Some say Cairo never sleeps and others believe that it conquers its invaders and sometimes its people.
The Egyptian capital keeps expanding although it occupies over 3,085 square kilometers.
The old city is currently facing a new challenge with the Egyptian government’s decision to establish a new administrative capital. This new unknown city threatens to steal Cairo’s spark.
Some say Cairo never sleeps and others believe that it conquers its invaders and sometimes its people.
The Egyptian capital keeps expanding although it occupies over 3,085 square kilometers.
The old city is currently facing a new challenge with the Egyptian government’s decision to establish a new administrative capital. This new unknown city threatens to steal Cairo’s spark.
This month, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi will lay the foundation stone of a 700-square-kilometer city, which will be Egypt’s new administrative capital, while the future of the current capital that dates back to 1376 remains a mystery.
The birth of a capital
The idea was first presented in March 2015 at the Egyptian Economic Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, south of Sinai, by the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The plans for this proposal were to be put by international experts and implemented by a UAE company in collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Housing. Eventualy, the company was scrapped and replaced by the Egyptian army.
Established in cooperation with the Egyptian Ministries of Defense and Housing through the urban development company with a budget of 6 billion Egyptian Pounds (US $675,000,000) sourced by the Ministry of Housing and the armed forces.
Located in the eastern desert, south of Egypt and 14 kilometers away from Luxor International Airport, three roads will surround the new project and plans are being developed to establish five new cities.
Enthusiasm surrounds the details of this project as cities located south of Egypt are under construction. Some of these cities were established years ago, after republican decisions including the New Luxor established in 2010. This city is l
A city from the Emirates
In the desert area of Suez, during the establishment of a housing project for the armed forces, the Egyptian government broadcasted pictures of the construction workers jolting their equipment enthusiastically.
These workers stand in the work area in Mohammad Bin Zayed city that is currently being built with funds from the UAE. The city is about 121,000 kilometers and will be a part of the first phase of the new capital.
Advertisements show fantastic, beautiful images of the city with solar-powered lighting columns on the roadside and 91 square kilometers of vast areas that will supply them with renewable energy, in addition to including in its first phase around 30,000 housing units. Both the Ministries of Transportation and Housing are considering the issue of linking the new project through an electric train with Blebeis (Sharqia governorate), with 10th of Ramadan industrial city and with Cairo. However, until late May, only some facilities were implemented: the government area, Mohammad Bin Zayed housing assembly and three tunnels within the traffic axis of the UAE president. The Minister of Housing also revealed that the city will include two districts; governmental and residential.
Roads leading to the city, such as the Cairo-Suez road, are still destroyed, dark and only lit by the light of passing cars.
It swallows everything
There has already been an attempt on the part of the Egyptian administration to escape the bustle of more than 12 million Egyptians in Cairo by establishing the new capital.
Recently, several ministries changed locations to the outskirts of the capital. The Ministry of Interior relocated from Tahrir Square to the Fifth Settlement in New Cairo. A new headquarters of the Attorney General was established in Rehab on the Suez road. Thus, it seems that the idea of moving outside the hustle of Cairo was already on the table before the proposal of the new Capital.
On the other hand, Cairo looks like a body with multiple arms that extends towards the east and west to join new desert areas to its development. The capital is originally formed from the meeting of three governorates where the bridges crossing over the Nile are the only thing separating Giza from Cairo and Qalyubia merges with Cairo through the agricultural road leading to the Egyptian delta.
Construction continues along both roads linking Cairo and the governorates of Suez and Ismailia. On the west side, near the Giza Pyramids, Dahshur transforms into a residential area that extends in the spaces between Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, Fayoum and Bahariya Oasis. Even though this area is vast, buildings are rising up every day and construction processes will not stop until Giza swallows the desert, as it occupied more than 28 kilometers on both sides of the road from Cairo to Alexandria, surrounded the Pyramids, approached Fayoum in the south-west and expanded towards the oasis in Egypt’s western desert.
A governmental district or a capital?
The Ministry of Housing recently published a map of the new administrative capital, but it did not reveal the shape of the residential area.
The Ministry’s map was more of a scenario that identified the functions of the city rather than its shape. It determined which functions will belong to the armed forces, which will belong to the Arab Contractor Company and the alliance between Orascom, Hassan Allam or Concord.
The movement in the city can be monitored due to the incessant noise of the construction works. Cairo includes 43 districts and it keeps on adding more.
One neighborhood became two as Cairo divided Nasr City into two districts; western and eastern. Al Salam city, founded in the 1980s at the entrance of Cairo from Ismailia side, became become two cities as well.
When searching through Google Maps, which are the only maps available for the accurate administrative borders of Egypt, we see that the location of the new capital, which is between Suez, Ain Sokhna and the Regional Ring Road, is within the borders of Cairo. Thus, there will be no constitutional amendment because the new capital lies within the borders of the old one. In the end, the dream of establishing a new administrative capital turns into a governmental suburb added to a city that is never satisfied.
