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Ahram Online: Experts examine Egypt’s informal housing crisis

Ahram Online’s Nada El-Kouny’s report on the one day workshop held last week at CEDEJ on informal urban development and government policies of evictions, among other related topics.

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In an attempt to tackle the issue of informal housing in Egypt, primarily following the January 25 Revolution, a joint workshop initiative was held on Monday by the French Centre for Social, Judicial and Economic Documentation (CEDAJ), UN-Habitat and the German Agency for International Cooperation’s (GIZ) Participator Development Programme in Urban Areas.

The workshop, held at the French Cultural Centre in Mounira, Cairo, was attended by approximately eighty people, including urban planners, architects, sociologists, economists, and government representatives, all dealing with the issue of informal housing in Egypt.

The ‘Egypt Urban Futures’ workshop tackled the issue of informal housing—more commonly referred to as ashwaiyat (random) settlements—from a number of different perspectives.

Regina Kipper of GIZ said the main objective of the workshop was to launch a new platform on the urban future of Egypt and its challenges since 2011, by promoting dialogue between civil society, private and public institutions and academics in attempting to work towards sustainable development.

Dina Shehayeb of the Housing and Building National Research Centre provided a brief overview of informal housing in Cairo, stating the phenomenon goes back to the 1950s when there was a major wave of urbanisation, mostly due to the dismantling of the agricultural economy and the increased industrialisation.

Shedding light on more recent statistics, urban consultant David Sims, the author of Understanding Cairo: The Logic of a City Out of Control (2011), stressed there had been an exponential increase in the rate of informal housing in Egypt in recent years. For example, in Geziret El-Warraq in Giza the post-revolution rate of population growth has increased four and a half times compared to its pre-revolution rate, Sims said.

Moreover, the encroachment on agricultural land has increased at a much higher rate. In many villages in Egypt’s Nile Delta farmers have found construction more profitable than agriculture. Referring to a telling statistic, Sims stated that according to the Ministry of Agriculture, 29,486 feddans of agricultural land in approximately 700,000 separate cases, had been built on since the January 25 Revolution.

Conflicting outlooks were presented on the mechanisms used to deal with informal and unsafe housing since the January 25 Revolution, which led to some heated discussions.

Nahed Naguib of the General Organisation for Physical Planning said the issue of informal housing was caused by economic and social problems and her organisation’s work focused on containing the growth of informal settlements. New housing units were being created by the Ministry of Housing and municipalities, Naguib added.

Ashraf Mohamed, head of the informal housing department in Cairo, said: “Just like the Aswan High Dam was built to contain the flooding of agricultural land, we have to stop the increase of ashwaiyat.”

Providing a critique of such a view, Yahia Shawkat, architect and informal housing specialist at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), said the biggest threat to such communities “is the state itself.”

Shawkat also noted that the “real entry point to such a debate has to take into account the agency of these self-built communities that will continue to grow.”

He highlighted a number of cases of forced evictions from informal settlements. He mentioned Qorsaya Island, which has recently experienced violent clashes between police and residents who the army attempted to evict by force, claiming ownership of the Island, despite many residents living there for decades.

Likewise, the government has a controversial “Cairo 2050” plan to clear slums and develop the land. An example of this is Ramlet Boulaq behind the Nile Towers, which planners hope will be replaced with more lucrative projects.

Urban planner Omar Nagati provided a more holistic view on the issue:

“While government officials have attempted to reduce informal neighbourhoods and demolish them, it is important to rethink the way we talk about ashwaiyat. Today, all of Egypt is becoming informal, starting with the street vendors, microbuses, toktoks, etc.”

Link to original article: http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/66652.aspx

The Revolution Added Two Years: On Cairo

By Frederick Deknatel

In Cairo, there is a street named after the Arab League. It’s a grand boulevard that cuts through Mohandiseen, a neighborhood built in the 1950s to house engineers and other civil servants, whose ranks swelled during the 1960s with the guarantee of employment under the state socialism of President Gamal Abdel Nasser. These days, the boulevard is lined with luxury car showrooms, drab mid-rises and fast-food chains, all forming the commercial spine of an upscale area too expensive for most clerks and bureaucrats. Last December, on one of the quiet streets that radiates off the boulevard, I visited the office of an architect named Dina Shehayeb. A professor at the Housing and Building National Research Center in Cairo, Shehayeb also runs her own firm, which focuses on community-based development and the revitalization of historic areas. The deadly street battles of late November between the police and unarmed protesters on Mohamed Mahmoud Street near Tahrir Square had ended, and the attacks on protesters by military police outside the People’s Assembly near Tahrir were a week away. Cairo was relatively calm. But in her office, Shehayeb spoke heatedly of a city transformed during the reign of the recently deposed president, Hosni Mubarak.

“We had thirty years of the government pushing us to informality,” she said, alluding to Cairo’s vast “informal” areas: dense urban districts built without official planning or permits, often in cheap red brick and concrete on agricultural land that once formed the Nile’s flood plain. Some two-thirds of Cairenes live in informal areas, the urban reality in a country where the government has never provided enough housing; during Mubarak’s three decades of power in Egypt, state assets and land were sold off in a costly dream of turning Cairo’s desert outskirts into satellite cities and gated suburbs. But Shehayeb was also talking about Mohandiseen, where someone with money and connections can skirt lax planning guidelines and build a tower on a street of low-rise buildings. “It was governance by informality, articulated and made ambiguous on purpose,” she said. “Things were always done with vagueness, uncertainty and contradiction.”

Shehayeb then lashed out at the latest master plan for the city, “Cairo Vision 2050,” which imagines Egypt’s capital as a high-rise delirium modeled on Dubai, with crowded informal areas and neglected Nile-side neighborhoods replaced by glass towers and an abundance of green space. As for the city’s “heritage” areas, from its belle époque downtown to its medieval core, home to an unrivaled concentration of historic Islamic architecture, they would become a vast “open-air museum.” Drawn up by the General Organization for Physical Planning (GOPP), part of the Ministry of Housing under Mubarak, Cairo 2050 (as it’s also known) was promoted as the “strategic urban development plan” for Greater Cairo, the sprawling urban area that includes three governorates, some 17 million to 20 million people and no mayor. Urban management falls instead to governors, often retired generals appointed directly by the president and given the rank of minister. Never made public, Cairo 2050 was presented at conferences starting in 2008, to consultants and advisers like the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat), and to investors in an Egyptian real estate market dominated by Gulf petrodollars.

The plan called for the massive decentral-ization of the capital, one of the densest cities on earth. Ministries and state institutions would move to the desert near New Cairo, one of the satellite cities to the east built under Mubarak, while millions of poor residents living in informal areas would be relocated to housing in an ever more distant stretch of desert. Snippets of the plan soon emerged in the local press. Bird’s-eye-view renderings of Khufu Avenue—a runway-size boulevard with dedicated bus lanes running in a line from the heart of Mohandiseen to the base of the Giza Pyramids—convey nothing of contemporary Cairo, a hectic modern capital with major infrastructure, housing and planning needs that is nevertheless depicted by the Egyptian and Western media as a traffic-snarled, smog-choked jumble of slums.

When Mubarak fell during the Arab uprisings in February 2011, Cairo 2050 did not fall with him; UN-Habitat and GOPP have been drafting an update. “It is curious, and an indication of GOPP’s isolation, that the organization and its parent, the Ministry of Housing, continue with this work in spite of mounting criticism from both Egyptian and foreign quarters,” writes David Sims, a longtime urban planner and economist in Egypt, in a new postscript to his authoritative book, Understanding Cairo: The Logic of a City Out of Control (2010). A year ago I met Bassem Fahmy, the project manager of the Strategic Urban Development Plan for the Greater Cairo Region, at UN-Habitat’s office in a cheerless tower in Dokki, near Mohandiseen. Leafing through a draft of Cairo 2050 on his tidy desk, Fahmy described the updated plans as tied “much more to reality. You cannot just present nice pictures with perspectives that are unrealistic…kind of like Dubai.” He admitted that some of the original plans represented “fantasy work, a kind of marketing,” and that certain mega-projects, like Khufu Avenue, were “totally confused. It will not see the light.” But the cover of the draft on his desk included a rendering of a huge roadway—much wider than the Champs-Élysées, the planners’ self-expressed model—terminating below the Pyramids, along with a few stock images of contemporary Cairo. The revised plans, Fahmy said, “will see the light, after public engagement,” and with UN-Habitat as a consultant. He cited questionnaires, focus groups and public presentations at which residents were shown images of the proposals. In the original Cairo 2050 plans, however, GOPP claimed to have consulted 1,800 “key officials, planners and thinkers” through two conferences, “28 specialized workshops,” four symposiums, and four surveys covering between 3,000 and 5,000 households in Greater Cairo.

“This was the promise of a Mubarak presidency: economic prosperity through real estate,” says Dina Shehayeb. For her, the corruption of the Mubarak era is far from over, even if Mubarak and his two sons, Gamal and Alaa, now sit in Tora prison, along with the ministers whose prosperity Gamal Mubarak’s liberalizing economic reforms had assured. “Those ministers in jail are just scapegoats,” she insists, because Cairo 2050 “is about legalizing conflicts of interest and sanctioning personal benefit.”

To read the rest of the article click on the link below.

This article appeared in the January 21, 2013 edition of The Nation
 

From “Paris along the Nile” to “Cairo 2050”

خالد فهمي يكتب في جريدة الشروق

الأحد 16 سبتمبر 2012

«نقول له دقيقة، دقيقة بس نتستر، احنا نايمين فى بيوتنا بالقمصان م الحر، يكسر الباب ويخش ويجر البنت ويقول لها اطلعى يا مـ.. يا متـ…ة يا و..ة وهى بنت بنوت، وداخلين علينا بالبتاع اللى على وشهم مش شايفين غير عنيهم، والراجل جوزى أهه، ده شكله إرهابى؟ فضل يضربه على دماغه والراجل يجيب من بطنه. ليه؟ ليه كل ده؟»

كلمات نقلتها أهداف سويف على لسان ضحايا الشرطة فى أحداث أبراج النيل التى وقعت يوم 2 أغسطس الماضى. مقال أهداف سويف الذى حمل هذه الكلمات المفجعة لم يضاهيه فى الدقة والقدرة على تحليل أحداث بولاق الدامية سوى تقرير بعثة تقصى الحقائق الذى نشرته المبادرة المصرية للحقوق الشخصية والذى قدم، فيما قدم، اتهاما صريحا لأحد ضباط الشرطة بالقتل العمد. التقرير قال إن عمرو البنى، أحد سكان منطقة بولاق أبو العلا، كان يعمل كغيره من جيرانه براتب شهرى فى تأمين الأبراج، وعندما ذهب لتلقى أجرته أطلق عليه أحد ضباط الأمن رصاصتين أصابت الأولى ساقه، واستقرت الثانية فى ظهره فأردته قتيلا.

مقال أهداف سويف وتقرير المبادرة المصرية كانا استثناءين محزنين للجوقة الإعلامية التى اعتمدت على رواية الشرطة ونقلت بدون تردد روايتها عن الأحداث وصورتها على أنها نتاج «بلطجة» سكان رملة بولاق أبوالعلا و«إتلافهم منشأة سياحية، ومقاومتهم للسلطات، وتلويحهم بالعنف ضد موظفى فندق فيرمونت القاهرة».

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إن أحداث أبراج النيل برملة بولاق لم تكن نتيجة بلطجة سكان المنطقة بل انعكاسا لعقلية طبقية وعنصرية فجة فى التعامل مع سكان القاهرة وليس فقط مع سكان بولاق. تلك العقلية تجد أبشع تعبير لها فى مشروع القاهرة 2050 الذى يزعم أنه يهدف إلى زيادة «المسطحات الخضراء» فى العاصمة وأنه يشجع السياحة والاستثمار فيها. المشروع أعدته لجنة السياسات بالحزب الوطنى الديمقراطى المنحل، وبالتالى يفترض أنه أهمل وألقى به فى سلة القمامة، إلا أن أحداث أبراج النيل توضح بجلاء أنه ما زال ساريا بل مفعّلا وينفذ بشكل حثيث.

المشروع لم تتبناه محافظة القاهرة أو أى جهة رسمية، ولا نعلم عن تفاصيله الكثير، لكن من الشذرات التى يمكن الحصول عليها من الإنترنت يتضح أن العقلية المهيمنة عليه لا تعبأ سوى بالمبانى والطرق و«المسطحات الخضراء»، ولا تهتم بسكان المدينة إلا بكونهم يشكلون عائقا أمام رفعة المدينة وتقدمها، وحسب هذه الرؤية فإن سكان القاهرة بـ«فقرهم» و«تخلفهم» و«بلطجيتهم» هم المسئولون الرئيسيون عن التردى الذى أصاب العاصمة والذى منعها من اللحاق بركب المدن الكبرى كدبى والرياض وهونج كونج.

ما أراه مقلقا حقا فى هذا المشروع ليس فقط تواطؤ الجهات التنفيذية معه أو على الأقل مع الفلسفة التى تحكمه، كما اتضح من تصرفات الشرطة وأداء الإعلام فى أحداث أبراج النيل، لكن أيضا تواطؤ قطاع كبير من الناس، حتى ما يطلق عليه «المثقفين»، مع تلك الرؤية التى تنظر للمدينة على أنها مبانٍ وشوارع فقط ولا تكترث بالسكان أو بأحوال معيشتهم أوبالخدمات التى يستحقون الحصول عليها.

ففى حملة الانتخابات الرئاسية الماضية، مثلا، لم يتردد أحد المرشحين من أن يعلن أنه فى حال فوزه سيعمل على القضاء على العشوائيات التى تشوه صورة المدينة. أى هراء هذا وأى عبث؟ ألا يعلم هذا المرشح والكثيرون غيره ممن تؤذيهم صورة العشوائيات أن تلك المناطق غير المخططة تأوى ثلثى سكان القاهرة؟ أى أن أغلبية سكان العاصمة لا يسكنون الأحياء الراقية أو حتى الفقيرة بل يقبعون فى هذه العشوائيات، وأنه نتيجة لغياب الدولة قد ابتدع هؤلاء السكان حلولا مبتكرة تلبى حاجاتهم من مواصلات وعمل وسكن وصحة وتعليم؟ إن العشوائيات باقية، والتعامل معها لا يكون بالقضاء عليها (إلا إذا كان المقصود بذلك أنهارا من الدم) بل بتقديم ما يضمن لسكانها قدرا أدنى من الحياة الآدمية الكريمة.

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ثم هناك «المثقفون» المهتمون بما اصطُلح على تسميته، خطأ، «القاهرة الخديوية»، تلك المدينة التى يرون أن الخديو إسماعيل شرع فى بنائها بعد الزيارة التى قام بها عام 1867 لباريس، عاصمة النور، وبعد أن أيقن أن مصر قطعة من أوروبا وصمم على تحويل القاهرة إلى باريس على النيل. هؤلاء المثقفون يعقدون ندوات عن عظمة المبانى التى شيدها أبدع المعماريين الأوروبيين فى وسط البلد والزمالك، ويتبادلون على صفحاتهم على فيس بوك صور القاهرة «الراقية» التى كان ينظم المرور فيها عساكر بوليس بملابس أنيقة مزركشة، ويتباكون على حال المدينة بعد أن وفد عليها ملايين الفلاحين وبعد أن غابت القوانين الرادعة وبعد أن اختفت «البلدية» و»التنظيم».

ما يغيب عن هؤلاء المتباكين على «القاهرة الخديوية» أن الخديوى اسماعيل قد يكون قد انبهر حقا بباريس، ولكنهم لا يتساءلون عن أى باريس أراد اسماعيل أن يحاكيها؟ عندما لحق على مبارك، ناظر الأشغال العمومية، بالخديوى اسماعيل فى باريس فى تلك الزيارة الشهيرة استلفت نظره أيضا هو الآخر الإصلاحات العديدة التى أحدثها البارون هاوسمان، عمدة باريس، والتى غيرت من طبيعة المدينة بشكل جعله غير قادر على التعرف على المدينة التى كان قد درس بها، هو واسماعيل، قبل ذلك بثلاثين سنة عندما كانا طالبين فى «بعثة الأنجال» الشهيرة. وفى وصفه لهذه الزيارة فى «الخطط التوفيقية» يوضح لنا على مبارك ما أبهره حقا فى باريس. لم تكن الشوارع المستقيمة أو الميادين الواسعة أو البنايات المتسقة أو التماثيل العظيمة التى ازدانت بها المدينة هو ما أبهر ناظر الأشغال العمومية. ما أبهره حقا هو شبكة المجارى العظيمة التى بناها هاوسمان أسفل كل شارع، والتى جعلت من باريس مدينة صحية ذات رائحة عبقة وهواء نقى.

وبعد عودته للقاهرة عمل على مبارك مع غيره من القائمين على المدينة من مهندسيين ومعماريين وأطباء، على تدعيم خدمات الصحة العامة التى كانت قد قطعت بالفعل شوطا بعيدا والارتقاء بها حتى تُعنى بالأحوال الصحية لسكان القاهرة. إن العناية بالصحة العامة، وليس الارتقاء بالقيم الجمالية، هى ما أبهرت اسماعيل وعلى مبارك فى باريس، وهى ما جعلتهما يضاعفا الجهد فى تحسين مستوى معيشة القاهريين. وكان من نتاج هذا الاهتمام بالصحة العامة العمل بجد ونشاط على القضاء على منابع المرض ومرتع الأوبئة، وكان من أهم هذه المخاطر الخليج المصرى الذى كان يشق المدينة من الجنوب للشمال والذى كانت تتحول مياهه لمستنقع آسن متعفن بعد انحسار فيضان النيل كل عام، وبالتالى رُؤى ضرورة تجفيفه وتحويله لشارع عظيم (شارع الخليج الذى أصبح بعد ذلك شارع بورسعيد). نفس هذا الاهتمام بالصحة العامة والتخوف من المياه العفنة هو الذى حدا بالقائمين على المدينة عام 1846 إلى تخفيف بركة الأزبكية وتحويلها لمنتزه عام.

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إن القراءة الواعية لتاريخ القاهرة الحديثة يوضح لنا كيف كانت العناية بصحة سكانها والعمل على تحسين الخدمات الصحية لهم هو ما شغل حال النخبة المصرية فى القرن التاسع عشر. إن اختزال قصة القاهرة الحديثة فى الأوبرا وفيردى وولع اسماعيل بأوجينى يجافى الحقيقة ويغفل المجهود الجبار الذى قام به على مبارك والكثيرون غيره فى تحسين الخدمات المقدمة لسكان القاهرة، ذلك المجهود الذى يعبر عن موقف تقدمى اتخذه قطاع مهم من النخبة المصرية فى القرن التاسع عشر تجاه سكان المدينة.

أما وقد تخلت الآن الحكومة عن هؤلاء السكان وبعد أن أغشت أضواء مدن الخليج الخاوية أعين النخبة فلا بديل أمام سكان القاهرة سوى التأكيد على حقهم فى حياة كريمة والعمل على صياغة قانون للمحليات يمكنهم من التحكم فى مدينتهم ويجعل منهم سادة المدينة الحقيقيين بعد أن ظلوا عقودا طويلة يعاملون على أنهم ضيوف ثقلاء يجب التخلص منهم.

shorouknews.com

The Contested Road to Khufu

Why the proposed new road wouldn’t solve any of the problems it claims to

By Meredith Hutchison and Nicholas Hamilton

One element of the Cairo 2050 document is the creation of a wide boulevard from the Sphinx square to the area of the  Giza Pyramids.  The project proposes the extension of the Arab League Road by 6 km and a 540 m wide roadway and redevelopment zone which would include high-end hotels and offices in the space currently occupied by over 220,000 residents and small businesses.  Khufu Avenue’s construction would require leveling of large areas of the of the Bulaq el Dukrur region – an area with one of the highest densities in Cairo – among other neighborhoods in its way, consequently causing significant displacement and segregation of informal areas from business and tourist areas. 

There is currently no credible relocation plan for the residents who will be forced to leave.  Many of the affected residents have lived in their homes for generations and depend on the social cohesion of their community for employment opportunities. 

Moreover, this may not be the most effective investment in transportation in order to accomplish the stated goals.  Three of the goals stated in the 2002 Greater Cairo Region Urban Transport Master Plan is that the cities transportation system be environmentally friendly, economical and Equitable system.  Other mechanisms exist to move people effectively, often more effectively than building new roads.  One such option is Bus Rapid Transit. Bus Rapid Transit has been estimated to cost about 1/10 that of a subway system and much less than building a 540m wide road and real estate project.  Importantly, these systems build upon existing infrastructure rather than requiring mass dislocation of thousands of residents.

For more on the proposed Loan for transportation, click here.

cairofrombelow.org

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 على أن أهم عامل أثر على الخديوي اسماعيل وناظر أشغاله العمومية علي مبارك كان ولعهما بباريس “عاصمة النور” ومحاولاتهما أن يجعلا من القاهرة “باريس على النيل”.

فأثناء دراستي لتاريخ “القاهرة الخديوية” في دار الوثائق القومية أيقنت أن عملية تحديث القاهرة في القرن التاسع عشر وبناء منطقة “الإسماعيلية” (أي وسط البلد) لم يكن يحركها فقط الافتنان بباريس بل كانت قيم العمران الخلدوني وممارسات الوقف الإسلامي أيضا عاملان مهمان أثرا على تطور المدينة. كما تأكدت أيضا أن الاقتداء بباريس كان نابعا ليس فقط من الولع بالشوارع المستقيمة وطرز البناء الغربي بقدر ما كان نابعا من الاهتمام بالصحة العمومية والعمل على الارتقاء بمستوى معيشة الأهالي.

ما يدعوني للحديث عن تاريخ “القاهرة الخديوية” هو ذلك المشروع الذي بدأنا نسمع عنه منذ حوالي خمس سنوات والمعروف بـ”مخطط القاهرة 2050”. هذا المخطط يحيطه الكثير من الغموض، فإرهاصاته بدأت مع جمال مبارك ومجموعة رجال الأعمال التي كانت تلتف حوله بالإضافة إلى وزير الإسكان السابق أحمد المغربي. وبالرغم من حبس جمال مبارك والحكم بالسجن على المغربي إلا أن ذلك المخطط ما زال مطروحا وتتبناه بقوة الهيئة العامة للتخطيط العمراني التابعة لوزارة الإسكان والموالفق والتنمية العمرانية.

ولكن ما يثير الريبة حقا ليس اقتران مشروع “القاهرة 2050” بالنظام السابق ورجاله بل ما يحتويه من خطط وما يفصح عنه من رؤى تتعلق بمستقبل المدينة. فما هو متاح على النت من معلومات عن المشروع توضح أن القائمين عليه مفتونون بنموذج محدد عن العمران وتخطيط المدن، وهو النموذج الخليجي الذي لا يكترث بتاريخ  المدينة أو بتراثها العمراني، كما يركزون على قشور خارجية مثل الولع بالـ”مساحات الخضراء” على حساب الاهتمام بعوامل التحضر الأخرى من توفير مواصلات وسكن ومرافق وفرص عمل إلخ.

كما تثير الريبة أيضا مشاريع بعينها يحتويها المخطط مثل إنشاء طريق مفتوح أطلقوا عليه اسم “بوليفارد خوفو” يمتد من ميدان سفنكس حتى الأهرامات عرضه مائة متر، وهو مشورع يستدعي ترحيل 25000 أسرة تقطن في منازل تقع على خط الطريق. وهناك أيضا نية لتفريغ منطقة “مثلث ماسبيرو” من السكان وتحويلها مع الكورنيش الممتد لشمالي بولاق إلى منطقة تجارية على غرار دبي، بالإضافة إلى مخططات “لتحزيم” العشوائيات وأخرى لتطوير جزيرتي الدهب والوراق.

والقراءة الدقيقة لما هو متاح عن المشروع توضح أن ما يحركه هو تصور سطحي عن العمران يتمثل في مسطحات خضراء وناطحات سحاب ومقاهي زاهية الألوان، وعدم اكتراث بسكان المدينة بل الاقتناع بأنهم هم من يقف في طريق نهضتها وازدهارها. وهو الأمر الذي يدركه هؤلاء السكان ويثير مخاوفهم، وهو أيضا ما دفع بعضهم للتظاهر ضد المشروع في منطقة مثلث ماسبيرو الأسبوع الماضي.

مأساة القائمين على مشروع القاهرة 2050 تكمن في عدم وقوفهم على تاريخ المدينة التي يدعون الحرص عليها وازردائهم لسكانها ولوم هؤلاء السكان على المشاكل التي تعاني منها.  إن ما يحتاجه سكان القاهرة أكثر من المسطحات الخضراء أو المقاهي الباريسية هي إدارة محلية تحترمهم وترعاهم، والسبيل الوحيد لتحقيق ذلك هو إعادة النظر في طريقة إدارة المدينة والتخطيط لمستقبلها بدءا بالتمسك بانتخاب المحافظ  ومرورا بمراجعة كل القوانين التي تنظم عمل المجالس الشعبية ومجالس الأحياء. عندها فقط سيصبح سكان القاهرة هم من يتحكم في مدينتهم وعندها فقط ستتوقف تلك المقولات الفاشية التي تتدعي أن “مصر حلوة وغنية بس سكانها كتار قوي ومش متحضرين”.

Qursaya Island

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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 to open it for development (some speculations regarding the kind of development range from five star resort, golf course to high-end residential units) all of which have no relationship to this community. The army has been used to protect and back private interests for much longer than most Egyptians realize, it is only becoming clearer in “post-Mubarak” Egypt. The video below is from 2007.

Decades-old fishing and construction licenses and over 25,000 documents issued by various official bodies acknowledging the presence of the islanders on El-Qorsaya, islanders claim, belie government claims that they do not have the right to be on the land, and that they may legitimately be remove from their homes.

Entirely self-sufficient, island residents say that they had personally provided infrastructure services such as electricity, by buying two generators from the government.

Islanders feel that their way of life is being sacrificed for corporate interests.
“The government left these people for years without services and they provided for themselves. The island was worthless to the government for all these years and now suddenly it’s become priceless,” said Abla during the meeting.
He added that El-Qorsaya is a microcosm of the situation in Egypt as a whole.
“Cairo needs greenery no matter how small. The government doesn’t care about Cairo or the people. It must learn how to deal with its people, it cannot just treat them as if they don’t exist or else all of Egypt will be up next.”

The community of 1000 fishermen and 4000 farmers have been living on the island for generations. It is a self sufficient community that farms and fishes for its own food. Inhabitants are content to live a basic rural way of life in the midst an overcrowded, congested city.

Qorsaya Island is located near the west bank of the Nile just south of Roda Island (the earliest island to be urbanized in Cairo). Qorsaya is halfway between Mar Girgis metro station on the eastern bank and Giza train station on the western bank. Its central location makes it prime for speculation and real estate. Moreover, government policies have made agricultural land worth at least ten-fold if the same land was to be urbanized. The southern tip of the Island has been home to a tourist attraction called “The Pharaonic Village” since 1984.

The Cairo2050 Plan includes development components for the island along with Dahab Island further south. Needless to say Cairo2050 has nothing to do with the people of the city and everything to do with corporate interests and neoliberal developments that aim to transform the country into a cash cow for a network of few businessmen with little positive effect on society at large. 

The fate of Qorsaya Island and the community that lives on it is still uncertain. Below is the first part of a 52-minute documentary film “al-Qorsaya” directed by Nawara Murad. For more information in Arabic, click here.

UPDATE November 18, 2012: Military and security forces stormed the island during the early hours of November 18, burned fields and when the farmers defended themselves at least two have been reported dead and 10 injured. It is known since the 2007 attacks that investors, Egyptian and Saudi, have been wanting to confiscate the island and turn it from a productive farming community to an exclusive tourist complex. Link to report of today’s deaths, click here.

Despite the Giza Governorate denial of any connection to the attack on the island, its official website features a plan for the redevelopment of the island. The community has not been consulted regarding these plans.

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UPDATE December 2, 2012: Below is a video by Mosireen showing testimonies by residents of Qursaya. Today 26 residents of Qursaya who were arrested during the military attack on the island stand trial at a military court.

dailystaregypt.com

On Cairo2050

The revived Cairo2050 plan will be presented by the government in the coming weeks. The plan has been controversial for its selling off of chunks of the city to private investors aiming to create luxury gated complexes and offices while displacing over a million inhabitant in informal areas. The entire process has been opaque and does not rely on studies nor does it encourage resident participation in its making.

The guest, argues that Cairo2050 offers shallow solutions, is concerned with image rather than solving real problems. A vision is needed that is on a national scale as Cairo’s growth and development is directly linked to what happens in the countryside and other cities. He argues that a national project of surveying the country, its land, resources, population centers, etc should begin immediately before producing any development plans for Cairo or other cities. (video in Arabic from Nile TV)

Albert Speer and the “Future of Cairo”

Albert Speer JR., the son of Hitler’s architect Albert Speer, will be giving a talk tonight at the Goethe Institute in Downtown Cairo about the future of the City. Albert Speer JR has a planning firm with many projects all over the world and he was commissioned by Mubarak’s NDP party to propose a plan for 6th of October City west of Cairo. The proposal was to be implemented by the Nazif government and was to be part of the mysterious Cairo 2050 plan for which Speer was a consultant. Hopefully the collapse of the NDP means an end to their new capital plans that were unambiguously for the benefit of a few businessmen in Gamal Mubarak’s Club. The 2050 plan, part of which is Albert Speer JR’s 6th of October proposal, were to come at the expense of uprooting hundreds of thousands if not millions of inhabitants and relocating them to desert cinder block communities and at the expense of the city’s rich history (entire neighborhoods with historic fabric were to be razed and replaced with gated resorts, hotels and office towers serving the parallel economic system that the NDP had created in Egypt).

The image above is one of the few Cairo 2050 images that were released and it depicts a complete makeover to the 150-year-old Haram Street which was planned to bring Ismail Pasha’s visitors for the Suez Canal opening to the Pyramids. The image shows the route stripped of its buildings which are replaced with a fascist parade of repeated building blocks. Bulaq and the historic Northern Cemetery were to be the first victims of the plan which called for those areas to be completely flattened to make room for the NDP’s vision of a future Cairo which Albert Speer JR helped in shaping. Will report on the talk later tonight but for now enjoy the following BBC documentary on Albert Speer the father.

*Update: The talk was unfortunate and Mr Speer was thankfully brief and went through a few points about how the future of Cairo must be … (drum role)…… Sustainable! Thanks a lot Mr. Speer for coming such a long way to tell us the obvious.. but please tell us something more specific.. (gentle sound of wind in an open field).. I really appreciate the effort of holding the talk and the Goethe Institute’s efforts to kick off a series of programs about the city, planning and architecture. However this was a bit under planned and not very informative. Mr. Speer denied any relation to the Cairo 2050 plan, however he did confirm his firm was asked to work on the 6th of October City (which is part of the overall plan).

More importantly for me is this use of the word sustainability in a very abstract way and without getting to the truth: that sustainability has emerged recently in Europe as a very expensive product that is then pushed onto developing nations, through conditions in IMF and World Bank funds, that essentially put Europeans to work and give them a very sexy new product to export. Rather than importing photovoltaic cells from Germany or wind turbines from The Netherlands, Egypt needs a sustainability research center that builds on vernacular practices rather than simply importing very expensive technology and inviting even more expensive experts to come and tell us what we should and shouldn’t do. Sustainability has given an economic life to post-industrial Europe and they have come up with a few technologies that are promoted as a way forward which is only part of the solution. There are much cheaper inventions in India for example that deal with the Indian context designed by Indians that will be far more sustainable than shipping (on fuel burning ships) 1000 massive wind turbines from Europe.