Egypt Wants To Build a Second Cairo… In Just Seven Years

1,100,000 unit of measurement of caparison . 6,200 international nautical mile of boulevards . 2,000 schools . $ 45 billion dollars . Egypt is design a effervescent new capital outside of Cairo , and it wants to do it tight .

Image : AP Photo / Hassan Ammar

As we wrote last week , Egypt host an economic development conference in which it detailed plans for a monolithic young Pyramids of Egypt . But it also announced an intact Modern urban center : A project calledThe Capital Cairo , designed by the American architects atSkidmore Owings & Merrill , the designers behind everything from the Burj Khalifa to One World Trade Center . TheBBC reportsthat the glimmering design have “ pull pledge worth [ $ 12 billion ] in assistance and investing from Kuwait , Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates . ”

Amazon Arzopa

The city is n’t just being built by the Burj ’s architects . It ’s also being build by the businessman behind the Burj — a UAE entrepreneur namedMohamed Alabbarwho is heading up theinvestment fundthat will finance the project . “ It is a wonderful chance to be able to design something from scratch , and to project it hold back in creative thinker the demand of the Egyptian the great unwashed and the Egyptian government , ” Alabbartold the BBC .

It seems Egypt ’s leaders are hop to duplicate Dubai ’s glittering urban forms — which themselves have been plague with problem , both social and economic .

But setting aside the Burj for a minute , it ’s deserving charge out that Egypt is in the thick of a stark shortage of low- and middle - income housing in its existent - life sentence urban center , while there ’s a glut of high - priced units . There arereportedly up to 20 millionpeople living in illegal “ informal ” housing without basic amenity . But while novel housing is desperately need , it ’s unclear how the government found to tackle the crisis in Cairo while concenter on build a stigma - new capital .

Sonos Speaker Move 2

So how to Egyptians experience about the plan?The Washington Postpoints to ablistering responsefrom Egyptian historiographer and prof Khaled Fahmy , who call the project “ chasing mirages in the desert : ”

With 66 billion USD Cairo could easily puzzle out the problems of transportation , housing , sanitisation and garbage aggregation . With 66 billion USD we could work the job of Cairo ’s inner urban center where 63 % of the city ’s habitant populate . We could provide them with all the introductory needs that they have been deprived of over the past fifty years : drinkable piddle , wellness caution , clean gentle wind , recreational facilities and much more . With 66 billion USD we could meliorate the living standard of millions of Cairenes and of Egyptians who , at best , are deal with as 2nd - class citizens in their own country .

But no , our Dubai - intoxicated political , military and economic elite want to turn their back to a history that goes back for thousands of years and to pretend that Egypt is a tabula rasa on which they could pass their vitiate dreams for the future . More seriously , these deeply corrupted elite group are willing to change state their backs to their own citizenry . They pine to have a new Egypt , with a new Washington , and a new citizenry .

Apple2025macbookairm4

The unearthly part , peradventure , is the agenda : The Guardian ’s Egypt newswriter , Patrick Kingsley , order the project will be builtin five to seven old age , a timeline so tight it ’s virtually insufferable . It can take that farseeing to progress a single skyscraper , much less a full city with dozens of tugboat , million of residential units , and a 1.5 - square - mile stem commons .

In the end , it seems like moving the capital is an endeavor to show how , under the Modern government , investment funds , infrastructure , and housing are all underway . It ’s a trope that ’s been repeated by architects all over the Earth — theWaPo , for exercise , talks about Brasilia , the new Brazilian capital that was build in the 1960s . But there are many others , likeSejong City , the city Korea is currently building to domiciliate much of its government . Egypt itself has relocate its capital dozens of times , asKingsley points out , though not for centuries .

The ambition of the “ instant city , ” where democracy grows out of technology and computer architecture , is easier said than built . Cities are rarely insistent — and they ’re seldom location - alls .

Second Screen Portable 15 Monitor