Incidently, after having written the other day about the urban phenomenea of New Cairo, a documentary was brought to my attention by the blog of a fellow student at the Center for Forced Migration and Refugee Studies, in AUC. At this point, I have only watched 4 of the 8 minutes, but from what I saw, I believe that it does a fair job to capture the shifting dynamics of the contemporary urban landscape within metropolitan Egypt. I encourage anyone with a general interest of understanding a little about the modern developments of the Middle East to watch it. Enjoy.
March 14, 2009
March 13, 2009
New Cairo
Yesterday was my refugee psychology class where we usually sit around, hold hands and talk about our feelings. Every once in awhile, people mention the word refugee, but for the most part the class discussion seems to meander into every direction except refugee psychology. I don't really mind the class so much, except it is located at the new campus, about an 1 hour bus ride outside of Cairo within the sprawling urban development, New Cairo.
The campus is absolutely beautiful, yet the poor general planning of the entire New Cairo development seems to undermine the satisfaction that one would otherwise derive from the setting. For the time being, going to school at AUC in New Cairo is disaster. With no public transportation system in place, the school shuttles buses from the old campus gates to the new campus, every day of the week. With only 2 or 3 departments still located at the old campus, the entire downtown facilities remain empty while the expense to maintain them remains in place. In New Cairo, all aspects of daily life had to be determined and constructed in advance of the resident population, so it is only natural that certain details are lacking or are insufficient. From technical concerns, such as anticipating the appropriate sewer size for the projected future population, to simpler details such as appropriate business hours.
New Cairo is a rather bizarre place, a big goofy suburb of rich people in big houses out in the desert. It has many of the characteristics of of new American suburbs, with rows of identical houses, tree lined streets, and convenient shopping centers dotting the periphery, but it also has an array of unique characteristics. Palm trees dot the medians, giant fountains of water are spread around to showoff the luxury of the neighborhood, and crazy glass office buildings are randomly distributed. The buildings are generally positioned within a high density, and with nearly zero setbacks, the facades are frequently immediately perpendicular to the street edge. I can't recall if there are any sidewalks, but I have the impression that the interest of cars dominate the street design far more than pedestrians.
The strange thing about New Cairo is that EVERYTHING is presently under construction. While normal communities evolve slowly over time, this whole city is planned from top to bottom by urban designers, architects, and real estate companies. The whole city is being constructed all at once, as all housing, business, utilities, and shopping have suddenly popped up within the Sahara like an oasis of modern commerce. It makes the area sorta creepy really, to see unfinished concrete buildings buried in the sand, as far as you can see. An apocalyptic allure hangs over the buildings, especially as I cannot look at them and detach my thoughts from the current economic crisis. It is difficult to measure or understand the economic downturn from where I stand, as the distinction between rich and poor is so massive within this country, that even with serious detriment to the Egyptian economy, one can barely see a difference. Yet as New Cairo rises from the desert, I wonder if it will ever accomplish the vision that was set out for this place many years ago.
When I went to school for city planning, many of my more traditional instructors would profoundly echo to the students that the most important characteristic for any planner to contain is to have a strong sense of vision. To have vision for the future, an ideal to work toward for the greater good of the community, and a specific sense of how this vision can be created in material form. As I look at New Cairo, I reflect on this sens of vision, contemplating the vision of those who initiated this plan, and yet to see their intentions undermined by greater forces. Certainly vision matters, but another lesson I had learned while studying planning was the value of metrics. How much did these planners study and measure the forces that shape communities, that shape the creation of their vision, and ultimately determine the success of this new settlement? Planning is of course, not a pure science, or at least is often not pursued in that manner as Community Planning is an interdisciplinary discourse.
While personal vision and precise measurements are certainly needed, I would argue that New Cairo reveals a common shortfall among planners, the element of community. As a completely designed new settlement out on the urban periphery, there was no preexisting community to serve as a foundation for growth. Communities evolve over time and cannot be magically called into existence. Yet without a community in place, how does one truly ever know what to plan for? Maybe in the future, New Cairo will stand as the feature destination for tourists and and successful businesses within Egypt. Perhaps it will be the glamorous counterpart to Cairo, or maybe it will become assimilated into the general sprawl of Cairo, so that these two different cities will merge into one single massive settlement. For the moment, New Cairo remains a disconcerting venture as it seems to have everything except for the most crucial ingredient. People.
The campus is absolutely beautiful, yet the poor general planning of the entire New Cairo development seems to undermine the satisfaction that one would otherwise derive from the setting. For the time being, going to school at AUC in New Cairo is disaster. With no public transportation system in place, the school shuttles buses from the old campus gates to the new campus, every day of the week. With only 2 or 3 departments still located at the old campus, the entire downtown facilities remain empty while the expense to maintain them remains in place. In New Cairo, all aspects of daily life had to be determined and constructed in advance of the resident population, so it is only natural that certain details are lacking or are insufficient. From technical concerns, such as anticipating the appropriate sewer size for the projected future population, to simpler details such as appropriate business hours.
New Cairo is a rather bizarre place, a big goofy suburb of rich people in big houses out in the desert. It has many of the characteristics of of new American suburbs, with rows of identical houses, tree lined streets, and convenient shopping centers dotting the periphery, but it also has an array of unique characteristics. Palm trees dot the medians, giant fountains of water are spread around to showoff the luxury of the neighborhood, and crazy glass office buildings are randomly distributed. The buildings are generally positioned within a high density, and with nearly zero setbacks, the facades are frequently immediately perpendicular to the street edge. I can't recall if there are any sidewalks, but I have the impression that the interest of cars dominate the street design far more than pedestrians.
The strange thing about New Cairo is that EVERYTHING is presently under construction. While normal communities evolve slowly over time, this whole city is planned from top to bottom by urban designers, architects, and real estate companies. The whole city is being constructed all at once, as all housing, business, utilities, and shopping have suddenly popped up within the Sahara like an oasis of modern commerce. It makes the area sorta creepy really, to see unfinished concrete buildings buried in the sand, as far as you can see. An apocalyptic allure hangs over the buildings, especially as I cannot look at them and detach my thoughts from the current economic crisis. It is difficult to measure or understand the economic downturn from where I stand, as the distinction between rich and poor is so massive within this country, that even with serious detriment to the Egyptian economy, one can barely see a difference. Yet as New Cairo rises from the desert, I wonder if it will ever accomplish the vision that was set out for this place many years ago.While personal vision and precise measurements are certainly needed, I would argue that New Cairo reveals a common shortfall among planners, the element of community. As a completely designed new settlement out on the urban periphery, there was no preexisting community to serve as a foundation for growth. Communities evolve over time and cannot be magically called into existence. Yet without a community in place, how does one truly ever know what to plan for? Maybe in the future, New Cairo will stand as the feature destination for tourists and and successful businesses within Egypt. Perhaps it will be the glamorous counterpart to Cairo, or maybe it will become assimilated into the general sprawl of Cairo, so that these two different cities will merge into one single massive settlement. For the moment, New Cairo remains a disconcerting venture as it seems to have everything except for the most crucial ingredient. People.
March 10, 2009
A Little Status Update for Y'all
Not a lot to chat about right now as everything is rather mundane and routine right now. I have been combing job adds and am nearing the point in which I can start to apply for wat/san, shelter, and development jobs here in Egypt as well as the rest of Africa and Asia. I just now left my Economic Development and Migration class, and am sitting in the campus courtyard, using the university internet is working properly, and my connection at home is not.
Yesterday I went out to dinner with Mallory, and we grabbed some decent Korean food at the Cleopatra hotel. It was funny because I realized that the staff actually recognize us now, no surprise since most of their clientele consists of Korean businessmen, bus loads of Korean tourists, and my roommate Phil. We also made brownies this weekend, had some friends over on Friday, and on thursday went to hangout with my Unigun friends. Will probably do something similar next weekend... hopefully I'll have something more to write home about!
March 4, 2009
Adventures in the Western Desert
Siwa is a rather incredible place although I definately plan to travel there on different terms the next time around. As previously posted, Siwa is a town located in the far North-Western territory of Egypt, within the heart of the Sahara and near the Libyan border. The people are ethnically Berber, as opposed to Arab, and the language consists of a unique blend of Berber and Arabic.
Here is a Slide Show of Photos! You can also link to the photo page directly, here.
Upon going to Siwa, things started off a little rough when I awoke at 6:27 in the morning - needing to be at the Fulbright Office at 6:30 for departure. However, everything in Eygpt runs on "Egyptian Time" and consequently arriving 15 minutes late was basically the same as being early. We left Cairo in a massive yellow bus covered with pastel polka dots, I guess to advertise just how ridiculous wealthy American tourists can be.
We first went to a musem where the last bast of WWII was fought within the Sahara. The museum had a lot stuff - old tanks, uniforms, weapons, radios... pretty much everything. The funny thing is that the English translations on the information panels was absolutely crazy! Many of us were wondering if the person hired to write the English phrases really even spoke the language, or if the person hired instead had only a cursory understanding and simply used a dictionary to constantly translate the words... void of context, sentence structure etc. The end result was something like this:Many days much war fought the German army was desert, salt." Salt?!!! That was an exact quote! So yeah, the museum was a blast.
We also stopped at a beach on the Mediterranean coast. It was the first time I ever saw the Mediterranean Sea from land, having only previously only seen it from airplanes. It was a beautiful blue, spotted with dark navy spots of ice cold water. I climbed the cliffs along the coast and found some really interesting rock formations and Arabic graffiti.
Later we arrived in Siwa and began an intense three day regimen of running all over the various tourist destinations within the region. Oh the agony! I mean, I had a good time and all, but this is NOT the way that I travel. To be herded about like a group of goats from one place to another, driving around on a silly yellow bus, with cameras clicking the whole time, the tour guide yelling about some inane historical fact and all of the people in the town looking at us with wide eyed stares? Talk about weird and creepy, I can't imagine why people ever travel this way. Within 4 days, I only spoke to about 3 people who actually live within the town, I learned nothing of the language, nothing about the food, the clothing, the music, the literature, and the list just continues. Ultimately, I know nothing about Siwa. I can only compare it to visiting New York and only going to the Statue of Liberty and Times Square - what do these to things have to do with living in New York? Pretty much nothing.
I should insist however that I did have decent time. I made it a point to wander off frequently, especially when in proximity to abandoned towns and buildings. I have always loved these sort of places, whether I'm in Cincinnati, Bangkok or Egypt, there is so much to learn and explore through abandoned human settlements. Within one city in particular, I simply ditched my group and took off like a mouse in a maze, simply climbing the walls of these roofless buildings when I would find a dead end. I discovered all sorts of minor curiosities, evidence of religious shrines, an oven for baking, remnants of a pagan temple, a former mosque, an olive press... it was certainly the best part of the trip.
On another day we spent 8 hours trecking through The Great Sand Sea, out in the Sahara desert. It was a long long day of driving up and down MASSIVE sand dunes, broken up with opportunities to drink tea by an oasis, collect fossils in the hills, and go swimming in a hot spring. I was the only one who appeared to feel uncomfortable within the super slimy water of the hot spring, but I toughed it out anyway... after all, I wasn't the only one who was going to smell like sulfur for the next 48 hours.
The last thing we did was go to a place called the Mountain of the Dead. It used to consist as the primary burial site for Siwa, where mummified bodies were stored within about 1,400 family tombs. However, during WWII the bodies were removed and the people of Siwa lived within the tombs to hide from the war. After the tombs were later evacuated, the mummified bodies remained outside - as the climate is so dry that it really didn't make a difference- since many of the tombs were destroyed during bombings. However we were told that in the 1950s, the government of Egypt came to clean up the site and all the mummies were removed to an unknown location. The place was sorta interesting, but it became much better after wandering off on my own. The funny thing is that I came to realize that the "cleaning" of the site actually meant, "pushing most of the bodies off the side of the mountain." As I wandered around the outskirts, I constantly found shattered pieces of bone and assumed these were animal bones, but after discovering half of a sun bleached pelvis, and the end of a femur, it was quite clear that these bones belonged to people. Later while climbing to the top of the mountain and exploring the caves along the way - one of which contained a ruined temple to the Egyptian god Amman - I found a large portion of a mummified body, crushed beneath a massive boulder. Good times!
We went to a few other places as well, like a natural spring that was the former vacation spa of Cleopatra and a temple site once visited by Alexander the Great. One night a guest lecturer provided an overview of the history and culture of the area, while at another time, some of those who recieved grants to study music in egypt gave us an impromptu peformance in the hotel. All in all it was a good time, but I really look forward to going there again the future when I can engage the place and people in a way that is more within my own parameters. If anything, I guess that means No yellow, polka dot tour bus.
Here is a Slide Show of Photos! You can also link to the photo page directly, here.
Upon going to Siwa, things started off a little rough when I awoke at 6:27 in the morning - needing to be at the Fulbright Office at 6:30 for departure. However, everything in Eygpt runs on "Egyptian Time" and consequently arriving 15 minutes late was basically the same as being early. We left Cairo in a massive yellow bus covered with pastel polka dots, I guess to advertise just how ridiculous wealthy American tourists can be.
We first went to a musem where the last bast of WWII was fought within the Sahara. The museum had a lot stuff - old tanks, uniforms, weapons, radios... pretty much everything. The funny thing is that the English translations on the information panels was absolutely crazy! Many of us were wondering if the person hired to write the English phrases really even spoke the language, or if the person hired instead had only a cursory understanding and simply used a dictionary to constantly translate the words... void of context, sentence structure etc. The end result was something like this:Many days much war fought the German army was desert, salt." Salt?!!! That was an exact quote! So yeah, the museum was a blast.
We also stopped at a beach on the Mediterranean coast. It was the first time I ever saw the Mediterranean Sea from land, having only previously only seen it from airplanes. It was a beautiful blue, spotted with dark navy spots of ice cold water. I climbed the cliffs along the coast and found some really interesting rock formations and Arabic graffiti.
Later we arrived in Siwa and began an intense three day regimen of running all over the various tourist destinations within the region. Oh the agony! I mean, I had a good time and all, but this is NOT the way that I travel. To be herded about like a group of goats from one place to another, driving around on a silly yellow bus, with cameras clicking the whole time, the tour guide yelling about some inane historical fact and all of the people in the town looking at us with wide eyed stares? Talk about weird and creepy, I can't imagine why people ever travel this way. Within 4 days, I only spoke to about 3 people who actually live within the town, I learned nothing of the language, nothing about the food, the clothing, the music, the literature, and the list just continues. Ultimately, I know nothing about Siwa. I can only compare it to visiting New York and only going to the Statue of Liberty and Times Square - what do these to things have to do with living in New York? Pretty much nothing.
I should insist however that I did have decent time. I made it a point to wander off frequently, especially when in proximity to abandoned towns and buildings. I have always loved these sort of places, whether I'm in Cincinnati, Bangkok or Egypt, there is so much to learn and explore through abandoned human settlements. Within one city in particular, I simply ditched my group and took off like a mouse in a maze, simply climbing the walls of these roofless buildings when I would find a dead end. I discovered all sorts of minor curiosities, evidence of religious shrines, an oven for baking, remnants of a pagan temple, a former mosque, an olive press... it was certainly the best part of the trip.
On another day we spent 8 hours trecking through The Great Sand Sea, out in the Sahara desert. It was a long long day of driving up and down MASSIVE sand dunes, broken up with opportunities to drink tea by an oasis, collect fossils in the hills, and go swimming in a hot spring. I was the only one who appeared to feel uncomfortable within the super slimy water of the hot spring, but I toughed it out anyway... after all, I wasn't the only one who was going to smell like sulfur for the next 48 hours.
The last thing we did was go to a place called the Mountain of the Dead. It used to consist as the primary burial site for Siwa, where mummified bodies were stored within about 1,400 family tombs. However, during WWII the bodies were removed and the people of Siwa lived within the tombs to hide from the war. After the tombs were later evacuated, the mummified bodies remained outside - as the climate is so dry that it really didn't make a difference- since many of the tombs were destroyed during bombings. However we were told that in the 1950s, the government of Egypt came to clean up the site and all the mummies were removed to an unknown location. The place was sorta interesting, but it became much better after wandering off on my own. The funny thing is that I came to realize that the "cleaning" of the site actually meant, "pushing most of the bodies off the side of the mountain." As I wandered around the outskirts, I constantly found shattered pieces of bone and assumed these were animal bones, but after discovering half of a sun bleached pelvis, and the end of a femur, it was quite clear that these bones belonged to people. Later while climbing to the top of the mountain and exploring the caves along the way - one of which contained a ruined temple to the Egyptian god Amman - I found a large portion of a mummified body, crushed beneath a massive boulder. Good times!
We went to a few other places as well, like a natural spring that was the former vacation spa of Cleopatra and a temple site once visited by Alexander the Great. One night a guest lecturer provided an overview of the history and culture of the area, while at another time, some of those who recieved grants to study music in egypt gave us an impromptu peformance in the hotel. All in all it was a good time, but I really look forward to going there again the future when I can engage the place and people in a way that is more within my own parameters. If anything, I guess that means No yellow, polka dot tour bus.
March 2, 2009
Return From Siwa
I'm sitting in class right now, but I wanted to mention that I have safely returned from Siwa. I had a really wonderful time and will follow up with some stories and photos in the next couple days. For now I'll just leave you with this photo of me doing a front flip off of sand dune in the Great Sand Sea of the Sahara desert.
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