New Cairo’s Fragmented City

This book examines the housing crisis within Greater Cairo’s metropolitan communities. The impact of the Greater Cairo Master Plan and New Towns Policy on the housing crisis is investigated focusing especially on New Cairo City, to the east of downtown Cairo. New Cairo City was established as a result of merging Greater Cairo Master Plan’s three eastern New Settlements, creating a large suburban community. To a certain extent New Cairo City, whilst replicating old social divisions and unresolved housing problems and ghettoisation, would appear to encapsulate most of the features and problems of Greater Cairo’s urban situation. New Cairo’s contested City is made up of diverse fragmented settlements ranging from up-market private gated communities incorporating upper middle class residents and property speculators, and decaying and inadequate resettlement housing for the relocated urban poor who often prefer to return to their inner city informal housing.