Cairo, New Cairo, Badr City and the Legacy of the Pharaohs.

Cairo is a vibrant city, capital of Egypt hosting 22 million people, a country in itself with more than 5,000 years of history. It is located strategically at the Nile delta, where different human settlements were established as capitals of the different historical periods. Recent history shows that from 2,5 million inhabitants in 1050, Egypt capital grow up continuously merging old settlements and rural villages constituting a complex metropolitan tissue interrelating urban functions, social status and governmental visions on giant mega-projects. Archeological investigations teach us that in ancient Egypt the construction of the pyramids was much more that a funerary monument dedicated to the rulers, they were actually very concrete visions of great national futures associated to prosperity, justice and transcendence paving the foundation of a mysterious and culturally mixed-up civilization. Islamic architecture and urbanism come to integrate these different urban settlements as part of a bigger city in which coexist ancient monuments from different periods, with medieval infrastructure and modern master plans, all of them expanding the vision of a great city ruling the crossroad between Africa, Asia and Europe, counting with public transport able to mobilize massively people from the countryside from all surrounding countries to serve in the engine of Egypt.

Egyptian macrocefalia is not other phenomenon of what happened in post-colonial countries across the global south, where the need of intermediary cities weaving network of efficient cities open the path for more inclusive and equity development. Cairo has been object of multiple tries of the national government of addressing the housing deficit through great affordable housing schemes, in general and also equal respect what happened in the global south, running short to really match the demand of new units to cope with the growing deficit. The search to create new cities out of town rather than helping to develop an affordable housing market has contribute to the horizontal expansion of the city, deepening social disparities and creating new challenges to provide drinkable water and municipal services in remote areas. A policy of new satellite towns was launched in the 80′s pursuing new urban development schemes, such as the case of Badr City, among others, a massive social housing scheme, designed with the rationale of modernism designs based on multiple story building placed in nobody land. Such policy demonstrates serious social and cultural problems as these neighborhoods serve the purpose of resettlement of households under risk in other parts of the city, solving a critical problem, but limited to generate living conditions able to make those family progress and improve their incomes and job opportunities. Just recently, the government introduce public space strategies to support better recreational and socialization schemes providing basic equipment and social activities in these areas.

In the same line, in the last decade, new efforts to create a "New Cairo" push for the development of massive real estate development in the periphery of the metropolitan city supported by governmental financial and in-kind resources. The urbanistic idea behind this was to incentive the private sector to invest in building houses for different income levels. As it happened normally, the private sector normally targets upper income groups where the possibilities of profits are bigger, leaving behind lower income groups, the majority of the demand. This situation leads to a landscape dominated by luxurious villages and modern apartments that in the context of high inflation and low salaries reduce the possibilities of the majorities to access adequate housing.

In 1955 the legendary Egyptian Prime Minister Gamal Abed Nasser move the colossal statue of Ramses II to Bab-Al-Halil square close to Cairo Main Railway Station as an impressive symbol of the country grandeur. In 2019, the same statue was moved again to the hall of the Gran Egyptian Museum (GEM) as another try to restaure the wisdom and power of the Pharaohs of the ancient time, demonstrating the willingness of the country to invoke recurrently its golden past. For some reason that still I do not know, in all the world, but specially in the global south, great projects that results in failure are called "pharaonic public works" equivalent to "white elephants" that should be avoided by all means. This is really a Gordian knot for any urban planner to be consider, as a great vision is always needed to find relevant solutions, but it is also true that the search for greatness without a balance sense of context and real feasibilities lead also to failures, unfortunately, when self-evaluation and reflection never happened, repeated failures.

Egypt have been pioneer on National Slum Upgrading Policies based on responding to risk assessment and relocating slum dwellers. A robust policy to drive urbanization towards prosperity and fulfillment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have dominated the agenda of the national government as well as at governorate and local level carrying out very ambitious development plans that have inspired internationally other plans and programs. Embracing social development schemes is very much rooted at the Egyptian society and have been influencing the national and international agenda of the country very much, including periods of pan Arabism and regional development. Nowadays a new vision for sustainable development is needed and my visit to the World Urban Forum give me chance to take an in-situ view of the current urban phenomena from the perspective of its unique history. The mix of peoples and cultures that Egypt have is what have framed its capacity to innovate and lead the world in different periods. The urban capacity to integrate previous settlement and merge is already indicating the cultural value of integration and diversifying assets. A great lesson provide by the city is that grandness is not only associated to "think big" but to find the right time and context to do it to make it really work.