Ahram Gardens

Construction on Cairo’s forth metro line is due to begin. The line will begin from its western-most station at the beginning of 6th of October desert city at DreamLand (a gated compound) and head east. The second station will be at Ahram Gardens, a vast area that is larger than the entire city of Cairo around the year 1900. The area of Ahram Gardens when super-imposed on the center of Cairo at the same scale includes: All of “Islamic Cairo” including the Citadel and Azhar Park, Garden City, Sayyeda Zeynab, all of downtown, Abdeen, El Zaher, part of the Shaf`i cemetary and the northern tip of Roda Island.

Besides the area’s emmense size, it is also notable that its name “Ahram Gardens” or Hada`iq al-Ahram refers to the Giza Pyramids directly next door. Despite this incredible location, Ahram Gardens are more of the same government commissioned housing blocks found anywhere across Egypt. Despite the scale of the development (if it can be called that) there seems to be no clear urban plan whatsoever. And despite that it was, like other desert deveopments, built on a clean slate, what has been built recreates the urban jumble, ad hock planning and lack of vision found in any government plan since the Sadat-era. This is, clear and simple, an urban planning crime and a violation of many standing laws and regulations. In addition, Ahram Gardens forever ruined one of the world’s most unique locations, the Giza Plateau.

David Sims sheds some light on this project in his Understanding Cairo (AUC Press, 2010). Sims refers to Ahram Gardens as “off-plan desert schemes” which he describes in chapter 6 of his book. Here is a bit of his short description of this particular urban snafu:

The oldest and perhaps most outstanding example of such desert land grabs is Hada`iq al-Ahram, or the Pyramid Gardens, subdivisions which began in the late 1970s. At that time a group of influencial persons formed a housing cooperative and somehow gained development rights over a huge 420-hectare site along the Fayoum road just beyond Midan al-Rimaya. This site was just two kilometers from the Giza pyramids area, hence its name. The land was subdivided into large building lots. It is understood that when Anwar Sadat heard of the project, he ordered it cancelled, and for years it remained simply a collection of empty lots with only traces of a street network. However, slowly but surely, investors bought parcels from the original cooperative members and construction of large villas and garden apartment blocks began. Today the site is perhaps half developed, utilities are in place, and land prices have soared to astronomical levels. The fact that the scheme is next door to the iconic Pyramids of Giza does not seem to bother anyone.

This massive area is essentially a land grab by officials. In addition, it is an infringement on a national treasure. The buildings are not occupied and like much of Cairo’s real estate developments, these buildings stand as place-holders where a select few officials, military generals and police officers are waiting for their property to gain value in the future for their own or their children’s benefit, certainly not for Cairo or Egypt.

To make matters worst, Ahram Gardens sits between the Pyramids and the new (and terribly sited) Grand Egyptian Museum. The museum under construction is meant to be the new home of the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square. The main concept of the winning design was direct and uninterrupted view from Museum galleries to the pyramids. Now police officer housing sits between the future museum and the ancient monuments. If the idea behind the new museum’s location is to generate an urban development boom in the area (a kind of Bilbao effect) then Ahram Garden is the museum’s testement to failure before it is even constructed.

Finally, these blocks are far more “informal” and random than the dense urban areas that are referred to as informal. However these kinds of “developments,” and there are many, are government backed and supported using state resources for the benefit of a few crooks. Ahram Gardens isn’t about solving a housing shortage (they sit empty) and it isn’t about developing Cairo and expanding it logically (there is no logic to this). It is about personal benefit and personal investments built on stolen land. These buildings are a true catastrophy because not only are they built on stolen state land (just because corrupt officials in the past accepted their sale does not make these sales legitimate) but also because they have utilities which many of Cairo’s dense urban areas (where people actually live) are deprived from.