A Capital Mess

As the Housing Ministry announces plans for more cities to ease the pressure on Cairo, urban planning experts say the government needs to rethink its blueprint By Hana Zuhair On a busy day, medical student Aly Shaheen spends at least six hours in his car: three hours commuting from his residential compound in Sixth of October City to Cairo University, and three hours back. If he wants to meet up with his friends Downtown later in the evening, he has to find someplace to wait out the afternoon, rather than spending even more time in traffic.Recognizing that Cairo was a city that had outgrown itself, the government decided nearly 30 years ago that expanding to the desert would be the solution for easing the pressure on the capital. Sixth of October City, 38 kilometers from the outskirts of Cairo, was built as the blueprint of a new well-planned independent city. Today, however, the outcome is a far cry from residents expectations. It is indeed a city and the seat of the Sixth of October governorate, but most residents still commute into Cairo each day for work, school and social outings. In December, the former Minister of Housing Ahmed El-Maghrabi told media that 60 new urban communities would be built by 2022. Pointing to the lack of urban planning, experts fear that the new communities will repeat the mistakes of the original satellite cities. These suburban settlements could be considered as sleeping cities; its citizens are still connected with the main city of Cairo socially as well as economically, says renowned architect Shahira Fahmy, who has worked with real estate developer SODIC and on American University in Cairo’s (AUC) new campus project. The main purpose of these new suburban settlements has still not been achieved yet. Clogged Pressure Valve There is no question that some sort of pressure valve for Cairo was needed. A booming resident population spurred the construction of high-rises without adequate parking or a unified neighborhood aesthetic. Even with Al-Azhar Park, the largest park of its kind in the Middle East and Africa, Cairo’s amount of green space per capita is one-tenth of the minimum recommended by the United Nations. Courtsey Palm Hills While new residental compounds have an internal sense of harmony not found in cairo neighborhoods,urban planners say they do not fulfill the needs of a real city Our existing cities are dying already, so we need new cities. The question is where do we build these cities and how? Therefore, it becomes extremely hard to achieve urban design when we lack urban planning, says Abbas El-Zafrany, a specialist in urban design and planning and a professor of architecture at AUC. New satellite cities offer more space for housing and facilities and, more importantly, decrease population density in the city. The new desert cities were also expected to slow the increased urbanization of agricultural lands and provide an environment that people would enjoy living in. To a certain extent, Sixth of October has been successful. Shaheen loves his residential neighborhood, noting that it is quiet and has fresh air, space between the houses and plenty of parking. However, the calm he feels at home is shattered once he drives out of the gates of his compound and turns toward Cairo Most of the Mehwar is blocked during rush hours, and these rush hours never end in Egypt Shaheen says. Once, I needed to be in Zamalek at 7pm: I moved at 5:30pm but got there at 8pm. Mehwar’s exits and entrances are always blocked. I got used to it, but I really wish this would change. Sixth of October has in essence become an extension of, connected to Downtown by an almost stagnant stream of honking cars. On the Mehwar, traffic does not move between 4 and 7pm, often even longer with the inevitable accidents and vehicle breakdowns. On the east side of the capital, the scene is repeated on the Ring Road connecting the capital to New Cairo and Kattameya. When new cities are established close to Cairo, [they] turn into suburbs of Cairo, like Madinet Nasr. El-Zafrany says.The housing minister said that 23 urban communities have been built since 1980, costing the government a hefty LE 500 billion. But urban planning experts say the urban expansion into the desert has been haphazardly implemented. Now, they say, the country is in dire need of immediate urban design reform. Urban design combines the practical considerations of urban planning, such as land use and transportation lines, with aesthetic considerations such as architecture, landscaping and open space. According to the UK’s Urban Design Group, an interdisciplinary professional forum for scholars and practitioners,Urban design helps to create successful places where the people want to live, work and play. By those standards, many residents of Cairo would say the capital has failed the test. Heba Wagih Kotb, an assistant psychology professor at AUC, says that one’s surroundings have a significant impact on a person’s physical and psychological health.The physical environment makes a huge difference in the level of stress experienced by people, says Kotb. Living in places that are ugly has an impact on people’s motivation and psychological well-being. Living in spacious areas that have harmonious colors and symmetry makes people more motivated, optimistic and full of energy. In 2004, the Ministry of Culture established the National Organization of Urban Harmony (NOUH) to work on improving the visual image of cities, villages and new urban cities,according to its website. NOUH Chairman Samir Gharib believes the problem has a lot to do with the culture more than the actual architectural planning. He is concerned that artistic value is absent in Egypt and feels that raising awareness of the need for visual harmony can effectively bring about change in how buildings are designed. Residents of the satellite cities complain the Cairo's 'rush hour' never ends. But the problem is economic as much as it is artistic. One of the problems with the nation’s current urban planning strategy is that it is primarily aimed at the middle and upper classes. Gated communities offer villas, pools and recreational facilities such as golf courses. Owning your own vehicle is a must, as there are no metros or other mass transit options for commuting to the capital. Meant to be havens from urban blight, the new cities now reflect the gap between the very rich and the very poor. The government has moved thousands of Cairo’s poorest inhabitants from illegal slum to housing projects on the periphery of the capital, but the lack of transportation and job opportunities near their new homes have left many worse off than before. Along the Mehwar and Ring Road are new slums built on illegally claimed lands. Slum areas are a result of inadequate regional economic planning that didn’t provide urban planning strategies in parallel, Fahmy says. Therefore people start to develop their own solutions in the form of slum areas. Gharib admits that the illegal slums are a major obstacle to achieving urban harmony.Urban planning and urban harmony are interconnected, he notes, so when they allowed the building of slum areas all around Cairo, this makes our mission harder. The Hard Part Analysts say that there are simple solutions to keep the situation from getting any worse, but the problem lies in implementing them. Gharib, recognizing that it is a multifaceted problem, calls upon the different ministries, governorates and the private sector to cooperate to achieve the needed urban reform. El-Zafrany says that new cities need to be built far away from Cairo, following the example of Medinet El-Sadat and Tenth of Ramadan City. The new cities should have their own infrastructure and services, or residents will continue to travel back to the capital. All the services of these new cities are dependent on Cairo, he notes. This is a big problem for urban planning. For the slums, El-Zafrany suggests planting trees to hide the visual unpleasantness and purify the air for residents. Accepting that the new cities are, in essence, suburbs, Fahmy says, Another important issue we need to tackle is the need to develop more [forms of] public transportation and even update and adjust the existing ones in order to attract more of the lower and middle class to these new suburbs. The re is no transportation link between Sixth of October and New Cairo to Cairo’s city center until now. Ultimately, planners have to recognize that it takes more than a cluster of compounds to make a city. If we are going to achieve a new city a real new city we have to consider adopting a few urban concepts such as self-sufficient cities and multi-polar varied social structures with real public spaces that facilitate the urban flow of experience without the real physical boundaries of the current gated communities, Fahmy says. And this new city has to be integrated within a broader vision of regional planning.