As New Cities Grow, Cairo’s Future Questioned
By: Farida El Deeb
@FaridaAEldeeb
The Emergency Exit exhibition recently hosted and sponsored by NextARCH Lab illustrated how urban growth and the quest for modernity has developed in the past few decades. in the quest for modernity.
NextARCH Lab, a unit founded in 2019 for the AUC Centennial under the supervision of the Architecture Department, put on display of newspaper clippings, research, statistics and images to highlight the five exits from Cairo expanding into the desert, specifically into the New Cairo districts.
“The idea of the exhibition was based off of research done on the ‘Desert City’, the administrative capital,” said Omar Rizk, NextARCH Lab’s visual curator of ‘Emergency Exit’.
Emergency Exit explored the housing, transportation and architecture of buildings in New Cairo. Among other issues, the exhibition looked at the availability of adequate housing and that of affordable housing in New Cairo and questioned whether it meets United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
“The purpose of the lab is to create a platform where the stakeholders, involved in the shaping of the city, communicate together,” said Amr Abdel Kawi, Director and founder of NextARCH Lab and Professor of practice in the Department of Architecture.
“People who study architecture and urban planning aren’t really communicating well with those who actually implement and [make] decisions,” Abdel Kawi said.
The architecture of corporate buildings in New Cairo has been categorized into six styles: signboard, post-modern layering, post-modern classicism, exaggerated high tech, revivalist regionalism and corporate form.
Transportation is also a critical issue when it comes to the mobility available to citizens. One of the displays at the exhibition read, “[Transportation] indicates an overall reach that intensifies along the axis of Teseen (Road 90) North and South and fades out as [commuters] go further towards the city boundaries”.
This has given plenty of thought for city designers and urban planners who said they are concerned about some of the flaws which went into planning New Cairo.
According to CityPopulation, there are 306,767 inhabitants in New Cairo, with new residents moving in as more services are offered for the area.
Many families have moved to New Cairo to facilitate university learning for their children.
According to Google Maps, there are eight universities located in New Cairo; The American University in Cairo, German University in Cairo, Future University in Egypt, Canadian International College, New Cairo Institutes for Science and art, The Higher Institute for Applied Arts, The Higher Institute for Engineering and Technology, The High Institute for Management Sciences.
