New Administrative Capital in Cairo: Power, Urban Development vs. Social Injustice – an Egyptian Model of Neoliberalism

Abstract

Die Stadtentwicklung in den Metropolen der arabischen Welt folgt seit den 2000er Jahren immer stärker neoliberalen Mustern: Ein Stadtneu- und -umbau wird mit Fokus auf Marketingstrategien und Profitmaximierung im Immobiliensektor vollzogen. Den Rahmen für die konzeptionelle Betrachtung der Stadt als ökonomische Ware und Marke bilden hierbei die autoritären politischen Systeme, der rasante Anstieg der Bevölkerung, die Revolten und Aufstände der letzten Jahre und die beachtlichen Investitionen in städtebauliche Großprojekte. In diesem Band werden theoretische und praktische Aspekte der neoliberalen Stadtentwicklung an ausgewählten Fallbeispielen aus Tanger, Kairo, Ramallah, Beirut, Amman, Tunis, Muscat, Manama und Doha vorgestellt.

Full text

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New administrative Capital - Cairo: Power, Urban Development
and Social Injustice – the Official Egyptian Model of Neoliberalism
Dr.-Ing. Hassan Elmouelhi, Technical University Berlin.
Biography
Hassan Elmouelhi is an urban planner, designer and architect, working since 2014 as a lecturer and
senior researcher at Berlin Technical University, Habitat Unit – International Urbanism and Design and
at the Urban Development Department – Campus El Gouna. His research and teaching interests vary
between international urbanism, culture, urban and socio-economic development, governance, culture
and urban informality. He coordinates the international cooperation project: “RealcityLab: Practice
orientation in architectural education” funded by BMZ (2016-2019), with Helwan University, Faculty of
Fine Arts, Department of Architecture. He coordinated and acted as co-principle investigator in the
research project: “Development Priorities in Informal Areas : Planning , Realization and Local
Perceptions-DEVEPER” (2 014-2016) in partnership with IUSD-Cairo, Ain Shams University, funded by
BMBF. His PhD in Architecture-International Urbanism from the Habitat Unit, TU Berlin, entitled:
“Culture and informal urban developmen t: A case study of Cairo’s informal settlements”, was published
in 2014. He has varied experience from both practice and academia and has taken part in teaching several
master level courses and seminars at TU Berlin in the past years. He has also worked as an architect and
urban planner for several consultancies in the Middle East, as a lecturer at Misr International University
in Cairo for several years, and as a guest lecturer for the Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design
master – IUSD – Ain Shams University/Stuttgart University. He leads the integrated term project for the
Urban Development master program - TU Berlin Campus El Gouna. He has participated as an expert in
several international workshops and seminars on informal urbanism in Germany, Egypt, Jordan, India,
Tunisia and Tanzania.
Abstract
The planning of Cairo’s urban growth has for decades been realized through the building of new
settlements in the desert surrounding Cairo, the country's capital, particularly to the east and west of the
city. The older generations of these new cities needed decades to reach a reasonable percentage of
occupancy and functionality. Gated communities constructed by private urban developers have shared in
this phenomenon by targeting certain segments of residents – mostly the upper and upper-middle classes.
However, Cairo urbanism struggles on the one hand with its majority of informally developed urban
sprawl, and on the other hand with the fact that the new cities are not really functioning at full capacity.
The Egyptian state has recently started construction of a New Administrative Capital 45 kilometers east
Cairo. This chapter tries to understand and theorize an ongoing process adopted by the Egyptian state to
address development, and specifically urban development, within the framework of theories of
neoliberalism, as indispensible from politics, power and several social theories, based on the case of the
Cairo New Administrative Capital (NAC). The discussion of this case study within the neoliberal urban
development contexts can deliver some deep analysis and insights into the political, economic, spatial,
cultural and iconic aspects of the interactions and interdependencies of the various players and elements
in this neoliberal order. Neoliberalism usually implies a reduced state influence on the market, thus the
NAC provides neoliberalism in a new, atypical, model regarding the role of the state. This contribution
discusses how this new administrative capital is situated within the Egyptian context, how it is promoted
to the Egyptian people, targeting specific income groups from Cairo society, how far it can be considered
an inclusive city, and how far it can contribute to the narrowing or widening of the gap between classes
within the discourse of urban justice. Also discussed is how it can be considered as a model of public-
private partnerships that redefines the role of the state in providing land and investments, or in other
words, the state as a real estate investor. The relation between the urban planners as professionals, and
the decision makers.

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Figure 1 N AC lo catio n in the context of the Cairo region. (edited b y the author, source:
https://www.facebo ok.com/ACUDEG Y/photos/ )
New Administrative Capital - Cairo: Power, Urban Development–
vs. Social Injustice – an Egyptian Model of Neoliberalism
Utopia, a novel published in 2008 by the Egyptian novelist Dr. Ahmed Khaled Tawfeek1,
features a future projection of the development path of urban segregation and urban injustice in
Cairo. The novel - categorized under dystopian fiction - shows an imaginary scenario for the
year 2023 where Cairo is split into two classes (high income and low income).
This is an example of how contemporary Egyptian literature foretells the negative impact of the
economic path that the Egyptian state adopted over more than three decades, during the
Mubarak presidency. However, the extensive political changes that have taken place after the
2011 revolution had thrown a shed on the Egyptian urban policy and practice. This is involved
in that image represented in the neoliberal urban development. The implications of such extreme
segregation and the economic and social gap between the classes are described in this novel in
the form of an apartheid-like segregated community. It creates a pessimistic vision of Cairo’s
future, with the rich being protected in a huge gated community and having all kinds of luxuries
while the rest of the old city outside of the fences is left to deteriorate, with its residents
suffering hunger and extreme poverty and the lack of basic necessities.
The planning of Cairo’s urban growth has for decades been realized through the building of new
settlements in the desert surrounding Cairo, the country's capital, particularly to the east and
west of the city. The older generations of these new cities have needed decades to reach a
reasonable percentage of occupancy and functionality. Gated communities constructed by
private urban developers have shared in this phenomenon by targeting certain segments of
residents – mostly the upper and upper-middle classes. However, Cairo urbanism struggles on
the one hand with its majority of informally-developed urban sprawl, and on the other hand with
1 Ahmed Khaled Tawfik died on 3rd April 2018. (source: Egypt today:
https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/4/46849/Author-Ahmed-Khaled-Tawfik-passes-away)

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the fact that the new cities are not really functioning at full capacity. Currently, the Egyptian
state is following a program for economic reform based on International Monetary Fund (IMF)
approval which addresses structural issues such as the huge budget deficit, official
overspending, state subsidies, and currency flotation (Hamzawy 2016).
At the Economic Conference in March 2015, the Egyptian government announced the national
project named the "New Administrative Capital" (NAC) as a solution for the booming megacity
of Cairo through the diverting of inhabitants away from Cairo (Serag 2017, Khorshed 2017). A
master plan prepared by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) (ibid.) over a two-month period
was used to visualize how this new city would look (Ahmed 2015) and its first phase has been
under construction since 2015. The target is to serve up to seven million residents in ten years'
time, when all phases2 are completed. The city is located between Greater Cairo and the Suez
Canal region, near the regional ring road and the Cairo-Suez road. The location of the NAC is
45 kilometers east of Cairo. As argued by the Minister of Housing in December 2017 in front of
the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the strategic location selected for the NAC is based
on two factors: first, an urban analysis of Cairo expansions over the past years reveals that the
eastern direction has dominated the percentage of added built planned areas in the expansion of
Cairo. Second, the location is midway between Cairo and the newly-developed Suez Canal
region, an ongoing national project that has been hugely invested in. According to Serag (2017),
one opinion criticizing the selected location as a push for the growth towards the east, is that it
will lead to a single huge block of built-up area. This opinion suggests that the new city should
be at least 500 kilometers distant from Cairo to discourage daily commuting from the old Cairo
agglomeration to the new capital, which would eventually turn the NAC into a ghost town by
night.
The NAC is planned to contain a governmental district; a central business district; an arts and
culture district, with an opera house, theaters and cinemas; and a sports city. In addition, it will
be the location of the Egyptian parliament, the cabinet, and ministries, as well as a district for
foreign embassies and the main Christian Orthodox cathedral. It is also planned to include the
highest tower in Africa, according to the official documentary3. In addition, the project includes
a central park – the “Green River” - and an international airport. It will comprise a total area of
170,000 feddan4 – almost double the size of Cairo!
However, it is important to consider that the NAC project is relatively recent, having been
announced only three years ago, and lacks transparency. Little information has been made
public and consequently very few research papers have discussed the project, especially from a
socio-political and urban economic point of view. Using the material available, this contribution
discusses how this new administrative capital is situated within the Egyptian context, how it is
promoted to the Egyptian people, specifically high income groups from Cairo society, how far it
can be considered an inclusive city, and how far it can contribute to the narrowing or widening
of the gap between classes. Also discussed is how the NAC project can be considered a model
of public-private partnership that redefines the role of the state in providing land and
investments, or in other words, the state as a real estate investor. The relation between the urban
2 Documentary: The New Administrative Capital
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=21&v=A3eOhwNk_CY
3 This contradicts the official announcement that the highest building in Africa, Zayed Crystal Spark, 600 meters
high, is planned for el Sheikh Zayed. It was also marketed during the Sharm El Sheikh Conference of 2015.
4 The feddan is an Egyptian unit of area equivalent to 4200 m2, or 1.038 acres (0.42 ha).

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planners as professionals and the decision makers, and the clashes that might take place as a
result of the conflict between planning professional ethics and the eagerness of the client (i.e.
the Egyptian government/NAC company) to maximize profits by violating and modifying the
approved urban plan and design are also discussed.
This chapter tries to understand and theorize an ongoing process adopted by the Egyptian state
to address development, and specifically urban development, within the framework of theories
of neoliberalism, as indispensible from politics, power and social theories, based on the case of
the Cairo New Administrative Capital. The discussion of this case study within the neoliberal
urban development contexts can deliver some deep analysis and insights into the political,
economic, spatial, cultural and iconic aspects of the interactions and interdependencies of the
various players and elements in this neoliberal order. Neoliberalism usually implies a reduced
state influence on the market, thus the NAC provides neoliberalism in a new, atypical, model
regarding the role of the state.
Space, Conflict and Struggle for Urban Justice
To address the above issues, the literature review starts with theories that address the relation
between urban justice and power. As a consequence of power being in the hands of those who
own, and are in control, conflicts in a city can dominate the scene, to the extent that it can be
expressed in some sort of violence. This matches to a great extent the vision in Tawfik's Utopia
regarding the future of Cairo. Mitchell (2003), addressing the relation between space and rights,
and inspired by Lefebvre, argues that: "Space, place, and location are not just the stage upon
which rights are contested, but are actively produced by — and in turn serve to structure —
struggles over rights. In a class-based society, locational conflict can be understood to be
conflict over the legitimacy of various uses of space, and thus of various strategies for asserting
rights, by those who have been disenfranchised by the workings of property or other 'objective'
social processes by which specific activities are assigned a location," (2003:81)
Mitchell (2003) also declares the right of all citizens to inhabit the city, and explains that the
problem in a bourgeois city is that it is "not so much a site of participation as one of
expropriation by a dominant class (and a set of economic interests) that is not really interested
in making the city a site for the cohabitation of differences," (18) Because property rights imply
the power to exclude, groups without property become alienated from political power. This
leads to violence because disempowered groups are denied access to public space (17-21). Laws
are decreed to counteract violence and to protect citizens, but they can also limit their rights.
Limiting rights is geographical, and people who cannot afford NAC prices are denied the right
to housing, as well as access to public space. With the explicit aim of establishing urban order,
current neoliberal practices reduce the democratization of public space (Mitchell 2003).
According to Harvey (1985), leftist theorists argue that elites under capitalism will always
represent the interests of the upper class; leftists disputed the possibility of finding a common
good for a class-divided society, while on the other hand liberals feared that state intrusion
would interfere with individual decisions and market allocations. Thus, Harvey’s basic position
is highly interdisciplinary and relies on the mutuality of social and spatial considerations in city
formation: “The only adequate conceptual framework for understanding the city is one which
encompasses and builds upon both the sociological and the geographical imaginations. We
must relate social behavior to the way in which the city assumes a certain geography, a certain

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spatial form. We must recognize that once a particular spatial form is created it tends to
institutionalize and, in some respects, to determine the future development of social process.”
(Harvey, 1973: 27).
This argument supports the concerns discussed in this chapter that a failure to consider social
integration and justice in the planning of the Egyptian NAC could lead to a city that is not for
everyone, but rather is exclusive to certain categories of society, mainly those who can afford it.
This supports the argument of this chapter that the Egyptian NAC is a very unique case, as it
creates a showcase for studying and understanding how neoliberalism is redefined in Egypt.
Poli tical Messages: “Great” - Projects, Buildings, Achievements, and Profit?
Size, quantity and a short implementation time are the factors adopted by the current Egyptian
state to measure and prove success and level of achievement (Selim 2017). In years of political
unrest, stability is both a target and a proof of power, a tool that can be used by the regime to
show the amount of control needed to attract investment for the sake of economic development.
Neoliberal urbanization in the Arab world is based on the expression of power, not excluding
Cairo. The notion of gigantic national projects has been propagated again5 and began to
dominate the scene in 2014, with the following national projects on the list: the New Suez
Canal; the Suez Canal area development project; and the National Roads project, which targets
the construction of around 4000 kilometers of new roads all over Egypt.
The first challenge (i.e. test) was the “New” Suez Canal project. This could serve as an example
of how decisions regarding national projects are made, financed and managed: it has been
implemented in a relatively short space of time considering its size (one year instead of three
years as originally planned) thanks to “orders” from President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, with
construction costs that have exceeded eight billion US dollars, taken from Egyptians' savings
(The Economist, 2015). The objectives of the project were to impact the Egyptian economy
through attracting investments and providing job opportunities, and “to gather the Egyptian
people around a national common goal”, according to the president’s repeated announcements
in the media.
Current Egyptian urban development policies have shown a visible misalignment through
different levels, on both global and national levels. The global urban agendas have been strongly
transformed towards principles of urban densification and protecting natural lands - both desert
and cultivated - from urban sprawl. This trend has been declared internationally as one of the
New Urban Agenda (NUA) targets, agreed upon by all UN Habitat members in Quito, Ecuador,
at the Habitat III conference in 2016. However, the Egyptian authorities have set out their
strategies for urban development in a way that depends mainly on increasing the area of
Egyptian urbanism in the Delta and Nile Valley, as in the long-term "Egypt National Vision
2052", and the intermediate-term "Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS) - Vision 2030". It is
also worth mentioning that the NAC, a large-scale urban development project, is not mentioned
within "Egypt National Vision 2052", and is mentioned only modestly in "Vision 2030" as an
economic catalyst project for increasing the national income of the state.
5 During Nasser's time, national projects were important power shows for the state, and also used to promote
closeness with the people.

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In Egypt’s case, the goals and strategies for urban planning are defined by the government,
represented by the Ministry of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities, the New Urban
Communities Authority (NUCA), the entity responsible for the development of new cities, and
the General Organization of Physical planning (GOPP), the entity responsible for producing the
strategies and developing strategic master plans for cities. Both bodies follow the ministry
administratively and serve its goals and strategies, which control urbanization all over Egypt.
If we look closely at the NUCA, we can see that it is concerned with selling land subdivisions
and providing infrastructure, and has no interest in how this would function. In Egypt, public
land management is a complicated and unclear process. It starts with the allocation of state land
to a certain entity, including the army. In the case of land in the new cities managed by the
Ministry of Housing, represented by the NUCA, the state used to set land prices according to a
defined profit margin, thereby defining the entire profits chain. This was the case until around
2008, when Ahmed El-Maghraby, the Minister of Housing at that time, started the process of
auctioning state-owned lands through the NUCA, causing a price hike and accentuating the
commodification of housing. Hence, public-private partnership schemes were remodified,
restructured and reshaped within these neoliberal economic and political orders. They indeed act
as "new" forms of governmentality and governance, presenting the state as the most powerful
real estate developer with a high tendency to create a very large profit in a short period of time,
relying on branding and convincing citizens (i.e. consumers) to invest in their future by buying
into a particular project. In addition, the project is being propagated as an achievement for the
government that serves to showcase its stability and sanitize its political position.
Neoliberal Urbanism and the Role of Urban Planning
Within a neoliberal state that adopts neoliberalism as an approach to economic development, the
presentation of the new governance structures in urban planning and the influence of the real
estate industry on neoliberal urban development have become part of the urban studies and
planning discourse, starting in the 1990s (Heeg / Rosol 2007, Ronneberger et al.1999). Jacobs
(1961) has criticized large-scale urban development, citing a case in the United States at that
time and claiming that, especially in large-scale urban planning projects, economic interests
were given a higher priority than the needs of the population, when the opposite should be the
case, with the housing and services needs of the people coming in first place.
Urban sociologists and geographers, among other urban studies researchers within the Global
City discourse, are critical of the role of urban planning, as it is increasingly being used as a
means of economic development and capital accumulation, and can be considered an instrument
of power and the projection of a political reality on a spatial dimension. In addition, neoliberal
development concepts are considered the best way to compete in this international competition,
providing the basics for Global City Theories, as in the writings of Friedman/Wolff (1982) and
Sassen (1991). Competitiveness between cities on a global level has recently caused Cairo to be
repositioned in several ways. In the mid-twentieth century, it was known as the biggest capital
in the Arab world, north Africa and the Middle East, a populous country with a rich history and
a highly-educated work force6, as well as being a cultural center, renowned for its cinema, music
and television production. The degraded quality of life that Cairo currently provides to its
residents has been touched upon recently by academics witnessing the rise of cities like Dubai
6 From the sixties, during Nasser’s time, Egyptians went to work in several north African countries (e.g. Libya and
Algeria) as well as Gulf Arab countries (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE) as teachers, doctors and engineers.

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over the last few decades. From a historical point of view (both ancient and modern), and
considering its cultural heritage, size and population, Cairo and its impact on other Arabs has
changed a lot. The position it once held has been usurped by cities like Dubai. Here I would
refer to Fainstein addressing how cities should be shaped:
“A city should be purposefully shaped rather than the unmediated outcome of the market and of
interactions within civil society—in other words planning is a necessary condition for attaining
urban values. Whether or not planning does actually produce generally beneficial outcomes,
however, depends on the goals selected and the mechanisms through which policies are devised
and implemented. (Fainstein 1999: 250).
Meanwhile, more moderate thinkers focused on the inadequacies of urban planning processes
and methodology, have argued that comprehensive planning is inherently undemocratic and
unattainable (Fainstein 1999). Urban planning, in that context, refers to the conscious
formulation of goals and means for urban development, especially in the development of
metropolitan areas.
New Cities as a Global and Egyptian Trend: Exclusiveness and Gated Communities
In order to put Egypt in the global context, new cities have been considered by many states in
the global South and North as the solution to housing problems in cities. According to Shepard
(2017): “In over 40 countries - such as Malaysia, Nigeria, China, Morocco, India, Saudi
Arabia, Ecuador, Oman, Kazakhstan, and Kenya - billions of dollars have been dumped into
developing new cities from the ground up”. Abdoumaliq Simone has mentioned 7 – (2016) that
in some central African countries there is a trend towards constructing new cities with huge
investments. Shepard adds, “While humans have always intentionally built new cities, we have
never built so many on such massive scales in so many places in so little time. This is a
phenomenon that has all the makings of a movement that will shape the political, social, and
economic trajectories of the planet in the coming decades.”
In the following part, this chapter will try to link the emergence of new cities as a notion in
Egypt and how this has developed through the last decades from being a service provided by the
state to meet citizens’ housing needs to reach the current model of the state as an urban
developer aiming to maximize profits as a source of national income. Neoliberalism,
privatization and free market policies were adopted as economic policies by Mubarak’s
Egyptian state for decades. This followed the so-called “open door” policy introduced by Anwar
Sadat in the mid-70s (Wahdan 2013, Sims 2014). Meanwhile, the structure of governance over
land and housing has benefited only a narrow high income elite class at the expense of the wider
middle-low class population. The high density of Egyptian cities and the concentration of built
areas in the Nile Delta and Valley, with 95 percent of the population living in only 5 percent of
the country's total land area (Sims 2014, GOPP 2014) was always the trigger and the basic
argument for constructing new cities. Starting in the 1970s, the concept of constructing new
cities was announced and materialized through the establishment of the New Urban
Communities Authority (NUCA), confirmed by a presidential decree in 1979.
Since the 1970s, housing production has been concentrated in the new towns and satellite
settlements built on desert land (Piffero, 2009). The formal housing market in the last two
decades (1990s-2000s) has focused more on higher class target group investors. The
7 In a personal interview with the author in Berlin (June 2016).

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government has focused on land parceling and selling to investors and individuals. Sims
interprets the passion of the Egyptian state for building projects in the desert over the last four
decades, from Mubarak until the present time. Since 1976, the authorities have established 21
new desert cities, with a combined target population of 20 million residents. The perceived
multiple advantages of such projects include the provision of housing and jobs, but in reality, up
until 2006, these cities had failed to attract more than a million inhabitants, mostly in areas close
to central Cairo (Sims 2015, 41, 141). These new towns were expected to absorb half of the
projected population growth between 1998 and 2017 (referring to GOPP,1998), but their
distance from the core town, and the lack of services and economic opportunities, made them
unattractive to low-income families (Elmouelhi 2014).
The first generation of new cities that surround Cairo was started in the 1970s (Sims 2014). The
political drive to find a national project combined with the real need to expand built-up areas
were the forces behind the political decision to create these new urban communities and also
influenced the choice of their names8. A common feature of these cities was that they all
included industrial areas. The second generation of new cities included Sadat City, which was
an attempt to create an administrative capital for Egypt (Sims 2014, Serag 2017). The Ministry
of Housing was actually relocated there for about eight months, then moved back to its original
location shortly after Sadat's death. At that time, President Mubarak had no will to continue with
the project, perhaps because it carried the name of his predecessor. However, some of the
ministries’ buildings in Sadat City are now used by the newly established Menofeya University.
The planning concepts of all of these cities were based on segregation between functions, as
Sims, describing Sadat City, observed: “Land-uses were strictly segregated, and in almost all
neighborhoods commercial and service activities were limited to small shopping nodes located
in the areas centered within the neighborhood block. Specific commercial areas or spines
existed within each new town, and it is in these zones that all larger office and retail
establishments as well as government offices were originally intended to locate. And all industry
and warehousing were restricted to designated zones far from residential quarters. While such
planning norms may represent on ideal in western cities, they are questionable for an Egyptian
urban culture that excels at diversity and compactness, and they are especially questionable in
Egypt's new towns where harsh desert climate prevails, shade should be given premium, and all
greenery will require copious irrigation forever.” (Sims, 2014:134,)
From the government’s perspective, it could be argued here that the "mistakes" made – in 6th of
October, 10th of Ramadan, and Sadat Cities – might be used to "promote" the Dubai model of
urban development as “the” solution, following private sector methods of promoting their
projects, which mainly depend on making attractive the ideas of exclusiveness and moving from
city to the suburbs, naturally with no industrial areas included in the planning.
Wahdan (2013) argues that under Mubarak’s rule, planning declined, evolving into a "special
purpose vehicle" in the service of real estate development associated with neoliberal shifts of the
economy and skewed toward resource and privilege concentration in the hands of a few, thus
further exacerbating uneven spatial morphologies. However, new settlements have been the
8 Two of these cities were named after the date of the Egypt-Israeli war in 1973 (Georgian calendar and Hijry
calendar): 6th of October City – to the west of Cairo, and the 10th of Ramadan City to the east, while the 15th of May
City to the south of Cairo was named after Sadat's so-called “reform revolution” in which a conspiracy against him
by some of those close to him was discovered.

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focus of Egyptian governments since the 1990s. In addition to the government-planned cities,
according to Lindsey (2017), huge portions of desert land are being sold — in some cases,
practically given away — to private developers “who build gated districts with names like
Utopia, Dreamland, Belle Ville, Hyde Park, El-Rehab (“Spacious”) City, and Palm Hills.
Having looked closely at government spending for the fiscal year 2016/2017, Shawkat (2017)
argues - based on evidence from the official records - that the political drive is favoring new
cities over the existing cities and villages in these governorates, despite the lack of accessibility
of these new cities. Public expenditure on new cities in five governorates, including the three
governorates of Greater Cairo (Cairo, Giza and Qalubia), was greater than spending on the
existing built environment in those governorates (ibid). Shawkat adds in an interview (Mohie,
2015) that, according to CAPMAS9, there are around 750,000 vacant housing units in the new
cities and more than a million in greater Cairo, with around seven million in the whole of Egypt.
He argues that the addition of one million units would not necessarily help to decrease density in
built-up areas (ibid).
Social exclusiveness was expressed in the urban development of Cairo, and has some roots in
the history of class relocation and movement from one district to another. In order to understand
the eagerness of classes to move to better quality districts, a social class analysis is needed to
draw the overall image of the relation between classes and urbanism in Cairo. “Within Cairene
residents, classification of people according to the place they live is very popular. Those who
belong to – or tend to belong to – the higher/middle class consider the rest as Bia’a, literal
translation of the word “environment”, and a short way of expressing the term ‘low
environment/low class’”(Elmouelhi 2014: 44). This is meant to summarize certain behaviors and
attitudes of the lower classes, which range between being vulgar, immoral and impolite. In the
last decade, higher class or middle class Cairene residents have begun to use the term
"’ashwa’eyat people” (el-nass betou‘a el ‘ashwa’eyat), when referring to the urban poor, their
bad manners and their socially disapproved-of habits of speech and dress. The term ‘ashwa’i
(meaning haphazard) has a negative connotation and is associated with social problems such as
drug dealing, drug addiction, prostitution, street violence and high crime rates (Abdelhalim
2010, Elmouelhi 2014). These terms illustrate in a simple way the clear divisions in Greater
Cairene society, revealing the concept of “them and us” (Safey El Deen et al., 2009). Cairenes
who belong to the upper-middle and upper classes share a variety of activities and places that
are accessible only to them. Housing is provided in the older formal planned areas, which many
no longer find attractive due to high densities, so they started moving either to private villas or
to gated communities in the suburbs, where they sought security. Education is also a field where
they are segregated from the poor urban Cairo dwellers who represent the majority, since the
quality of public education is very low and does not meet the expectations of parents for their
children (Elmouelhi 2014). Their leisure time on weekends is spent at social-sporting clubs,
which are exclusively for members. Cafés are also places for the more affluent youth to
congregate, as are certain exclusive locations on the north-west coast during vacation periods in
the summer (Amin, 2001).
A short historical brief is required to illustrate these class distinctions through some examples.
In the 19th century, the expanded new quarters of Cairo became the Belle Époque downtown.
9 Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) is the official statistical agency of Egypt that
collects, processes, analyzes, and disseminates statistical data and conducts the national census.

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The much older neighborhoods, known today as Islamic or medieval Cairo, were viewed as a
dirty and disorderly relic of the past and were abandoned by the country’s elites (Namaan 2011).
The upper classes had always tended to move to newly-developed areas with better quality
facilities, in search of the security and exclusiveness they were able to afford. Movement from
one district to another can also be explained according to the social aspiration model. For
example, from downtown to Heliopolis (Abou Lughod 1970), and later in the 1980s: from
Abbasseya to Nasr City - towards the east, and from Dokki and Agouza to Mohandesseen –
towards the west (Elmouelhi 2014).
New Cairo and El-Sherouk Cities have recently become the favored destination of the upper and
upper-middle classes who lived in Heliopolis and Nasr City for decades. In the western part of
Greater Cairo Region (GCR) – Giza – we find the same phenomenon of relocation as the upper
classes escape from Mohandeseen, Agouza and Dokki towards the west. These settlers live in
the gated communities of 6th of October and Sheikh Zaied, or else buy their own plots of land
from the state agencies affiliated to NUCA and build their own villas and houses (Sims 2011).
Nevertheless, it is argued that these new settlements around Cairo represent normal growth. The
decay of the built environment and the degrading of the classes to which the new residents
belong have taken place in many parts of Cairo and this trend has been well understood by real
estate developers, who have depended in the last two decades on the disadvantages of living in
Cairo and on providing the missing qualities needed for urban life in their projects. Ghanam
(2014) mentions the fact that since the mid-1990s dozens of these communities have spread
around Cairo. Lindesy (2017) describes an example of this marketing approach observed some
years ago: “there was a sign above a dilapidated building in the city center that said, simply,
‘Why Are You Here?’ Of course, only a wealthy minority has the choice to be anywhere else.”
Kuppinger (2004) has listed some of the qualities of gated communities as follows: bountiful
greenery, healthy living environments, high quality lifestyles, comfort, convenience, community
services, and peace and quiet (Kuppinger, 2004). Adham (2005) in his study of new spaces for
Cairo has listed some of the qualities that are promised in order to attract clients: convenience,
beautiful views, total living experience, with an emphasis on: cleanliness, organization, human
scale and green environment. Abo Tera and Ashoub (2017) confirmed that greenery is often
included as a promised feature, and claimed that greenery is commonly perceived as being
scarce in the Cairo urban environment. So, generally speaking, what gated communities promise
is a sense of exclusivity (Ghanam 2014).
One neoliberal urban development strategy is urban "outsourcing", which usually takes place
through the provision to private developers in new cities of large plots of land at low prices,
with the developers having the responsibility to provide infrastructure on the land. An example
is needed to explain this. El-Rehab City is a successful model of how the private sector can
carry the responsibility within the field of urban development on a larger scale than just a few
apartment houses or villas within a gated community. In the late 1990s this private city became
known for its high quality urban management system and green public spaces. It was known as
part of New Cairo. Following the successful model of El-Rehab, another city, Madinaty, was
developed by the same developer (Talaat Mostafa Group [TMG]), with construction beginning
in July 2006. Relying on the developer’s reputation and offering good quality services and urban
management – like El-Rehab – higher prices for the villas and flats were announced, divided
into a number of phases and with the possibility of paying in installments. Also provided by

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TMG was an affordable and adequate transportation system in the form of buses, a provision
considered to be a main cause of the success of these private cities since it encourages mobility.
The success of these two examples proves that good housing projects are inseparable from good
quality housing, thereby linking good quality housing with the larger scale of urban planning
and design: good quality of infrastructure, public space and public services, in addition to good
urban management systems, and not only for urban-demographic problem solution. However,
the state has preferred to share in the profits of the private sector, depending on market
mechanisms and the social aspiration of the citizens, who consequently act as customers.
Who Has Access to the NAC?
Although it is often officially claimed that the NAC is for everybody, scrutiny of the official
website reveals that luxury housing dominates the scene, similar to that offered by real estate
developers who build for those who can afford to pay. The percentage of housing units offered
by the NAC to lower income groups is not announced in any official press release or official
webpage. So, the question is: Who will be able to live in the new capital?
Based on six interviews with consultants, contractors and officials close to the decision-making
process in the planning and implementation of the NAC, and after studying the available
published official data on the ministry’s website10 as well as articles published in Egyptian
newspapers,11 it can be argued that there is no clear vision of how this large-scale project will
include a share in the housing parts for the middle and lower classes. The updated figures
announced by the president in January 2018 regarding the social housing project has reached
245,000 units at a cost of 32 billion EGP, and a further 355,000 units are under construction, at a
total cost of 71 billion EGP.
The (acting) Minister of Housing, Utilities and New Urban Communities (MoHUUC)
announced during his visit on January 13, 2018 to the residential district in the New
Administrative City that the first district contains 25,000 units, each with a floor area of between
100 and 180 m2, in addition to around 1000 villas with floor areas of between 230 and 328 m2.
He mentioned that the work had started only three and half months previously and added: “…it
will be fully finished with different designs (modern-classic) to match different tastes”. This
statement is no different from real estate marketing slogans that aim to attract different segments
of customers. He added that the infrastructure construction was being followed up by the
ministry, with the construction of the prestigious residential towers area by the Chinese
company due to start soon, announcing that about 10 billion EGP had so far been invested in
infrastructure and housing units, in addition to the 3 billion “dollars” due to be invested in the
towers area. Making a simple calculation and considering that the US dollars to EGP exchange
rate (at the time of writing) is 1:17, the level of investment in the towers area would be 51
billion EGP. This represents almost five times the amount used for infrastructure and housing.
The aforementioned residential towers resemble the Dubai model, symbolic of modernity and
aimed strictly at high-income groups – this in a country where more than 40% of people live
10 New Urban Communities Authority official website. http://newcities.gov.eg/know_cities/Ne wCapital/default.aspx
11 Youm7 “Q&A: All what you want to know about the New Administrative Capital“, 7th January 2017.
https://www.yo um7.com /story/2017/1/7/ %D8%B3-%D9%88- %D8% AC-%D9%83%D9%84-% D9%85 %D8% A7-
%D8%AA%D8%B1%D9 %8A%D8%AF-%D9 %85%D8%B9 %D8 %B1%D9 %81%D8%AA%D9%87-%D8%B9%D9%86-
%D9%85%D8%B4%D8 %B1%D9%88%D8%B9-
%D8%A7%D9%84%D8 %B9%D8%A7%D8 %B5%D9%85 %D8%A9/3044170

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below the poverty line. An online check of the prices of the flats on offer revealed that the price
of a 125m2 unit starts at 1,250,000 EGP (ca. 60,000 Euros), with prices of 9000-10000 EGP/m2
(ca. 450-500 € /m2), which is far above prices in other Cairo districts.
Deve loper
Project
Loca tion
Are a Fedda ns
Avg . Price/m
Dorra
Ad dress E ast
5 m ins from Su ez road, 20 min from Heliopolis, 5 mins from New Capital
60
15000
Palmhills
Palm Hills n ew cairo
Directly on Mid Ring Ro ad
500
16.500
Palmhills
cap ital gardens
Cairo Suez Roa d, at KM 45, be side Madinaty.
103
12.000
Al Ma rase m
5th Squ are
10 m inutes from Heliopolis and 2 0 minutes from Down T own. (G olden Square
158
20.000
Arco
La Fon taine
(Golden Squa re)
35
16.000
Wa di Deg la
Neop olis
Future City
500
9,500 - 11,000
Hyde Park Deve lopments
Hyde Park
In the inte rsection b etween 90 Street and Mid Ring Road
1000
14.500
Sabo ur
Aria
Future city
100
12.000
El-haze 2 Group
Lake View Res idence
Golde n Square
70
22,000 to 24,000
Wa di Deg la
prom onade
5 m ins from A UC, infron t of M ivida
33
16.000-17.000
Ara bia Group
Galle ria moo n valley
Golde n Square
71
13,000 -14,800
Misr Italia
IL BOSCO
in the h eart of the new capital, Directly on South Ben Za yed Ax is
200
11.000
Sabo ur ALAH LY
L'Ave nir
Future City
100
12000
Pione ers
Stone Re sidenc e
Directly on the Ring ro ad, and beside West G olf and Katameya heig hts
460
12.000
MNHD
Ta j City
Interse ction of Suez road and ring road
900
16.000
Sodic
Villette
Golde n Square
300
20.000
Sabb our
Aria
Future city
108
13000
Em aar
Mivida
Golde n Square
900
28000
Al-Futtaim
CFC
Ring Roa d
1000
30000
Equ ity
Cap italway
New Capital
42
14,000 - 18.000
Al-Maras em
Cap ital Gate
Directly on Mid Ring Ro ad
170
13,500 - 16,000
Ha ssan A llam Prop erties
Swa n Lake Future
Future City
400
11500 - 125 00
Table 1: Pri ces per square me ter in 2018 for residen tial units in gated communi ties developed by real estate developers
in the context of NAC (source : author)
Another model is available in which big corporations (e.g. QNB Bank) buy plots of land to
construct housing for their employees. This approach will lead to certain sectors of society from
big private corporations having access to live (and work) in the NAC. The minister has visited
housing construction sites to which 35,000 employees are supposed to be relocated, according to
the GOPP studies.
In a newspaper interview, general “Abdeen” 12 - CEO of NAC Company (Al-Misryon 2017)
was asked if the project included in its plans accommodation suitable for lower income families.
He answered: “The residents of the NAC will definitely need services to be provided, for
example doormen will be needed, and definitely they will have houses." Answering the same
question in a TV interview on 30th January 2018), he announced that of course there would be a
place for everybody, flats of between 100 and 150 m2, which are definitely not for high-income
groups, according to him, but for the middle class. It is clear that the percentage or number of
units of social or affordable housing either has not yet been decided, or at any rate not publicly
announced. This would lead to the following discussion that tackles the role of architecture in
this socio-political context. The project could be seen as too expensive and not a priority for
Egyptians (Alaraby 2017). Such arguments propagated by experts 13 claim that the project is
mainly propaganda.
Dubaization: Developed Nation Model vis-à-vis Propaganda
Dubai has become in the last decades the role model for many cities, to be emulated by national
governments, including that of Egypt. El-Sheshtawy (2006) introduced the term Dubaization in
12 Former Minister of Local Development, who was appointed as CEO of NAC company in October 2017.
13 Ahmed Zazaa, an urban architect and planner at 10 Tooba, where a group of researchers promote an alternative
urban policy.

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2004, defining it as the act of building a city that relies on spectacular, non-contextual
architecture. He has called the planned transformation of Cairo “The Dubaization of Cairo’s
skyline”. By revisiting the Cairo 2050 project, developed between 2005 and 2008, it can be
argued that having Dubai as a model has influenced the planners to a great extent. Branding here
becomes the issue. The use of images (iconography) is a hallmark of Dubai, and when used by
another city could be categorized as a part of Dubaization. The fantasy of using iconic
architecture is a common feature of buildings in Dubai. Projects like the Emirates Towers, Burj
Al-Arab, Burj Dubai, Burj Khalifa, World Map Islands, and Palm all fall perfectly into this
development category.
A. Alraouf (2006) in his article “The Emergence of a New Urban Brand ‘Dubaization’”, refers
to Dubai as the most famous Arab city in our time. He initiates some crucial questions regarding
the consequences of “competition” between cities on the future of Arab cities and wonders what
kind of social life will emerge out of this development. Is this a process of constructing,
reconstructing or deconstructing the identities and territorial outlooks of our cities? He also
wonders if there is any future for sustainability in the developmental strategies of Arab and
Middle Eastern cities. He argues: “Dubai, as a model of urban development, is based primarily
on images and icons rather than sustainable concepts and process”. In the case of Cairo, it is
clear that such an approach has influenced political decisions regarding the direction of
development for the city and that this has its roots in the Cairo 2050 project, that served as an
introduction to the NAC.
The Cairo 2050 project, unofficially abandoned in the wake of the political changes that have
taken place in Egypt in 2011, was the framework for "Capital City Outsourcing", supported by
Mubarak Junior (Gamal Mubarak), who – according to many political interpretations - was
being groomed to take over from his father and become Egypt’s president. In 2008, the national
project Cairo 2050 was announced in the media, illustrated with images of skyscrapers and other
modern architectural designs destined for certain areas of Cairo. The project was meant to
assure the capability of Cairo to develop and compete with other developed cities in the world,
including Dubai. Back then, the project was unofficially linked to Gamal Mubarak, the former
president's son, who at the time was head of the policies committee of the ruling National
Democratic Party. After the political changes of 2011 and the stepping down of President
Mubarak, the project completely disappeared until, in 2015, very similar images started
reappearing in the form of NAC buildings. These Dubai-style buildings, many of them
skyscrapers with lots of green areas, represented an aspiration and a competitiveness with
Dubai, with the concept that “Egypt is not less than them” being unofficially voiced by
Egyptian planners. The Dubaization trend has been adopted and repeated in many different
projects, including small regional-scale projects such as New Al Alamian and New Mansoura in
the Dakahaleya governorate. It could be argued that, although the New Cities have only
achieved 15 percent of their planned average occupancy of 5 million people (Egypt Vision
2052), this has not been enough to persuade Egyptian decision makers to think differently
regarding the decision to build more new cities.
By following the case of the NAC, it would be easy to say that branding is important for
creating the required value that leads to the profits aspired to by investors. Architecture in that
case is also considered as a tool for propaganda. The logic and the carried symbolic messages
involved in choosing certain items or buildings with specific functions to be constructed in the

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Figure 2 the Church in the middle of the new capital clo se to the luxury ho using compo unds and conference
center MASA (so urce: author 2018).
first phase, and the way they are propagated, is important in that context. Starting with the
religious complex, the inclusion of a church and a mosque carries the message of religious
unity. The parliament represents political power and democracy. The Massa Hotel could be
considered a symbol of luxury; besides its function as the site of the opening ceremony, it will
host regular meetings and press conferences between the cabinet and the president, presenting
the achievements of NAC implementation. These landmarks – if we agree that they act as
landmarks in the marketing game – are used to boost the attractiveness of the units being sold.
Power, Democracy, And Decision Making Mechanisms
Fainstain (1997) believes that the concept of visionary leaders who impose their views on the
urban population is in disrepute, while the notion of an identifiable model of a good city is
viewed with skepticism. In the case of Egypt, spatial expression of political reality is
represented in the planning and the way urban settings are formulated. There is an obvious lack
of democracy and the inefficiency of democratic mechanisms or practices in urban planning
and monitoring processes. Elected entities in Egypt are mainly associated with the
parliament. Since 2011 there have been some intervals without a parliament. Local popular
councils, which are more concerned with local governance, were disbanded by a court ruling in
June 2011 (2014: 52).
The relation between power to be gained and sustained and the means of production in this case
is ownership of land and real estate, as explained by Fainstein (1999) commenting on Harvey:
“…when dealing with conflicts among identity groups or, in fact, with any issue of social power,
he invariably regards power as an outcome of ownership of the means of production. Thus, he
both minimizes the significance of non-economic forms of subordination and refuses to accept
that economic dominance can be a consequence of power rather than the cause of it.”

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Figure 3 Diagram illustrating the relation between different NAC stakeholders within the political and
economic structure (So urce: author)
By reflecting on the current Egyptian case, army’s support for the president has become more
obvious in recent years during President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi’s first presidency period (2014-
2018). However, further studies are needed to analyze and evaluate the impact of this
relationship on the development process of the Egyptian economy and particularly the urban
development. The following diagram tries to simplify the way different stakeholders are related
to the NAC and to each other.
Since the 1990s, the expansion of neoliberalism has globally seen the entrepreneurial
involvement of local governments playing a new role in urban governance. Local governments,
working in conjunction with private agents and urban elites, have turned into promoter-
developers, producing cities based on competitive logistics, in order to rise to higher positions in
the global urban hierarchy. In this sense, gentrification policies have been one of the main urban
strategies that have driven cities towards success in the global market (Miro 2011). Harvey
argues that "neoliberalisation – as the process of transformation towards Neoliberalism – was
from its start meant to be for the sake of the restoration of class power" (p. 16). He describes
neoliberalism as “a political project to re-establish the conditions for capital accumulation and to
restore the power of economic elites.” (Harvey 2007: 19).)
In Egypt, decision-making and participation are issues that have been raised among
professionals and intellectuals in the last couple of years, after the announcement of the
government's intentions to initiate the NAC. The way the project was designed and announced
— without any public consultation, accountability, or transparency regarding public costs and
environmental impact — reinforces the regime’s authoritarianism (Lisdey 2017). It could be
argued that in such an atmosphere, that discourages public discussion and imposes political

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restrictions, criticism is stigmatized as being either against the Egyptian dream, pessimistic, or
even destructive. However, the technical opinions of urban planning specialists reveal how the
New Administrative Capital is a controversial project. The NAC project has created a critical
debate on the necessity and adequacy of its construction during a very critical period in Egypt's
history. According to Serag (2017), within the planning related disciplines, three lines of
thought have emerged in relation to this issue. The first one confirms the construction decision
and the location chosen for the new capital. The second opinion acknowledges the idea of
having a new capital, but is concerned about the chosen location. The third opinion stands firm
against the whole principle of a new capital (Serag 2017).
Khaled Fahmy (2015) wrote expressing his critique of the decisions taken regarding the NAC:
“In a dramatic move, and to showcase its future plans, the government suddenly unveiled a plan
to build a new administrative and economic capital of Egypt some fifty kilometers to the east of
its millennia-old city, Cairo. We, Cairenes and Egyptians, were not informed, let alone
consulted about this move.” He argues that the residents of Cairo were not involved in the
decision making or even asked what they needed in this new city, to which they are supposed to
be relocated. Khaled Tarabeya (2015) replied to Fahmy in a published article, arguing that the
dream is big and deserves to be followed, focusing on how we should see the positivity of the
project and be optimistic. It could be argued that the project would be more successful if it had
considered the social integration of different classes in a way that provides the means for
inclusiveness and justice. To achieve social justice, Harvey suggests:“Only through critical re-
engagement with political-economy, with our situatedness in relation to capital accumulation,
can we hope to re-establish a conception of social justice as something to be fought for as a key
value within an ethics of political solidarity built across different places” (Harvey, 1996: 360).
Regarding the case of new cities in Egypt in general, and specifically in the case of the NAC, it
could be easily argued that no kind of public participation has taken place during the planning or
design processes. The master plan for the NAC was suddenly announced to the public through
the media. In addition, no planning for future social interaction in these cities has been
considered.
In that context, one can argue that as a consequence of the 2011 revolution, controlling public
spaces became more important for the state for the sake of political stability. The NAC includes
in its objectives moving the state’s principal ministries out of Cairo. One interpretation of this
decision is to make it more difficult for residents to mount major protests (Flahive 2017). All
other major government ministries will eventually be moved to the NAC on its completion
between 2020 and 2022. From that perspective, moving the major body of the state to the NAC
is a mechanism to facilitate the state’s security.
Land and Power: The State as Real Estate Developer
The ownership of land directly related to profit making transforms this asset through capitalism
and the market into real estate. The value of urban land depends mainly on its location and the
kind of societal activity that takes place on it (Gottdiener 2016, p.113). According to Gotdiener,
who also refers to Lefebvre, the buying and selling of land, whether it is developed or not, is a
major force in the production of space (Gottdiener, 1991, 2016, Lefebvre, 1991). As in the case
of the NAC, land is considered the first asset/capital required to start an urban development
project. Power relations at the higher political level are also a factor that directs decisions and
are related to the ability to generate income for the government:

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“Endorsed Thursday by President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi Thursday, Minister of Housing Mostafa
Madbouly is named as Acting Prime Minister. Madbouly will fulfill the duties of the role after
the incumbent Prime Minister Sherif Ismail has jetted off to Germany for surgery. The post-
operation treatment is expected to last for up to three weeks.” (Egypt today, November 23, 2017)
This political decision shows how powerful the Minister of Housing has become within the
cabinet, and how close he is to the ruling regime. This power might have several sources, but in
the context of this chapter the amount of profit that his ministry is adding to the state’s yearly
income could be considered a possible source. In addition, his technical and communication
skills help him to provide convincing arguments for political decisions.14
The military in Egypt holds a special position in the hearts of the Egyptian people, enjoying
high levels of trust and appreciation. The partnership between the military and the Ministry of
Housing could easily be argued to be the optimum form of coalition that has the maximum
power to lead the implementation of a huge project like the NAC. However, it is clear that the
scale this time is much bigger than previous experiences of the NUCA. It even required that the
state establish a company as a legal entity in partnership with the Egyptian army and the
Ministry of Housing.
Previous relocations and new cities, planned to be self-sufficient and independent, have only
been partially successful, and in most cases have remained reliant on Cairo or have even been
merged into it. Transportation has always been a problem. Sufficient public transportation has
never been provided by the state to carry commuters between their places of work and their
homes (Sims 2014). One of the main differences between how the state currently deals with the
new administrative capital and how it used to deal with new cities can be found in its approach
to marketing. In the past, a lack of good marketing for new settlements was one of the reasons
for their failure. The need for political achievement is one of the main reasons behind such a
huge-scale urban development project supported by the state as a priority.
The way in which the project was announced reveals a degree of uncertainty on the part of the
government, starting with the name of the project, initially dubbed the New Capital, then
changed to the New Administrative Capital. There was also confusion regarding investors. First,
the UAE15 was involved, but then they stepped back, as did the Chinese investors who followed
them, raising questions, especially since details of the conflicts were not officially announced.
The political will was there to embark on such a national project, but the decision makers
appeared to be unclear about how it could be implemented. Attracting foreign investors was one
of the announced mechanisms for the project, especially after the devaluation of the Egyptian
currency in November 2016 to almost half of its previous value. However, this aim has failed to
be achieved since the Egyptian government seems to prefer to have full control of the process
and the profits, with private investors taking second place in the profit chain.
There is a shift in housing policy in Egypt that has been happening gradually over the last
decades. In the 1990s, Dr. Soliman (then Minister of Housing) started the new approach of
depending on the new cities to bring income into the ministry (i.e. the state). This approach
14 In June 2018, while this book was in its final publishing phases, he was appointed as prime minister.
15 There is a good relationship between the United Arab Emirat es and Egypt , established during Mubarak's time and mainly due
to the UAE's economic support of Egypt. Recently, the corridor linking New Cairo to the New Administrative Capital was
named Mohammad bin Zayed Corridor, after t he current ruler of the UAE.

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relies more on the private real estate developers to provide the market with housing projects that
meet the expectations of the upper class and sometimes also the upper-middle class, but rarely
addresses the needs of the lower-middle class or lower income groups. The state usually sells
large plots of land in the new cities to investors for prices16 upon agreement and, in return, the
private investors are responsible for the construction of infrastructure networks inside their
gated project territories. In some cases, speculation is the target of these real estate developers.
They purchase land, then wait till it increases in value to sell it and make a profit without adding
any material value to it (Gottdiener 2016). However, in most cases, the state tries to fight against
such speculation by following up and through the setting of regulations that demand that
construction commence within two years.
Sims (2010) argues that, since the 1990s, gated communities have been perceived in Egypt as a
successful investment model which provides a higher quality of the services, privacy and
security often lacking in normal urban areas, including Cairo (Abo Tera 2017). The New
Administrative Capital can be seen as a private city due to the way it is promoted and how the
market dynamics and mechanisms are focused on certain higher target groups as prospective
residents. It contains many gated communities developed by smaller real estate developers, as
each of them develops one or more project, based on the financial capacity and size of the
developer, in addition to his capacity to deliver at the agreed time. Although the NAC is by
definition and according to official announcements a city for all (!) and its future development
remains to be realized, the urban planning of the new capital, its designated uses, zoning and the
target groups it is promoted for all seem to aim at excluding large segments of the population for
the purpose of value creation in “capital-intensive neighborhoods”. In theory, developers buy
real estate, construct something such as houses, factories, office buildings, retail shops, mini or
mega malls (Gottdiener 2016), which is typically the case in Egypt. In some cases the developer
retains the ownership of the property and rents it out, as in the case of shops or office buildings,
but in most cases they prefer to sell the project on and move to another empty piece of land to
develop. Shawkat (2016) argues that Egyptian governments in the last decades have considered
housing as a commodity, while the social dimension and the concept of the right to housing
have not been really practiced or visualized.
In order to understand why the government prefers to invest in real estate, the relationship
between real estate development - as an economic activity - and the wider economic picture in
Egypt needs to be explained. The concept of “property is the best investment” is so entrenched
in the mentality of Egyptians that it is already a self-fulfilling prophecy. Due to the structural
weakness of the Egyptian economy in general and the widespread corruption and indisposed
business environment, investors refrain from industrial activities and head for the safe haven of
real estate. The demand for real estate in Egypt is not true, people do not buy houses because
they need homes, they do it because it is the most stable and safe way to invest money in Egypt.
According to Gottdiener: “The role of large corporations is also important in the process of
urban development, while their direct connection to local individuals is the least in the chain”
(2016: 115).
The New Administrative Capital Company for Urban Development is the company in charge of
developing the project. It is a holding company with capital estimated at 6 billion Egyptian
16 Usually the prices of plots of land should be defined by a committee that includes representatives from the Ministry of
Finance and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Utilities.

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pounds. It provides a solution to the problem of how to keep maximum power and control in
the hands of the military and Ministry of Housing partnership and avoid any conflict that might
arise from the question of who owns the land of the newly-established capital. In 2015, the
project was announced as a partnership between the Egyptian government and the private Gulf
real estate developer Capital City Partners (alaraby 9 June 2015). This partnership came to an
end without any announcement of the reasons, but some rumors suggest that there was conflict
over the share of each of the two sides. The establishment of The New Administrative Capital
Company - comprised of: Armed Forces National Lands Projects Agency (with 51%); Ministry
of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities represented by NUCA (with 49%) (Khorshed
2017); and National Service Products Organization (NSPO)17 – could be interpreted as a new
form of governance. The NUCA in past years was considered to be the main body responsible
for providing the Ministry of Housing with a substantial share of its profits through the sale of
land and housing units. It was – and still is – responsible for the management of these new
cities, arguing that the cities are not yet completed and that, according to the NUCA mandate, it
is their job to manage them until they are. This is despite that fact that in some of these cities the
infrastructure work has been finished and land and housing units sold18. According to Ayman
Ismail19, the first chairman of the NAC company: “The financial model for the project is
engineered to capitalize on partnerships with subdevelopers and investors, and to benefit from
selling land plots to buyers of specific caliber.”20
In the case of the NAC, the government depends on the private developers as wholesale traders
in the process, meaning that they play the role of middlemen between the state and the clients
paying money to buy units. When it comes to recent urban development projects, the role of the
state/army in providing land and investments is seen to take the the form of land distribution and
the sale of plots to investors willing to pay billions of Egyptian pounds for a profit in the short
term. According to an interview with one of the project consultants, these plots range in size
between 50 and 500 feddans. In the first phase, around 1600 feddans were sold to private
developers in the first couple of months, according to Abdeen 21 CEO of NAC Company
(December 2017). In some cases, even larger plots are sold to private developers. For example,
Talaat Mostafa Group has bought a plot of land with a total area of 8000 feddans.22
Marketing the NAC: Between National Vision and Real Estate
In this part, the chapter argues how the implementation of the NAC represents a complex
interrelation between the Egyptian state and the private sector that has been shaped in the last
years, and which accordingly implies a special form of Public Private Partnership (PPP). The
success of the project within that frame is the shared goal of the Egyptian state - represented by
the current ruling regime - and the private real estate developers. Mutual benefits are acquired
due to the common goals achieved through different marketing campaigns. It is argued that the
marketing strategy of the NAC has shown common objectives shared by the state and the
17 State Information Service. http://www.sis.gov.eg/section/352/5238?lang=en-us (accessed April 10, 2018)
18 In an interview, the director of one of the New City agencies claimed that the city was almost done.
19 He is CEO of one of the most successful private real estate companies in Egypt: Mountain View
20 Interview at The Report: Egypt 2017, published in Oxford Business Group,
https://oxfordbusinessgroup.com/interview/ayman-ismail-chairman-new-administrative-capital/egypt-2017
21 Former Minister of Local Development, who was appointed as CEO of NAC company in October 2017
22 Hisham Talaat Mostafa, CEO of the group was imprisoned but released one week after buying the land from the
company – for health reasons.

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New administrative Capital - Cairo: Power, Urban Development and Social Injustice: Book Chapter
20
private real estate developers who buy plots of land from the NUCA. As part of this covert deal,
the state starts by promoting the project with a show of full support; thereby establishing the
public feeling that there is no way the project can fail. This perception is supported mainly by
two things: trust in the military, and the well-presented urban planning and design carried out by
professional urban planners23.
How the NAC is promoted to and perceived by the Egyptian people is an important question
that could help towards an understanding of the aims behind the project. In order to provide an
answer, the identity of the targeted segments of residents to be relocated to the NAC needs to be
verified by checking the branding and the marketing campaigns – starting with the official state
message, in addition to that of the private investors/real estate developers. Through the second
half of 2017, it was observed that the billboards in the main arteries of Cairo (e.g. 6th of October
Bridge and the ring road) featured high-end architectural products, mostly in the form of villas
and luxury apartment buildings with gardens (Figure 3). Advertisement billboards and TV ads –
used usually by private urban developers as marketing tools – were used by the regime on
several levels: for the propagation of its vision for a better Egypt, as a political achievement; for
attracting Cairo residents - at least those who could afford it - to enjoy a better quality of life in
the new big-scale gated community, namely the NAC.
The Green River is one of the main concepts founded by the planners and forms the main
recreational artery of the new city, providing links between different parts of the city. It is made
up of parks and restaurants and is supposed to serve all NAC residents. According to the planner
and the original approved urban plan, the built-up area should not exceed 30%. This concept is
used as a marketing tool for the new city in general, as mentioned by the Minister of Housing in
his presentation before the Egyptian president in December 2017. However, the Green River
built-up area has recently been densified in order to maximize profits, according to Abdeen in
his interview.24
NAC: What is Happening on the Ground?
Fieldwork was carried out in the period between 15th December 2017 and 15th January 2018.
This included scanning for the advertisements on the Facebook pages of the main NAC
company and the pages of the developers, and conducting semi-structured interviews (while
posing as potential buyers) with three agents working for broker companies that sell units from
several projects. In addition, a thorough analysis was conducted of Egyptian newspaper articles
(mainly Youm7) announcing official press releases by the Egyptian government relevant to the
New Administrative Capital. The findings relevant to explaining the process are summarized in
the following part.
The chain of development starts with the state selling or allotting large plots of land to real
estate developers. In some cases, these developers build on the land themselves or through a
sister company, using their own money or bank loans, then go on to sell the units in their project
23 The Egyptian Consortium of Urban Planners, UDC+5, is collaboration between five Egyptian private planning
and architectural design firms owned by professors of architecture and urban planning in Ain Shams University,
Cairo.
24 This densification led to conflict between the NAC Company and the urban planning team. This was not
announced officially, but was traced and investigated through social media (i.e. a Facebook posts) by Egyptian
planners, including members of the planning team in December 2017.

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21
either directly to individuals or through broker companies which usually work for more than one
company or compound at a time.
The real estate investors acquire the plots of land from the NAC Company at relatively high
prices (between 3500 and 5000 EGP/m2). After the developer’s company gets the ministerial
decree confirming the developer company’s ownership of the plot, the company embarks on
marketing campaigns for the units in their compound, whether for villas or flats. Customers are
required to pay a percentage of the unit’s price that ranges between 10 and 25 per cent even
before the design of the master plan is finished, and before the developer gets a permission to
build.
The minimum price for 1 m2 in the current phase is 9500 EGP25, with the average price being
14,500 EGP/m2. The client pays 10% of the unit’s price, without knowing the exact unit that he
is buying, as the master plan – in that phase – is not yet finished.
At least ten foreign university campuses, affiliated to different countries, were officially
announced as proposals by Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Egypt’s Minister of Higher Education and
Scientific Research in November 2017 (Times higher Education 2017). According to the
minister: “The New Administrative Capital is expected to be a perfect location to attract more
foreign universities to open new branches or campuses in Egypt based on agreements with the
Ministry of Higher Education.” (ibid.) The same news were also announced by the Minister of
Housing, Dr. Madbouly, when talking generally about the government's achievements. There is
clearly some conflict regarding who owns these achievements, even on the level of announcing
the news. It is worth observing that, within the scanned available news related to the NAC, no
mention is made of the establishment of any public university in the project.
Based on interviews with four professional Egyptian engineers, a sample of those involved in
different parts of the planning and construction processes of the NAC, some common remarks
can be highlighted as follows: The pace of the process is much faster than is normal for a project
of such a huge scale. This starts at the early phases of design and proceeds through to the last
phases of construction of the buildings, leading to a number of issues, including fatal mistakes.
These issues are due to lack of information, lack of sufficient time taken to optimize decisions
and a lack of coordination between the different consultants. Some of these issues can be
resolved in later phases and a compromise reached, but in other cases it is already too late. It is
worth mentioning that everything is controlled and has to go through the military engineering
organization, starting with contracting, coordination, permissions, etc.
Regarding the funding for construction, a number of bank accounts have been set up for
donations with the aim of collecting the construction costs of some of the planned NAC
projects. For example, the church and the mosque, plus a mysterious project dubbed Civilization
Center, with no indication to the public as to its contents or function.
One crucial and unsurprising observation made regarding the NAC is “lack of transparency”
regarding the source of the project funding. According to one of the consultants interviewed, the
sources of funding for different buildings are different and not consistent. It occasionally
happens that the architect and the structural consultant start their work without signing a
contract and without knowing their fees or the source of the funding. They accept these working
conditions because they would otherwise have no work. But such conditions adversely affect the
25 This price is no longer available, according to the broker companies in January 2018.

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quality of the design work, and in fact work of a lower quality is being accepted. Contractors
assigned to construct the buildings do not get their fees on regular bases, despite being put under
pressure to achieve high rates of performance regarding time schedules. The rate of
infrastructure provision is far behind the rate of building construction, which means that certain
buildings are finished as projects with no water or electricity provision. A good example of this
mismanagement is Sports City, which includes swimming pools!
The opportunity to host major official events is one reason behind the choice of the NAC as the
venue for conferences and other national events attended by the president, such as the Coptic
Christian Christmas, which used to take place every year at the Cathedral in the Abbasseya
district26. It is worth mentioning that the first building to be constructed and prepared for
operation was the Massa Hotel, owned by the military forces.
Impact of the NAC on the Cairo Real Estate Market: Higher Prices – Lower Prices
The NAC is located relatively close to several new settlements to the east of Cairo. The largest
of these is New Cairo, made up of three settlements, including the prestigious Fifth District - El-
Tagamu' El khames. Others include El-Rehab City, New Heliopolis, El-Sherouk City and Badr
City, this last an industrial city considered the closest in design to the NAC. Begun in the 1990s,
El-Sherouk city27 was intended to be developed as a residential city and had extended plans for
several phases, dependent on different types of development: the provision of bigger plots to
private investors; the subdivision of parts to be sold to individuals either for apartment buildings
with a high number of units, or as plots for villas. Such decisions have implications for the
prices of the plots, depending on the location and the number of units that can be built. The
villas' locations were usually better than those of the department buildings. The Heliopolis Club,
a prestigious social and sports club, the majority of whose members belong to the upper-middle
and upper classes and enjoy a sense of elitism, has opened a branch there, surrounded by several
compounds whose prices were consequently higher due to their proximity to the club.
After the announcement of plans to build Madinaty, a private city, the expectation was that
prices in nearby El-Sherouk City would increase. This did indeed happen, but prices in El-
Sherouk remain relatively much lower than prices in the NAC 28. In January 2018, the Minister
of Housing announced the construction of 250,000 social housing units in El-Sherouk City,
which he visited directly after a visit to the NAC. A link between the two projects can be easily
created. Their proximity allows El-Sherouk to act as a sort of dormitory town for lower income
families working in the NAC. Badr City has also been influenced by the NAC due to its close
location. In the second half of 2017, the price of land and units there noticeably increased. It is
now also used as a dormitory town for construction workers. Public transport has been
established to facilitate their daily commute29. On the other, west, side of Cairo, in 6th of
October and Sheikh Zaied – which are considered an extension of Giza – prices of housing units
have increased in accordance with the prices demanded in th