EGYPT’S NEW CAPITAL: MEGA-PROJECT OR MIRAGE?

A new administrative and financial capital, announced by the Egyptian government in March 2015, will be located 45 kilometers to the east of Cairo, halfway to the Red Sea port of Suez. Intended partly to reduce the crowding in Cairo, it is envisaged that as early as 2020, the new city will be home to the Egyptian parliament, the presidency, ministries and embassies. Built on around 700 square kilometers, the new capital will eventually have a population of between 5 to 7 million people.

 

According to Wikipedia, Egypt has had 29 capital cities over the past 5,000 years. Cairo has been in place since 950 A.D. Thus, in the overall scheme of things, perhaps it would be time for a new capital. Cairo’s population is growing faster than any other city in the world, adding to the pressure on the Egyptian economy struggling to recover from six years of political and economic turmoil. Greater Cairo, an energetic but dysfunctional metropolis that suffers from grinding traffic congestion, pollution and inadequate public services includes the cities of Cairo, Giza and Qalyubia and is one of the most congested cities on earth. Home to some 22.8 million people, about a quarter of Egypt’s total population of 92 million, it will gain another half a million in 2017.

Egypt’s new administrative and financial capital was recently rated by Business Insider as one of eight multi-billion-dollar mega-projects that are expected to transform the world’s greatest cities by 2030. The others are Todtown, a new mixed-use development in Shanghai’s Minhang District; Europa City, an 8.6-million-square-foot mixed-use development north of downtown Paris; New City Istanbul; the 16-acre World Trade Center site in New York City where the Twin Towers and surrounding buildings once stood; the new São Paulo master plan; the Shibuya Station Area Development project in Tokyo; and the $16.5 billion Power Station Development in London.

Aiming to “build national spirit, foster consensus, and provide for long-term sustainable growth,” a conceptual masterplan for Egypt’s new city was developed by the U.S. urban planning and engineering firm, Skidmore Owings and Merrill LLP. Approximately 700 square kilometers in area, with 200 square kilometers of preserved natural areas and one of the largest city park systems in the world, the city will be linked to historic Cairo through extensive public transit links. The masterplan comprises 21 medium and high-density residential neighborhoods housing over a million residents. While these neighborhoods will be new in every way, their design will reflect Cairo’s traditional development patterns. Each neighborhood is centered on a communal public space surrounded by local shops, schools, religious buildings, and civic amenities. Vegetated “wadis” (valleys) embrace natural breezes for passive cooling of buildings. 25 “dedicated districts” range in function from business and administrative to cultural and innovative. The city’s downtown area will have skyscrapers and a tall monument said to resemble the Eiffel Tower and Washington Monument. It will also have a park double the size of New York City’s Central Park, artificial lakes, about 2,000 educational institutions, a technology and innovation park, 663 hospitals and clinics, 1,250 mosques, 40,000 hotel rooms, a 5,000-seat conference center, a theme park four times the size of Disneyland, 90 square kilometers of solar energy farms, an electric railway link with Cairo, and a new international airport.

It has been estimated that the first phase of the project alone, due for completion in five to seven years, will cost $45 billion. The project got off to a shaky start since it was first unveiled at a March 2015 investment conference in Sharm El Sheikh. After talks broke down with Dubai real estate company, Emaar Properties, the Egyptian government turned to China. Preliminary agreements were signed with China Fortune Land Development and another state-owned company, China State Construction Engineering. Finally, in May of this year, after protracted negotiations, Egyptian officials, attending the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, announced that the China Fortune Land Development Company had agreed to invest $20 billion to build an up-market residential district, an industrial park, a university, schools and recreational centers. Egyptian officials said they expected a final agreement could be reached by the end of the year. In August of this year, an agreement was reportedly signed with China’s AVIC International and China Railway Group Limited to construct a 66 kilometers rail transit system connecting Greater Cairo with the new capital. Reported to be worth $1.39 billion, funding will comprise a $739 million loan from the Exim Bank of China and $500m from Egypt. Running at speeds of up to 120 kilometers an hour, the light rail passenger train is expected to serve an estimated 340,000 passengers daily. Construction was scheduled to begin this month. Finally, in October, the China State Construction Engineering Corporation signed a $3 billion agreement to build a Central Business District comprising twelve business complexes, five residential buildings, two hotels and a 345-meter high skyscraper. According to the Chinese newspaper Xinhua, the skyscraper, scheduled to be completed within the next three and a half years, will be the tallest building in Africa,

As negotiations with the Chinese and others proceed, fundamental questions remain unanswered. One concern relates to water. The masterplan calls for abundant open spaces and greenery and an artificial river, bordered by extensive parklands, wends its way through the city. The question being raised is what will it take to pump scarce water out of the desert and who will bear the cost. Other critics ask why the rush to build a new city at a time when Egypt’s economy is largely being propped up by financial aid from the Arabian Gulf and loans from the International Monetary Fund? A concern, voiced by ordinary Egyptians, is that the poorest people in Egypt will continue to be left behind. One of the main causes of overpopulation in Cairo is internal migration. Egypt lists 351 slums as “unsafe”, most of them in the sprawling capital where the poorest have built ramshackle homes that lack basic amenities. A recent report by 10Tooba, an organization for urban engineering professionals and architects, claims that as many as a third of households in Cairo lack basic infrastructure such as clean water and sanitation. Some 850,000 people are reported to be living in such dangerous conditions. Investments, say the critics, should go towards providing equal rights to housing, public services and utilities for all Egyptians. Critics say that instead of solving problems in existing urban areas, the government builds new cities for political and profit-seeking reasons and in order to divert attention from already existing problems. A hallmark of the government’s urban planning philosophy has been to relocate poor inhabitants to peripheral cities in the desert, instead of solving infrastructure problems in existing cities.

David Sims, an urban planner who knows Egypt well, told the Wall Street Journal that “Egypt needs a new capital like a hole in the head.” Sims gave an exasperated account of the official obsession with “reclaiming” the arid lands outside the Nile Valley. Since 1976, authorities have established 21 new desert cities, with a combined target population of 20 million residents. The new capital would make it 25 million. Yet, as of 2006, these “new urban communities” had attracted less than one million people, mostly in the areas close to central Cairo. Despite the high investments, the new towns have attracted low occupancy because the housing is unaffordable, unobtainable and inaccessible for the majority of people. In addition, the towns were built with a highly modernist approach that did not allow for the informal enterprises and activities that most Egyptians rely on. In other words, it is the opposite of traditional urban development in Egypt, which is compact, dense, and mixed-use; adapted to a climate of very hot summers and sandstorms; and built to maximize transportation links, social contacts, and small, informal business opportunities. University of Pennsylvania lecturer and urbanist, Jon Argaman, argues that much like its predecessors, the new capital’s primary target audience is not the five million or so Cairenes the government would like to draw out of the Nile valley. Instead, it is meant to appeal to an international audience of investors and donors and a relatively small number of Egyptians who aspire to leave Cairo’s problems behind.

Most people agree that something will be built in the desert, and that some people will profit. Egyptian public and private construction companies have begun working on infrastructure projects and residential neighborhoods. Whether the government will move there, and whether anyone will follow, are open questions. Nasr City, a socialist suburb planned in the 1950s, was meant to house Egypt’s ministries, but the move never happened. Likewise, officials in Mubarak’s government repeatedly broached the subject of relocating government agencies, but never followed through. Time will tell whether this attempt will succeed.