On June 10, Minister of Housing, Utilities and New Communities Ahmed El Maghraby addressed AmCham members at a special luncheon held at the Semiramis InterContinental Hotel in Cairo. His presentation on the topic of “Cairo: 2050” outlined the long-term plan for Cairo, which he said aims at reversing urban deterioration and improving the quality of life.

El Maghraby began by noting the explosive growth in the size and population of Cairo over the years. Today, Cairo accounts for 22 percent of Egypt’s population and 43 percent of the country’s urban population. Some of this growth can be attributed to the fact that 55 percent of all universities, 46 percent of all hospital beds and 43 percent of all jobs lie within the Cairo region, El Maghraby added. Other factors for rapid urban growth include a ban on the development of some agricultural land and outdated rent control laws.

The minister stressed the urgency of alleviating Cairo’s population problem, noting that “if we leave the situation as it is, in the year 2022 we will probably be living in a city... of 28 million people. We have to do something, this is not a choice, this is not something that we can wait on, we must move now.”

Although the problem is large, the goals are attainable, he stressed. “I’m not saying that we should move now to try to keep the population at 16 million. I’m only hoping that we can contain the increase in the population of Greater Cairo to 24 million rather than 28 million. That’s a huge number, but it’s a good target.”

The housing ministry is developing strategies to alleviate overcrowding and improve the quality of life. “We are for the first time producing comprehensive development plans for the different governorates and districts of Egypt.” He noted that it was also the first time that a development plan had been formulated for the more than 4,600 villages in Egypt.

El Maghraby then discussed new urban developments across Egypt, including Upper Egypt and the Red Sea, made possible by the new roads being built, which he hopes will lead to a population shift away from Cairo. “We are also increasing the rate at which we are developing the new urban cities or new communities to encourage settlements at faster rates there to relieve the pressure on greater Cairo.”

The housing ministry has a program for establishing new villages near old ones to curtail the growth of buildings on agricultural land. The target is to build about 400 new villages to absorb 4 million people by 2022, he said. El Maghraby outlined several ways to lessen overcrowding, such as the relocation of ministries to an area near New Cairo. The ministry is also working to improve traffic flows around Cairo, such as through Remaya Square, Giza Square, the Ring Road and the 26th of July Corridor, in addition to building news roads.

With respect to water supply – a hot topic these days – the minister said there were “major works” under way. He pointed out that all 13 of Cairo’s water stations are being either rebuilt or renovated to increase capacity. “Cairo will not witness any further water problems [after] this summer. We’re running at full capacity this summer, but next summer and those after we will go to a much more normal situation where there is capacity to absorb the increasing population, at least until 2030.”

El Maghraby emphasized that a new urban plan for Greater Cairo should be a collective vision. “This vision belongs to no one single person, no one single government, no one single sector of society. It belongs to all of us,” he said.

He said realizing that vision will affect plans to cap population, expand new cities, develop agricultural lands, relocate cemeteries, create new governorates, create housing programs and a build a proposed new airport west of Cairo. “All our options are open and we should be making those decisions now. We should raise questions now and hope to arrive to some conclusion. These are questions that society needs to answer now for us to complete the formulation of this vision. This vision is not the urban plan, this vision is the basis on which will be able to build an urban plan to reflect [our] visions.”

In the question and answer session that followed the speech, a number of issues were raised, including establishing an independent planning authority for Cairo, building an entirely new capital city, dealing with water shortages, allocating human resources for urban plans and enforcing building height regulations.