December 2011
19 posts
3 tags
Zamalek Waterfront
A long stretch of waterfront in central Cairo is paved, clean, and planted with some shrubs and palm trees, overlooking the skyline on the eastern shore of Cairo, but it is empty of humans. The unused stretch of waterfront is about one kilometer long and begins about 150 meters north of the Qasr el Nil Bridge in Zamalek up to the Marriott Hotel (just before the 26th July Street).
The first 150...
2 tags
A new beginning for Egyptian tourism(?)
Note: This op-ed first appeared in Al Masry Al Youm on June 1, 2011.
In the recent flurry of reports about Egypt’s impending economic challenges, many have highlighted the damage done to the tourism sector in the wake of the 25 January revolution. The number of tourists who’ve come to Egypt in the first quarter of this fiscal year is down 46 percent from last year. Despite this significant...
4 tags
Book: Remaking the Modern
Farha Ghannam. Remaking the Modern: Space, Relocation and the Politics of Identity in a Global Cairo. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Reviewed by Amy Mills (Department of Geography, University of Texas at Austin) Published on H-Gender-MidEast (June, 2003)
Building the Urban Landscape with the Gendered Spatial Practices of Everyday Life
This rich ethnography examines the forces...
6 tags
New Construction: St. Regis
Actually this construction isn’t so new, it has been slowly trying to make its way out of the ground for a few years now and it will be another few years before it is complete. The 6 billion+ Egyptian pound investment by Qatari Diar is expected to be finished in 2014, however it may take longer with 2016 as a more realistic completion date. The St. Regis project consists of two towers...
6 tags
What's going on with heritage management?
Excerpt from Al-Ahram Weekly:
Netherlands/Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC) and the American Research Centre in Egypt (ARCE) convened a one-day Heritage Management Workshop on 22 November to review the current situation in Egypt and discuss a way forward. In her opening address Kim Duistermaat, director of the Netherlands Institute, which hosted the event, said: “Archaeology is no ...
8 tags
Resurrecting Boulac Bridge
One of Cairo’s iconic bridges, Boulac Bridge, is pictured here in 1961 during the 9th anniversary of the 1952 Coup/”revolution.” The bridge was located at the extension of Boulac Street, later renamed Foad Street and currently holding the name 26th of July Street (which begins at Azbakiyya Garden bending at the High Court and on to the bridge which crossed the Nile from Boulac...
4 tags
Al Masry Al Youm Blog: Walls go up
By Sarah Carr
There are now not one, but four walls in downtown Cairo. Huge cubes of round-edged cement are clumsily stacked on top of each other, as if by a child. Hours after its construction, the Qasr al-Aini wall was almost completely covered in graffiti on the protesters’ side. Tens of silhouetted army soldiers stood sentry behind the cubes, visible through the gaps between them....
3 tags
Urbanizing the Counter-Revolution
Excerpt from an article on Jadaliyya.com
The Tools of Occupation
The events of the past eleven months have put into focus the notion of the “postcolonial.” During the past decade it was becoming increasingly clear that postcolonial regimes only serve private interests, the interests of multinational corporations and the strategic interests of superpowers, not the people they rule. Recent...
3 tags
Destruction Alert: Institut d'Egypte burned
UPDATE December 19, 2011: Unfortunately the very same forces that have kept Egypt in the dark about its cultural resources, its libraries and heritage have been abusing the devastating burning of the Institut d’Egypte on government and some private media outlets to guilt Egyptians for the loss of heritage. Similar tactics were used in the early days of the January 25 uprising when the...
3 tags
Khaled Fahmy on Cairo2050
مأساة مشروع القاهرة 2050
أخبار الأدب –18 ديسمبر 2011
منذ حوالي عشر سنوات انتشر الاهتمام بتاريخ منطقة وسط البلد بالقاهرة في أوساط النخبة الثقافية، فعقدت ندوات كثيرة ونشرت كتب عديدة تتناولت ما يسمى بـ”القاهرة الخديوية”، كما أفردت هذه المجلة الغراء ملفا كاملا عن الموضوع. وكأحد الدارسين لتاريخ القاهرة في القرن التاسع عشر سعدت كثيرا بهذا الاهتمام، ولكن أزعجني في نفس الوقت التأكيد...
6 tags
Qursaya Island
To most Egyptians, the sight of members of the army in confrontation with civilians is rather unusual (until recent events). However, residents of Qorsaya Island had their encounter with the army back in 2007 when it was used by the government to protect bulldozers and intimidate residents of the island. The government wanted to forcibly evict the rural community inhabiting the island in order...
2 tags
Modernist building damaged
Amid the recent clashes near Tahrir Square between protesters and security forces, an iconic building designed by Egyptian architect Ali Labib Gabr was damaged. Fire broke out on the third floor during the fighting and eye witnesses claim it was caused by a tear gas canister which landed in the apartment. Regardless of the exact cause of fire, the entire apartment was burned with black marks...
5 tags
Paris was never along the Nile
Warning: I’m about to throw a brick at the glass house where a lot of people live.
The expression “Paris along the Nile” is popular among nostalgists and Orientalists alike. It has gained currency among a growing bourgeoisie who view contemporary Cairo with discontent and find a fragment of its imagined past to be a redeeming escape only because it maybe referenced via Paris, the “capital of...
Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design
The MSc Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design aims to train a new generation of experts and decision-makers to face the tremendous environmental, cultural and social challenges resulting from the rapid urbanisation and ongoing societal transformation currently taking place in the Middle East and North Africa. In studying IUSD students acquire skills to develop integrated,...
4 tags
Lessons from elsewhere: Frankfurt Waterfront
The Nile River goes right through Cairo. Yet for pedestrians there are few opportunities to experience the river up close. At present the river can be experienced by riding boats or crossing the city’s bridges, particularly Qasr el Nil Bridge. The sidewalks along the river are higher up from the water where pedestrians are much closer to buzzing traffic than the river. In addition views of...
Tahrir Square on 360Cities (click image)
4 tags
Architectural History Matters: Sultan Hassan +...
At first glance the two mosques pictured above appear to belong to the same historical era. The Sultan Hassan Mosque (left) and al-Rifa`i Mosque (right) are two of Cairo’s most important monuments and they stand at one of Cairo’s most important and oldest squares at the foot of the Citadel. The two buildings compliment each other in proportion, material, orientation and although they...
2 tags
6 tags