consumption (malls, hotels) and a
lower-density “suburban” ring where the elite
and new middle class enjoy larger spaces, greenery,
malls, less-polluted air, and the relative
absence of the poor. However, 6th of October