Sunday, August 11, 2019

Egypt's New Capital


Egypt is planning on building a new capital, 40 km east of Cairo. The project doesn't even have a name yet.  It won't be New Cairo, because that name is already taken.  

Update: The name is Wedian.

The new city will cost $45 billion, hold 6.5 million people, and cover 700 sq km.  It will have some similarities to Neom, the new city planned by Saudi Arabia in its far northwest.

The problem, as the video points out, is that Egypt has built multiple new planned cities in the last 30 years that have failed.  Some of these are like China's ghost cities.  The problem is that it will be expensive to live there, even for middle-class people, so only rich people will live there, and there aren't enough of them to fill it.  

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Here is another article about new Egyptian cities: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jul/10/new-cities-in-the-sand-inside-egypts-dream-to-conquer-the-desert
Today there are 22 built or part-built Egyptian new cities – and the New Urban Communities Authority (NUCA) has plans for 19 more. Around 7 million people now call these new cities home. It is arguably the most ambitious new cities programme the world has ever seen – a dream of bustling cities in an almost lunar desert landscape that outstrips the visions of even China and India.

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