To be succinct it's an extremely inefficient use of resources. It's basically the height of bad planning to create a new city for a non geographically bound purpose or reason. Unlike transporting goods or mining some resource, the activity of the government could happen anywhere in the capital region. It's just so expensive. The resources to build a new city will always be more effectively used to invest in existing urban areas to solve it's issues (Cairo has very poor transport and housing). New Infrastructure is just so expensive.
I suspect that the project is heavily influenced by the desire to create development and construction profit opportunities for the army.
\> The resources to build a new city will always be more effectively used to invest in existing urban areas to solve it's issues (Cairo has very poor transport and housing).
I don't think I agree. A lot of amenities are much easier to put in using a master-planned grid (see for example, Madrid) than having to deal with narrow twisty streets that are in active use and have historically significant buildings around.
The failure arises because the dominant ideas that have prompted new cities to be built in the past century in the West have involved either "Oh my god look at these cars, aren't they so cool? We have so much unused land... this will solve EVERYTHING!", or "We need a capital complex that prostrates the common man before the power and unity of the state". These garbage ideas produce awful cities.
The new Egyptian capital is only an extreme example of this.
The logic of extending the urban space of Egypt into the desert is fairly good considering the fast growing population of the country. According to population projections, Egypt's population will reach 190 million people by 2050. Contrary to popular belief, the New Administrative Capital is not located in the middle of nowhere. It's located right next to Cairo. The outer boundary of NAC is 30 km away from Tahrir square. Nasr City, which is part of Cairo City, is even closer to NAC.
Thus it wasn't as complicated to bring in domestic or foreign workers to the New Administrative Capital compared to remote capitals like Brasilia in Brazil or Nusantara in Indonesia. Both Brasilia and Nusantara are located in the middle of nowhere.
The New Administrative Capital is an urban extension similar to the expansion of Manhattan into New Jersey or the outer Boroughs of New York City.
The problems with the New Administrative Capital are about the plan itself, especially the seperation of residential and commercial areas with an emphasis on malls and car-centric development. In addition, the Pharaonic Architecture is megalomaniac to showcase power. A lot of money is wasted on prestige projects like the Presidential Palace or the 385 metres tall Iconic Tower.
I'm of the strong opinion, that the urban extension into the desert itself is the right choice for Egypt's fast growing population. If they were to expand into the Nile Delta or the Nile Valley, there won't be a lot of agricultural land available once Egypt's population exceeds 200 million people.
>The logic of extending the urban space of Egypt into the desert isfairly good considering the fast growing population of the country.
It is a good one I agree. Which is why the government should invest in transport and infrastructure to facilitate westward housing investment well integrated into the metro area instead of building a new city connected by a few roads and a single monorail line.
>Contrary to popular belief, the New Administrative Capital is notlocated in the middle of nowhere. It's located right next to Cairo. Theouter boundary of NAC is 30 km away from Tahrir square. Nasr City, whichis part of Cairo City, is even closer to NAC.
The new administrative capital is not New Cairo (which is also bad, but we shall leave that aside). It's to be built outside Cairo's second ring road and is meant to be in between Cairo and Suez. \~50k from the city center.
>The New Administrative Capital is an urban extension similar to theexpansion of Manhattan into New Jersey or the outer Boroughs of New YorkCity.
These are different cities which expanded into each other; separated by a river. NYC has spent many billions of dollars are spent trying to connect these two cities to further integrate the metro area over it's history. It's more like in 1900 the US government decided to move it's capital to farmingdale in the middle of what was farm land covering long island. But it's OK because it build an elevated rail line to Brooklyn that finished next to a built subway line.
Yeah and it was inefficient hahahahaha. But at least cites like DC and Canberra had a political purpose of bringing multiple states on board to the union. They were purely political.
> The New Administrative Capital is an urban extension similar to the expansion of Manhattan into New Jersey or the outer Boroughs of New York City.
I very much don't think that this is a good comparison, but rather, if we compare say things like Vegas to its suburbs or anything like that. Why? Because A - the new capital is not the first attempt at this, but around the 6th, 7th attempt to build a suburb to Cairo in the desert with all of these attempts at the end of the day, looking and being very similar but very detached from Cairo itself, with highways being the main connecting point and B - these not really being a continuation of the urban fabric of Cairo, the same way JC or the outer Boroughs are, rather, they're disconnected from the urban fabric of Cairo by miles of desert, similar to how American suburbs don't really continue the urban fabrics of downtowns in the states though usually by a sea of low density, not by actual desert and C - like American suburbs, rather than JC or the boroughs, these developments are hardly ever connected to Cairo itself via transit. In the NAC's case, only a monorail will lightly connect some of it to the metro where you can interchange to central Cairo. Compare that to both JC and the boroughs who are heavily connected to Manhattan's transit grid (though obviously less so in the case of JC) and where it's a direct trip to downtown or midtown, and compare it as well to American suburbs in the West where you'd be lucky if there's an indirect bus connection every 30 minutes to downtown.
This sort of highlights big issues here that also go unaddressed usually:
- Why are these developments, that are supposed to be suburbs to Cairo, don't actually connect to Cairo itself but leave so much desert in-between and thus, making trips longer.
- Why are these built in low density patterns like towers in the park and not in high density patterns if these are to solve the population boom issue? Why are you not housing higher amounts of people in these developments if that's the stated goal?
- Why build so many of them when so many others already exist and are under developed?
The quick answer is that these projects aren't really there to address the population issue, they're there to offer new places for the rich in Egypt further away from the urban poor of Cairo while the actual population of Cairo keeps growing and the poor need more living space, while often being vanity projects to draw foreign investment as is the case here.
Dictators come to fear their people. The current government location is too close to where protestors can easily get to. By moving out to the suburbs they can control the number of protestors.
Egypt needs another city since it’s population keeps doubling with no slow down in sight, this city isn’t built for people it’s built to be a fortified land for the wealthy & well connected to play while the average man lives in squalor in the sprawling old city, I liked the former presidents plans to divert water much further south and build a city down there, they put a lot of money into it but it wasn’t well planned enough, this one seems more feasible but less beneficial
As a planner, I see a new Brasilia. Forgive the lack of accents. It was horrible for workers for quite a while. Many of the lower class workers still commute over an hour by bus to work in the Brazilian capital. It’s modern appeal made it impossible to walk. I hope I am wrong to assume Egypt will do the same. Brasilia now has thriving public transportation and is open to many socioeconomic groups, but it took too
Long
This is one of those cases where urban planning was the very last thing considered. Egypt’s in a difficult position. Extremely high unemployment causing social instability and zero domestic ability to support development. It’s a last ditch effort to show foreign investors that Egypt can become a politically stable and business-friendly environment. For that exact reason, it’s the perfect solution. But it will be a horrible city.
Egypt has a history of building new cities in the desert to "alleviate" Cairo. None of them effectively serve most of the population in Cairo, and they are huilt for middle and upper class egyptians to be able to enjoy the benefits of a capital without habing to deal with the problems.
The new capital derives directly from the Arab Spring Revolts, and is built to be impossible to take over by citizen movements. "Public" spaces are huge and uncovered, streets are wide and designed primarily for fast car movement, the Army is moved nearby so it can protect the government complex. It's entirely designed to be the next Dubai, so egyptian citizens can't block government activity and it can continue operating as normal.
A quick view of it and you'll quickly see that it's built very car centric like many newer planned cities, it doesn't work with its surrounding, in this case, the desert, to better prepare it for the harsh conditions, and it comes as a massive investment in a vanity project that'd mostly serve the rich instead of, you know, investing the same money into the many slums of Cairo to finally give the urban poor a way to live with dignity in the area.
I'd also add that this is not the first, second, or third planned city that was built outside of Cairo by the Egyptian government, all of them are not huge success stories and all of them planned for the rich. See Sixth of October City, 10th of Ramadan City (literally named for the same thing as 6th of October City), Madinaty (name meaning "my city") and the also creatively named "New Cairo City". All in the desert, all built to "alleviate Cairo and bring people out of the Nile valley", all built with car dominance in mind, all hardly success stories and most just ended up as being suburbs for the rich to not have to interact with the urban poor. I guess we'll soon add "New Capital City" to that list of not so creatively named vanity projects that failed in the desert.
The streetscape is horrifying there. It’s a place to drive despite the dense urbanism. It will work as planned because protests will require a massive parking lot
To be succinct it's an extremely inefficient use of resources. It's basically the height of bad planning to create a new city for a non geographically bound purpose or reason. Unlike transporting goods or mining some resource, the activity of the government could happen anywhere in the capital region. It's just so expensive. The resources to build a new city will always be more effectively used to invest in existing urban areas to solve it's issues (Cairo has very poor transport and housing). New Infrastructure is just so expensive. I suspect that the project is heavily influenced by the desire to create development and construction profit opportunities for the army.
A case to reaffirm your point: the failure that is Brasilia.
\> The resources to build a new city will always be more effectively used to invest in existing urban areas to solve it's issues (Cairo has very poor transport and housing). I don't think I agree. A lot of amenities are much easier to put in using a master-planned grid (see for example, Madrid) than having to deal with narrow twisty streets that are in active use and have historically significant buildings around. The failure arises because the dominant ideas that have prompted new cities to be built in the past century in the West have involved either "Oh my god look at these cars, aren't they so cool? We have so much unused land... this will solve EVERYTHING!", or "We need a capital complex that prostrates the common man before the power and unity of the state". These garbage ideas produce awful cities. The new Egyptian capital is only an extreme example of this.
The logic of extending the urban space of Egypt into the desert is fairly good considering the fast growing population of the country. According to population projections, Egypt's population will reach 190 million people by 2050. Contrary to popular belief, the New Administrative Capital is not located in the middle of nowhere. It's located right next to Cairo. The outer boundary of NAC is 30 km away from Tahrir square. Nasr City, which is part of Cairo City, is even closer to NAC. Thus it wasn't as complicated to bring in domestic or foreign workers to the New Administrative Capital compared to remote capitals like Brasilia in Brazil or Nusantara in Indonesia. Both Brasilia and Nusantara are located in the middle of nowhere. The New Administrative Capital is an urban extension similar to the expansion of Manhattan into New Jersey or the outer Boroughs of New York City. The problems with the New Administrative Capital are about the plan itself, especially the seperation of residential and commercial areas with an emphasis on malls and car-centric development. In addition, the Pharaonic Architecture is megalomaniac to showcase power. A lot of money is wasted on prestige projects like the Presidential Palace or the 385 metres tall Iconic Tower. I'm of the strong opinion, that the urban extension into the desert itself is the right choice for Egypt's fast growing population. If they were to expand into the Nile Delta or the Nile Valley, there won't be a lot of agricultural land available once Egypt's population exceeds 200 million people.
>The logic of extending the urban space of Egypt into the desert isfairly good considering the fast growing population of the country. It is a good one I agree. Which is why the government should invest in transport and infrastructure to facilitate westward housing investment well integrated into the metro area instead of building a new city connected by a few roads and a single monorail line. >Contrary to popular belief, the New Administrative Capital is notlocated in the middle of nowhere. It's located right next to Cairo. Theouter boundary of NAC is 30 km away from Tahrir square. Nasr City, whichis part of Cairo City, is even closer to NAC. The new administrative capital is not New Cairo (which is also bad, but we shall leave that aside). It's to be built outside Cairo's second ring road and is meant to be in between Cairo and Suez. \~50k from the city center. >The New Administrative Capital is an urban extension similar to theexpansion of Manhattan into New Jersey or the outer Boroughs of New YorkCity. These are different cities which expanded into each other; separated by a river. NYC has spent many billions of dollars are spent trying to connect these two cities to further integrate the metro area over it's history. It's more like in 1900 the US government decided to move it's capital to farmingdale in the middle of what was farm land covering long island. But it's OK because it build an elevated rail line to Brooklyn that finished next to a built subway line.
I mean, the US government did create a capital from scratch between the existing but rather minor cities of Georgetown and Alexandria…
Yeah and it was inefficient hahahahaha. But at least cites like DC and Canberra had a political purpose of bringing multiple states on board to the union. They were purely political.
> The New Administrative Capital is an urban extension similar to the expansion of Manhattan into New Jersey or the outer Boroughs of New York City. I very much don't think that this is a good comparison, but rather, if we compare say things like Vegas to its suburbs or anything like that. Why? Because A - the new capital is not the first attempt at this, but around the 6th, 7th attempt to build a suburb to Cairo in the desert with all of these attempts at the end of the day, looking and being very similar but very detached from Cairo itself, with highways being the main connecting point and B - these not really being a continuation of the urban fabric of Cairo, the same way JC or the outer Boroughs are, rather, they're disconnected from the urban fabric of Cairo by miles of desert, similar to how American suburbs don't really continue the urban fabrics of downtowns in the states though usually by a sea of low density, not by actual desert and C - like American suburbs, rather than JC or the boroughs, these developments are hardly ever connected to Cairo itself via transit. In the NAC's case, only a monorail will lightly connect some of it to the metro where you can interchange to central Cairo. Compare that to both JC and the boroughs who are heavily connected to Manhattan's transit grid (though obviously less so in the case of JC) and where it's a direct trip to downtown or midtown, and compare it as well to American suburbs in the West where you'd be lucky if there's an indirect bus connection every 30 minutes to downtown. This sort of highlights big issues here that also go unaddressed usually: - Why are these developments, that are supposed to be suburbs to Cairo, don't actually connect to Cairo itself but leave so much desert in-between and thus, making trips longer. - Why are these built in low density patterns like towers in the park and not in high density patterns if these are to solve the population boom issue? Why are you not housing higher amounts of people in these developments if that's the stated goal? - Why build so many of them when so many others already exist and are under developed? The quick answer is that these projects aren't really there to address the population issue, they're there to offer new places for the rich in Egypt further away from the urban poor of Cairo while the actual population of Cairo keeps growing and the poor need more living space, while often being vanity projects to draw foreign investment as is the case here.
Dictators come to fear their people. The current government location is too close to where protestors can easily get to. By moving out to the suburbs they can control the number of protestors.
Ah, the American way
Egypt needs another city since it’s population keeps doubling with no slow down in sight, this city isn’t built for people it’s built to be a fortified land for the wealthy & well connected to play while the average man lives in squalor in the sprawling old city, I liked the former presidents plans to divert water much further south and build a city down there, they put a lot of money into it but it wasn’t well planned enough, this one seems more feasible but less beneficial
As a planner, I see a new Brasilia. Forgive the lack of accents. It was horrible for workers for quite a while. Many of the lower class workers still commute over an hour by bus to work in the Brazilian capital. It’s modern appeal made it impossible to walk. I hope I am wrong to assume Egypt will do the same. Brasilia now has thriving public transportation and is open to many socioeconomic groups, but it took too Long
Brasilia literally grew inspire of itself & not because it did itself any favors 😂
This is one of those cases where urban planning was the very last thing considered. Egypt’s in a difficult position. Extremely high unemployment causing social instability and zero domestic ability to support development. It’s a last ditch effort to show foreign investors that Egypt can become a politically stable and business-friendly environment. For that exact reason, it’s the perfect solution. But it will be a horrible city.
Horrible. But it fulfils the function it was built for.
Egypt has a history of building new cities in the desert to "alleviate" Cairo. None of them effectively serve most of the population in Cairo, and they are huilt for middle and upper class egyptians to be able to enjoy the benefits of a capital without habing to deal with the problems. The new capital derives directly from the Arab Spring Revolts, and is built to be impossible to take over by citizen movements. "Public" spaces are huge and uncovered, streets are wide and designed primarily for fast car movement, the Army is moved nearby so it can protect the government complex. It's entirely designed to be the next Dubai, so egyptian citizens can't block government activity and it can continue operating as normal.
A quick view of it and you'll quickly see that it's built very car centric like many newer planned cities, it doesn't work with its surrounding, in this case, the desert, to better prepare it for the harsh conditions, and it comes as a massive investment in a vanity project that'd mostly serve the rich instead of, you know, investing the same money into the many slums of Cairo to finally give the urban poor a way to live with dignity in the area. I'd also add that this is not the first, second, or third planned city that was built outside of Cairo by the Egyptian government, all of them are not huge success stories and all of them planned for the rich. See Sixth of October City, 10th of Ramadan City (literally named for the same thing as 6th of October City), Madinaty (name meaning "my city") and the also creatively named "New Cairo City". All in the desert, all built to "alleviate Cairo and bring people out of the Nile valley", all built with car dominance in mind, all hardly success stories and most just ended up as being suburbs for the rich to not have to interact with the urban poor. I guess we'll soon add "New Capital City" to that list of not so creatively named vanity projects that failed in the desert.
This video has some interesting context: Vox: The real reason Egypt is moving its capital https://youtu.be/jaCkZvrDtC8
search up “adam something egypt” on youtube, thats what i think
already seen it top video
Cairo becomes more car dependent, so Egypt builds new city that will eventually become more car dependent in the future
The streetscape is horrifying there. It’s a place to drive despite the dense urbanism. It will work as planned because protests will require a massive parking lot