Cairo: dealing with enormity
p. 68-69
Texte intégral
24,400,000 | 1979 | 1987 | 2008 | 2020 |
Number of inhabitants in 2018 | Old Cairo registered by UNESCO as World Heritage Site | First metro line from Helwan to El-Marg | Launch of "Cairo 2050" strategy | Planned opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum |
Source: CAPMAS |
1Cairo, the largest city of the Arab world and the African continent, is home to almost a quarter of all Egyptians. In the past 25 years its population has doubled and its surface area has tripled. The number of inhabitants in the megacity will exceed 30 million in 2050, as compared with four million in 1966. While this enormity is decried (congestion, pollution, dirt, insufficient public transport etc.) the town still, somehow, manages to function, as has been noted by David Sims, due in part to the informal sector and neighbourhood social networks. It has been spared the chaos and criminality that can be observed in other multimillion-sized cities. Nonetheless, the deteriorating environmental situation, in particular pollution of the Nile, is having a heavy impact on health.
2The town is split between three governorates (Cairo, Giza and Qalyubia) and for lack of any politico-administrative structure overseeing the entirety of the agglomeration, the outline of Greater Cairo vary according to institution. CAPMAS defines the “urban zone” as the governorate of Cairo and the towns of Giza and Shubra el-Khaima. The General Organization for Physical Planning (GOPP), responsible for urban planning since 2008, adds to its definition of “Greater Cairo” a suburban zone composed of nine districts in the governorates of Giza and Qalyubia, as well as eight new towns established in the desert, outside the ring road: 6th of October, 15th of May, Obour, El-Shorouk, Sheikh Zayed, New Cairo, Badr and 10th of Ramadan.
A bustling metropolis
3Once occupied by the Pharaonic capital of Memphis, the site of Cairo at the apex of the Delta is exceptional. The new town of the Arab conquerors, Fustat in 642 and then Al-Qahira of the Fatimid caliphate in 969, was built on the right bank and remains a historical centre with Khan al-Khalili, the Ayyubid citadel, and the mosque and university of Al-Azhar. Over the centuries the town, partially blocked in by the cliffs of Moqattam, spread westwards. At the end of the 19th century Khedive Ismail laid out a European quarter (Wust el-Balad) to the north of Islamic Cairo, then in the 1930s the island of Zamalek was developed and the Nile crossed, opening up the extensions that would become Giza, Dokki, Mohandeseen and Imbaba. Today, the urban sprawl encompasses the pyramids of Giza and spreads indiscriminately towards the desert and down the Nile Valley, barely contained within the planned residential quarters and the new towns that encircle the capital. While Cairo was once at the cutting edge of urban planning in the Arab region, the urban fabric is characterised by density, verticality and by the extent of informality in the production of space and in everyday functioning.
4The low-income housing of Old Cairo is deteriorating despite its registration by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site and sporadic restoration projects. The noise, extreme density and then the clashes around Tahrir Square have resulted in the American University in Cairo relocating to the edges of the city (officially in New Cairo since 2008) and the well-off households that once occupied Wust el-Balad have followed suit, leaving the district in the hands of public renovation operations since 2011. Cairo is a megacity of bits and pieces, with some social worlds still intermingling in the outer central districts, but more fractured in the wealthy compounds of the periphery. Shopping malls on the desert margins add a frame to the urban extension, until they too are enclosed within the built-up continuum.
5Although housing is a central problem, the tens of thousands of empty accommodation units are a paradox that is visibly present in the many ghost buildings. This phenomenon is due to legislation that protects renters (rent control based upon a law of 1947) and a distrust of banks, which encourages savings to be invested in real estate.
The top-down logic of the megaprojects
6Development projects first set out in the Cairo 2050 strategy have been continued under the presidency of Abdel Fatah al-Sisi (Egypt Vision 2030) with the same aims: relieve the central districts by shifting to new developments in the desert, such as the administrative capital; and regenerate the downtown area in order to promote an image of a modern, sustainable city according to the international standards of a neoliberal model town capable of attracting tourism. The major works include the construction of the Grand Egyptian Museum near Giza (planned completion date 2020), intended to receive artefacts from the current museum at Tahrir, as well as the development of the Maspero Triangle bordering the Corniche to build a high standard residential and commercial neighbourhood. The corollary of these operations is the demolition of housing and businesses accused of being informal, insalubrious and polluting in order to free up areas of high real estate value. The unfortunate losers in this are the inhabitants of Maspero district, the tanneries of Old Cairo (relocated to Badr new town), and the rag-picker community of Batn el-Baqara (evictions began in 2016). The completion of Line 3 of the underground railway (between Imbaba and the current airport) and the new Sphinx International Airport to the west are the other landmark projects designed to rebrand the capital. The choice, as always, has been to build new rather than improve what exists. These developments, built upon private investment, have been initiated from on high and implemented by governors and governmental agencies, and all without elected municipalities or local authorities that are representative of the citizens.
4.1 The growth of Cairo, 1960-2017

Auteurs
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Hala Bayoumi
Hala Bayoumi, CNRS research engineer in mathematics applied to humanities and social sciences. She has been head of the Digital Humanities Unit at Centre for Economic, Legal and Social Studies and Documentation (CEDEJ) since 2007 and was awarded the CNRS Crystal Medal in 2017
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Karine Bennafla
Karine Bennafla, professor of geography at Jean Moulin University of Lyon, affiliated to the research group EVS (Environnement, Ville, Société) – UMR 5600. She was director of the Centre for Economic, Legal and Social Studies and Documentation (CEDEJ) in Cairo from 2015 to 2019
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