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The New Administrative Capital of Egypt Egypt’s Relationship with its Deserts and the Production of the New
Administrative Capital
Student: Joost Vintges
Student number: 10343431
University: University of Amsterdam
Study: Master Middle Eastern Studies
Thesis supervisor: Dr. R. Woltering
Second Reader: Dr. M. Voorhoeve
Date: 1 July 2019
Word count: 21769
Figure 1: Kiluanji Kia Henda, ‘A City Called Mirage’ 2014-2017. https://iscp-nyc.org/event/kiluanji-kia-henda
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Table of Contents
Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 4
The development of the Egyptian deserts .......................................................................................... 9
1.1 The appeal of the desert ..................................................................................................................... 9
1.2 Managing the desert ......................................................................................................................... 11
1.3 The scramble for desert land............................................................................................................. 17
2. The high modernist city ................................................................................................................ 23
2.1 Le Corbusier, Henri Lefebvre, and Brasilia ........................................................................................ 24
2.2 Internal colonization .......................................................................................................................... 31
3. The New Administrative Capital .................................................................................................... 34
4. Justifying the New Administrative Capital ..................................................................................... 39
4.1 Congestion ......................................................................................................................................... 40
4.2 Housing crisis ..................................................................................................................................... 41
4.3 Jobs .................................................................................................................................................... 44
4,4 The legitimacy of the current government ....................................................................................... 45
4.5 Safety ................................................................................................................................................. 46
5. Financing the New Administrative Capital ..................................................................................... 48
6. Designing the New Administrative Capital: Constructing a new everyday life ................................. 52
6.1 Digital tools in urban planning .......................................................................................................... 52
6.2 A fragmented design ......................................................................................................................... 54
7. The districts of the New Administrative Capital ............................................................................. 56
8.1 The housing districts and the people that might occupy them ........................................................ 57
8.2 The government zone........................................................................................................................ 59
8.3 Central Business District (CBD) .......................................................................................................... 61
8.4 Spaces of knowledge and expertise .................................................................................................. 62
8. The principles of the New Administrative Capital ........................................................................... 63
7.1 A Walkable and Liveable City ............................................................................................................ 64
7.2 A Connected City ............................................................................................................................... 64
7.3 A Green and Sustainable City ............................................................................................................ 65
7.4 A Smart City ....................................................................................................................................... 66
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 70
Bibliography ..................................................................................................................................... 73
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Abstract
This Thesis explores the function of the desert in the production of the framework for Egypt’s
projected new capital city, the New Administrative Capital of Egypt. By analysing previous
schemes in the Egyptian desert, we will create a better understanding of the appeal of the desert
and the way it unleashed certain forces in the Egyptian society. Three forces and their
consequences on the ground will be discussed. First, the way in which Egypt’s unique desert
ecology, the changing demography in the Nile Valley, and technological advantages changed the
perception of the desert. As David Sims shows, the new image of the desert led to a hasty and ill-
considered development of desert land. Second, the opening of the desert attracted certain
economic interests and led to a rapid privatization of the its key location. In hindsight, however,
these schemes were often dubious money-making schemes that enriched a few. The schemes only
marginally contributed to the Egyptian economy and did not succeed in dispersing the Egyptian
population horizontally (as promised). Third, the image of the desert as a clean slate for Egypt’s
future played into the hands of ‘high modernist’ planners (as termed by James C. Scott). With the
help of Scott, Sims, Henri Lefebvre, and a case study of Brasilia, I will show how their ideology
was often out of touch with reality and followed problematic abstractions of natural and human
relations. With these theoretical tools at hand, we will analyse maps, advertisement, news
articles, and additional reflections on the New Administrative Capital and critically reflect on the
shape, the justifications, the financial pictures, the principles, and the objectives of the project.
This thesis will show that the masterplan for the new capital often adheres to the problematic
assumptions seen in previous desert schemes and is based on universalist high modernist notions
that are out of touch with Egypt’s local contexts.
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Introduction
“The New Administrative Capital city will provide outstanding services and a high quality of life
for the citizens of Cairo and the surrounding area. The new city will also create a variety of job
opportunities, as part of a comprehensive development framework. Once the capital is complete,
it will be vital to continue to upgrade the infrastructure and provide constant maintenance, to very
high standards, across the various projects, and to provide ongoing high-quality services for
citizens, to guarantee a sustainable city.”
- Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, President of Egypt1
On the eleventh of October, 2017, president Abdul Fatah al-Sisi inaugurated the first phase of the
project for the New Administrative Capital of Egypt in the brand-new Al Masah Capital Hotel,
one of the largest hotels in the world. At that time, this hotel was the only finished and
operational structure in the city to be. Now, in 2019, constructions of the still nameless city have
accelerated impressively and the contours of an actual city slowly appear.2 In an official video,
we get a better sense of the objectives of this futuristic city-scheme in the desert of Egypt. Cairo
‘got old and overwhelmed with the crowd’ the video states and in order to ‘rise again as one of
the most beautiful capitals in the world’, a new city, ‘a liveable city’, needs to be built in the
desert hinterlands East of Cairo.3 The way in which these words disregard existing Cairo and its
19 million inhabitants is unsettling but also gives us a sense of the contrasting image between the
desert and the Nile Valley. The new capital is the most important project of the current military
regime led by Sisi and is presented as the shining future of Egypt. The video alludes to some of
Cairo’s modern-day challenges (congestion, lack of adequate housing, and a deteriorating quality
of life) and the new capital is put forward as a reasonable solution to some of these ills. The
image of the desert as Egypt’s future is not new, as David Sims argues in his seminal study
Egypt’s Desert Dreams: Development or Disaster?. Decades of desert urban development has
established a self-evident idea of the desert as an answer to Egypt’s growing population and the
decaying urban of modern-day Cairo.
In his book, Sims questions this rationale by taking a closer look at the incentives and
1 Sisi quoted in ‘The Smart Revolution: Reimagining Cities’, darmagazine i16 (January 2019) 48. 2 The city is sometimes referred to as ‘Wedian City’, however, this will not be its official future name. 3 Cube Consultants, ‘The Capital Cairo – al-ʿĀṣima al-ʾIdāriyya al-Jadīda’, Vimeo video, 30 August 2016.
https://vimeo.com/180717384.
5
achievements of fifty years of desert development in Egypt. He paints a different picture and
comes to the conclusion that most of Egypt’s desert projects have failed in achieving their set
goals and targets. When driving through the desert either East or West of Cairo, the many
unfinished or empty structures, as seen from the road, attest to this image. The cities have been
built but the people never came. Understanding these problems of desert satellite cities (and other
desert schemes) is crucial in a study on the New Administrative Capital. In the first chapter of
this thesis, we have a closer look at the way technological advancements and the unique Egyptian
ecology and demography pushed the horizon of Egypt’s policymakers into the desert.4 With the
help of Sims,5 Timothy Mitchell,6 James C. Scott,7 Jonathan Nitzan, and Shimshom Bichler,8 we
try to understand the forces at work leading to the build-up of cities, reclamation schemes,
factories, and tourist projects in the desert. The core purpose of these schemes (at least in the
official rhetoric) was to create new lives for Egyptians in the desert. Also the New Administrative
Capital adheres to this narrative. Through a dispersion of the Egyptian population, the Nile
Valley will be relieved of the ever-more growing population pressure. In hindsight, however, the
investments did not have this desired effect and, as Sims shows, were often sketchy money-
making schemes that enriched a few but did not improve the productive life or collective
wellbeing of the Egyptian population.9 The Egyptian desert turned into a playground for
speculative capital and this resulted in a rapid corporate development of its key locations.
Desert projects were often framed as what James C. Scott would refer to as high
modernist ideology. Both the government and corporations obscured existing local societal and
natural relations in both the Nile Valley and the desert with their attempt to control the desert and
reengineer everyday life here. By grasping the commercial logic and the high modernist ideas
depicting desert development, we will understand better why the desert has such an appeal to
these dominant powers of Egypt and the way these forces shape the framework for the New
Administrative Capital of Egypt. In Chapter Two, this thesis will provide a brief case study of
4 Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-politics, Modernity (University of California Press, 2002) 210. 5 David Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams: Development or Disaster? (AUC Press, 2018); Sims, Understanding Cairo:
The Logic of a City Out of Control (2012). 6 Mitchell, Rule of Experts (2002) and Mitchell’s later work on ‘capitalization’. Timothy Mitchell, ‘The Capital City’
in: The Arab City: Architecture and Representation, ed. Amale Andraos and Nora Akawi (Columbia Books on
Architecture and the City 2016); Nasser Abourahme & Omar Jabary-Salamanca, ‘Thinking against the sovereignty
of the concept’ (interview Timothy Mitchell), City, 20:5 (2016). 7 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed (1998). 8 Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, Capital as Power: A Study of Order and Creorder (Routledge 2009). 9 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) xviii.
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Brasilia in order to analyse the ideology of urban high modernisms. At the moment, the New
Administrative Capital has not been built yet and is still just an idea on paper and in the minds of
its planners. By analysing Brasilia, we can reflect on the possibilities and barriers of planned
cities and with the help of Henri Lefebvre give a sense of what high modernist spaces try achieve.
From Chapter Three onwards, we will analyse the actual plans for the New
Administrative Capital. The first two theoretical/historical chapters gave us critical tools to
interpret the way in which the desert, capitalization, and high modernism produce the new city.
With these tools at hand, we will analyse maps, advertisement, news articles, and additional
reflections on the new capital city and critically reflect on the shape, the justifications, the
financial pictures, and the objectives of the project. In Chapter Three, we discuss some general
information on the new capital in order to form a mental picture of the scheme. In Chapter Four, I
have distilled the five most important justifications for the project; congestion, housing, jobs,
legitimacy of the current government, and safety. Most of these justifications are supported by
the official narrative on the new capital (congestion, housing, jobs, and safety). In this chapter, at
the same time, we will reflect on the feasibility of these objectives (with the help of the
theoretical tools developed in the theoretical framework) and some of the ‘darker’ (unofficial)
motives of the new capital scheme. In Chapter Five, the financial side of the project will be
discussed and the consequences of this approach for the scheme’s feasibility and future. Chapter
Six gives us a better sense of the ideology producing the fragmented shape of the new capital and
the contrast of the design to some of the ‘older’ mixed-use neighbourhoods of Cairo. Chapter
Seven will analyse some of the districts of the new capital; the housing district (and who might
occupy them), the government zone, the Central Business District, the Smart Village, and the
Knowledge City. And in the last chapter, Chapter Eight, we will critically reflect on the official
principles of the new capital; Walkable City, Liveable City, Connected City, Business City,
Smart City, Green City, and Sustainable City.
Besides the secondary literature presented in the theoretical framework, the sources for
this thesis are official maps, advertisement (pictures and videos), news articles, and other critical
reflection on the New Administrative Capital (Sims and the master thesis by Mirette Khorshed).10
In the new foreword of the paperback edition of Egypt’s Desert Dreams (published in 2018),
10 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018); Mirette Khorshed, ‘Cairo’s New Administrative Capital Wedian City:
Lessons from the Past and for the Future’, Master Thesis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Februari 2017).
7
Sims shortly discusses the new capital and this was a helpful start for this thesis. We have to
understand that the build-up of the new capital is still in an early stage and as I will better explain
throughout this thesis, most of the news articles, advertisement, and maps follow the official
rhetoric of the project. News agencies like al-Ahram, Egyptstreet, Egypt Independent, and Egypt
Today are often just spokesmen for the state (especially when it comes to a sensitive subject like
the New Administrative Capital) and this limits the scope of this research. In addition, the
Egyptian state only releases limited information on the project and many vital matters (like its
budget) remain obscure. However, as we will see in this thesis, we will also learn from the
intransparancy of the state and the interests it tries to protect, especially when it comes to
financial matters. This thesis tries to overcome some of these limitations, first, with the help of
some sources that do offer critical reflections on the new capital (Sims, MadaMasr, and news
agencies outside of Egypt like al-Jazeera, the Guardian, the Independent) and second, by looking
at previous desert projects in Egypt and the project of Brasilia.
8
‘Today, brethren, we turn to the Western Desert to establish there a new valley, parallel to the
valley of the Nile.’
- Gamal Abdel Nasser
,
Figure 2: The Nile Valley and the Egyptian deserts,
https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/68000/68269/Egypt.A2003235.0845.1km.jpg
9
The development of the Egyptian deserts
1.1 The appeal of the desert
During the turbulent 1950s, Egypt’s relationship with its desert started to change. Heretofore, this
vast and inhospitable space had only captured the imagination of (both Western and Arab)
trailblazers.11 From this point forward, the desert entered the minds of Egypt’s new revolutionary
nation builders. Gamal Abdel Nasser declared in 1958,
‘today, brethren, we turn to the Western Desert to establish there a new valley, parallel to
the valley of the Nile. We are endeavouring to utilize the water of the wells in order to
create new land extending from the southern borders, 150 kilometers west of Aswan, and
running northwards through Dakhla, Kharga, Farafra, and Bahria Oases. There are
cultivable lands there estimated at 3 million feddans which are being left without
cultivation.’12
Development of desert land was not something completely new. From the rule of Muhammad Ali
Pasha onwards, various schemes in the desert materialized, most notably Port Said, Ismailia (both
next to the Suez Canal), and Baron Empain’s Heliopolis. Nevertheless, Nasser instigated
something bigger, the idea of the desert as a solution and as a new way forward for the future of
Egypt. Nasser was mostly rhetorical when it came to developing the desert.13 However, he
planted a seed that came to bloom during the reign of Sadat, Mubarak, and the post-Mubarak
regimes (Morsi and Sisi).14 From Sadat and his infitāḥ (open door) policies onward, the desert
became the main site for development schemes and the ‘new place’ for future Egypt, at least in
the fantasy of its planners.
Egypt’s population is growing and it is growing fast. Between 1952 and 2013, the
Egyptian population quadrupled to 85,8 million and is still growing 2.03 percent annually.15
11 Apart from the Bedouin tribes that roamed the desert for centuries. 12 With these words Nasser instigated his New Valley plan, which was aimed to reclaim around three million
feddans. Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 37. 13 Nasser was responsible for both the Tahrir Province (reclamation scheme) and Nasr City (important part of the
urban core of Cairo today). 14 Muhammad Morsi election campaign speeches promoted megaprojects in the desert. Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams
(2018) 59. 15 ‘Population, total: Egypt, Arab Rep.’, The World Bank
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=EG; Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 248. The
Egyptian government expects this population to double in 2050.
10
Almost all these people are ‘cramped [in the words of the World Bank, JV]’ 16 within the Nile
Valley, which constitutes around five percent of the land of Egypt. Naturally, Egypt has a high
population density (especially the metropolitan areas), or in the more threatening words of the
World Bank ‘higher than of Bangladesh and Indonesia’.17 From the seventies onward, the
growing Egyptian population within this small piece of land struck fear into the hearts of many
Egyptian and international observers (the Egyptian state, World Bank, and USAID). According to
a World Bank report, ‘these two themes—the relatively fixed amount of usable land and the rapid
growth of the population—will be seen as leitmotifs in the discussion of Egypt’s economic
problems.’18 How can the valuable fertile soil of the Nile Valley be protected against urban
encroachment? And how can the growing population be housed and fed (with only limited space
for crops and houses)? These fears, bolstered by new technological possibilities, contributed to
the appeal of the desert. Only by developing the desert surrounding the Nile Valley could this
looming ‘ecological-demographic narrative of crisis’19 be warded off.20
Development plans in Egypt have been backed by this rhetoric for the past fifty years. As
David Sims elaborates so vividly in both Understanding Cairo and Egypt’s Desert Dreams, the
idea of the ‘old’ and ‘congested’ Nile Valley in contrast to the limitless possibilities of the vast
Egyptian deserts became a ‘force of its own’,21 that seemed unstoppable. Since time immemorial,
the striking sharp boundary (in comparison to other deserts) between the Nile Valley and the
desert had an end of the world feeling but with this changing perception, it became the site of a
bright new future. This chapter shows the consequences of this rhetoric by analysing some of the
desert schemes that rolled out from the seventies onwards. It shows how the rationale for these
developments obscured many deeper relations embedded in Egyptian society and is based on
false assumptions. Fuelled by speculative capital and high modernist rhetoric, this led to
disastrous development schemes. Instead of a gradual and balanced expansion into the desert,
16 Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt (2002) 209. 17 Mitchell rightly questions the comparison with Bangladesh and Indonesia. ‘The World Bank might equally have
mentioned Belgium, say, or South Korea, where population densities were respectively three and four times higher
than Indonesia— but where the comparison would have had a less negative implication.’ Mitchell, Rule of Experts
(2002) 212. 18 Mitchell, Rule of Experts (2002) 210. 19 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 65. 20 Obviously, other proposals have been put forward to deal with the lack of fertile land in Egypt. These ideas relate
mostly to raising the productivity of agriculture by technological innovation. However, planners and executers face
many difficulties and resistance with their attempts to tackle these questions in the highly-populated Old Lands. This
is one of the reasons why the clean slate of the desert is so attractive. 21 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 3.
11
most prime locations of Egypt’s desert were claimed by dubious investments in a short period of
time. As I will discuss, Egypt’s new relation with the desert, in a way, closed instead of opened
the desert for the average Egyptian. By placing the new capital of Egypt in this historical context,
we can better understand the logic underpinning the city and make some projections about its
future.
1.2 Managing the desert
Technological innovations like a map or a microscope change our interaction with the nonhuman
natural world. These tools both open and close ways we relate to this world. Scott in his book
Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed helps us
understand this process. With his example of the disastrous experiment of ‘forest science’ in
Prussia and Saxony, we will open up new ways to look at Egypt’s relation to its deserts. As Scott
argues, Europe’s relation to its forests rapidly changed in the second half of the eighteenth
century (quickly followed by other continents) due to new technological innovations of forest
management. In order to overcome the shortage of available wood in Prussia and Saxony, new
techniques were developed to better plan and maximize the production of wood. This forest
science recommended certain types of wood and effective ways of planting and cutting trees. The
implementation of these techniques meant a complete transformation of the national approach to
forests. The ‘old forests’ were cut down and replaced by an orderly pattern of the same type of
trees. The newly arranged forests now became a site that seemed manageable from the state’s
perspective and the systematic pattern established a certain aesthetic that pleased its planners.
These new techniques, managed by state and commercial institutions, ‘revealed’22 new
perspectives on nature and society. However, this science, at the same time, obscured many
deeper relations embedded in the forest, both human and nonhuman. The ecosystem of the forest
was completely destroyed by the new relationship between man and nature and this destruction
eventually materialized into a crisis on the ground. The generations following the successful first
22 The ways in which technological innovations ‘reveal’ certain societal and natural relations is described in Karl
Marx’s Capital. The way he puts it, ‘technology reveals the active relation of man to nature, the direct process of the
production of his life, and thereby it also lays bare the process of the production of the social relations of his life, and
of the mental conceptions that flow from those relations.’ David Harvey, A Companion to Marx’s Capital (Verso
2010) 191-192. Marx makes us attentive to the entanglement of a larger network when talking about technology.
Technological tools not only change the way we interact with the nonhuman (nature) but also our relation to each
other, our daily life, modes of production, and our own mental conception of the world.
12
harvest, matured more slowly and in some cases even stopped growing.23 The symbiotic
relations, keeping the ground fertile, were crucial to the forest’s survival, however, the
simplifications of the technical scope had concealed these relations.24
The forest science was a disaster for the local peasantry, many of whom relied on the
ecosystem of the old forests for medicine, food, shelter, etc. The monoculture of these new
forests completely concluded this man-nature relationship. The forest became exclusively a
concern for the state and commercial institutions, carefully managed and controlled. With the
example of German forests, Scott tries to illustrate the problematic relation between
administrative systems (and their technological tools) and the complexities of living systems on
the ground. The top-down scope of the state and commercial institutions always rely on
problematic simplifications and abstractions to manage these systems.25 Regarding Egypt and its
management of the desert, we can also see how certain technical tools disclose a new relation to
this landscape and how, at the same time, bureaucratic, technical and commercial logic (these
terms will be better explained later) simplified many technicalities and deeper social relations
when it comes to creating a new world there.
Although this thesis acknowledges the power of technology in changing our relation to
the world, we have to be cautious not to develop a technological determinant argument here.
Technological innovations never occur in isolation and have to be seen through a wider web of
human and nonhuman relations. The techniques used for ‘greening the desert’ (as discussed in the
next section) have been developed in a specific context and it took time (and specific social
circumstances) before these tools entered the scope of Egypt’s planners. Before the 1952 coup,
some reclamation experiments had already materialized in the Egyptian deserts, however, it was
the Malthusian fear, the dream of a modern Egypt, and most importantly, the construction of the
Aswan Dam that truly incorporated the desert into Egypt’s horizon. Whereas the Prussian
peasantry had already a specific relation to the forest, the relation between Egyptians and the
desert was at a new stage.
Obviously, the desert is a dry place. Management of water is, therefore, crucial when
trying to create life here. Almost all of Egypt’s water enters the country through the Nile. When
talking about diverting water into the desert, we are inevitably talking about the water from the
23 In German called Waldsterben (forest death). Scott, Seeing Like a State (1998) 20. 24 Scott, Seeing Like a State (1998) 11-22. 25 Scott, Seeing Like a State (1998) 11-22.
13
Nile. There are a few exceptions of desert schemes where either groundwater or desalinated
seawater is used but both sources of water are controversial because groundwater in the desert of
Egypt is a non-renewable source and the desalination of seawater on a large scale still faces
limitations and comes at a high price. The vagaries of the water of the Nile determine Egypt’s
limits of development and is a constant source of worry.26 These worries have surfaced recently,
with the controversial project of Ethiopia to build a large dam upstream. As we saw in the
fragment of the speech of Nasser, with the construction of the Aswan Dam under his rule, Nile
water became controllable and measurable, this opened up new ways of redirecting this water for
new development schemes, among which in the desert.
As Sims argues in Egypt’s Desert Dreams, land reclamation (turning desert land into
fertile ground for cultivation) has been the most extensive and lengthiest desert development.
What seemed to be impossible a few decades ago (except maybe on the desert fringes) has been
made possible, in theory at least, by a few technical inventions. Large dams, strong pumps (to
redirect Nile water), pivot or drip irrigations systems, and a selective choice of crops create the
possibility to reclaim and cultivate the desert.27 These techniques broaden the scope of Egypt’s
possibilities to ‘control’ and exploit nature. In combination with the perceived demographic
threat and new profit-making schemes (explained in the next section), this led to a powerful
cocktail to turn the desert green.
However, just as with the forests in Prussia and Saxony, these ‘new tools’, handled by
bureaucratic and commercial institutions, oversimplified cultivating the desert and to this day, the
governmental and corporate cultivation of the desert has been a failure. Millions of government
funds have been spent on reclamation schemes without barely any returns.28 Sims shows that
several problems, both technical and societal, have led to this scenario. To begin with the
technical problems, three issues were overlooked. First, the amount of energy that is required to
pump Nile water to the designated lands was not taken into account. In contrast to the Old
26 The construction of the Aswan Dam has made the Nile much more predictable, however, the Nile still faces many
limitations. Between 1980-87, the Nile faced a major drought and this almost led to a forced shutdown of the Aswan
Dam. Naturally, this drought posed a great threat to the lands upstream. Nevertheless, also today, ‘there are good
indications’ as Sims puts it, ‘that limits to Egypt’s increased use of both Nile and groundwater have been reached
and that a zero-sum situation has arrived or will soon do so, and that supplying sufficient water for new desert
projects can only be made at the expense of Old Land irrigation.’ Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 67 and 70. 27 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 73-77. 28 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 281-283.
14
Lands,29 where water flows to the government irrigation system by gravity, the reclamation
schemes in the desert require massive government pumping stations in order to redirect the water
into the designated canals (and often need additional booster stations). This process uses a
significant amount of energy and is, therefore, costly.30 Second, policymakers underestimated the
technical difficulties and costs of conveying the Nile water to the end users. Chiefly due to bad
management, poorly constructed canals, and leakages, problems occurred in redirecting Nile
water to the farmers and led to vagaries in their access to water (especially at the end of the
schemes).31 And third, most reclamation schemes lacked a central built drainage system. While
the Old Lands were provided with a comprehensive drainage system, this was not deemed
necessary for the reclamation schemes (due to a misunderstanding of the necessities in desert
reclamation schemes). The absence of drainage systems can cause a salt build-up in the irrigation
water to such a point that it becomes harmful to the plants. Often, it was left to the end user
himself to deal with this problem. Still, even with this new knowledge at hand, in some of the
new (from 1997 onwards) reclamation schemes (Toshka and East ‘Uwaynat), drainage is given a
low priority, eventually leading to problems on the ground.32
Next, to the profits and food promised by the reclamation of the desert, it also ensured
new jobs and lives for Egyptians that would work on these lands. As we saw before, according to
the official consensus, spreading the population of the Old Lands horizontally (in the desert) is
still the imperative reason for developing desert land. By creating opportunities in the desert,
people would want to build their lives there. However, a few problems were overlooked. First,
many of the reclamation schemes were set up by private capital and were, therefore, highly
capital intensive. These projects only created limited job opportunities of which many were
seasonal. Second, the harsh conditions and the insecurity of life in the desert did not really attract
the target group of unemployed graduates.33 By moving to the desert they had to leave behind a
system of social capital, that secures many basic needs, in exchange for an insecure future in the
desert. The government enthusiasm of conquering the desert was not always shared by the
Egyptian population (especially not the unemployed target population).
29 The terms ‘Old Lands’ and ‘New Lands’ are generally used when talking about Egypt’s agriculture. The Old
Lands represents the agriculture in the Nile Valley and the New Lands the agriculture in the desert. 30 This problem was already recognized by a USAID research in 1980. Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 71. 31 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 70-72. 32 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 72 and 77-78. 33 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 40.
15
The misjudgement of the local circumstances in the Old Lands and the significance of
these elements in the life of Egyptians, not only created problems for reclamation schemes but for
almost all schemes in the desert. The strong social connections that are so vital in Egypt, the
knowledge of local actors, and the way people are dependent on the (urban) informal economies,
have been completely obscured in the minds of Egypt’s politicians and technocrats when it comes
to conquering the desert. The numbers don’t lie. In the past fifty years, many lands have been
reclaimed but these lands only produced marginal revenues. As Sims puts it, it seems as if the
government is more occupied with the ‘feddan game’, counting the numbers of lands that have
been reclaimed, than it is with actually creating productive lands.34 When it comes to moving
people out of the Nile Valley, the government has made huge efforts and has built twenty-one
cities and neighbourhoods within the desert (and is still announcing new schemes),35 however,
yet again the accomplishments are negligible, especially compared to the costs and efforts by the
state to realize their ambitions. In a 2006 census,36 it was revealed that around 800.000 people
had moved to these desert cities, which represents a bit over 1 percent of the population at that
time. Embarrassingly, the self-set target of the new-town schemes was not met and the
achievement rate reached only 3.8 percent, according to the census. In contrast to the on-ground
achievements, this is even a harder blow. Complete neighbourhoods can be classified as ghost
towns and between 61 and 79 percent of the buildings are left vacant.37
Where the formal rhetoric identifies the congestion and over-crowdedness of the Nile
Valley (especially in the metropolitan areas) as Egypt’s main problem, Sims argues instead that
this is one of her greatest strengths. The way Cairo has grown from four million to seventeen
million people in the past fifty years without ever developing into a city where
inhumane/unliveable conditions prevail, as some apocalyptic prophesies predicted (e.g. Planet of
Slums by Mike Davis) is a miraculous achievement and its success can mostly be ascribed to the
informal dynamics of Cairo that have flourished in the urban density of the city. ‘Land is
subdivided, housing is built, properties are exchanged, business operates, and public transport
34 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 281-283. 35 Between 2014 and 2018, the plans for twelve new desert communities have been released. Sims, Egypt’s Desert
Dreams (2018) xliii. 36 Every ten years (1986,1996,2006), the population of Egypt in each census district of the country is calculated.
According to Sims, this is the only reliable source for population statistic in Egypt. Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams
(2018) 140. 37 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 283-284.
16
moves in the shadows of illegality.’38 Where a ‘minimal government’ has done a fine job in
providing Cairo with crucial basic public services like water, electricity, roads, and sewage,39
Cairenes have filled the void left by the minimalist government approach. Without a centralized
or corporate logic, they built their own neighbourhoods and created a highly sophisticated system
of public transport. Today around 63 percent of the inhabitants of the Greater Cairo region live in
the informal neighbourhoods and most of these people make (to a certain extent) a decent
living.40 In addition, the reclamation schemes on the fringes of the desert organized by informal
actors have been very successful (estimated at between one and two million reclaimed feddans).41
This so-called waḍ’ al-yadd (‘hand claim’) process started somewhere in the eighties and since
then has made considerable headway. The failure of state and corporate reclamation schemes
absorbing millions of Egyptian pounds is underlined by the success of these local (often illegal)
initiatives.42 The achievement of local initiatives in dealing with the quadrupling of the
population with only minimal state support deserves praise and much more academic attention. It
is ironic that the government formulates their logic of desert development completely on a
misreading of this success.43
By putting the map of Egypt on a drawing board and determining its future challenges,
many questions were overlooked or simplified. The question of space and numbers became a
force of its own, fuelled by technical, commercial and high modernist logic (better explained in
the next chapter). These powers set in motion a hasty government and corporate development of
the desert. In a short period of time, all the prime vacant lands in the desert had been given a
purpose. However, as Sims argues, these developments did not initiate the dispersion of Egypt’s
population into the desert, instead, this valuable land became a site for failed reclamation
38 Sims, Understanding Cairo (2012) 268. 39 As Sims describes, the government has been quite successful in providing basic services to most of the inhabitants
of Cairo. Especially if we compare Cairo to other megacities in the Global South, Cairo has done considerably well.
Sims, Understanding Cairo (2012) 257. 40 This in no way implies that the life is easy inside these areas. Many informal areas are in dire need of
improvements. 41 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) Iii. 42 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 100-104. 43 At the same time, we could also consider this negligence a blessing, for it has redirected the state’s attention
towards the desert and has saved most informal areas in Cairo from government/corporate restructuring. Time and
time again we see how the main response of the government towards informality is one of eviction and destruction.
The recently bulldozed Maspero Triangle attests to this. Farid Farid, “How can a proud country kill its heritage?’
Cairo calls time on oldest watch shop’, The Guardian, 7 August 2019.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/aug/07/cairo-redevelopment-plan-calls-time-on-egypts-oldest-watch-shop
17
schemes, gated communities, ghost cities, abandoned hotels, and empty factories. I want to put
emphasis on ‘valuable land’ because potentially it offered many opportunities for the public good
(and still does). Instead, as I will describe in the next chapter, desert development schemes only
benefited a privileged few. Many prime locations (around Cairo and along the coast) have been
allocated to dubious investors. The loss of ‘public land’ (previously owned by the government)
decreases the possibility for (informal) expansion into the desert for the average Cairene and,
therefore, gradually realizes the image of the Egyptian locked inside the small strip of the Nile
Valley.
1.3 The scramble for desert land
‘To say that these minerals, plants and animals are meaningful – in other words, that they are
economic goods – means that they have been brought within the sweep of the community’s
knowledge of ways and means.’
- Thorstein Veblen44
The relation between the Egyptian state and the Egyptian ecology is unique because almost the
entire Egyptian desert (Western Desert, Eastern Desert, and Sinai) belongs to state institutions.
Egypt’s frontier demography for development is not privately owned, it is the state who has the
power to allocate land for public development or sell it to private investors. Whereas before 1952,
there was only minor interest in buying pieces of this (perceived) useless land (for instance Baron
Empain and his project of Heliopolis), a run on securing the most valuable lands by private
investors unfolded after the 1973 October War with Israel and the infitāḥ policies of Sadat.45 Two
important conditions instigated the scramble for publicly owned land. First, because of the
growing state interest in the desert, Sadat’s policies were aimed at encouraging investors (both
national and international) to invest their capital outside of the Nile Valley. Land was sold
extremely cheap (for instance LE1 per square meter in 10th of Ramadan46) and under easy
payment conditions.47 Because this land was suddenly opened for development (both public and
private initiatives), it started to attract the attention of many investors not wanting to miss out on
44 Nitzan and Bichler, Capital as Power (2009) 222. 45 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 121. 46 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 124. 47 ‘a typical purchaser faced a down payment of only 10 percent of the total price, with the remainder spread over
seven to ten years.’ Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 136.
18
these attractive investment opportunities.
The historical context of the seventies was the second important catalyst in the scramble
for desert land. These days were the heydays for oil-rich countries in the Arab World. Given that
Egypt is closely located to these fellow Arab-speaking countries, many Egyptians during this
period moved to these oil-rich states and prospered. On their return to Egypt, they looked for
opportunities to invest this ‘oil-money’ and after years of living in the well-organized Gulf states,
many wanted to maintain the luxurious lifestyle. The desert was the answer to both of these
demands. 48 This new class of Egyptians started buying land and property in order to invest their
capital and create future streams of income. Land investments and real-estate have a special
allure in Egypt because bond and stock markets are not trusted due to the vagaries of the
Egyptian pound and economy.49 Buying property is seen as a clever move because these
investments are written in stone and are considered low risk. This means that property does not
need to be of any use value for the investor, it can be a structure to secure capital and, at the same
time, create durable structures of revenue for the future.50
For the investor, the commercial motive determining the scramble for desert land is
chiefly speculative. The value of the property is established by its durability, the way it will
generate future flows of income from example, the future revenues of land reclamations, resale of
land, touristic related investments, or rent. This forward-looking gambling game in economic
terms is called ‘capitalization’. In the calculation of capitalization, expected future earnings of
present-day investments are discounted to today’s value (also called net value). Capitalization
‘tells us’, as Nitzan and Bichler put it, ‘how much a capitalist would be prepared to pay now to
receive a flow of money later.’51 Marx, in Volume III of Capital, refers to these revenues as
‘fictitious’.52 ‘The forming of a fictitious capital,’ as Marx argues, ‘is called capitalising. Every
periodically repeated income is capitalised by calculating it on the average rate of interest, as an
income which would be realised by a capital at this rate of interest.’53 Marx considers this form of
48 Or in the words of Mitchell, ‘and that’s why real estate investment always appears alongside oil revenues. It is the
most logical and straightforward way to take extraordinary revenues from oil and turn them into a long-term future
that can be capitalized in the present.’ Mitchell, ‘The Capital City’ (2016). 49 In November 2016 the Egyptian pound devalued around 50% to the Dollar after the Central Bank of Egypt floated
the Egyptian pound 50 This also partly explains the high number of vacancy in Cairo. Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 151. 51 Nitzan and Bichler, Capital as Power (2009) 153. 52 Abourahme & Jabary-Salamanca, ‘Thinking against the sovereignty of the concept’ (interview Timothy Mitchell),
(2016) 741. 53 Nitzan and Bichler, Capital as Power (2009) 168.
19
capital fictitious because its value is related to an insecure future and cannot be rooted in any
‘material basis’ (labour, modes of production, and commodity money). David Harvey (along with
many other neo-Marxists, as shown by Nitzan and Bichler54) follows Marx’s argument, ‘the
money capital advanced [in future appropriation, JV] has to be regarded as fictitious because it is
not backed by any firm collateral [rooted in production, JV].’55 According to Harvey, this form of
capital is crucial for the ever-more growing accumulation in our modern economy because it
captures the changing and complex flows of circulating capital into a ‘fixed form’.56 However,
both Marx’s and Harvey’s ideas of fictitious capital are not particularly helpful in understanding
the unique relations (of time and power) embedded in this form of capital. By stressing its
fictitiousness, we overlook its real value in the present and the way this value tries to ‘order’ our
future world.57
The corporation is central in the logic of capitalization. The history of the corporation is
much older than the idea of capitalism but the base for its power can best be traced back to the
days of colonial expansion. In order to share the risk of overseas expeditions, corporations like
the Dutch East-India Company (VOC) and the English East-India Company (EIC) were founded
and established a monopoly on trade routes. These companies always had their eyes on the future.
This future mirrored the expected revenues and it was this calculated future that had to be sold to
present-day investors. Managing the future became crucial in safeguarding these calculations and
it did not take long before political powers protected these companies (with violence if necessary)
in order to safeguard their investments and to discipline the future. Over time, other similar
institutions (e.g. the oil firm and the railroad company) were able to create durable structures
generating profits for generations. Corporations are not only responsible for the physical
structures but have to protect its durability as well (in order to keep its present-day value), or as
Mitchell puts it, ‘the apparatus equally required the control of territory, the displacement or
elimination of native populations, and command over labour forces. New technical and political
powers engineered a new temporal relationship: the future as a durable revenue structure.’58
54 Nitzan and Bichler, Capital as Power (2009) 84-124. 55 David Harvey, Limits of Capital (Verso 2018 [1982]) 267. 56 Harvey, Limits of Capital (2018) 267. 57 ‘Creorders’ as Nitzan an Bichler would stress. This highlights its ongoing process and construction. ‘To have
history is to create order – a verb and a noun whose fusion yields the verb-noun creorder.’ Nitzan and Bichler,
Capital as Power (2009) 305. 58 Mitchell, ‘The Capital City’ (2016).
20
Because the corporation depends on his ability to predict and control the future, Nitzan and
Bichler stress the role of power/sabotage in today’s accumulation. Capital is inherently political
and related to power. By organizing and safeguarding the future, corporations are inevitably
entangled in nonmarket and socio-political relations, like taxes, zoning laws, property laws,
patents, and debt/rent related legislation. Bringing future profits into the present demands shaping
the social order.59
In 1980, military restrictions on the Red Sea Coast were revoked and the desert along the
long strip of the sea was opened for development. Investment for touristic purposes was in line
with the government’s intention to create job opportunities for Egyptians and moving them out of
the Valley. Tourism could create a livelihood for thousands of Egyptians in the desert. After the
opening, most land close to Hurghada was allocated and became an area of development in a
short period of time. The government encouraged corporations to invest in this land by keeping
the price of land fixed at $US 1 per square meter (below local market prices), regardless of the
location. Also, the terms for down payment and taxes were particularly advantageous for the
investor. Because of the endorsement by the government to allocate the land for tourist
development and by providing it with basic infrastructure, this previously worthless land (from
the scope of investors) became extremely valuable. The land allocated for private development
exceeded its original value of $1 by 10000%. In addition, banks estimated the value of the land at
$100 per m2. Thus, by buying 100.000 square meters for $100.000, investors had a prospect of
gaining access to a liquidity of $10 million, just by signing the land deal.60 This money was then
used to construct hotels and bungalow parks along the coast, that would ensure these investors
with future revenues. By calculating the prices, the future revenues, and the risks, Egyptian
investors made a calculation of the durability (in providing future revenues) of these enterprises
(that were clearly favourable to the capitalist).61 Obviously, the government lost money on these
deals. The cost of providing services to these remote locations far exceeded the price for which
land was sold. Or more bluntly described by Sims, ‘it seems almost as if the whole process is a
59 Deen S. Sharp, Corporate Urbanization: Between the Future and the Survival of Lebanon (CUNY Academic
Work, 2018) 60 I used exactly the same example that was presented in Thomas Richter and Christian Steiner, ‘Politics, Economics
and Tourism Development in Egypt: insights into the sectoral transformations of a neo-patrimonial rentier state’,
Third World Quarterly, 29:5 (2008) 955. 61 For a better explanation and overview of the elementary particles in the calculation of capitalization, see Nitzan
and Bichler, Capital as Power (2009) 184-214.
21
kind of enormous charity scheme aimed at benefiting certain political classes, especially the rich
and the influential.’62
The consequences of this approach were huge. For investors, this deal was a no-brainer.
By signing these land deals, they could easily and almost riskless create structures that would
ensure them of revenues extending far into the future. In the nineties, tourism-investments
involved very low risks. Under optimal circumstances, investors were able to pay off their
investments within two years and even during ‘troubled times’ (for instance after the 1997 attack
in Luxor), it would still take them only six or eight years to be able to repay their loans. Tourism
has proven to be a very profitable business in Egypt, not only for investors. The government also
benefited from these investments due to the foreign currencies that stabilized the trade deficit. As
Thomas Richter and Christian Steiner argue, ‘the political decisions to expand the tourism sector
in Egypt were not primarily driven by economic needs, but instead have deep roots in the neo-
patrimonial structure of the country, which they aimed to stabilise.’63 The combined power of
both the private and the public sector backing the development of Egypt’s coastal land resulted in
the complete privatisation of certain areas along the coast that were filled with hotels and
luxurious resorts, mostly aimed at all-inclusive/package deal tourism.
The example of land allocations around the Red Sea Coast is only the tip of the iceberg of
desert investment schemes. As Mitchell puts it in the Foreword of Sims’ Egypt’s Desert Dreams,
‘the main economic benefits [of desert development, JV] came not from improvements in
productive life and collective wellbeing, but from land deals, contracting opportunities,
and speculative profits enjoyed by the small group of well-connected entrepreneurs and
regime insiders who were the principal beneficiaries of desert development.’
From the perspective of this ‘productive life and collective wellbeing’, tourism-investments did
create a considerable amount of jobs. However, most of these people (mostly men) did not move
to these areas instead stayed in dormitories close to their work instead. Their families never
moved out of the crowded Valley. 64 The disadvantages of moving to these areas still outweigh
62 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 267. This quote relates to desert development in general, not specifically to
the desert development along the Red Sea Coast. 63 Richter & Steiner, ‘Politics, Economics and Tourism Development in Egypt’ (2008) 940. 64 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 200-203.
22
some of the hardships of the Old Land.65 On the last note, the desert developments along the
coast were a disaster for the environment and the future of tourism in Egypt. Especially along the
Red Coast and the Sinai, tourism has done unavertable damage to the coral reefs and on the North
Coast, a huge concrete wall of privatized bungalow parks has taken complete ownership over the
sea and beach.66
The desert was the ideal landscape for investors to extend their (oil) revenues into the
future and to consolidate a system of power as to who has access to the land. Because of the
unique demographic situation in Egypt, where public institutions control the desert hinterlands
(almost all the land of Egypt), these institutions are innately entangled in the process of
capitalization. The state has the power to allocate or withhold land for development and is,
therefore, crucial for the forward-looking capitalist. Through a complex system of government
favouritism,67 a select privileged few gained access to prime locations and made huge revenues.68
Because these investors were backed by government institutions (and because investors
supported governmental plans), these lands and projects became extremely valuable.69 However,
this did not mean that the investors had well-developed plans for these lands that would benefit
the common good (creating jobs, revenues, and productive lives for Egyptians of all social
classes in the desert). Instead, their investments only provided revenues for a selective few. It is
remarkable how the Egyptian government did not learn from past failures and, instead of reviving
65 The main reason for this is hard economics. As Sims and El Miniawy put it (quoted in Sims’ Egypt’s Desert
Dreams), ‘the average worker . . . simply cannot afford the family housing and high consumption and service costs
related to new areas. And opportunities in these areas for supplementary household income, so common and
important in the large popular areas of the Nile Valley, are extremely limited. The Egyptian wage workers, faced
with this reality, make what is a rational economic decision to keep their families in their established homes where
costs are considerably lower, preferring to work as individuals in the new desert areas, keeping personal costs to a
minimum, and remitting their savings directly to their families.’ In addition, displacement means a loss of social
capital and social safety nets. Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 202-203. 66 These parks are mostly aimed at Egyptians who want to spend the summer along the North Coast. The rest of the
year, these houses remain empty. Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 199-200. 67 Mitchell, Rule of Experts (2002) 282; Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 261. 68 As Stephan Roll argues, especially after the financial reforms during the 1990s, a new financial elite established
their power in the economic/political landscape of Egypt. ‘Financial reforms were for the benefit first and foremost
of members of the entrepreneurial elite and therefore for those with close connections to the political regime. Whilst
other members of the business community gained hardly any advantage from the expansion of credit to the private
sector or the opening of the banking sector for foreign capital and stock market development, a few members of the
entrepreneurial elite were able to expand their businesses and consolidate their position within the Egyptian
economy.’ : Stephan Roll, ‘Finance Matters! The Influence of Financial Sector Reforms on the Development of the
Entrepreneurial Elite in Egypt’, Mediterranean Politics 15 no. 3 (2010) 367. 69 ‘Corporate capital is a symbolic crystallization of power exercised over large-scale human organizations, typically
by a small group of large absentee owners intertwined with key government officials.’ Nitzan and Bichler, Capital as
Power (2009) 270.
23
failed schemes, kept allocating new lands for development. This illustrates the real interests of
the Egyptian dominant powers (corporations and the state). The New Administrative Capital of
Egypt also has to be discussed in this context. While the majority of the newly built houses in the
past fifty years are still left vacant, the government decides to build a huge city that has to house
around six million people. In a better way than theories on ‘commercialization’, ‘neoliberalism’,
rentier state, and fictitious capital, thinking from capitalization gives us a deeper insight into the
history and present of Egyptian desert development. At the same time, it opens new ways to
discuss the future of which the new capital will be part. According to Egyptian officials, the New
Administrative Capital in Egypt will chiefly be finance with private capital. These investors,
naturally, expect that their invested capital will generate future incomes.
2. The high modernist city
‘In Brazil it was Rio and it became Brasília – we need this. It costs billions, we know, but we
need it’
- Khaled El-Husseiny, ACUD Chairman
The idea of the desert as a clean sheet, one that can be completely modified to the wishes of a
planner is a powerful image. This image was an important impulse for the build-up of the desert
in a high modernist fashion. In this chapter, I want to take a closer look at the ideology of high
modernism. Just as in Scott’s Seeing Like a State, I will assess of a case study on Brasilia to
exemplify ‘high modernism’, as this ideology seemed to have inspired so many desert
development schemes in Egypt (including the new capital). However, I will not articulate these
critiques alongside Jane Jacobs (as Scott does), instead, I will make use of Henri Lefebvre, who
in my view brings forward more powerful tools to dissect the city and its inhabitants. Lefebvre’s
idea of the city as a condition for capitalism, rather than an outcome of its flows unveils critical
tools to better understand the role of space, the state, and the everyday in the logic of capital.
Especially his dialectical approach towards space helps us to better locate the actors in ‘the
production of space’. Brasilia was one of the first cities to be built completely from scratch
inspired by a high modern vision. There has been extensive research on the city, especially the
book The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasília by James Holston is helpful to
better understand the ‘human reaction’ to the high modernist scheme and helps us to articulate
some of the problematic assumptions in building a new city.
24
2.1 Le Corbusier, Henri Lefebvre, and
Brasilia
In 1956, two Brazilian architects, Lúcio
Costa, and Oscar Niemeyer, joined hands and
embarked upon the realization of a
revolutionary project, a new capital for
Brazil, Brasilia. Four years later, on April 21,
1960, the new city was founded and Brazil’s
governmental institutions on the coastal lands
of Rio de Janeiro were moved into the
centre-west region of the mainland of Brazil.
Brasilia was built from scratch, and was to become the new face of Brazil and the new regime,
led by Juscelino Kubitschek. The task given to Costa and Niemeyer was a dream for every
modern urbanist at that time. Out of empty space, a new man-made landscape could be created,
completely to the liking of its planners. With Brasilia, its architecture and cityscape, a new
society was envisioned that would constitute the modern future of Brazil. These utopian
modernist visions were largely inspired by the Swiss-French architect/urbanist Le Corbusier.
Corbusier is an important figure in the theorization and professionalization of urban planning.
Next to his architectural work, he left behind a large oeuvre of books on planning and
architecture. Corbusier looked for ways to free the modern man from historical and social space
confining the modern spirit in its search for ultimate freedom. The traditional and classist city
with its inefficient use of space had to be abandoned. Clean spaces, without any historical or
social baggage, needed to be erected in order to create an efficient and equal society. With
Brasilia, Costa and Niemeyer were given the perfect opportunity to put some of Corbusier’s ideas
into practice on an empty, tabula rasa space.70
Brasilia was built in the shape of an airplane and had to house around 600.000 people.
Corbusier foresaw the revolution of the automobile and proposed that future cities should be built
in service of the car. Also, Brasilia followed Corbusier’s vision and automobile transport was
prioritized. This attention to (automobile) movement is seen in Brasilia’s road-plan. Highways in
70 James Holston, The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasília (The University of Chicago Press
1989) 1-98.
Figure 3: The Conceptual Masterplan for Brasilia. Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia#/media/File:Brasil
ia_-_Plan.JPG
25
straight lines without traffic lights or stop signs cut through the city’s modern structures and
deliver people and goods directly and efficiently to the building of destination. Sidewalks are a
rare sight in Brasilia and the wide highways without pedestrian crossings make walking a
troublesome task. Street-life is therefore almost completely absent, except for some preordained
public spaces. Life is concentrated inside live- and workspaces.71 Space in-between is ruled by
cars, a necessity in Brasilia, making it first and foremost a middle/upper-class city.
One of the key aspects of a modernist city, according to Le Corbusier, is repetition.
Repetition eradicates differences and brings order in the flow of people, commodities, and
information. Order within a city optimizes the efficient use of space and mass-production. This
abstract way of looking at space is not only visible in Brasilia but also in many other places
(especially North-American cities). It seems hard to escape this modernist logic or, in the words
of Max Weber, ‘iron cage’ of instrumental rationality.72 Acceleration of movement within cities
is fetishized and only constitutes to a faster flow of subjects and objects, ‘increasing the
circulation of traffic as an end in itself’.73 As a consequence of this rational approach to space,
non-places materialize. These places are completely stripped of any human relation, their only
function constitutes to the enhancement and satiation of limitless flows. The Motel, the petrol
station, and the highway restaurant
‘are constructs devoid of the particular, built to honour a repetitive and instrumental logic.
Their sterile enclosures offer ‘safety’ from contamination from any localized culture
and/or nature, from anything that is different, but this is achieved only at the cost of
making the person concerned subject to the efficient ordering of the production line and
endless queues to consume.’74
Brasilia’s lifeless streets, encircled by empty grass and orderly flats, non-places, are the natural
product of this technoscience.
In the high modernist city, repetitive spaces often come across as ‘neutral’ and lacking a
clear ideology. Abstract space strives for the eradication of difference and is based on a perceived
71 Holston, The Modernist City (1989) 101-136; Edward Cornish, ‘Building Utopia: Lessons from Brasilia’ The
Futurist 25 no. 4 (Jul/Aug 1991) 30-31. 72 Mick Smith ‘Repetition and Difference: Lefebvre, Le Corbusier and Modernity's (Im)moral Landscape’, Ethics,
Place & Environment 4 no. 1 (2001) 33. 73 Smith ‘Repetition and Difference’ (2001) 32. 74 Smith ‘Repetition and Difference’ (2001) 33.
26
scientific/rationale concept of order and repetition. It, therefore, presents itself as ‘clean’ and
‘empty’. Only, as Mick Smith argues, modern urbanism does serve certain forms of moralities (or
immoralities). A certain ‘sameness’ is imagined by the eradication of difference. Objects and
individuals nonconforming to this sameness are excluded within this space. Only in a
rationalized, orderly city can the modern subject be truly free so in the end, also these ‘Others’
need to be freed by the means of normalization and homogenization. Smith dissects three main
features of the (im)morality in Corbusier’s modernist space: ‘mass-production’, ‘repetition’, and
‘efficiency’. However, according to Lefebvre, this morality misses ‘any frame of reference or
horizon’75 and just serves the biopolitics of ‘normalization’ in an industrial society. In the words
of Lefebvre, ‘Le Corbusier ideologizes as he rationalizes’, the consequences of his quest for
‘freedom’,
‘is a fracturing of space: the homogeneity of an architectural ensemble conceived of as a
'machine for living in', and as the appropriate habitat for a man-machine, corresponds to a
disordering of elements wrenched from each other in such a way that the urban fabric
itself - the street, the city - is also torn apart.’76
In the eyes of Lefebvre, Le Corbusier was not a ‘revolutionary’; on the contrary, he drew the
blueprint for state control and the advancement of capital accumulation in the city.
To fully understand Lefebvre’s critique of spaces of modernity and of capital, we have to
evoke his theory on the production of space, the spatial triad. Just as Marx tried to theorize the
deeper social relations mystified in the commodity in Capital, Lefebvre follows this argument
and tries to grasp space as a product(ion) of social actors, that cannot be seen as a timeless given.
Space is a tempo-spatial process that is better understood divided into three interconnected
concepts; perceived (spatial practice), conceived (representation of space), and lived space
(representational space). These three elements in the production of space are in a constant
dialectical relationship. Perceived space relates to the material and physical aspects of space. It is
the extension of the human body into space and the way human senses (seeing, smelling, hearing,
feeling, and tasting) encounter its surrounding. The way we perceive space is determined by the
way space is conceived and lived. Conceived space is the space of the planner or the professional,
75 Smith, ‘Repetition and Difference’ (2001) 36. 76 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Blackwell Publishing 1992 [1974]) 303.
27
it relates to the presupposed idea around space and is, therefore, linked to the production of
knowledge. The last dimension of space is the space of the lived experience and the
everydayness. It tries to encompass the way humans change their surroundings in their everyday
activities and rhythms, by the use of symbols. Representational space gives meaning to the
conceived and perceived landscapes. Although we have a sense of the lived experience around
us, it is the hardest aspect of social space to study and comprehend. According to Lefebvre, this
unimaginable aspect of the lived experience integrates art, revolution, and other irrational
wonders of life into the social dimension of space.77 With the use of Lefebvre’s spatial triad,
‘space is to be understood in an active sense as an intricate web of relationships that is
continuously produced and reproduced. The object of the analysis is, consequently, the active
processes of production that take place in time.’78
Returning to Brasilia, we see how everyday life is crushed by the rational abstraction of
the city. Commenting on the city of Niemeyer, Lefebvre argues that in the production of the
‘space of Brasilia…there is an almost self-consciously
comic aspect to the process… The person who sees and
knows only how to see, the person who draws and knows
only how to put marks on a sheet of paper, the person
who drives around and knows only how to drive a car —
all contribute in their way to the mutilation of a space
which is everywhere sliced up. And they all complement
one another:…’79
Abstract space tries to control and discipline the lived
space and thereby tries to impose a form of
ideology/morality on the production of space. For
Lefebvre, Le Corbusier’s urbanism and architecture
served both state power and state capitalism. The clean
77 Christian Schmid, ‘Henri Lefebvre’s Theory of the Production of Space: Towards a Three-Dimensional Dialectic’,
in Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Lefebvre, Ed. Kanishka Goonewardena, Stefan Kipfer, Richard
Milgrom, and Christian Schmid (2008) 39-40. 78 Schmid, ‘Henri Lefebvre’s Theory of the Production of Space’, Space, Difference, Everyday Life, ed.
Goonewardena et al. (2008) 41. 79 Lefebvre, The Production of Space (1992) 312-313.
Figure 4: Construction Brasilia,
https://www.archdaily.com/303639/the-
construction-of-brasilia-photos-by-marcel-
gautherot
28
and efficient space in the city was the perfect breeding ground for state-led capital accumulation
and tried to overshadow the human everydayness in the modernist city. The city of Corbusier
reminds us of the factory of Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford. Every aspect of the complex social
systems of work and everyday life was dismembered and reorganised in a more ‘efficient’ way.
Brasilia was the personification of this new state capitalist city, concealed in Avant-Garde
rhetoric. All barricades to optimal productivity were dismantled (inefficiency, difference) and the
city was employed as a loyal servant for the enhancement of state and capital control. Lefebvre’s
critique is controversial because Corbusier (and also Niemeyer and Costa) were fervent anti-
capitalists and important members of communist parties. Lefebvre’s critique gives a good insight
in his dubious position within the Marxist tradition. In 1958, he was expelled by the French
Communist party because of his rejection of authoritarianism and his support for the anticolonial
cause in Algeria.80 One of the important elements that distinguish Lefebvre’s open Marxism from
classical Marxists is not only his extension of Marx’s critique of capitalism into the urban but
also the way he understands the modernist state and its role in the survival of capitalism. The
modern state organizes ‘a unitary, logistical, operational and quantifying rationality which would
make economic growth possible and draw strength from that growth for its own expansion to a
point where it would take possession of the entire planet’.81
From the moment the construction of Brasilia started, tensions rose over the accessibility
of the new city. President Kubitschek mobilized a huge workforce coming from all over Brazil to
work on the city. These people, drawn by economic opportunities and the patriotic call of this
project, needed accommodation. This immediately posed a problem for the planners because it
threatened the planned purpose of Brasilia. The huge cubes in the wings of Brasilia, the
superquadra, were built to house the administrative heart of the government so there was no
space for the heavy influx of workers. A settlement outside the airplane-shaped centre was built
to house these workers. This way, the new capital retained its image as a ‘clean city’, where the
80 Lefebvre’s attempts to better theorize the experience of ‘everyday life’ and alienation under capitalism was met
with scepticism. Literature on Western Marxism remains strikingly silent on Lefebvre’s contribution to current
Marxist thought. Marx had never really aimed his attention to the city, only Friedrich Engels wrote on the urban
question of housing the working class, but according to Lefebvre only touched the surface of dooming urban future.
Marie Huchzermeyer. ‘Humanism, creativity and rights: invoking Henri Lefebvre’s right to the city in the tension
presented by informal settlements in South Africa today.’ Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa
85 (2014) 68; Lukasz Stanek, ‘Space as concrete abstraction: Hegel, Marx, and modern urbanism in Henri Lefebvre’
in Space, Difference, Everyday Life, ed. Goonewardena et al. (2008) 69. 81 Lefebvre quoted in Neil Brenner, Stuart Elden, ‘Henri Lefebvre on State, Space, Territory’, International Political
Sociology 3 no. 4 (Dec 2009) 359.
29
‘traditional’ characteristics of Brazilian city-life could not take root.82 However, by creating a
spatial schism between the workforce and the civil servants, the city planners abandoned the
socialist principles of Costa and Niemeyer. Because there was no place for peripheral space in the
blueprints of Costa and Niemeyer, these worker-settlements were supposed to be temporary.
Nevertheless, the workers quickly claimed their right to the city (mostly with the help of force)
and their settlements were slowly legalized. The build-up of peripheral space in Brasilia led to a
clear class dimension in the city. The contrast between Plano Piloto and its outskirts is striking.
As Holston puts it in 1989, ‘there is not one satellite within 14 kilometers of the Plano Piloto.
Thus, the passage between center and periphery is uncompromisingly stark’.83 Even with the
continues growth of the periphery, ‘the authorities have kept the elite center surrounded by its
wide moat’.84
Niemeyer and Costa, inspired by Soviet avant-gardism, tried to reshape the way cities
constitute our everyday life. Looking at the blueprint for Brasilia, it sometimes seems like an
antitheses to the existing, colonial constructed cities of Brazil like São Paulo and Rio the Janeiro.
Or in the words of Scott, ‘in some important respects, Brasilia is to São Paulo or Rio as scientific
forestry is to the unplanned forest. Both plans are highly legible, planned simplifications devised
to create an efficient order that can be monitored and directed from above.’85 The disappearance
of the streets and the squares, essential nodal points for commerce, religion, social interaction,
resistance, and civic institutions in the traditional Brazilian city, left many Brasilienses
disorientated when moving to Brasilia. Brasilia does have squares and streets but as I elaborated
before, streets only had a single function and the squares of Brasilia are so vast that it is better to
speak of ‘open spaces’ (or non-spaces). The ‘slicing up’ of space into segments of work, housing,
recreation, and traffic left a ‘one-dimensional city’ and affects the way Brasilienses experience
space and time.86 The local human purpose of a city disappears and is mobilized by an abstract
82 Holston, The Modernist City (1989) 200. 83 Holston, The Modernist City (1989) 293. 84 Holston, The Modernist City (1989) 294. 85 Scott, Seeing Like a State (1998) 125. 86 The term ‘one-dimensional’ is borrowed from Herbert Marcuze’s concept ‘the one-dimensional man’, which tried
to describe the way capitalism and technological rationalism flattens discourse, imagination, politics, culture into a
one-dimension paradigm that tries to cripple negation (two-dimensional). However, instead of following Marcuze’s
argument on the totalitarianism of consumerism, I want to highlight the ruling paradigm of capitalization and the
way it shapes the urban. More so than consumerism, capitalization gives us an idea of the main drives of capitalists
today. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Routledge
Classics 2002 [1964])
30
top-down morality/ideology.87 When the lights turn off after office hours in the core of the city,
the vertical line that represents the body of the plane (workspace), the lights are turned on in the
wings, the space of living. The linear time of this work-living relation (and recreation and
transport as well) is highlighted by the use of extreme abstract space. As Marx tried to describe
the abstraction/dehumanization of the worker into a ‘purely mechanical activity’,88 de-skilled and
simplified, Lefebvre talks about space and illustrates how the space is dehumanized into a mere
abstraction for the purpose of capital growth and state power. Escapement from this abstract logic
(in the case of Brasilia) seems virtually impossible because it is defined within the landscape.
I define high-modernism as the belief that both ‘the natural’ and ‘the social’ world can be
completely rearranged by technoscience and rational planning. However, when talking about the
urban forms that high-modernism can take (e.g. Brasilia and Islamabad), or other ‘actual existing
high modernisms’, we have to be careful to not fall into a Eurocentric trap by correlating today’s
urban high modernity exclusively with Corbusier. Even when talking about Brasilia, references to
only Corbusier are problematic and do not take into account the context in which these ideas
were shaped. For the sake of the length of this thesis, these problems are disregarded. Brasilia is
not the aim of this study, it merely serves as an example of how high modernist urban theory,
while keeping a face of neutrality, consistently embeds ideologies/moralities into its urban fabric
and obscures existing relations on the ground. Although, as I showed in this chapter, Corbusier
has been crucial in shaping ideas on high-modernism, Egypt’s relation with this ideology has
developed within a specific history of technoscience and materiality,89 therefore, it is important to
discuss the context in which these ideas were shaped. High-modernism is fluid and is constantly
(re)invented by different actors in different circumstances. The cities that shape our imagination
today are not Brasilia and Islamabad, instead they are for instance Singapore and Dubai.
Especially the influence of Dubai’s high modernism over the Arab world is crucial in
understanding contemporary high-modernism in Egypt. Several scholars have turned to the
concept of ‘Dubaiization’ or ‘Dubai-esque’ to conceptualize Dubai’s influence not only over the
87 This does not mean that ‘real’ Brasilia is devoid of humanity. As Lefebvre showed us with his dialectic, even in
the most abstract spaces people produce their own spaces and give meaning to their landscape. There is a constant
struggle over the production of space. 88 Nitzan and Bichler, Capital as Power (2009) 140. 89 In the article ‘Hydropolitics, Economy, and the Aswan High Dam in Mid-Century Egypt.’, Ahmed Shokr gives us
an idea of how these specific relations played out when building the Aswan Dam. This offers a revisionary analysis
of the modern history of Egypt. Shokr, Ahmad. ‘Hydropolitics, Economy, and the Aswan High Dam in Mid-Century
Egypt’ The Arab Studies Journal 17, no. 1 (2009): 9-31.
31
Arab regions but throughout the whole world. It seems as if Dubai inspires modern urban
planning and architecture with achieving the unimaginable. Dubai has extended our
‘technological scope’ by building the highest tower in the world, a ski slope in the desert (in a
mall), and a palm tree-shaped island. This creates the illusion that the natural world knows no
limits at the hands of the high modernist planner and it broadens the horizon of renewed utopian
planning and social engineering.
2.2 Internal colonization
To better conceptualize the forces at
work trying to take hold of the everyday
of people, both Scott and Lefebvre turn
to the idea of ‘domestic colonization’.90
Lefebvre’s idea on this form of
colonization developed with the waning
of the French Empire and the growing
American influence of
Fordism/Taylorism in France. According
to Lefebvre (in the words of Kristin
Ross), during this period certain
‘rational administrative techniques developed in the colonies were brought home and put to use
side by side with new technological innovation.’91 American technological tools and
rational/scientific instrumentalism entered the houses of people through household innovations
and cars. By combining these techniques with new forms of ‘colonial efficiency’ (exported from
the colonies), these innovations changed everyday life in France permanently:
‘Paradoxically, under neocapitalism, exploitation has taken the form of internal
colonisation. People are waking up to these developments. Organised capitalism now has
its colonies in the metropoles and it deploys the colonial mode of control when it banks
on the internal market[…] Metropolitan populations are regrouped into ghettos (the
90 Scott, Seeing Like a State (1998) 72. 91 Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (MIT Press 1996
[1995])
Figure 5: Typical high-modernist aesthetic of Egyptian social housing
programs https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-egypt-cairo/demolition-on-
the-nile-puts-squeeze-on-two-cairo-districts-idUKKCN1M619E
32
suburbs, foreigners, factories, the students) and new towns have certain features that
remind us of colonial cities.’92
According to Lefebvre, the urban landscape of France developed into a hegemonic landscape.
Outside of the centre of political and economic power (the centre of knowledge, consumption,
and investments), the periphery was increasingly organised and fragmentized into secluded
compartments, an accumulation of ghetto’s, managed from dominant centres.93 These ideas of
Lefebvre are quite deterministic (later he nuanced his position slightly94) and are still rooted in a
Eurocentric approach to Marx’s narrow understanding of the financial economy. Scott, however,
dusts off this idea of domestic colonization and gives us a better and more contemporary
explanation. The effort by the state to colonize everyday life has, according to Scott, the
characteristics of “a ‘civilizing mission.’ The builders of the modern nation-state do not merely
describe, observe, and map; they strive to shape a people and landscape that will fit their
techniques of observation.”95 As we saw before, not only the state tries to reshape space in order
to fit its own simplistic logic, private corporations, with their inherent relation to future revenues,
also form a crucial part in this process. Or in the words of Scott, ‘a private corporation aiming to
maximize sustainable timber yields, profit, or production will map its world according to this
logic and will use what power it has to ensure that the logic of its map prevails. The state has no
monopoly on utilitarian simplifications.’96 Especially with the case of Egypt, understanding the
shared power of both the corporation and the state, or what Nitzan and Bichler would refer to as
‘organized power’, in shaping the space for the new capital is crucial. These forces operate within
a certain logic (see high-modernism and capitalization) and have certain ideas on how a ‘perfect
and durable society’ should look like. The desert of Egypt became a playground for these
capitalist and high modernist dreams.97
92 Stefan Kipfer and Kanishka Goonewardena, ‘Urban Marxism and the Post-colonial Question: Henri Lefebvre and
‘Colonization’, Historical Materialism, 21 no. 2 (2013) 99. 93 Kipfer and Goonewardena, ‘Urban Marxism and the Post-colonial Question’ (2013) 97 and ‘Colonization and the
New Imperialism: On the Meaning of Urbicide Today.’, Theory & Event 10, no. 2 (2007). 94 Kipfer and Goonewardena, ‘Urban Marxism and the Post-colonial Question’ (2013) 89. 95 Scott, Seeing Like a State (1998) 82. 96 Scott, Seeing Like a State (1998) 87. 97 In a recent attempt to ‘civilize’ the streets of Cairo, the government has called for a massive paintjob of the
buildings surrounding the large highways. Owners of these houses are forced to paint their houses in order to create a
more aesthetic appealing ‘experience’ when driving on these highways. This example, helps us understand the
strange logic underpinning the state’s call for modernization/civilization that often is just an equivalent to
‘beautifying’, and that in reality only concerns the well off. An image of civility and modernization has to be staged
33
‘The vision is a new, world-class city reflective of the rich heritage of Egypt, whilst delivering a
higher quality of life for existing and future generations.’
- Mostafa Madbouly, Prime Minister of Egypt98
in these streets to delude the tourists and the more wealthy classes on their way to the satellite cities or the pyramids.
In the meantime, the people owning these houses (relatively poor people) are left with the burden of painting their
houses. Declan Walsh, ‘What to Do About Cairo’s ‘Uncivilized’ Buildings? President Orders Epic Paint Job’, The
New York Times, March 8 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/world/middleeast/egypt-cairo-sisi-pyramds-
ring-road.html; Adham Selim, ‘Slums, Gated Communities and Public Space’, MadaMasr, October 19 2016.
https://madamasr.com/en/2016/10/19/feature/culture/slums-gated-communities-and-public-space/ 98 ‘The Required Birth of a New City’, darmagazine i16 (January 2019) 46.
Figure 6: Masterplan of the Green River and Business District https://www.aljazeera.net/news/ebusiness/2019/2/2
34
3. The New Administrative Capital
In March 2015, only two years after the popular military coup, the first plans for a new
administrative city between Cairo and Suez were presented during a conference in Sharm el-
Sheikh. However, these plans fell through after the leading financier for the capital, Capital City
Partners, owned by the Emirati businessman Mohamed Alabbar, backed out of the initial deal. A
second attempt to resume the project was initiated with Chinese backing but also this joint project
between the Egyptian and Chinese state fell through due to differences over the financial picture
of the project. Eventually, the Egyptian government decided to proceed alone and quickly after
this decision, constructions started and a wide highway between the port city Ain Sokhna and
Cairo (the new capital lays in-between) was built. The original 2015 design of ‘the Capital Cairo’
by Skidmore Owings & Merfill were abandoned and a new city was sketched.99 This time, a local
group of architects and planners, united as Urban Development Consortium +5 (UDC +5), were
responsible for the design. Chinese companies, however, never completely disappeared from the
picture and it seems as if they are still involved in some projects within the new capital. The
financing and construction of the business district, including the highest tower of Africa, is a joint
project with the China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC).100 In addition, in a
recent statement on the Facebook page of the new capital, it was revealed that the Chinese
government has extended a loan of 1.2 billion dollars for an electric train connecting the new city
to Cairo (Madinat al-Salam) and some of the satellite cities.101
Reliable information on the new capital is scarce because statements disappear as fast as
they appear or get contradicted in later announcements. This creates confusion and makes writing
99 There seems to be much confusion on the architectural bureau responsible for the current design. Many sources
(including Sims) state that the current design is still the work of SOM, however, this seems to be unlikely. SOM has
made no public announcements on the project since their design was published in 2015 (this design is different from
the current design). Also UDC +5 states quite clear that they are responsible for the current ‘Masterplanning’ and
‘Architectural Character and Design’ on their website. The thesis ‘Cairo’s New Administrative Capital Wedian City:
Lessons from the Past and for the Future’ by Mirette Khorshed also comes to the same conclusion. ‘Cairo New
Administrative Capital – Wedian’ 5+ UDC http://www.udc5.com/project/wedian-new-capital-city/, the first plans by
SOM: ‘Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Leading City Planning for New Egyptian Capital City’, SOM, 13 February 2015
https://www.som.com/news/skidmore_owings__merrill_leading_city_planning_for_new_egyptian_capital_city;
Khorshed, ‘Cairo’s New Administrative Capital’ (2017). 100 Mirette Magdy ‘China to Finance Majority of New Egypt Capital's Tower District’, Bloomberg, 18 March 2018
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-18/china-to-finance-majority-of-new-egypt-capital-s-tower-
district 101 Facebook Page: ‘al-ʿĀṣima al-ʾIdāriyya al-Jadīda’- The Capital Cairo’
https://www.facebook.com/SmartCityEg/posts/2048053318826777 and ‘4 sharakāt Maṣriyya tanaffidh mashrūʿ qaṭār
al-ʿĀṣima al-ʾIdāriyya al-mukahrab’, Ṣawt al-Ama, 22 February 2019,
http://www.soutalomma.com/Article/858887/4
35
this thesis hard. For the government, it is important to keep a tight grip on the information
circulating about the new capital. Maintaining an uplifted mood among investors is crucial for the
project’s financial feasibility. According to official statements, the new capital will not be
financed with money from the state budget. Instead, it will be paid through land deals, private
investments, and loans (better explained in Chapter 5).102 Negative reports can have serious
consequences for the seemingly ever-growing Egyptian real-estate market and the government
desperately tries to protect the image of this successful market. News relating to the new capital
has to be seen in this context. At the same time, however, the daily advertisements on Facebook
and real-estate platforms are mostly aimed at investors/end-users.103 This means that the
government in these pictures and videos set a standard of how the future will look like, on which
the investors will capitalize. To a certain extent, these investors put their trust in the
government’s power to deliver this standard and it is important for the government to not lose
face, especially because the new capital’s project has become the main project of the current
military regime. In order to not damage today’s value, the government is obliged to secure the
belief in their future capabilities by portraying this power in the present.104 So while the
government keeps a tight grip on the information circulating on the new capital, the information
that does see the daylight sets a standard of ‘promises’ to the investing capital.105 There are some
sources that do operate outside of the official rhetoric and offer critical reflections on the new
capital, especially news agencies outside of Egypt (e.g. the Guardian, the Independent, the
Economist, and Carnegie). From inside Egypt, MadaMasr has been helpful in understanding
some of the handlings surrounding the new capital, especially when it comes to its financial
picture.
With the new conceptual design (by UDC +5), maps (see figure 8 and 9), a video,106 and
other advertisement was released that gives us a general idea of the layout of the city. 107 I will
102 Aḥmad ʿĪsā, ‘al-Ḥukūma: muwāzana al-dawla lā tataḥammal ayya aʿbāʾ fi tamwīl inshāʾ al-ʿĀṣima al-ʾIdāriyya
al-Jadīda’, Aghbāran al-Yawm, 5 March 2019 https://akhbarelyom.com/news/newdetails/2814884/1 103 Facebook Page: ‘al-ʿĀṣima al-ʾIdāriyya al-Jadīda’- The Capital Cairo’; ‘Aqārmāb,
https://egypt.aqarmap.com/ar/neighborhood/cairo/ 104 The Egyptian government up till now has been quite successful in demonstration their force. Constructions are
showing progress at an unprecedented speed. This show of power raises the value of these lands and will convince
investors to capitalize. 105 We should not overstate these promises. Commercials have a tendency to paint a rosy picture and it would be
naïve to think that investors will expect that the new capital will look exactly like these images. 106 Cube Consultants, ‘The Capital Cairo – al-ʿĀṣima al-ʾIdāriyya al-Jadīda’, Vimeo video 107 ‘26 Wonderful information in number about The New Administrative Capital’ https://www.c-egy.com/en/about-
capital
36
briefly discuss the information presented in these sources so we will be able to construct a mental
picture of the projected city.
Figure 7: The Ring Tower, https://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=2083071
Phase 1: The ‘phase one layout’ is the centre of the project and constitutes 168 km2 (40.000 FD)
of the total area of 714 km2 (170.000 FD) and needs to house around 1.5 million people. This
area is the main focus of construction at the moment. This space will be subdivided into:
- Green park and river.
- Eight residential zones: a total of 25 km2.
- Business District.
- Government District: 4,5 km2.
- Medical City: 2,26 km2.
- Knowledge City: 1,49 km2.
- Smart Village: 0,86 km2.
- Conference Zone: 1 km2.
- Expo City: 3,78 km2. Opera (3 halls).
37
The total area of the city will be 714 km2 and needs to house 6,5 million people. The area will be
subdivided into:
- Housing: 40% of the city (285,6 km2) is allocated as ‘living space’, this area is divided
into 20 resident districts and 13 valleys. The districts are subdivided into ‘high-density’
(35%), ‘mid-density’ (50%) and ‘ low-density’ (15%) areas. Most likely, this degradation
also reflects their future prices. Per capita at least 15m2 of green space is promised. With
6,5 million people this means 97,5 km2 of green space.
- Business: 30% of the city (214,2 km2) is allocated as business area and is divided into
several ‘specializations’.108
- 20 ‘areas’ of 8 km2 for large investments.
- A business area of 8 km2.
- An industrial zone of 11,5 km2.
- A solar farm of 11,5 km2, that together with a solar system on the roofs of the residential
district will provide the city with 70% of its energy.
- Urban development/Real-estate area of 50 km2.
108 We should not forget that the housing area is also meant for real-estate investments.
Figure 8: Phase One of The New Administrative Capital https://cubeconsultants.org/home/cairocapital/
38
- Roads: The roads in the new capital extent over 650 km. 40% of the road system is
allocated for bicycles and pedestrians. It is not clear if this 40% is part of the greater
network of 650 km (so 260 km).
- The River/park: 25 km2.
- Airport: 33 km2.
Facilities
- 1250 mosques and churches.
- 2000 schools and colleges.
- 600 medical facilities.
- 40.000 hotel rooms.
To put it in perspective, the new capital has a larger surface than Cairo (606 km2) and is projected
to house around 6.5 million people (official numbers estimate Cairo’s population at around 9/10
Figure 9: The 13 Valleys of the New Administrative Capital, https://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=2083071
39
million109). The projected scale of the city is unprecedented. For example, Brasilia, as planned by
Costa and Niemeyer, had to house around 600.000 people. In contrast to the dense urban spaces
in Cairo, the new capital promises spaciousness and a multitude of green parks. This desire for
spaciousness and ‘greenery’ is not new and was already part of earlier desert schemes (Sadat city,
Sixth of October). Especially in recent years, the idea of a spacious city became an important
marketing tool. The desert city was promoted as an antipode of the cities in the Nile Valley with
its crowded metros, congested streets, gray flats, and unwalkable sidewalks. Life in the desert
provides safety, a ‘natural’ habitat, calmness, luxury, a healthy environment, and like-minded
people. The idea of the desert as an open and ‘healthy’ space became an important marketing
strategy. Large Billboards and slick videos with computer-animated images are able to give
people an experience of these future utopias.110 The layout of the new administrative capital is
one of the best examples of this hyperbole.
In this thesis, I make numerous comparisons to the previous satellite cities built either by
Sadat or Mubarak. Although, I think these comparisons are justified, we also have to look at
some clear-cut differences between previous schemes in the desert and the current plan for the
new capital. The amount of resources being mobilized for the new capital is exceptional in Egypt
(in comparison to previous desert schemes), the government puts its money where its mouth is
and seems to be determined to make the project a success. Additionally, the fact that the new
capital will be the new seat of the government makes the new capital different from any previous
city-scheme initiatives by the government. By housing the most important state institutions, the
new capital will have a natural pull-factor for new inhabitants, embassies, foreign guests,
services, and businesses. These elements make the new capital different from other desert city
schemes and might contribute to its future success.
4. Justifying the New Administrative Capital
‘We need a landmark, a new capital. We have the right to have a dream and this is our dream.’
- El-Husseiny, Chairman of ACUD111
109 The Greater Cairo region houses around 19 million people. 110 Mohamad Abotera and Safa Ashoub, ‘Billboard Space in Egypt: reproducing nature and dominating spaces of
representation’, Urban Transcripts 111 Ruth Michaelson, “Cairo has started to become ugly': why Egypt is building a new capital city’, The Guardian, 8
May 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/may/08/cairo-why-egypt-build-new-capital-city-desert
40
In this chapter, I have distilled the five most important justifications for the New Administrative
Capital. Most of the justifications are supported by the official narrative (congestion, housing
crisis, jobs, and safety) but I have also added a fifth (unofficial) justification, ‘the legitimacy of
the current government’ that I believe should be briefly discussed as well (better explained in the
section itself). At the same time, with the logic of the desert, capitalization, and high modernism
in mind, I want to have a closer look at the justifications and discuss the context that shapes these
ideas. As I will show, many of the legitimations are problematic and are either based on ‘a false
reading’ of Cairo’s problems or propose dubious solutions. The section ‘safety’ will also discuss
the (unofficial) ‘deeper’ reasons why the current Egyptian government might find a large isolated
city in the desert a smart idea.
4.1 Congestion
The main justification for the new capital is Cairo’s congestion. Congestion is a real problem in
Cairo. Streets are blocked, metros are overcrowded, and public spaces are scarce, if not non-
existent. In addition, Cairo is one of the most polluted cities on earth.112 The problem of
congestion and pollution are so relatable because people face these barriers every day. Solutions
for congestion could be the enlargement of the public transport,113 discouraging car usage, and
opening privatised spaces for the public. However, these measurements are not shared by the
logic of capitalization and, therefore, by the powerful institutions dictating large city projects in
Egypt. Real profits are made in land deals on the outskirts in the desert and here is where the
dominant powers propose the ‘solution’ for congestion; a dispersion of the urban into the desert.
The urbanization of the desert in the past fifty years shows that this idea became self-evident.
Still, as Sims shows, satellite desert cities have not relieved Cairo of its traffic, the opposite is
true. Because most of the satellite cities are still in some way dependent on the centre of Cairo
(work, leisure, public institution), these cities/neighbourhoods have worsened the situation on the
road. An increasing number of people are dependent on the car and have to travel greater
distances to reach their desired destination (hence increasing Cairo’s pollution). The new capital
will only contribute to these problems. Looking at the pictures presenting the layout of the city, it
looks as if the city is surrounded by empty desert, however, this is far from reality. The New
112 ‘Cairo is world’s second most polluted city: WHO’, Egypt Independent, 15 May 2018.
https://ww.egyptindependent.com/cairo-is-worlds-second-most-polluted-city-who/ 113At the moment, a third metro line in Cairo is being built. However, the construction of this metro line takes time
and the new metro line does not connect any satellite cities to the urban core of Cairo.
41
Administrative Capital will be connected to the huge satellite neighbourhood New Cairo (500
km2) and is 62 kilometres (71 km via the Suez Desert Highway) away from the centre of Cairo
(see figure 10). The new capital will develop as part of the Greater Cairo region. People might
live in Cairo and work in the new capital, or the other way around. This means that it will
contribute to its traffic congestion. The new capital will increasingly force people to buy a car
and to take part in the daily bottlenecks to and from the centre of Cairo.
Figure 10: On the left, we see Cairo and Giza, in the middle we see New Cairo, and on the right, we see the new capital. This
picture gives us an idea of the magnitude of the eastern urban expansion (including the new capital). This eastern expansion
alone is around 1500 km2 and is larger than for instance Los Angeles.
http://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=30.066717&lon=31.521835&z=11&m=w&search=cairo
4.2 Housing crisis
The second justification for the new capital is the housing crises in Cairo and the urban
encroachment of the fertile land of the Nile Valley. Encroachment is rightly seen as a great
danger to the future of the agricultural land in Egypt. Many villages in the Delta are slowly
expanding and ‘eating’ the precious land of the Delta. Developing desert land could be one of the
ways to deal with this threat. By its aspiration to attract a considerate portion of Cairo’s current
population, the new capital tries to provide Cairenes with alternative adequate housing. Also, the
relocation of government institutions can create new spaces for housing in Cairo. On paper, these
ambitions seem like the right move to ease the pressure on the housing market in Cairo at the
moment. However, yet again, the problems that satellite cities face today cannot be overlooked
and could be an indicator for the future of the new capital. Around 12,8 million units are left
42
vacant in the newly built satellite towns in Egypt (around 4.7 million in the Greater Cairo
Region).114 This is not only a problem of the new towns but also in the high red-brick flats of the
informal areas (ʿashwaʾiyyāt) many floors are left empty (an estimation of these empty units is
more difficult). If the government could find ways to discourage the misuse of property in Egypt,
a lot of dead capital would be ‘freed’ and houses would be made available.115 The most important
reasons for vacancy is the disastrous management of public land and the Egyptian real-estate
revenue model, where units are sold and bought purely for investment reasons. There are no clear
signs that the new capital will offer a radically different approach.
There are some proposals that could help the Egyptian economy to get out of this
impasse, however, the most important argument directly problematizes the ongoing construction
of the new capital. Sims argues that any reform needs to start with ‘a presidential decree that
freezes any further wholesale public land allocations to the main sectoral agencies (NUCA, TDA,
GARPAD and GAID) and all ‘retail’ sales or other land disposals by them to investors or any
other end users for a period of five years.’116 This five-year period can then be used to evaluate
the already existing projects in the desert, to move forward with stalled projects, and to tackle the
systematic problem of vacancy (by which millions of houses could be made available). However,
we can expect that a proposal like this will lead to an outcry of the powerful capitalists and
government officials profiting from these schemes so only a strong collective voice (as we have
seen in 2011) is able to achieve something of the like. Nevertheless, when it comes to the new
capital, this proposal seems to be too late and would be a huge waste of the already invested
resources. The key objective for the new capital is, therefore, to not make the same mistakes of
the earlier satellite city schemes and to make sure the real-estate market of the new capital does
not become another toxic profit-making machine that could result in many empty and unfinished
structures. In response to these problems, the chairman of ACUD responded with the following
statement,
‘I think when people find all needed services and road networks, as well as, high-class
utilities, large green spaces and high-quality technological infrastructure, they will move
114 ‘Total Number of Vacant Housing Units in Egypt 12,8 mn: CAPMAS’, Egypt Independent, 2 October 2017.
https://ww.egyptindependent.com/total-number-vacant-housing-units-egypt-12-8-mn-capmas/ Around a third of
these structures are not completely finished. 115 I call this ‘dead capital’ because this capital has been taken out of the crucial capital flows/circulation of the
economy. Instead, this capital just ‘sits’ there in the hope for a better future. 116 At least five years are necessary to implement radical reforms. Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 305.
43
immediately to live in the city. Moreover, we required developers to deliver their units
fully finished so clients won’t deal with the hassle of finishing.’117
It is a wise decision to force developers in delivering fully finished units. If enforced, this might
tackle the problem of undeveloped structures (as is seen everywhere in Cairo). However, whether
this is indeed the must-needed solution against vacancy is everything but clear. Especially with
the various powers backing the project, many Egyptians will be tempted to invest their money in
these structures (finished or unfinished). Sims presents three other possible measurements that
could deal with land speculations.118 First, performance bonds (between 20% and 50% of the
project’s total investment value) that would force investors to finish the scheme within the
contractual time, otherwise they would lose this bond. Second, releasing land under usufruct
(long lease) contracts in order to reduce speculative intent. And third, enforce an annual property
tax in order to discourage the misuse of land purely for investment reasons.119 However, for the
government, keeping the city attractive for the end-user is its first and foremost priority. These
kinds of laws could scare investors away.
Another important question is how the new capital might contribute to the saturation of
the fast growing Egyptian real-estate market that could lead to a bubble and eventually a burst.
However, we should take into account the ‘unique’ conditions in which real-estate in Egypt
operates. Real-estate in Egypt relies mostly on payments in cash, this makes the situation
different than for instance in the US, where credit penetration is much higher.120 A crash like the
one between 2007-2009 in the US is, therefore, much more unlikely in Egypt. At the same time,
there are signs that point to serious problems in the Egyptian real-estate and trigger a speculative
bubble. In recent years, an enormous supply of housing is created by the massive scale of housing
schemes in the desert. However, these houses are only affordable for a small section of the
population. Especially the mid- to low-end segments experience an insufficient housing supply
117 Shaimaa Ghanem, ‘New Administrative Capital Is An Incomparable Integrated City: ACUD Chairman’, Invest-
Gate, 7 November 2018 https://invest-gate.me/features/new-administrative-capital-is-an-incomparable-integrated-
city-acud-chairman/ 118 We have to see these measurements within the larger picture of what Sims calls ‘the New/Reformed System’.
Here, Sims proposes a new system that could reform the current ‘disastrous’ methods of developing desert land.
Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 301-315. 119 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 312-313. 120 Mohammad Gad and Alya El Marakby (translation), ‘On the Egyptian pound, living standards and real estate: An
economy forecast for 2019’, MadaMasr, 2 January 2019 https://madamasr.com/en/2019/01/02/feature/economy/on-
the-egyptian-pound-living-standards-and-real-estate-an-economy-forecast-for-2019/
44
because the prices are too high for their targeted demand.121 Also, the new capital will not be able
to provide this segment with sufficient housing (better explained in Chapter 7 in the section ‘the
housing district and the people that might occupy them’) and these people are, therefore, still
forced into the informal sector.122 The fear, also underlined by Sims,123 is a saturation of the
housing market that could eventually create financial problems for the new capital.
4.3 Jobs
The third justification for initiating a grand project like the new capital are the job and investment
opportunities. The initial stage of building the city has already generated jobs for a large number
of people (a realistic figure on the number of jobs generated by the new capital up to now is hard
to come by) and we can expect constructions to continue for many years to come. Especially for
young Egyptians, who are struggling to find jobs,124 projects like these are important and can
support them in building an independent life in Egypt. However, the temporality of these jobs has
to be noted. State-led job creation projects can help people to get on their feet but is not a
structural solution for unemployment in Egypt. In the logic of Keynes, large projects could
effectively drive salaries up and, therefore, demand but due to inflation, wages do not seem to be
rising in Egypt.125 As discussed earlier, the long-term jobs that the city tries to generate are
largely unreachable for the average Egyptian. We should make no illusions about the vacancies in
the large glass towers of the business district, these will not be occupied by people struggling to
make ends meet in any of the informal areas of Cairo today.
It is hard to obtain exact figures on the number of permanent jobs desert projects have
generated. In Egypt’s Desert Dreams, Sims makes a few estimations on this number. According
121 According to NUMBEO, a crowd-sourced global database, Cairo has a house price-to-income of 12.75, making it
a less affordable city than for instance Dubai or New York (however, these numbers should be taken with a grain of
salt). NUMBEO, ‘Property Prices Index 2019’, Accessed 23 May 2019 https://www.numbeo.com/property-
investment/rankings.jsp 122 Omar el-Shenety, ‘Mid to Low-End Housing: The Unattended Market Segments’, Alternative Policy Solutions, 3
February 2019. http://www.aps.aucegypt.edu/en/commentary-post/mid-to-low-end-housing-the-unattended-market-
segments/ 123 In the words of Sims, ‘My fear is that demand might be too thin, given the huge and growing market supply.’
Emanuele Midolo, ‘Inside Egypt’s New Capital’, Property Week, 8 March 2019.
https://www.propertyweek.com/insight/inside-egypts-new-capital/5101721.article 124 The World Bank estimated the youth unemployment of Egypt at 34% in 2018. ‘Unemployment, youth total (% of
total labor force ages 15-24) (modeled ILO estimate)’, Data retrieved in April 2019, The World Bank,
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.1524.ZS?locations=EG 125 Gad and El Marakby (translation), ‘On the Egyptian pound, living standards and real estate’, MadaMasr
https://madamasr.com/en/2019/01/02/feature/economy/on-the-egyptian-pound-living-standards-and-real-estate-an-
economy-forecast-for-2019/
45
to Sims, reclamation schemes have given around 125.000 people a livelihood and the new-town
programs have generated around 300.000 industrial jobs and 250.000 residue jobs. The special
industrial zones have created around 100.000 permanent positions and the tourism sector around
400.000. In total (reclamation, tourist, and industrial schemes included), sixty years of desert
projects have generated 1,2 million jobs and by including the indirect jobs, this number reaches
around 1,8 million (when being generous).126 Given the fact that around 750.000 people enter the
Egyptian job market each year, the desert has not proven to be the much-needed solution for
unemployment in Egypt (especially if one takes into account the financial toll of these schemes).
With the large business zone, that could offer new opportunities for Egyptian start-ups, the new
capital might do a bit better than the previous projects. Also, the fact that the new capital will
absorb sectors of the government contrasts with previous desert schemes. Some ministries of the
government will relocate their employees to the new capital, however, this will not create new
jobs and the scale of this relocation is everything but clear.127
4,4 The legitimacy of the current government
Improving the face of Egypt and legitimizing its current government is the fourth justification for
the new capital. The military regime has lost some of its initial popular support.128 The
enthusiasm of the popular coup and the power vacuum left after the bloody crackdown of the
Muslim Brotherhood gave the current regime a strong base for their rule. However, the
devaluation of the pound, the rise of fuel prices, and the repression of critical voices have left its
scars on the legitimacy of Sisi and his administration. Operation Sinai (against the terrorist
insurgency in North Sinai) was an important smoke screen for Egypt’s economic situation but by
now this show of force has lingered on for too long and has lost much of its initial praises. The
revolutionary spirit, which led to the toppling of Mubarak, seems to be effectively killed by the
military for now and Sisi still seems to be in a strong position, however, the recent events in
Sudan and Algeria must also worry Egyptian policymakers. The current regime could use a large-
126 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) 288-289. Sims does not cite any sources when it comes to these numbers so
checking these figures is not possible. 127 The highest mentioned number of government employees being moved to the new capital is 51.000. The
government has around 5 million employees (2,8 million in the Greater Cairo Region) so these numbers are
negligible. ‘Minister of Planning discusses transferring governmental bodies to New Administrative Capital’, Egypt
Independent, March 31 2019 https://ww.egyptindependent.com/minister-of-planning-discusses-transferring-
governmental-bodies-to-new-administrative-capital/; Sims, Understanding Cairo (2012) 212. 128 Marwa Fikry Abdel Samei, ‘El Sisi's tainted legitimacy’, open Democracy, 29 May 2014.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/el-sisis-tainted-legitimacy/
46
scale project like the new capital to strengthen its position and its legitimacy in the eyes of the
people. The Egyptian army has quite the reputation of ‘getting things done’ and also the new
capital can attest to this image.
4.5 Safety
The fifth and last justification is the concern for ‘safe spaces’. Due to the unrest and chaos during
and after the revolution of 2011, Egypt encountered terrorist insurgencies taking advantage of
this power vacuum. The consolidation of fundamentalist groups in Egypt resulted in many
terrorist attacks throughout the country and heavy fighting in North Sinai, where several of these
cells had infiltrated. Due to the fact that North Sinai became a no-go area for Egyptian and
international observers, the magnitude of what has happened/is happening in North of Sinai is
still not exactly clear129 besides the formal body count game (of alleged terrorists) by the
government, as if we are talking about reclaimed feddans again.130 At the same time, these
terrorist threats and the aftermath of the 2011 revolution have changed the face of Cairo.131 Blast
proof walls, blocked streets, heavy-armed soldiers, and military checkpoints are part of the daily-
life in Cairo today and also the new capital conforms to this safety rhetoric. In the new capital, a
system of cameras and other digital tools will be installed in order to protect the city and its
inhabitants (better discussed in Chapter 8 in the section ‘Smart City’). After some videos were
released showing a large wall within the new capital,132 rumour has it that this wall will
completely enclose the city. However, these sources are most likely wrong.133 The wall that was
filmed is part of a separate, highly protected scheme, just on the South-West border of the official
plans for the new capital. This so-called ‘Octagon’ or ‘military entity’ (al-Kiyān al-‘Askarī)134
129 ‘Egypt: Serious Abuses, War Crimes in North Sinai’, Human Rights Watch, 28 May 2019.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/05/28/egypt-serious-abuses-war-crimes-north-sinai 130 The 40 militants killed in North Sinai after the terrorist attack near the Giza Pyramids illustrates the strange logic
with which the Egyptian army operates. ‘Egypt police 'kill 40 militants' in raids after tourist bus blast’, BBC, 29
December 2018 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-46708695 131 Mona Abaza, ‘Walls, Segregating Downtown Cairo and the Mohammed Mahmud Street Graffiti’, Theory,
Culture & Society 30, no. 1 (January 2013). 132 ‘ Yūtūbiyyā ‘sūr al-‘Āṣima al-Idāriyya al-Jadīda”, YouTube video, posted by Mudawwana Uksijīn Maṣr, 5
September 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLiFJSgrJiU and ʿĀmer ʿAbd al- Munʿim, ‘Aswār al-ʿĀṣima
al-ʾIdāriyya wa al-hurūb al-kibīr’, al-Jazeera, 28 August 2017. http://mubasher.aljazeera.net/opinion 133 The spokesman of the New Administrative Capital denies this claim. al-Ḥadath al-Yawm, ‘ Mutaḥaddith al-
‘Āṣima al-’Idāriyya yarudd ‘alā shāʾi’āt al-Ikhwān ‘an inŝāʾ sūr ḥawl al-‘Āṣima al-’Idāriyya’, YouTube, 6 January
2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRnjXEkVIDE 134 It is not exactly clear why this ‘controversial’ name is used. al-Kiyān (the entity) is commonly used for Zionism,
the Zionist entity (al-Kiyān al-Ṣahiyyūnī).
47
will most likely be the new Headquarters of the Armed Forces (and the Ministry of Defence) and
might develop into the real heart of
the New Administrative Capital.
Google Earth gives us an idea of the
build-up of the area (that are not
included in the official plans). These
images show a huge blast proof wall
(thicker than the walls surrounding
the airport) enclosing this large area.
The pictures confirm the claim that
the Egyptian military is building an
(unannounced) military fort on the
edge of the new capital.135 Residential houses seem to be constructed within the compound but it
remains the subject of speculations as to who will occupy these houses.
Safety is evidently an important concern for the planners of the new capital, however,
who is this city trying to protect and from whom? In light of the complete crackdown of Egypt’s
civil society and the current number of political prisoners,136 should we completely rely on the
government’s narrative that the protection measurements in Cairo and the new capital are only
against ‘terrorists’ and ‘criminals’ (whomever they might be)? Some sources (al Jazeera,
Carnegie), out of reach from the Egyptian government, speculate on the more ‘darker’ motives
for the new capital. The new capital is built far away from Tahrir Square and its revolutionary
masses. As I discussed before, the average Egyptian will probably never inhabit the city. Only the
rich classes, often friendly to the status quo, can purchase a house in the new capital and belong
in this elitist safety corridor. In an article published at Carnegie, Michele Dunne makes the
analogy to the American Green Zone in the centre of Baghdad,137 where Little America was
recreated. This enwalled enclave accommodated a McDonalds, cinemas, and cafes and became
135 Karīm Muḥammad, “Qiṣṣat ‘al-kiyān al-ʿaskary’ dākhil al-ʿāṣima al-ʾidāriyya .. Burūj mushīda li-ḥimāyya al-Sīsī
wa-jinirālātuh”, Freedom and Justice Gate, 17 May 2018. https://fj-p.com 136 Human Rights Watcht estimates the number of political prisoners in Egypt at 60.000 (Sisi denies this). Richard
Hall, ‘Egypt's Sisi denies his country holds any political prisoners, but rights groups say tens of thousands detained’,
The Independent, 4 January 2019. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/egypt-political-prisoners-
abdel-fattah-alsisi-president-cbs-a8710951.html 137 Michele Dunne, ‘Sisi Builds a Green Zone for Egypt’, Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 27 November 2018.
https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/11/27/sisi-builds-green-zone-for-egypt-pub-77803
Figure 11: Figure 11: Google Earth picture of the construction of a military
zone, Google Earth,
https://earth.google.com/web/@29.93620233,31.64719012,430.38432625a,12
434.11157492d,35y,0h,0t,0r/data=CjoaEAoIL20vMDF3MnYYASABKAIiJgok
CZxchokKgzVAEZZchokKgzXAGdX75X3Ok
48
the symbol of the American delusion during the
occupation of Iraq. Disconnected from reality,
American planners, from out of their safe space,
tried to pick up the pieces and reorganize ravaged
Iraq while enjoying a Big Mac and a beer.138 If the
new capital actually does develop into an
exclusively upper-class city, protected by an
impenetrable military ford, the analogy between
the Green Zone and the new capital might not even
be too far off. By moving the government to this
safe elitist bubble, officials will be even more
disconnected from the current realities in Egypt and try to rule Egypt the way imperial states like
Great-Britain, the Netherlands, or the Soviet Union tried to rule/colonize large hegemonial
territories from enclosed spaces (the settlement, the home country, the capital city) far from the
daily realities.
5. Financing the New Administrative Capital
The total costs of the new capital are estimated between 45 and 58 billion dollars (800 billion/ 1
trillion EGP).139 No plan has been released on the details of these costs or the ways it will be
funded. The only official statement (besides some vague numbers) claims that not a single penny
from the state budget will be used in financing the new capital.140 The shareholders company, the
New Administrative Capital for Urban Development (ACUD) oversees the project and is owned
138 The journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran illustrates his visit to the Green Zone in Baghdad with the following words,
‘from inside the Green Zone, the real Baghdad—the checkpoints, the bombed-out buildings, the paralyzing traffic
jams—could have been a world away. The horns, the gunshots, the muezzin’s call to prayer, never drifted over the
walls. The fear on the faces of American troops was rarely seen by the denizens of the palace. The acrid smoke of a
detonated car bomb didn’t fill the air. The sub-Saharan privation and Wild West lawlessness that gripped one of the
world’s most ancient cities swirled around the walls, but on the inside, the calm sterility of an American subdivision
prevailed.’ This quote highlights the ‘otherworldliness’ of the Green Zone in Baghdad. Rajiv Chandrasekaran,
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone (2006) 21. 139 The consensus seems to be 45 million, however, in a recent article, Reuters estimates the costs at 58 billion
dollars. Aidan Lewis and Mohamed Abdellah, ‘Egypt's new desert capital faces delays as it battles for funds’,
Reuters, 13 May 2019. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-new-capital/egypts-new-desert-capital-faces-delays-
as-it-battles-for-funds-idUSKCN1SJ10I 140 Beesan Kassab, ‘The new administrative capital: Outside the state budget or outside public accountability?’,
MadaMasr, 25 May 2019. https://madamirror12.appspot.com/madamasr.com/en/2019/05/25/feature/economy/the-
new-administrative-capital-outside-the-state-budget-or-outside-public-accountability/
Figure 12: The Military Entity and its Wall
49
49% by NUCA (New Urban Communities Authority), affiliated with the Ministry of Housing, 141
and 51% by two military-affiliated bodies, Armed Forces National Land Projects Agency and
National Service Products Organization. These institutions have provided ACUD with an initial
cash injection of 216 billion EGP (204 according to the Guardian in 2016) in order to get the first
constructions off the ground.142 In addition, ACUD has added around 24 billion of paid-up capital
to their capital liquidity.143 Both the NUCA and the Armed Forces are financially independent
and have their own budget, separated from the state (at least in their own perception). NUCA
creates its revenues through land-deals, while the Armed Forces, over the years, have acquired
large tracts of (mostly) desert land and are one of the largest investors in Egypt.144 The fact that
these institutions claim that they are independent of the state budget partly explains the
nontransparent ACUD budget up till now. Because the new capital is chiefly a military project,
even the parliament is not able to review ACUD’s expenses.145 In a recent article, Beesan Kassab
of MadaMasr, questions the independent status of ACUD and the way it positions itself outside
of the state budget. Even though financially independent, both NUCA and the Armed Forces are
public institutions and, accordingly, their budget should be subjected to public review. In
addition, the allocated land for the new capital is public property (state owned), this should give
the Parliament and the general public the right to be informed on the new capital costs and
revenues. Most importantly, however, as AUC Professor Mostafa Kamel al-Sayed puts it, ‘the
purpose behind the administrative capital project is entirely civilian and it cannot be deemed as a
project that would affect armaments in any way’, thus claiming that the opacity surrounding the
new capital’s budget is in no way justified.146
Besides the initial capital injection, the new capital will be chiefly financed by paid-up
private investments. Just as with the previous satellite cities, developing land is mostly the
concern of real-estate corporations. The army/government provides the investor with the plan,
141 Although financially independent, NUCA is a state institution and has the power to allocate public land for
development. Over the years, NUCA profited from shady land deals. Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) xxxiv,
125-126. 142 Michaelson, ‘Cairo has started to become ugly’, The Guardian. 143 Kassab, ‘The new administrative capital’, MadaMasr. 144 Cristina Casabón, ‘Egypt's military economy’, open Democracy, 29 July 2015.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/egypts-military-economy/; Laila Sawaf, ‘The Armed
Forces and Egypt’s land’, MadaMasr, 26 April 2016. https://madamasr.com/en/2016/04/26/feature/economy/the-
armed-forces-and-egypts-land/ 145 NUCA does publish its books but has not made a financial statement for 2018 yet. Kassab, ‘The new
administrative capital’, MadaMasr. 146 Kassab, ‘The new administrative capital’, MadaMasr.
50
layout, and basic utilities and the capitalist will capitalize on these plans by constructing for
instance units for residence or business. These residential houses or business structures will then
be sold or rented to the end-user or other investors. Hitherto,147 it seems as if large and familiar
corporations have a stake in the new capital. REMCO (project Stella Park),148 The Talaat Mustafa
group (project CELIA),149 Misr Real Estate Assets Management, Safwa Urban Development,150
The National Bank,151 and Amoun Co152 already oversee other desert projects in Egypt and also
have a stake in the new capital. There are different figures on the price these corporations paid to
obtained land. According to Sims, Talaat Mustafa (one of the largest real-estate companies of
Egypt) obtained land at a price of 1.500 EGP per m2 (payment is spread over 8 to 10 years).153
While the news agency Al-Arabiyya claims that the price for real estate corporation reaches up to
7000 EGP per m2 (repayment of 6 years).154 The investments by large Egyptian real-estate
agencies are crucial in making the scheme financially feasible. Therefore, we can expect that
large, familiar, and, in the eyes of the government, reliable corporations receive priority when it
comes to gaining access to the land. In addition, these corporations manoeuvre within a position
of power and especially the rich corporation will most likely receive concessions in order to keep
them on board. This way, the powerful alliance between the state and the corporation (organized
power) is kept intact and determines the shape of the city to be and the everyday life of its
inhabitants. Both the government and these corporations look for ways to exert their power over
these people and to incorporate them in their calculated logic of capitalization.
The prices for a square meter in the new capital range between 11,600 (apartment) and
19,150 (villa) EGP.155 An average apartment (150 m2) will cost around 1.75 million EGP. The
chairman of the ACUD claims that Egyptians with a salary of 8000 and above (which according
147 Fahīma Aḥmad, ‘Baʿd khaṭifha.. Hadhihi asʿār ʿaqārāt al-ʿĀṣima al-ʾIdāriyya’, Al Arabiya, 23 October 2017.
https://www.alarabiya.net/ar/aswaq/realestate/2017/10/23 148 Official Website Stella Park http://www.stellapark.com.eg/ 149 Official Website Midtown Egypt http://www.midtownegypt.com/ 150 Official Website SUD, ‘Commercial Projects’ https://sud.com.eg/projects/ 151 Manāl al-Maṣry, ‘al-Bank al-ahly yaḥguz 13 ʾalf mitr li-ʾiqāma farraʿ al-ʿĀṣima al-ʾIdāriyya’, Maṣarāwī, 14
Januari 2018. https://www.masrawy.com/news/news_economy/details/2018/1/14/1241635 152 Official Website Amoun Company http://www.amouncc.com/commercial.html 153 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) xxxiv. 154 Aḥmad, ‘‘Baʿd khaṭifha..’, Al Arabiya. 155 Both the real-estate website Aqarmab and Sims can give us some perspective on the general costs of housing in
Egypt. According to Aqarmab a square meter in New Cairo is 9.800-18.600 EGP, in Nasr City 6.700-14.550 EGP, in
Zamalek 22.100 EGP, and in Giza 3.750-5.500 EGP and for Greater Cairo proper, the 2008 study (before inflation)
estimated a square meter at around 923 EGP. ‘Dalīl asʿār ʿAqārāt al-Qāhira al-Kubra’, ʿAqārmāb, Accessed on 31
May 2019 https://egypt.aqarmap.com/ar/neighborhood/cairo/; Sims, Understanding Cairo (2012) 149.
51
to Sims is around 10 % of the population) will be able to afford a unit in the new capital.
Egyptians that are able to spend this kind of money can invest in the new capital by buying
individual plots for resale, rent, or personal use/investments.
According to the chairman of ACUD (stated in November 2018), around 80% of the land
in the first phase has been sold. 40/50% (20% according to Reuters) of these investors are
foreign.156 Foreign capital is crucial in making the project a success. The previous failed attempts
to cooperate with foreign investors prove the importance of foreign investors. Both the deal with
Emirati Mohamed Alabbar (Capital City Partners) and the 20 billion dollar loan from China
(meant for phase 2 and 3 of the project) fell through and it seems as if problems have not yet
disappeared. In a recent article, the news agency Reuters reported that foreign financiers are
creeping back at a fast pace.157 These troubles directly expose the financial fragility of the project
by putting all the trust in upfront capital and loans. Only if enough investors are on board, the
constructions can continue, otherwise, the project will have to tap into the state budget and this
would mean a loss of face for the regime. As explained before, the way in which the new capital
is financed largely explain the intransparent nature of the scheme. Any negative report could
damage the project and set in motion a downward spiral where investors would abandon the
project altogether. Reports on a speculative bubble, setbacks, and possible limitations of the
project are not welcome in this business climate. The government makes sure to exert their power
by discouraging or censoring these kinds of reports.
The financial backing by foreign capital also raises the question of concessions made by
the Egyptian authorities to these corporations and states. A recent article by MadaMasr shows
how large investments by Gulf states and Saudi-Arabia in the Toshka reclamation project, one of
the largest reclamation schemes in Egypt, have been a political tool to secure water and land for
agriculture over the borders. Even more than Egypt, the Arab peninsula faces water scarcity and
is concerned about its food security. By securing large tracts of land in Egypt (and other places),
corporations are entitled to a certain amount of water to reclaim these lands. The food, that is
grown on these lands is then exported to Saudi-Arabia and the Gulf. Although the Egyptian state
makes money with these arrangements, it is a peculiar and a controversial matter that the valuable
156 Lewis and Abdellah, ‘Egypt's new desert capital faces delays as it battles for funds’, Reuters; Ghanem, ‘New
Administrative Capital Is An Incomparable Integrated City: ACUD Chairman’, Invest-Gate. 157 Ghanem, ‘New Administrative Capital Is An Incomparable Integrated City: ACUD Chairman’, Invest-Gate.
52
and fragile source of Nile water is used to improve food security in the Arabian peninsula.158 This
article exposes some of the deeper incentives of foreign capital in Egypt and shows that a critical
outlook is necessary to better understand these investments in Egypt. China, Saudi-Arabia, and
other Gulf countries (these are the largest investors in Egypt) have their own agenda when it
comes to developing Egypt. Egypt can maneuver itself in a difficult position by relying too much
on their financial backing. Non-governmental views on the matter could give us a better
understanding of the consequences of these capital injections for future generations and the
power relations embedded in these investments.
6. Designing the New Administrative Capital: Constructing a new everyday life
Five Egyptian companies, united under the banner UDC +5, are responsible for the grand design
of the new capital; Cube Consultants, Archplan Architects & Planners, Land Consultants,
Ökoplan Engineering Consultations, and Yasser Mansour Concept Architects. All these firms
have an impressive track record of urban planning and architecture in the Middle East, including
designing Egyptian satellite cities. With the design of the new capital, these companies were
offered the chance to draw a city completely from scratch and use their years of experience to
create the ‘perfect city’. What stands out the most in their design is the artificial river running
through the city from its Western to its Eastern end, the Iconic Tower, and the scale of the
project. This chapter will first have a close look at how the high modernist designs of the new
capital are shaped and presented, and what this means for the new capital itself. And second, the
way space is ‘sliced up’ in the new capital and how this contrasts spaces in the older parts of
Cairo.
6.1 Digital tools in urban planning
Official information on the shape of the new capital is scarce and sometimes unreliable, hence
this analysis will be based mostly on conceptual maps and videos, of which there are plenty. The
development of 3D images and videos in architecture is an interesting phenomenon and is
changing the way we think about and interact with cities. Today, urban planners are not only able
to sketch a building or a street but due to the technological innovations of 3D graphics and
cinematic VFX are able to imagine and visualize a complete urban ensemble. This empowers the
158Ṣafr al-Nūr and Nada ʿArafāt, Kayf taḥaqqaq mayyāh Maṣr ʾamn duwal al-Khalīj al-ghidhāʾiyya’, MadaMasr, 22
March 2019. https://madamasr.com/ar/2019/03/22
53
perspective from the conceived space because suddenly it seems as if planners are able to ‘plan’
the perceived and lived space altogether. Although Lefebvre showed us that this is impossible, we
should not underestimate these artificial worlds and the way it influences our desires. Planners
have always been concerned about rethinking our everyday life but now this planned everyday
becomes a product itself that tries to encompass all aspects of our world and can be slickly
visualised for people not trained in the jargon of urban technocrats. It can be tempting to take
these representations as reality due to their aesthetics, simplicity and cleanliness. Both planners
and consumers (through advertisement) can become trapped in this virtual reality and loose grip
of the realities produced on the ground. Or in the words of Adhem Selim,
‘the government’s growing interest photoshopped maps, architectural visualizations,
video promos and professional presentations might simply be good PR campaigning, but
it’s also part of a ruling paradigm. These plans, drawings, maps, images, videos,
presentations and other visual media about grand schemes for a new Egypt are in fact
some of the ways in which the authority produces itself, rather than being a mere product
of the regime.’159
The continued roll-out of satellite cities and reclamation schemes attests to this imaginative high
modernist world. No lessons were learned from previous mistakes and computer animated worlds
kept being released, while the reality painted a very different picture.
The manner in which units in Egypt are advertised and sold already gives us an idea of
how computerized images change our relation space. Many of the formally constructed houses in
the desert satellite cities are sold solely through advertisement. Apartments are sold from a folder
or a website, while these structures have not been built yet. Modern-day technology is able to
present potential buyers with images of their future product or can even give them some form of a
‘digital tour’. When enough people have invested in these pictures or videos of the future, the
actual structure can be built. Investments of this type give the capitalist an advantage because it
159 Adham Selim, ‘Capital Cairo: A Regime of Graphics’, Failed Architecture, 29 October 2015.
https://failedarchitecture.com/capital-cairo-a-regime-of-graphics/
54
does not require a loan from the bank so there are barely any risks involved. At the same time,
this system adds fuel to the fire and stimulates overbuilding and speculative capital.160
6.2 A fragmented design
Space in the new capital will be heavily dispersed and fragmented. According to the presented
plans, each district will have its own designed ‘purpose’. This means there will be a ‘Smart
Village’, an ‘Academic City’, a ‘Medical City’, a ‘Health & Sustainability Park’ etc. The exact
purpose of these areas is not always clear, although their names do give us a hint. Just as we saw
in Brasilia, the neighbourhoods are segregated from the utilities. On the outskirts of the
neighbourhoods, at the borders of the phase one design, we see that space is allocated for
commercial and administrative purposes. Expectedly, this area will provide people with daily
necessities like shopping facilities and other services. This way of looking at space offers us (as
outsiders) a clear picture of the layout of the city and makes life easier for the planner and the
160 “Liqāʾ maftūḥ ‘al-rafāhiyya al-mushawwaha lil-Masāḥāt al-imutanāhiyya: ‘Āṣimat Maṣr al-Jadīda’ – al-Liqāʾ bil-
kāmil”, YouTube, Published on 3 April 2019 by Alternative Policy Solutions, Lecture by Sims, 1:40:40 till 1:42:25
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJSp4_YA6MQ&list=WL&index=31&t=5939s
Figure 13: Some of the Specialized Districts of the New Administrative Capital,
https://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=2083071
55
investor. Services can be centralized around certain areas and complement one another.
The centralization of utilities is an important modern urban development and has become
the norm in many modern city schemes the world over. The most recent development is the
concentration of Tech knowledge and utilities into a ‘specialized space’, the most famous
example being Silicon Valley. Especially for societies/cities with a knowledge-based economy,
concentrating this knowledge seems a logical choice in order to make this spirit blossom.
Similarly, university campuses and malls need to be seen in this logic of ‘centralization’, or what
Lefebvre would call ‘minimal/induced difference’. Lefebvre argued that the use of this form of
minimal difference is an inherent part of modern urban planning. Utilities and population groups
within a city are purposely separated from one another (student, worker, consumer, and tourists)
in order to optimize their performance in a specific economic and societal context (as decided
top-down by the planner) and to please the high modernist aesthetic of the technocrat. The same
goes for everyday life activities within the city like leisure (parks), consuming (malls), and
movement (roads). Minimal/induced difference is difference within the system and as a rule,
carefully managed and controlled.
If we look at more traditional spaces in Cairo, like Old Cairo/Islamic Cairo, we see a very
different kind of ‘urban’.161 Live and utility spaces (in a huge variety) are mixed within this urban
fabric and can even barely be separated from one another. This complexity makes the city from
the outsider’s perspective very unorganized and unreadable, however, from the ‘local
experience’,162 these spaces are perfectly logical and a necessity for everyday life. The urban
diversity of the ‘old city’ does not mean that concentrated (homogenized) spaces are absent in the
areas. Over many years, certain streets and neighbourhood have emerged that specialize on
certain products like pots/pans, jewellery, and garbage. Often from a practical perspective, these
spaces grew naturally and absorbed the local knowledge of generations.163 Lefebvre ascribed to
161 The Medieval inner-city spaces of Cairo (as used in this example) have a different history than the ‘recent’
phenomenon of the ‘ashwa’iyyāt. Nevertheless, Sims does see some comparisons between the urban fabric of the
informal areas and the Medieval urban of Cairo. The urban of these areas is much more complex and ‘localized’ than
the formal satellite cities. For pictures of the comparison between the informal and the Medieval town see Sims,
Understanding Cairo (2012) 117. 162 What Lefebvre would highlight as the ‘lived experience’ of space which we have to see in his larger dialectical
ensemble. 163 What Scott would call the knowledge of the mētis. This practical knowledge has developed naturally over
generations and is the result of the solution-oriented approach of people in local contexts. In the perception of the
high modernist state, this mētis is disregarded and rearranged to the liking of the planner with often disastrous
results. Scott, Seeing Like a State (1998).
56
the spaces of autogestion (self-management) the concept of maximal/produced difference that
‘endure or arise on the margins of the homogenized realm, either in the form of resistances or in
the form of externalities’.164 Because, Lefebvre argues, ‘why should spaces created by virtue of
human understanding be any less varied, as works or products, than those produced by nature,
than landscapes or living beings?’165 Lefebvre is not calling here for a return to a ‘natural state’,
he tries to show us, just as Scott tried with the analogy of the forest revolution in Prussia, that
everyday life is far more complex than the abstract space imagined and produced by modern
urban planners.166 The state and the corporation are in a constant struggle to control future spaces
by incorporating their moralities and calculations within these spaces. The sketches of the new
capital have not been forged throughout a long history shaped by local actors, instead, the
compartments of the new capital were drawn in a short period of time by a few specialists who
possess certain ideas on aesthetics, durability, and the way Egyptians should live their life. This
thesis does not try to depict these ideas as fundamentally ‘wrong’ but tries to show that the high
modernist approach often follows a problematic line of reasoning, obscuring local contexts and is
rooted in a certain economic and state logic (that not necessary tries to improve the collective
wellbeing).
7. The districts of the New Administrative Capital
In this chapter, we will explore some of these ‘specialized’ neighbourhoods, starting with the
most important districts: The housing districts, the Government Zone, and the Central Business
District and followed by two other areas (Smart Village and City of Knowledge). Because of the
length of this thesis, I had to make a choice on what to discuss and what to leave out and I based
my decision simply on the availability of information. Information on other districts like the
‘Medical City’, ‘Expo City’, ‘History and Gateway Park’, and ‘Health and Sustainability Park’ is
extremely scarce. We will have to wait and see how these areas will develop in the future. By
164 Smith, ‘Repetition and Difference’ (2001) 40. 165 Lefebvre The Production of Space (1992) 397. 166 Lefebvre’s experiences during the 1968 revolution in Paris formed the background for Lefebvre’s famous call for
a ‘right to the city’ or in different words, ‘the right to differ’. Lefebvre saw in this uprising different social groups,
students, workers, and French-Algerians that did not accept their fragmentation on the base of their socio-
economic/ethnic position in the peripheries and who called for the right to centrality and difference. Goonewardena
et al. Space Difference Everyday Life (2008) 292-293.
57
exploring the decisions made in erecting some of these districts, we will better understand the
compartmentalization of the new capital (as discussed in the previous chapter).
8.1 The housing districts and the people that might occupy them
The street pattern of the neighbourhoods in the new capital is planned differently than the satellite
cities and Brasilia. The straight angle grid is abandoned and replaced by more ‘organic looking’
patterns. Straight lines are avoided, instead, curves prevail. These forms attest to the claim that
the capital will put less emphasis (according to the CEO of the new capital) to the usage of the
car. Bike lanes, sidewalks and public transport need to be a trustworthy and safe alternative.
However, most likely, the car will still play a vital role in the new capital. The surface area of the
city is huge and in its early stages, ‘patched’. The car seems to be the most simple answer for
transport in the city. Around 11% of the population of the complete metropolis of the Greater
Cairo Region (including the peri-urban regions) owns a car and is, therefore, able to live in a
pioneering desert city like the new capital.167
The size of a standard unit in the new capital will be around 150 m2, containing three
bedrooms, a salon, a kitchen, two bathrooms, and a parking space underneath.168 According to
MadaMasr, the government is planning to build 30.000 units in phase one, estimating its value at
167 Sims, Understanding Cairo (2012) 235. 168 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) xxxii.
Figure 14: Figure 15: Two Valleys of the Phase One Layout, zoomed-in picture,
https://cubeconsultants.org/home/cairocapital/
58
12,5 billion EGP.169
There are enough warnings that housing in the new capital will only be available to a
privileged few, as was the case with the previous satellite cities.170 The current prices displayed
on real-estate websites do not even come close to what the average Egyptian is able to spend. In
the 2008 Housing Study of Urban Egypt (HSUE), it was calculated that households in Greater
Cairo have an average income of 4.324 (2.804 for the peri-urban areas).171 This means a yearly
income of around 52 thousand and this is before inflation had kicked in. As mentioned, the
bottom price for ground in the capital is around 11.600 EGP per m2 so a standard apartment of
150m2 is far out of reach for the average Cairene. Also other daily costs, like water and public
transport will be much higher compared to for instance Cairo. The construction of pipes, pumps
(needed for conveying water), and infrastructure for public transport is expensive. This can only
169 Bīsān Kasāb, ‘al-ʿĀṣima al-ʾidāriyya.. Kharij al-muwāzana am kharij al-muḥāsaba?’, MadaMasr, 25 April 2019.
https://madamirror12.appspot.com/madamasr.com/ar/2019/04/25 170 Some of the earlier satellite cities did provide (unsuccessful) alternatives with social housing projects. There are
no signs that this will be the case in the new capital. Sims, Understanding Cairo (2012) 157-162. 171 Sims, Understanding Cairo (2012) 42-43.
Figure 16: Typical Housing Units in The New Administrative Capital,
https://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=2083071&page=4
59
be compensated by raising the price for these services or by heavily subsidising them. The
government has made several promises to provide housing for mid-earning people in the new
capital, however, the current evidence does not support these claims and it seems as if the
government does not take this problem seriously. When asked by the Guardian on the availability
of low-income housing in the new capital, the spokesman of the new capital, El-Husseiny
responded as followed, ‘forget the numbers, they’re not important and not fixed. We have a
dream, and we’re building our dreams now.’172
8.2 The government zone
The government district fills around one-third
of phase one and is cut-off from the housing
district in the east by ‘the National Ring Road’.
South of the government district (also cut-off
by this road) is the embassy district located.173
The government district is isolated by this ring
road and by large fields of (seemingly) grass.
Safety seems to be an important objective here.
Only a few roads connect the rest of the city to
this area and these roads are easy to monitor or
to close. The choice of the planners is a classic
modernistic grid of straight streets and angles.
The government zone will accommodate thirty
ministries, the cabinet, a Justice City, and the
Parliament. According to Oliver Bennet of the
Independent, the new presidential palace will
be at least eight times bigger than the White
172 Michaelson, ‘Cairo has started to become ugly’, The Guardian. 173 According to an official statement in October 2018, 57 embassies requested to move to the new capital. The
embassies who wish to stay in Cairo might lose their protection. Shaimaa Al-Aees ‘57 embassies request to move to
New Administrative Capital’, Daily News Egypt, 16 October 2018. https://dailynewssegypt.com/2018/10/16/57-
embassies-request-to-move-to-new-administrative-capital/; ‘An elephant in the desert: Egypt prepares to open its
grand new capital’, The Economist, 24 January 2019. https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-
africa/2019/01/24/egypt-prepares-to-open-its-grand-new-capital
Figure 176: Government District, zoomed-in picture,
https://cubeconsultants.org/home/cairocapital/
60
House.174 There has been an interesting proposal on the way the authorities want to finance the
government district in the new capital, which is estimated to cost around 40 billion EGP.175
ACUD will finance these structures and in exchange will take possession of the government
buildings in Cairo and find a new purpose for them. ‘Maybe we can make them into hotels’ El-
Husseiny suggests.176 This, however, presupposes the idea that these buildings will be empty,
contradicting earlier official statements saying that only a part of the government’s workforce
will be moved to the new capital.177
The spaciousness of the government district has an important consequence, effective
protests within the new capital seem to be virtually impossible. Also in Brasilia, this is a much-
heard complaint.178 Tahrir Square is located in the centre of Cairo and houses several important
administrative buildings, therefore, it is the ideal space for protests. High buildings enclose this
space and the streets leading to the square can ‘easily’ be blocked by protesters. As we saw
during the 2011 revolution, the fighting mostly happened in the connecting streets while the
square itself was quite safe from the riot police. In addition, the compactness of Tahrir Square
created a sense of unity and protests appear (from a bird-eye view) more impressive in an area
like this. Tahrir Square has an ideal layout to create a powerful ‘counter-space’.179 Protesters are
able to alter the story of the square and claim their right to the city by constructing a new self-
made narrative on this area. The power of people to produce their own space seems a much more
174 Olivier Bennet, ‘Why Egypt is building a brand new mega capital city’, Independent, 10 September 2018.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/egypt-capital-city-cairo-architecture-the-new-administrative-
capital-a8521981.html 175 Michaelson, ‘Cairo has started to become ugly’, The Guardian. 176 Michaelson, ‘Cairo has started to become ugly’, The Guardian. 177 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) xxxv. 178 Holston, The Modernist City (1989) 308-314. 179 The idea of ‘counter-space’ comes from the Lefebvrian analyse of revolutionary space on Tahrir Square by
Robbert Woltering and Wladimir Riphagen in ‘Tales of a Square: The Production and Transformation of Political
Space in the Egyptian (Counter)Revolution’. Here Woltering and Riphagen describe ‘counter-space’ as ‘a space
where social processes are regulated in a manner different from how it was conceived and perceived prior to the
event.’ So the lived space of people changes over the course of time and creates a new meaning to a space, one that
conflicts with earlier conceived ideas. This what we saw for instance during the 2011 revolution. However, within
the abstract spaces of the new capital, counter-space is much more unlikely to develop. Robbert Woltering and
Wladimir Riphagen in ‘Tales of a Square: The Production and Transformation of Political Space in the Egyptian
(Counter)Revolution’, Arab Studies Quarterly 40 no. 2 (Spring 2018) 117-130.
61
difficult task within the wide spaces of the new capital and no doubt that officials are aware of
this.
8.3 Central Business District (CBD)
One of the landmarks of the new capital is the large planned business district built in
collaboration with the Chinese firm CSCEC.180 20 towers will be built in the area, including ‘The
Iconic Tower’, the highest tower in Africa (385 meters). Dar al-Handasah (Dar), the Lebanese
consultancy/planning/engineering/architect bureau has a prominent role in the design of the
district and towers (and many other projects inside the new capital). The 3 billion dollars (around
50 billion EGP) that are needed to construct the business district will be financed by Chinese
loans. According to Egypt Today, 15% percent of this loan will be repaid by NUCA as a deposit
and the remainder 85% will be repaid over a ten year period (after a grace period of 42
180 ‘Ta’araf ‘alā Taṣmīm Minṭaqqa al-A’māl al-Markaziyya…..al-‘Āṣima al-Idāriyya al-Jadīda’, published by
IDSCEGYPT on 26 March 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcFy8R3EoNM
Figure 18: The wide spaces of Brasilia, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/galleries/How-Le-Corbusier-changed-the-
world/corbusier-brasilia/
62
months).181 NUCA hopes to cover these costs by selling the land to corporations. Expectedly, the
area will be one of the prime locations of the new capital and will be extremely valuable.
8.4 Spaces of knowledge and expertise
The presented Smart Village in the new capital is not the first ‘smart village’ in Egypt. Following
the success of Dubai’s Internet City in attracting foreign capital and becoming the region’s
leading IT city, Mubarak tried to imitate this model in 2000/2001 and built a smart village in the
desert along the Cairo-Alexandria road. In the article ‘From Dubai to Cairo: Competing Global
Cities, Models, and Shifting Centers of Influence?’, Yasser Elshashtawy, one of the leading
scholars on Cairo’s and Dubai’s urbanism, discusses the way in which this project portrays the
interconnectedness between the two cities.182 Where Cairo was once the leading capital of
architecture in the region, now Dubai has become the role model for successful urban planning.
Both the Smart Village (built in the early 2000s) and the new capital’s Smart Village support this
argument. We see how Egyptian policymakers try to copy Dubai’s achievements but, at the same
time, are not able to match its success. Egypt’s first Smart Village was never able to compete
with Dubai due to peculiar planning and blindness to the local Egyptian context. Egypt’s first
Smart Village was built in the middle of nowhere and, therefore, was disconnected from both the
Greater Cairo Region and Alexandria. In addition, Egypt is not a knowledge-based economy and
lacks the capital to attract or develop leading IT knowledge. Still, Egypt’s policymakers promote
their ambitions by transforming the desert into an exhibition of the smart village in Dubai, hoping
that the knowledge and benefits will naturally come. The idea of a smart village creates value
because it plays into certain ‘global investment trends’ that capitalists are more than willing to
capitalize on. Although the location seems to be chosen better this time, the new smart village in
the new capital will most likely face the same problems. The allure of the new capital might
attract some national or international IT knowledge but it will still be hard to compete with the
already firmly established IT centres in Dubai, Singapore, and San Francisco.
The ‘City of Knowledge’ will host several universities, schools, and other knowledge
producing services. As is stated on the website of Cube Consultants, one of the consultancy
181 ‘New Capital's Business District to include 20 towers’, Egypt Today, 18 March 2018.
https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/3/45544/New-Capital-s-Business-District-to-include-20-towers 182 Yasser Elsheshtawy, ‘From Dubai to Cairo: Competing Global Cities, Models, and Shifting Centres of
Influence?’, in Cairo Cosmopolitan: Politics, Culture, and Urban Space in the New Globalized Middle East, ed.
Diana Singerman and Paul Amar (AUCP, 2006).
63
bureaus of UDC +5, the area ‘is dedicated to
excellence on both the national and the
international levels. Through freedom of
academic expression, knowledge is created
and disseminated by means of scholarly and
creative achievements, education, practice,
and outreach.’183 The accommodation of a
diverse section of ‘knowledge institutions’
can create a strong boost for development. If
planned wisely, these institutions might
complement one another and create a
welcoming knowledge climate in the new
capital. Already eight international
universities have decided to locate inside the
new capital (it is not sure if they will locate inside this specific area). Remarkably, the University
of Canada has already opened its doors in the new capital, while the city is still under
construction.184 The daily trip of these students to their lectures and classes must be an interesting
experience. 50 schools are planned to open its doors in the new capital. Most likely (with the aim
of financing the early stages of the new capital), these schools will be private schools. It is too
early to say if any public schools in the new capital will be opened in the future.
8. The principles of the New Administrative Capital
The projected new capital is built on seven official principles; green, sustainable, walkable,
connected, liveable, smart and business. Because many architects and urban planners today seem
to be in love with empty jargon and buzzwords, it is sometimes hard to take certain descriptions
seriously and to separate these concepts from their marketing objectives. However, although their
meaning is often obscure (liveable?, connected?), we should give these concepts a chance and
figure out what they mean in order to better understand the philosophy of the new capital. This
183 Cube Consultants, ‘City of Knowledge – The Capital Cairo’ https://cubeconsultants.org/home/project/city-of-
knowledge/ 184 ‘University of Canada in Administrative Capital opens door for 2018-2019 students’, Egypt Today, 9 August
2018. http://www.egypttoday.com/Article/1/55632/University-of-Canada-in-Administrative-Capital-opens-door-for-
2018
Figure 19: The City of Knowledge,
https://cubeconsultants.org/home/project/city-of-knowledge/
64
philosophy gives us an idea of how Egypt’s policymakers and planners see the future of Egypt.
Some ideas like ‘smart’ and ‘sustainable’ are important concepts in today’s urban planning and,
therefore, I will elaborate more extensively on these ideas. The principles of ‘walkable’ is
discussed together with ‘liveable’ and ‘green’ is discussed together with ‘sustainable’. The idea
of a ‘business city’ is explained throughout this thesis so I will not elaborate on this concept in
this chapter.
7.1 A Walkable and Liveable City
The idea of a ‘walkable city’ is a clear break with earlier ideas of Corbusier and the high
modernism of Brasilia. In Brasilia, the automobile was given priority above any other form of
transportation. Now we return (at least according to these ‘pillars’) to the most basic form of
transportation, walking. From the perspective of pollution, climate change, and clogged
sidewalks in Cairo, this seems to be a wise decision. In addition, a walkable city is crucial for its
‘liveability’.185 Lively streets create a sense of community and have proven to be a highly
effective method in street security (dense areas in Cairo attest to this). Especially, the enormous
green park will attract many visitors and strollers.186 At least 15 m2 of green space per capita is
promised in the future capital and this creates a much healthier environment than the dense and
polluted spaces of Cairo. However, creating green areas in the desert might contradict the
‘sustainability principle’ of the new capital (better discussed in the section ‘a Green and
Sustainable city’ of this chapter).
7.2 A Connected City
The idea of a connected city could mean several things. From a practical perspective, it could just
mean a sophisticated infrastructure (both public and private) and the way the city is connected to
other urban centres in Egypt (Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez). There are two proposals for public
transport, an electric train and a monorail. As mentioned in Chapter 3, plans for an electric train
have just been released. China has extended a loan of $1,2 billion for the project. $461 million
(2% interest rate) is allocated for the infrastructure costs and $731 million (1,8% interest rate) for
providing the trains. The railway will connect Madinat al-Salam (East of Cairo, at the beginning
of the Ismailiya Desert Road) with the new capital. The railway will consist of 11 stations located
185 Liveable is a highly contested word. The planners of the new capital should explain this idea better. 186 However, space in this park might be too dispersed in order to create this effect.
65
in the neighbourhoods/cities of Obour City, al-Shorouk, al-Badr New Town, and Mostaqbal City.
The third metro line, which is still under construction, will connect Madinat al-Salam with
Cairo’s metro network. From Ataba station in Downtown (an important metro hub), it will take
16 stations to reach Madinat al-Salam and then another 11 stations to reach the new capital. 187
Although slower,188 the planned monorail seems to be a slightly better alternative for
transportation between Cairo and the new capital. The Canadian company Bombardier-Orascom
has just won the bid for the project and negations over the scheme are still ongoing. Two
monorails are planned to be built. The first monorail will start at Cairo Stadium in Nasr City (six
stops away from Ataba) and via New Cairo run to the new capital, while the second monorail will
connect Sixth of October and Giza to the new capital. Public transport is extremely important for
the future of the New Administrative Capital and the fight against Cairo’s congested streets. The
government deserves praise for these investments. However, it seems as if the projects will not be
a much faster alternative than the car. The two projects do not offer a straight and rapid
connection between the centre of Cairo and the new capital. A trip from Downtown to the new
capital with the electric train will be a time-consuming task with 28 stops and a transfer. In
addition, the fares most likely need to be heavily subsidized in order to keep this transport
affordable.189
7.3 A Green and Sustainable City
When it comes to sustainability, the plans for the new capital are ambitious. Seventy percent of
the new capital needs to be powered by solar energy. A solar farm of 11,5 km2 and solar panels
on top of the residential buildings will make this possible. Even in the unlikely scenario of a
shortage of sunlight in the desert city, its habitats do not need to worry. The government just
finished the construction of a massive power plant (run by Siemens) just outside the new capital.
The power plant is part of a larger project in where three interconnected power plants (largest in
187 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) xxvii-xxix; Ahmad Morsi, ‘From Greater Cairo to Egypt's New
Administrative Capital: An easy commute’, ahramonline, 26 January 2019.
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/322410/Egypt/Politics-/From-Greater-Cairo-to-Egypts-New-
Administrative-Ca.aspx 188 Electric train reaches 120 km/p and the monorail 80 km/p. Ahmad Morsi, ‘From Greater Cairo to Egypt's New
Administrative Capital’, ahramonline. 189 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) xxvii-xxix; ‘Bombardier-Orascom consortium wins Egypt monorail train
bid’, Al-Masry Al-Youm, 29 May 2019. https://egyptindependent.com/bombardier-orascom-consortium-wins-egypt-
monorail-train-bid/;
66
the world) need to provide forty million Egyptians with electricity.190
A green future in the desert is not only promised to Egyptian farmers but also to the urban
dwellers. The new capital will provide its future inhabitants with a park twice as large as Central
Park in New York. The park will be watered by a ‘new Nile’ running through the entire city from
its Eastern to its Western end. As I explained before, the water needed for the scheme needs to be
pumped from the Nile and redirected to the new capital. Arab Contractors has been assigned to
construct the pipelines needed to provide the first stages of construction with water (550
Feddans).191 Probably, two pipes carrying Nile water and one pipe carrying desalinated Red Sea
water will provide the city with water (although sources are quite vague on this matter).192 The
eventual amount of water that needs to be redirected to the new capital to support the river,
vegetation, swimming pools, industry, and households is estimated by the Guardian at around 1.5
million cubic meters a day. In comparison, the population of New York (population of 8,4
million) used in 2018 1007,5 gallons of water per day, which is around 3,814 million cubic
meters.193 It is not clear where the Guardian got this number from but one thing we know for sure
and that is that colossal quantities of water are necessary to facilitate the city. The magnitude of
the water transfer raises many technical questions. What will be the price of water in the new
capital and most importantly, what will be the burden on the already struggling Nile? Already,
New Cairo, the largest and most successful satellite neighbourhood was hit by water shortage in
2014, while this neighbourhood has not even come close to achieving its population target.194 The
new capital (even in its early stages) will put an even larger burden on the eastern water
provision. This means that the design of the new capital might clash with its sustainability goals.
Because water is such an important and controversial matter in Egypt, you would expect more
transparency from the authorities when it comes to these critical issues.
7.4 A Smart City
‘Through aspiring to develop and build new Smart Cities, Egypt is primarily focused on creating
190 ‘Completion of world's largest combined cycle power plants in record time’, Siemens Global Website, 24 July
2018. https://www.siemens.com/press/en/feature/2015/corporate/2015-06-
egypt.php?content[]=Corp&content[]=WP&content[]=PG&content[]=SFS 191 Official website of The Arab Contractors: http://www.arabcont.com/English/projects/project-552.aspx 192 Sims, Egypt’s Desert Dreams (2018) xxxii. 193 ‘Water Consumption In The New York City’, NYC Open Data https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Environment/Water-
Consumption-In-The-New-York-City/ia2d-e54m; Michaelson, ‘Cairo has started to become ugly’, The Guardian. 194 Isabel Esterman, ‘Water shortage shrivels dreams of the good life in New Cairo’, MadaMasr, 4 September 2014.
https://madamasr.com/en/2014/09/04/feature/society/water-shortage-shrivels-dreams-of-the-good-life-in-new-cairo/
67
a society that will offer its members an enviable quality of life, attractive living environments
with ample opportunities for progress and growth, and healthy lifestyles.’195
- Ahmed Abd El Fattah El Shenawy & Jad Succar (Dar)196
With the incorporation of ‘smart city’ into the principles of the new capital, it plays into one of
the largest global trends of city projects today. London, Amsterdam, Dubai, and New York all
have initiated projects that need to make these cities ‘smarter’. However, what does ‘smart’ stand
for? In the section ‘spaces of knowledge and expertise’ in Chapter 7, we have discussed the idea
of a smart village and the way this relates to the larger picture of a knowledge-based economy. In
this section, smart relates to the way technical tools can help to monitor, connect, regulate, and
manage city flows. As explained by Dar al-Handasa (Dar), ‘the city dashboards will provide a
holistic view of city operations, enabling city stakeholders to manage data from various sectors
such as lighting, parking, traffic waste management, Wi-Fi, and others.’ By collecting data, the
certain processes in a city can be measured, secured, and improved. We can, for instance, better
understand the way pollution circulates within a city and traffic congests in certain areas, in order
to propose solutions. Another important aspect of the smart city hype is the way it plays into
safety concerns. With the help of ‘smart’ cameras and a centralization of data, complete cities can
be monitored. For a country that struggles with terrorist attacks, these measures can help to
improve its safety, or in the words of El-Husseiny, ‘a smart city means a safe city, with cameras
and sensors everywhere. There will be a command centre to control the entire city.’197 Naturally,
the use of these technical smart tools also raises many questions. Who will sit in the control
rooms, what kind of data is collected (and why this data especially?), and in what ways will these
tools actually improve the liveability of the city?
One of the most worrisome developments of the smart city development in the new
capital is the way it plays into the hyperbole of high-modernism and extends the scope of social
engineering (and the eradication of difference/the Other). The report that the new capital will
become a ‘cashless city’ demonstrates this.198 It seems as if the planners (in collaboration with
195 Ahmad Abd El Fattah El Shenawy and Jad Succar, ‘Building a Smart and Resilient City’, darmagazine The Smart
Revolution: Reimagining Cities i16 (January 2019) 57. 196 El Shenawy and Succar, ‘Building a Smart and Resilient City’, darmagazine (2019). 197 Michaelson, ‘Cairo has started to become ugly’, The Guardian. 198 ‘Egypt’s New Capital to Be First ‘Cashless’ City in the Country’, Egyptian Streets, 17 Februari 2019.
https://egyptianstreets.com/2019/02/17/egypts-new-capital-to-be-first-cashless-city-in-the-country/
68
MasterCard) with this idea try to create an ideal imaginary world that in no way resembles the
economic realities of Egypt today, and will exclude the majority of Egyptians. A large part of the
economic activities in Egypt happen on an informal basis and is, therefore, rooted in cash. It is
clear that the Egyptian government detest these unreadable economic transactions, however, by
eliminating this form of livelihood, they will condemn these people into extreme poverty. The
idea of a cashless city (if true) affirms the elitist future of the city. Other proposals are smart pole
services (lampposts with cameras and other sensors), tools to optimize public and private
transport (for instance smart parking), and a holistic digital system for the city’s basic utilities
(energy, water, and connectivity).
As the idea of cashless city shows, we cannot separate the developments of urban smart
tools from the corporate hunger for power in the city. Most of these city developments are in
collaboration with private businesses in order to develop, finance, or operate these gadgets. In the
words of Nitzan and Bichler, ‘nothing seems to escape the piercing eye of capitalization: if it
generates earning expectations it must have a price, and the algorithm that gives future earnings a
price is capitalization.’199 By better understanding everyday life within a city, corporation can
make better calculations of the future to which investors will capitalize on (information is one of
the largest sources of wealth these days). These corporations do not prioritise liveability,
capitalization is their true motive. The way this logic will play out on the ground and will occupy
the everyday life of people is still early to say. However, the fact the Egyptian civil society is left
in the dark when it comes to these developments is alarming. No civil resistance (the true
spokesman of ‘liveability’) can be mounted against these corporate interests and it seems as if
they are given free rein in the new capital of Egypt in order to make the scheme financially
possible.
Smart tools can be helpful in organizing a city. Especially in our digital age, services can
be better measured, controlled, and fine-tuned.200 By the means of a smart city, we can create a
better picture of for instance pollution, waste, and efficiency, which are central questions of our
time. But at the same time, we should be careful in seeing efficiency as an end in itself (as we
saw with the question of transportation in Brasilia). If we would argue with the principle of
‘liveability’, authorities need to come with better arguments of how these smart tools will
199 Nitzan and Bichler, Capital as Power (2009) 158. 200 Connected services are also vulnerable. Technical problems or hackers can shut down crucial systems of water
supply, electricity or connectivity.
69
actually improve this idea of liveability. In the words of Lefebvre, we would need to better
understand smart city tools in the context of ‘the Right to the City’. How can techniques
empower inhabitants to take control over their own everyday life and in what ways can the state
and the corporation contribute to this empowerment?
70
Conclusion
The opening of the Egyptian desert set in motion an untameable force of commercial and high
modernist interests that eventually produced the framework for the New Administrative Capital.
During the five decades of Egypt’s desert development, huge amounts of resources were
mobilized to create a ‘new Egypt’ in the desert. In retrospect, however, these schemes are to this
day still struggling in attracting people and making profits (even the profitable tourist section is
struggling since the 2011 revolution). In order to understand the New Administrative Capital (and
its future), this thesis discussed four problems of Egypt’s expansion into the desert. First, the
Malthusian fear of policymakers and international observers led to a hasty development of desert
land and left no room for critical reflections. Second, new technological advantages created
possibilities to exploit the desert, however, this effort had its limitations and sometimes led to an
oversimplification of the reality, creating problems on the ground. This thesis has only discussed
the way in which the Aswan Dam, the technology of desert reclamation schemes, and computer
animated architecture extent the scope of Egyptian policymakers, however, this is only part of the
story. More research is needed on alternative techniques like concrete-making and other city-
building tools in order to better understand how planned cities entered the horizon of Egypt’s
planners. Third, the opening of the state-owned desert led to a toxic revenue model and rapid
privatization of the desert. The scramble for land became an easy way to turn oil money into
quick profit and a selective (well-connected) few made outrages revenues from the desert.
However, the capitalization on the Egyptian desert did not lead to a dispersion of the Egyptian
population and only marginally contributed to the Egyptian economy. Fourth, the way in which
the clean slate of the desert played into the hands of high modernist planners. Out of the
confidence of technological progress (e.g. Aswan Dam and reclamation techniques), a new
approach to the natural- and the societal world developed. These phenomena suddenly seemed
manageable for the high modernist planner. However, as Scott and Lefebvre showed us, this
often led to disastrous development schemes, in where nature, space, and humans were colonized
and degraded to mere abstractions, fitted in the one-dimensional ideology of the technocrat.
The political will to make the New Administrative Capital project a success is impressive
and deserves praise. However, the conceptual plans of the city face the same limitations as
discussed in the previous paragraph. The financial picture of the project seems fragile and
sometimes even out of touch with reality. Again (as with previous desert schemes), only a few
71
large real-estate corporations will benefit from the scheme, hence, the new capital confirms the
image of the desert as a speculative playground for Egyptian elitists. In addition, the architects
and urban planners, armed with their slick visualizations, seem to be more occupied with
imitating Dubai and other global urban centres than they are with the local story of Egypt. Instead
of working from the strengths and weaknesses of the Egyptian society, these planners followed
universalist high modernist ideas and sketched a highly dispersed and fragmented desert city. Just
as with the previous desert cities, the designs often look like an antipode of the average Egyptian
street and is only accessible for a selective few (both in terms of housing and work). Only time
will tell if the new capital might ever be opened for the rest of the population (by the means of
social housing and work opportunities in the city).
One of the most worrisome developments of the new capital project is the way in which
the Egyptian civil society is left in the dark. At the same time, however, this is not surprising. The
popular coup of 2013 that put the Armed Forces in power led to a powerful crackdown of Egypt’s
civil society that had bloomed since the days of the 2011 revolution.201 Grassroots organizations
have been completely silenced by the means of anti-NGO laws,202 imprisonment,203 and
torture.204 Barely any platform is present to mount resistance or offer constructive criticism. In
itself, this is an upsetting situation but also regarding the future of the new capital, there is reason
for concern, for in the words of Scott, ‘where it goes brutally wrong is when the society subjected
to such utopian experiments lacks the capacity to mount a determined resistance.’205
Due to the early stage of the construction and due to the lack of reliable information, we
have only been able to scratch the surface of the conceptual plans, its actors, and the future shape
of the new capital. Continued research is crucial to create a more complete picture of Egypt’s
new capital. By studying previous desert projects and the high modernist city of Brasilia, this
thesis tried to fill the gap left by the intransparancy of the state and give an idea of some of the
problems that arise when planning a city. If we look at the conceptual masterplan for Brasilia and
201 Kristin Chick, ‘Egypt’s Civil Society Is on Life Support’, Foreign Policy, 13 December 2017.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/13/egypts-civil-society-is-on-life-support/ 202 Farah Najjar, ‘Egypt's NGO law aims to 'erase civil society”, Al Jazeera, 16 February 2017
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/02/egypt-ngo-law-aims-erase-civil-society-170215121321442.html 203 Hall, ‘Egypt's Sisi denies his country holds any political prisoners, but rights groups say tens of thousands
detained’, The Independent 204 Maged Mandour, ‘The Primacy of Torture in Egypt’, Carnegie, 20 December 2018.
https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/78014 205 Scott, Seeing Like a State (1998) 89.
72
its realization, modern-day Brasilia is a betrayal to the high modernist and egalitarian plans of
Costa and Niemeyer. Today, this large metropole houses around 4,3 million people (planned at
600.000) and its high modernist design can only be found in the city’s centre, the Plano Piloto.
The unplanned periphery developed into the real heart of Brasilia and gives the city a striking
classist character. If the new capital would attract the number of people as Brasilia, this would be
a huge success. However, as discussed, this is highly unlikely. Life in the desert still faces many
limitations and is unaffordable for the average Egyptian. Looking at the numbers, desert
development has failed in dispersing the Egyptian population horizontally. The desert will never
be the all-out solution for Egypt’s population growth. The population densities in the
metropolitan areas of the Nile Valley are still crucial in making Egypt operational and liveable,
especially with a government that only provides minimal service. The new capital completely
disregards the strength of the Egyptian society.
73
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