#cairo2050

[Illustration of Emaar Square used for advertising and real estate promotion]

ترجمة عربية للمقال متاحة على هذا الرابط

In mid-February the Egypt subsidiary of the UAE-based Emaar signed a protocol with the Egyptian Defense Ministry which clears the way for the construction of Emaar Square, a mixed-use development with open-air shopping for international luxury brands. The development is part of the company's exclusive Uptown Cairo. Emaar is the developer behind the world's tallest building, Burj Khalifa. The Egyptian Defense Ministry is in many ways Egypt's largest land owner/manager and the massive property that is now being developed by Emaar with Uptown Cairo's exclusive residential clusters and golf course is/was owned by the military and was previously unavailable to the market.

In the years leading up to 2011 visions of the future of Cairo as imagined by the former regime and its businessmen began to emerge. That vision, known as Cairo 2050, would have led to the mass eviction of thousands of families to transform the city into pockets of high-end residential development, golf courses and shopping centers. Much of the investment power for these projects were to come from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The former regime was intent to the Dubaization of Cairo and close ties between the money (Gulf capital) and power (the regime and the military) were being built. These projects were halted after the revolution took an unwanted turn (Qatar-backed Muslim Brotherhood coming to power and Qatar competing with Saudi/Kuwait/UAE for financial control in Egypt). Now, many projects are back on track, including the Maspero triangle and Uptown Cairo.

Those who celebrate the Dubai model and wish for its expansion across the region make the unethical choice of ignoring the fact that the Gulf cities of the last decade emerge out of a very specific relation between political power and capital (often one and the same). The expansion of such model into cities such as Cairo with vastly different demographics and where a military functions not as an institution of the state but as caretaker with unchallenged access both to politics and capital (in the form of assets such as land and resources for example), such a model in this context would have disastrous impact on the urban majority who will be marginalized in favor of serving an entrepreneurial transnational minority (perhaps working in Dubai and using their money to obtain property in Cairo's Dubai-style enclaves), who will ultimately occupy the role of the colonial-era elites of the past. The urban majority will be moved out of the way when necessary and put to work under unacceptable conditions, with no power to mobilize and with little pay.

So why is this interesting? First, this is not a free market. When the military is arguably the biggest land owner with no civilian oversight makes a direct and opaque deal with a developer to build an exclusive and gated community in the heart of the capital, this is not a free market. The development is framed by the government as part of "building Egypt" and attracting investment while in fact all this is doing is creating more opportunity for private accumulated capital (buyers) to be locked into cages (gated development) with no access to democratic municipal management: those wealthy buyers won't pressure the government for services, they will deal with a company instead.

Second (and not to state the obvious), this is not a democracy, and certainly not revolutionary. The protocol signed in Feb included the Housing Ministry, Local Development Ministry, Investment Ministry and the Governorate of Cairo. All these state institutions are partaking in one of Cairo's most exclusive developments while the majority of the city's population is abandoned. This cooperation between these state institutions will, for example, allow for Emaar to built a private road to link the Uptown Cairo/Emaar Square with Cairo's road network. This private road will require the "cleansing" of Jabal al-Ahmar area (which is likely to mean the forced eviction of some poor people to get them out of the way). Egyptian state institutions, including the military, have a lengthy track record of forcibly evicting residents, and using lethal force to do it, in favor of private interests.

Why are so many state institutions failing to solve Egypt's mounting urban problems, many of which are directly caused by these very institutions, why are they coming together to sign a protocol for a private highway to a private city? This is not the first time such uneven attention was paid by state institutions towards serving an exclusive minority with links to political and military power while turning a blind eye on the needs of the majority.

[The location of Uptown Cairo showing in yellow dotted lines the private roads linking to the city's network. The land size of the development is comparable to the neighborhood of Zamalek]

This latest protocol went unnoticed in the news, in a way it is business as usual. So how did we get from Tahrir Square to Emaar Square?

In Egypt, urban space continues to be the stage for the struggle not only to shape the spaces of the city but also for creating new forms of democratic representation. The protests taking place in Egypt starting in 2011 and the ensuing political upheaval shed light on questions of space and political participation, particularly how spaces of the everyday have become sites of resistance, revolution and transformation. The underlying theme which has been consistent from the beginning of this most recent chapter in Egypt’s history of urban protest is the desire to (re)construct democracy from the bottom up.

The Egyptian revolt hasn’t been discussed in local and international media outlets as an urban struggle, or more specifically as a movement seeking to “overcome the isolations and to reshape the city in a different social image from that given by the powers of developers backed by finance, corporate capital, and an increasingly entrepreneurialy minded local state apparatus.”  The city has in fact been shaped by power and capital in ways which have manifested in the extreme unevenness of development resulting from the neglectful rule of the state towards the urban majority while providing concessions to international developers (namely Gulf real estate investment) or local entities, namely individuals, associations or corporations linked directly to the police and military state apparatus.

The struggle in Egypt manifest in urban space since 2011 is one directly linked to the ways in which power and capital have produced socially and economically unjust urban experiences. In Egypt the more generic terms of “corporate capital,” “finance,” and “state apparatus” aren’t helpful to put into relief the specific interlinking of power and economy accessible to the military and police, state institutions with a monopoly over violence in the name of the state, which have functioned in ways similar to corporations in other contexts, thus bearing weapons in civilian spaces and having direct access to capital and assets such as land and building materials that directly shape cities and their development.

[Image circulated in social media last month purporting to show the "Israeli-style separation wall" construction to enclose Uptown Cairo from its surroundings. It would be useful to think of this wall while contemplating the wall caging Tahrir Square]

The city, as Egyptians have come to know it, is the result of the political and economic structures protected by the regime. Cities, in this current political economy in Egypt, have lost their vital role as places of economic possibilities for the majority of the population. Instead, since the 1970s the state has fallen short of providing services, creating effective systems of urban management, producing plans for urban expansion and where capital can be invested into the production of new urban environments that allow for local private capital to grow while protecting the sanctity of the common, the public sphere and its manifestation in public spaces shared by a wide segment of the urban population.

During this time the military continually protected its grasp on Egypt’s economy leading to a 1997 presidential decree that gave the military the right to all undeveloped lands in the country, making it the largest landowner in Egypt’s history. Land is one of many commodities monopolized by the military, which it then utilizes in opaque sales operations with international investment for exclusive gated communities, beach resorts or shopping malls. The Egyptian military as an institution is perhaps the main beneficiary of Egypt’s political and economic status quo, which has produced the current urban environment. In addition to land, the military produces building materials such as cement and brick, the essential construction materials in Egypt used for everything from luxury condos in gated communities to new residential buildings in informally planned districts expanding onto agricultural land. Finally, the military has access to an unpaid labor force through the country’s mandatory conscription. Often conscripts from lower social standing coming from the poorest parts of the country work in construction sites and in factories producing building materials. More explicitly “as the managers of a state-owned economic empire built on corruption and oppression of working classes, military leaders have become decisively complicit in repressing labor and violating their rights.” The spatial confrontations, often violent, in Egyptian squares between protesters/participants and soldiers/conscripts are in many ways vivid illustrations of Egypt’s struggle over its politics, economy and space, in other words, a struggle towards a more even urban development.

UPDATE 25 February, 2014: As the government suddenly resigned news emerged that the housing minister (his ministry participated in the above discussed protocol) will become Egypt's next prime minister.

Update 26 February, 2014: According to Ahram Online "Egypt's draft investment law contains provisions to prevent third parties from challenging contracts made between the government and an investor." Such a law will protect contracts such as the one discussed above from scrutiny by the public using any legal channels to challenge them.

Update 28 February, 2014: For clarification a paragraph was added above starting with "Those who celebrate the Dubai...".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).