Cairo to Brasilia and Back: Why State-led Urban Modernization Programs Fail
Cairo to Brasilia and Back
Why State-led Urban Modernization Programs Fail
By Hassaan bin Sabir
Contemporary Cairo, the largest city in the Arab world, is deeply fragmented. Its intensely segregated metropolitan area is a mosaic of detached urban communities.[i] Gated sectors on the outskirts of the Greater Cairo Region attract Egyptian elites seeking to isolate themselves from the wider citizenry.[ii] Meanwhile, priced out of these areas, rural immigrants and other newcomers to Cairo are forced to search for affordable housing in satellite communities on the city’s periphery: near railways, metro lines, highways, and floodplains.[iii] These spatial cleavages, which manifest themselves in physical barriers—walls, fences, and even deserts—have produced a city which lacks cohesion in the absence of an urban center that can fuse these disjointed residential areas into a functioning whole. Moreover, the physical markers which typify Cairo’s fragmented landscape are also symptomatic of more deep-seated cultural divisions which map onto the city’s socioeconomic stratification.
To ease the pressures on Cairo, the Egyptian government has announced plans to build a new capital city from scratch forty-five kilometers to its east. The project’s announcement in 2015 employed emotive rhetoric aimed at rallying support for the investment and breeding “confidence” and “pride” in Egyptians.[iv] Plans released so far show that the new capital will provide housing for 6.5 million people, alongside attractions such as a theme park, a new parliament and presidential palace, a business district, a central bank, and airport.[v] Officials hope this will alleviate some of the overcrowding and congestion that plagues Cairo.[vi]
The construction of the new capital is part of a larger urban development program, with the Egyptian government aiming to build 14 new cities over the next decade.[vii] Key governmental figures claim that these projects will create jobs, modernize the economy, and usher Egyptian society into the twenty-first century.[viii] While such state-led modernization programs can be expressions of national identity and tools for socioeconomic development, they are also susceptible to the pitfalls of centralized, top-down planning and implementation. Such shortcomings take root when states project idealized visions of modernity to mobilize their populations. However, these visions rarely fit neatly with the reality of urban life for the lower classes and migrants, who fail to assimilate into cities both spatially and culturally.
A Story of Broken Promises
Though the creation of new cities is not a recurring feature of twentieth century Middle Eastern history, the region has had its own tryst with modernity. Faced with national boundaries drawn by colonial powers which did not map neatly onto the complex tribal and kinship structures of Arab society, nascent Middle Eastern states had to innovate new ways to incorporate the masses into the political arena and, through it, the nation.[ix] The objective underpinning this desire was the need to legitimate the state.
In Egypt, this legitimization played out following the proclamation of the Egyptian Republic in 1952 after a military coup overthrew the country’s pro-British monarchy. With the vestiges of colonial rule removed from the scene, President Gamal Abdul Nasser embarked on an ideological program which merged conceptions of Arab nationalism with modernization.[x] Known as Pan-Arabism, this ideological construction was manifested in rapid state-led industrialization and infrastructural development. Although rapid urbanization was rarely promoted explicitly by Nasser and his regional counterparts, they nevertheless equated urban growth with progress.[xi]
The project failed, largely because of a lag between social mobilization and social assimilation. Mobilization here refers to the process by which powerful centralized states like Nasser’s Egypt projected themselves as the promoters of the economic interests of the people to derive support for their political programs.[xii] Modernization, they claimed, offered the pathway to economic prosperity for the Egyptian masses. This provided the public with a set of expectations about the positive effects of modernization on their lived experiences–expectations which were rarely met.
Migrants arriving in Cairo, at the time a center of growing industry, found themselves in a city with inadequate housing, overcrowded transportation, and overloaded public utilities.[xiii] Pushed to the periphery, these individuals and their families were forced to find housing in shanty towns and other poorly planned communities which lacked basic necessities such as clean water and electricity. Moreover, owing to the authoritarian nature of Nasser’s regime, there was an absence of civil society groups which could foster an inclusive cultural life in these burgeoning communities.[xiv] These urban divides were symptomatic of a broader failure of Arab political elites like Nasser: their inability to assimilate the wider populace into a new, and modern, socioeconomic and cultural order. Its product is the disjointed Cairo we see today.
A Tale of Three Cities
On the surface, then, the incumbent Egyptian regime—also authoritarian in character—is on track to follow in the footsteps of Nasser’s government. Proponents of the ongoing modernization program, however, are likely to argue that through the construction of new cities, Abdel Fatah Al Sisi’s government aims to rectify the negative effects of Nasser’s project. This is easier said than done.
Egypt is not the first country to embark on an ambitious urban development project. In the late 1950s, regimes in both India and Pakistan sought to use the construction of new federal and provincial capitals to break from their colonial pasts and start anew. Political leaders in both nations presented these enterprises as an embodiment of the goals and ideals of their nascent states.[xv] This desire manifested itself in the forms the two cities took: with their gridiron plans and regimented streets, Pakistan’s Islamabad and India’s Chandigarh stand in stark contrast to the urban and rural sprawl which characterizes their neighboring towns.
Across the globe, Brazil was also swept up in this modernizing fervor. There, it found expression in the city of Brasilia, designed to embody Brazil’s progressive and egalitarian ideas in the 1950s.[xvi] The task of implementing this vision fell to Brazilian architect Lucio Costa, who conceived of an urban space where the different socioeconomic groups of Brazilian society could intermingle and enjoy equal access to the city.[xvii] However, the reality of today’s Brasilia is far removed from these lofty goals.
Brasilia’s existing metropolitan area is divided into two distinct segments: the original Pilot Plan designed by Costa and the various satellite communities on its outskirts. Sharp socioeconomic divides map onto this spatial cleavage. The Pilot Plan, similar in structure to Chandigarh and Islamabad, is home to most government officials and individuals from the professional and managerial classes. The satellite communities, on the other hand, are inhabited by poorer families forced to move out of the city center as early as a decade after Brasilia’s inception.[xviii] These deprived communities sprang out of informal settlements built by construction workers who worked on the Pilot Plan.[xix]
Both Chandigarh and Islamabad have faced similar challenges in creating socially cohesive statist projects aimed at modernizing society. In Chandigarh, migrants from rural areas seeking low-paying jobs are forced to reside in the adjoining city of Rawalpindi, burdening its already weak infrastructure.[xx] Similarly, residents belonging to Pakistan’s Christian minority, who struggle to gain access to adequate education and employment in a society whose official religion is Islam, have long inhabited slums near the city center. Though near to metropolitan life, these communities are materially deprived, and their poverty stands in stark contrast to the affluence enjoyed by residents of modern bungalows just a few hundred meters away. Chandigarh is not too dissimilar: nearly 10% of its population is relegated to slums on the city’s outskirts.[xxi] The inhabitants of these communities–which lack basic amenities like water, electricity, and working toilets–are mostly migrant laborers who earn low daily wages.[xxii]
Conclusion
It is by no means a foregone conclusion that Egypt’s new capital will follow a developmental trajectory akin to that of Islamabad, Chandigarh, or Brasilia. To avoid the hardships which befell these cities, it is imperative for Egyptian leaders to learn from their nation’s own past. This has not been the case so far. Like Nasser’s government, the present regime’s attention is directed solely towards tugging at the population’s heartstrings, hoping that these emotive appeals will both placate the concerns of those questioning the financial prudence of these projects and generate widespread enthusiasm for them. However, while these rhetorical devices may mobilize the populace for now, more tangible efforts will be needed to create a cohesive urban space which can absorb the influx of millions of socioeconomically and culturally diverse citizens. Foremost among these is the need for an urban plan which prioritizes the construction of a vibrant public sphere, one which facilitates cultural autonomy and enables a flourishing civil society. This is easier said than done for an authoritarian regime intent on suppressing individual freedoms. Without it, however, the lag between mobilization and assimilation which brought Egypt’s first attempt at modernization will plague it once again. The product will be a new capital whose landscape is marred by the spatial and cultural borders we see in Cairo today.
Illustration by Samantha Malzahn.
[i] Mohamed, A. A., A. Van Nes, M. A. Salheen, M. A. Khalifa, and J. Hamhaber. “Understanding Urban Segregation in Cairo: The Social and Spatial Logic of a Fragmented City.”
[ii] Architecture, Failed. “Cairo’s Metropolitan Landscape: Segregation Extreme.” Failed Architecture (blog). Accessed November 3, 2020. https://failedarchitecture.com/cairos-metropolitan-landscape-segregation-extreme/.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] “Egypt Unveils Plans to Build New Capital East of Cairo.” BBC News, March 13, 2015, sec. Business. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-31874886.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Reuters
[vii] Al Bawaba. “Why Is Sisi Building 14 New Cities in Egypt?” Accessed November 3, 2020. https://www.albawaba.com/business/why-sisi-building-14-new-cities-egypt-1306079.
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] Paper
[x] Moore, Clement Henry. “Authoritarian Politics in Unincorporated Society: The Case of Nasser’s Egypt.” Comparative Politics 6, no. 2 (1974): 193–218. https://doi.org/10.2307/421461.
[xi] Ibrahim, Ibrahim and Georgetown University, eds. Arab Resources: The Transformation of a Society. Washington, D.C. : London: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies ; Croom Helm, 1983.
[xii] Ibid.
[xiii] Moore, Clement Henry. “Authoritarian Politics in Unincorporated Society: The Case of Nasser’s Egypt.” Comparative Politics 6, no. 2 (1974): 193–218. https://doi.org/10.2307/421461.
[xiv] Ibid.
[xv] Singh, Ganeshwari, Simrit Kahlon, and Vishwa Bandhu Singh Chandel. “Political Discourse and the Planned City: Nehru’s Projection and Appropriation of Chandigarh, the Capital of Punjab.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 109, no. 4 (July 4, 2019): 1226–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2018.1507816.
[xvi] Badawy, Aya, and Nuno Pinto. “Egypt Is Building a New Capital City from Scratch – Here’s How to Avoid Inequality and Segregation.” The Conversation. Accessed November 3, 2020. http://theconversation.com/egypt-is-building-a-new-capital-city-from-scratch-heres-how-to-avoid-inequality-and-segregation-103402.
[xvii] Ibid.
[xviii] Ibid.
[xix] Ibid.
[xx] Liu, Yong, Shaker ul din, and Yue Jiang. “Urban Growth Sustainability of Islamabad, Pakistan, over the Last 3 Decades: A Perspective Based on Object-Based Backdating Change Detection.” GeoJournal, March 10, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-020-10172-w.
[xxi] Firstpost. “Chandigarh Slum Residents Languish on City Outskirts as Houses Promised under Govt Scheme Are yet to Be Handed over - India News , Firstpost,” February 28, 2019. https://www.firstpost.com/india/chandigarh-slum-residents-languish-on-city-outskirts-as-houses-promised-under-govt-scheme-are-yet-to-be-handed-over-6173371.html.
[xxii] Ibid.
