The Canal Towns: Port Said, Ismailia, Suez
p. 98-99
Texte intégral
1859 | 1968-1970 | 1976-2002 | 5.4 million TEU |
Building of Port Said begins | Israeli bombardment and evacuation of the towns (the War of Attrition) | Port Said declared a "free zone" | Capacity of Port Said container terminal |
5.13 Palestine Street, Port Said, 2017

© Karine Bennafla
5.14 New town Suez after 1975, 2018

© Nora Guigues
1Although less than three hours distant by car from Cairo, the canal cities are very different from other population centres of the Valley and the Delta. The trio of Port Said, Suez and Ismailia have their own identity and specific urban landscapes that are linked to a shared trajectory since they were first developed by the Universal Company of the Maritime Canal of Suez in the mid-19th century. These towns, located on the west bank of the canal, were seriously affected by the Arab-Israeli wars of 1956 to 1973 because of their position on the front line, suffering extensive damage and the evacuation of civilians. Statues and mural paintings recall this heavy sacrifice for national independence and defence of the country. The reconstruction of the canal cities after the October War coincided with the implementation of economic liberalisation policies. In order to facilitate the revival, lessen the demographic pressure on the Delta, and, especially, to attract foreign direct investment, the towns were opened up to large industrial port development projects, driven by the central authorities and based upon free zones.
Atypical new towns
2Capitals of their own governorates, Port Said (pop. 750,000), Suez (pop. 730,000) and Ismailia (pop. 385,000) are ranked third, fourth and fifth in the national urban hierarchy. These medium-sized towns were born of the building of the canal, either on an old site (Suez) or created ex nihilo (Port Said, Ismailia). Each one had its own original speciality that was more or less reinforced during the 20th century: as a port open to the Mediterranean, Port Said is a town of commerce and trade founded upon a cramped space on the shores of Lake Manzala; Ismailia was built on Lake Timsah in 1862 at the centre of the isthmus in order to oversee the construction works of the canal and house the administration, especially the headquarters of the Canal Company, later the Suez Canal Authority: Suez, once an embarkation point for pilgrims to Mecca, became an industrial centre with particular links to oil production.
3The towns were designed by European architects of the Canal Company along geometric lines, with squares and green spaces, wide regular streets, and a separation between European and local neighbourhoods, all evidence of a 19th-century concern for hygiene and segregation. This colonial urban planning has left behind a remarkable and diverse architectural heritage in varying states of decay. The garden cities of Ismailia and Port Fuad, the arcaded tenements and wooden balconies on slender columns of Port Said, and the art deco villas are vestiges of this openness to the world and of the plural society that existed until 1956. The reconstruction of the towns and the return of the displaced populations gave rise to strips of planned social housing and then, with demographic growth, informal extensions to the building stock and impoverished neighbourhoods on the margins, such as the shantytowns of Zerzara, Qabouti and Ezbet Abu Ouf in Port Said, which were razed in 2018.
At the heart of megaprojects
4The Suez Canal, 193 km long with no locks, was completed in 1869, linking Europe with Asia and avoiding the long detour around the Cape. At the time a potent symbol of Egypt’s modernisation, this international transit way with its three towns has regularly been exploited by the government to serve national economic ambitions and to assert the country’s successful integration into the global economy. In the mid-1970s each of the canal cities hosted an industrial and commercial free zone designed to attract external capital. The extraterritorial status accorded to Port Said boosted shopping tourism and made the town rich. At the end of the 1990s major capital and infrastructure projects were implemented to develop the export and logistics industries. These included the Port Said East container port (2004), designed to be a new Mediterranean hub, and the cargo port at Suez, but foreign investment did not flow in. The canal was widened and deepened in 2015 and a logistics and industrial free zone (the SCZone) was declared along its the length, heralding new urban changes. The challenge is twofold: to increase traffic with a view to doubling income from crossings by 2023: and to create a zone for industry and employment that goes beyond transit and container transhipment which currently predominates. The expansion of Port Said East deep-water port is thus coupled with the modernisation of the western harbour, an industrial zone of 75 km2, of which Russian investors have earmarked 525 hectares (2018), and the new town of East Port Said. The construction of a new town at Ismailia is also underway on the east bank of the canal. Meanwhile, the involvement and the place of local economic actors within such major developments is still an open question, as is the conjunction of these proposed zones with the rest of the urban fabric and any eventually ripple effect.
5.15 Schematic plan of Port Said and Port Fuad in 2018

Auteurs
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
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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