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Article: New cities for old: population pressures in Africa's biggest city force urban developers to stay one step ahead of the game.(Cairo: urban development)
- Article from:
- MEED Middle East Economic Digest
- Article date:
- April 16, 2004
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 MEED Middle East Economic Digest. All Rights Reserved. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Seen from the air, Cairo appears to be a physical manifestation of the desert that surrounds it, a jumbling sprawl of buildings that through years of sandstorms and pollution have acquired a uniform patina of dusty ochre. The mosques of Fatimid Cairo and the brutal high-rises of the Nasserist era sit companionably beside each other, wrapped in the same brown smog. Despite their architectural differences, there is a strong sense of continuity between the two. The bones of the modern city, from bricks to concrete breeze blocks, are still derived from the effluvial mud of the Nile and the limestone quarries of the Muqattam escarpment, from which the building blocks of the ...