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cairo is toying with suburbanization, and all the social ills it
can bring
by ashraf khalil
the names – dreamland, royal hills, gar-denia park, beverly
hills – suggest amusement parks or country clubs. and the effect
is entirely intentional. the new world of luxury housing developments
cropping up on the outskirts of cairo is meant to offer a shimmering,
mirage-like vision of a completely different life – one closer
to that seen on western television shows than anything egypt has
to offer.
beverly hills and its brethren aren’t much to look at right
now, mostly large construction sites dotted with partly finished
two-story villas. demand for such housing, once booming, has slumped
for the past year, weighted down by concerns the market has been
saturated. but construction continues nonstop, as does the debate
over whether these new communities will save cairo or finish it
off for good.
egypt has always been a place of rigid class divisions, but until
now cairo’s rich and poor have generally lived side by side
in relative harmony. partly for lack of anywhere else to go, egypt’s
elite stayed in the city, often turning the apartments in which
they were raised into marble-covered palaces. but now, a growing
percentage of the relatively well-off are choosing to get out of
the city and behind the walls of luxury developments whose biggest
selling point is their insulation from cairo’s noise and crowds.
“they see all these urban problems and they don’t want
to deal with it,” said assef bayat, a sociology professor at
the american university in cairo. “those people who can afford
to get out are getting out.”
only a limited percentage of the population can afford that, though,
and it’s unclear how rigid economic segregation might affect
egyp-tian society – where, for the most part, national pride
and identity cross class barriers. some warn that suburbanization
here will play out much as it did in dozens of american cities,
where fleeing residents sealed the fate of urban centers, whose
inevitable descent into poverty and crime then validated the fears
that prompted the departure of better-off residents in the first
place.
“this is the start of segregation,” said hisham bahgat,
a cairo university professor of architecture and urban planning,
who predicted that cairo’s city center will fall into complete
neglect within a decade or so. as the middle- and upper-class residents
head for greener pastures, followed by the goods and services which
cater to them, the city could become the sole domain of those too
poor to escape. the process itself has played out in one neighborhood
or another as long as “al-qahira” has been around. “islamic
cairo was once the height of beauty,” bahgat said. “now
it’s a slum.”
ahgat argued that the new desert migration is merely an extension
of a longstanding trend. cairo has always had its elite enclaves,
some of them located within the city proper – garden city in
the 1920s, then the outlying communities of heliopolis and maadi.
whether it’s in the desert, in maadi or in luxury apartments
or villas downtown, egypt’s elite, he said, “have al-ways
been hiding.”
to this point, the hiding places have invariably been absorbed back
into the ever-growing city. but some observers said the new elite
suburban communities signal a fundamental shift in the relations
between egypt’s social classes. “in egypt you had the
nasserist egalitarian experience. this is almost the end of that,”
bayat said.
just how egalitarian the whole nasserist experience was depends
on whom you ask, but a shift from an economy based on entitlements
to one based on competition will inevitably produce tension. egypt’s
program of economic reform is widely touted as the key to greater
prosperity for its booming population – and it’s been
just that for a highly visible and confident upper class enjoying
ever-greater spending power. but as much of the rest of the population
awaits the fruits of economic liberalization, some say the new communities
look like proof that the haves and have-nots will soon be as separated
geographically as they are economically. some warn that the separation
could disrupt egypt’s social cohesion.
“the basic principle of any urban planning is the social mix,”
said architect and urban planner sayed ettouney. “you don’t
want to encourage social divisions.”
the idea of settling the desert around cairo actually originated
in the desire to relieve the congestion that can give rise to tensions.
former president anwar sadat planned to use the foreign aid flowing
into the country after the camp david agreement to ease population
pressure in the capital by creating autonomous desert communities
with their own industries, housing, schools and services. but cairenes
have been reluctant to leave behind tight-knit family bonds for
an uncertain future farther afield, and the desert push didn’t
really start to take off until the early 1990’s.
of that first crop of desert cities, sixth of october city has had
the most success in developing into an organic community. boasting
around 200,000 residents, housing for several different income levels
– heavily subsidized for the poor – its own private university
and more than 1,000 factories lured by 10-year tax holidays, the
city looks and feels as if it’s managed to turn its uniform
streets and anonymous apartments into neighborhoods.
beyond sixth of october, however, the government’s efforts
to create thriving self-sufficient desert communities have met with
mixed results at best. other first-generation desert towns such
as tenth of ramadan haven’t lit the same residential fire.
aside from sixth of october, the other real desert success story
is new cairo – the product of a radical turnaround in the government’s
desert development policy.
when ibrahim suleiman replaced hasaballa kafrawi as minister of
housing, utilities & new communities in october 1993, the government
shifted strategy and handed part of the responsibility for desert
development to the private sector. large government-owned tracts
– which kafrawi had kept in government hands – were put
on the block, and the door was opened wide for private investment.
huge swaths of desert – an estimated 50,000 acres around sixth
of october and other satellite cities – have been snapped up
by private developers. new cairo, the flagship of this recent push,
resulted when three smaller, state-planned communities just east
of the city were combined and expanded. with sixth of october standing
as the most successful example of state-planned desert development
and new cairo shaping up as the centerpiece of the private push,
it should be interesting to see how the two communities turn out.
in sixth of october city, the government’s dedication to industrial
development and affordable housing have managed to keep it close
to the original egalitarian ideas. but new cairo is powered by private
money, and it seems unlikely that the the finished product will
be anywhere near as accessible.
among architects and urban planners, opinions vary on this radical
shift in government development policy. bahgat, who’s involved
in the planning of sheikh zayed desert community, said kafrawi was
overly hostile to private in-vestment and suleiman was right to
make the change. the private money, he said, provided a much-needed
boost to a desert development drive in danger of stalling under
government di-rection. meanwhile, the profits can be used to develop
infrastructure for the poor.
but ettouney warned that the new private initiatives are proceeding
haphazardly, with little regard for zoning, planning, water resources
or infrastructure burden.
“it’s like an orchestra playing without a conductor. everyone
is just playing, and they’re all motivated by short-term profit,”
he said. “the whole idea of these new towns is that you have
autonomous communities with housing, work and services. but what
you have here is luxurious dormitories for the wealthy.”
a visit to one of these “dormitories” affords a surreal
glimpse of the poor taste and conspicuous consumption that typifies
egyptian (and american) suburbia. in greenland, where the cheapest
available plot (complete with custom-built villa) starts at around
£e 775,000, villas with model names like versailles, cannes
and nice boast roman columns or california-style red roofs –
sometimes combining both in a sort of pastel-hued southern california
plantation motif. “if they could transport the whole buildings
straight from orange county, they would,” bahgat said.
if cairo does in fact follow the american blueprint for suburbanization,
then the city could be in for a long, slow downward spiral. in the
u.s., the trend started much the way it’s starting here –
with middle-and-upper class families seeking wide open spaces, clean
skies and safe streets. at first, american suburban dwellers remained
dependent on the city center. their homes were outside, but their
jobs, shopping and entertainment were in the city.
as the trend evolved, however, white-collar jobs themselves moved
away. companies relocated their headquarters to shiny new suburban
office parks, along with schools, theaters, hospitals, grocery stores
and shopping malls.
“when that happens, what will you need downtown,” asked
efg-hermes research anal-yst hassan badrawi. “why would you
ever go?”
in the end, the city itself is left as a deteriorating, economically
depressed wasteland – its population plagued by crime, drug
use and despair. for a vivid example of that worst-case scenario,
check out detroit, michigan – whose downtown suffered an almost
total collapse in the 1980s and early ’90s and is just now
gradually coming back.
it’s still far too early to make such bleak predictions for
cairo. the first-stage migration has not really started in earnest
just yet. “nobody has moved for the moment. everybody has just
bought land,” said eric denis, head of the french government-sponsored
urban observa-tory of contemporary cairo.
badrawi agreed. “everybody is still waiting for everybody else
to be the first to move,” he said. one former bank president
who has long contemplated a move to the desert said he’s convinced
that life would be better away from the noise and pollution of cairo.
he’s certainly wealthy enough to afford a villa in a walled
desert enclave. and yet, he lives in a posh apartment, remodeled
to his specifications, in an unassuming giza high-rise less than
five minutes from where he grew up. his concern? “i’m
afraid that no one would ever come visit me out there,” he
said.
the banker has a point, because it’s not yet clear that buyers
who have snapped up many of the desert units on offer actually intend
to live there. the sixth of october development & investment
co., or sodic, has seen tremendous demand for the first two phases
of its beverly hills community. but since buyers willing to pay
a small penalty have the option of bowing out of their contracts
before delivery, those sales aren’t necessarily final. this
situation exists in other communities as well, including those with
weaker sales. as denis said, “maybe it’s all just real
estate speculation.”
still, planners said, the trend is just hitting its stride. the
american university in cairo plans to move from downtown to new
cairo, and several major sporting clubs – an anchor of middle-
and upper-class egyptian social life – are opening desert-city
clubs. as the push to provide the new communities with infrastructure
accelerates, the fear of isolation that kept such people from leaving
may well dissipate. the new flyover from lebanon square to the cairo-alex-andria
desert road has reduced travel time to sixth of october city to
around 20 minutes, which has the bank president finally ready to
seriously consider the move.
“for better or for worse, that’s the future,” bahgat
said. “the next generation of egyptians will be born there.”
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