Improving Cairo for the Many, Not the Few

The government of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had a vision for Cairo's future. In 2007, it put forth a plan dubbed "Cairo 2050," and among its objectives was to create wide avenues, green spaces, and new or revamped tourist sites, such as near the Pyramids.

However attractive such a scene may sound, it would mean displacing hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of people from their neighborhoods, many of them Cairo's poorer residents who live in informal areas, or ashwa'iyyat. A whopping 70 percent of Cairenes live in these areas, where they build cheap housing illegally, often on agricultural land.