What Morsi means for the suburbs

Mohamed Morsi is Egypt’s first elected president. His 4 army predecessors all lived in the large bustling inner city Cairo. Nasser lived all of his presidential life in manshiyet el bakry, close to Heliopolis (at that time considered to be a neighborhood for the affluent), while Sadat lived in his Nile front house in Giza. Mubarak, who lived in Heliopolis since he was an army officer and vice president, moved the presidential office to the neighboring Heliopolis palace in central Heliopolis. The block where his house was located, has been, since then and still remains even after his overthrow, completely cut off from its surrounding fabric by checkpoints and barricades. His neighbors were continuously scanned for political affiliations and security clearances, only for living on the same block. Probably, some of them had been living there long before Mubarak became president. The area was a complete black hole in the perception of the city and it wasn’t until Google earth started showing the area, that the size of that block became evident, and with it the suffering of its residents.

Morsi, the new president, lives in new Cairo, considered by many as the most successful of the new cities (suburban) model launched by Sadat since the 70's. The new city started out as three separate suburban housing settlements to the east of Cairo, and were later joined together into one large city. Morsi lives in a new Cairo typical 3 story family house with its unidentifiable neoclassical (supposedly luxurious) style mixed with a large Islamic verse literally glued on top of the pediment. If, like Mubarak, the neighborhood in which his house lies will be sealed off for security measures, and considering the urban arrangement of new Cairo’s plots, we are looking at a great deal of discontent from his neighbors, as well as many of new Cairo’s residents. If the presidential offices remain in Heliopolis, the idea of moving back and forth everyday in a 20-30km commute becomes completely absurd. According to David Sims’s numbers in ‘Understanding Cairo’, almost 64% of new Cairo’s built residential units are uninhabited, and it is already suffering and suffocating from lack of proper infrastructure and daily traffic jams. If we add Morsi's high security commute, which demands clear and flowing roads, then we are looking at a much worse situation. Furthermore, it is evident that Morsi will not practice a radically different economic and development model than Mubarak’s (if at all different), which was based on brutal neoliberal policies focusing on concentrating capital in the hands of very few, and catering to the benefit of real estate development tycoons. Perhaps the names will be different, but the policies remain the same. This definitely means that his policies towards Cairo’s suburbs and Egypt’s new cities, which have clearly shown significant failures over the years, will be similar to Mubarak’s fake bubble of real estate speculation in order to maintain a hardly hit economy that needs a booming construction sector to get back on its feet. This also means that his so-called priority to inner city under-developed informal settlements is simply election talk. Perhaps he will do better than the complete neglect and sometime intentional destruction of these communities that was characteristic of the Mubarak era, but a genuine interest in providing suitable and sustainable communities for inner Cairo residents remains highly improbable.

Morsi's Family House in New Cairo

Presidential Guard secure Morsi's house after election results were announced with supporters celebrating

Nevertheless, Morsi does add a lot of legitimacy to these new cities. Mubarak’s neighboring district elkorba, was very well maintained, planted, lighted...etc. and provided some pleasant examples of public space, only because Mubarak lived next doors. Yet another severe example of the dissociation between Mubarak’s family and the rest of Egypt. I can imagine a huge boom occurring in new Cairo soon. Not only in terms of development and construction, but also a big leap in terms of state investments whether in public spaces, infrastructure, parks and green areas (which have all been completely lacking for years now). I imagine Morsi will be quickly blinded by the elite neighborhood he lives in, and the trials by city officials to portray the new cities as the cure to all of our continuous urban failures.

Morsi indeed could mean an electric shock to the dead body of the new cities program and Egyptian suburbs.

On Cairobserver

A couple of weeks ago I attended the launch of the printed edition of www.cairobserver.com.  The blog has been online for almost 1.5 years and is concerned with ‘Cairo’s architecture and building, urban fabric and city life’ and is run by Mohamed Elshahed in an open contribution based format. The 2 hour launching event started with a short introduction from Mohamed and some comments from his guests and turned into a rather short open discussion with the audience on issues like land policies, public engagement, and informal settlements. In his introduction Mohamed emphasized that the publication spurred from his belief that the discourse about the city and its architecture should be based on wider societal participation and engagement, and that without careful repositioning of the professionals within a larger system of public conscious the field would only become more irrelevant by time.

After the event was over, I managed to carefully study the publication and come up with several points that I think are essential to highlight in order to have a better understanding of the state of discourse in Egypt.

Print matters

The decision to produce a printed edition of a blog is a very risky decision. Although this is not the first, only a few could be called successes, at least in this field. As we all turn to the internet to get our news and information, digital blogs have become the easiest way to engage with like-minded people. And that’s exactly its drawback. If you are not interested in these subjects, the likelihood of you stumbling upon cairobserver is very minimal. On the other hand, print has very different rules. Although its not as flexible nor extendable as a blog, engaging the reader physically still has its appeal to a lot of people. It is also a much easier way to engage a wider audience, especially in a place like Egypt. Printing the edition in A3 newspaper format, Mohammed also managed to keep the publication simple, share-able, lightweight, graphically elaborate, and cheap to produce. A publication that really doesn’t suffer from the real burdens associated with a publication.

Arabic… Arabic… Arabic:

Realizing that the real audience in such an endeavor use Arabic to discuss and debate these issues, and trying to engage with non-academics and non-specialists, Mohammed managed to translate many of the posts and articles from the blog that were originally written in English into Arabic. Architects are quite difficult to understand in any language they use, so the attempt to translate their texts into another language without loosing too much of the meaning, yet not resorting to direct translations that don’t make any sense, is quite a difficult task. With the help of Nabil Shawkat, I thought the translated texts were very clear and informative. They did not use any overly complicated terminology that architects usually use. The threads of ideas were quite easy to follow, and the arguments remained interesting. Again, this was a very successful decision to widen readership, engagement and debate. The blog itself has transformed over the last months to include more posts written in Arabic from different contributors, which indicates a genuine interest in this direction.

Why pay for that

I would like to think that the decision by the British Council to spend their grant money for artists on such a project is a decision based on a larger interest in promoting urbanism and architecture-related projects rather than a specific interest in cairobserver. Realizing the necessity of moving the discourse of architecture and the city from the professional realm to that of normal citizens and engaging them in order to create a larger ‘movement’ surrounding this field, instead of within it, is very promising. Their belief that architecture-related content deserves to be made available, read, and discussed by everybody makes a fundamental statement about the state of discourse in Egypt and its future.

The more the merrier

Although the publication presents opinions and arguments on a wide range of topics (from transportation to heritage to governance and public policy), I believe this diversity was a bit distracting even if it kept the publication fresh and fast-paced. Overall, I don’t think it compromised the continuous thread going through the whole publication, while keeping all of the different views juxtaposed. It also sent a message that collectiveness and collaboration are essential in dealing with the city, in dissecting its problems and in providing assumptions and positions.

The cairobserver publication is definitely a big step on the way of opening up the discussion on architectural and urban issues in a huge and out of control city like Cairo, especially in a post revolutionary condition, when a lot of the existing models and ideas need serious re-evaluation and re-positioning.

The complete publication is available for download here.