| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Since the late 1960s, Cairo's urban development has been characterized by a rapid expansion of densely populated informal settlements ('ashwa'iyyat) that now house more than 60 percent of Cairo's population. In 2008, the Egyptian government began promoting Cairo 2050, a grandiose "vision" that aims to counter this phenomenon and transform Cairo into a global city like Paris or Tokyo. This article shows that attempts to redirect Cairo down this path of modernization would fail to resolve the city's urban challenges because they ignore realities on the ground. The article argues that informality and its associated high population density have offered solutions-though they are suboptimal-to resolving Cairo's urban challenges, and that implementing modernity from above will create more problems than solutions.
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