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Author : David Sims Publisher : American University in Cairo Press Page : 560 pages File Size : 53,9 Mb Release : 2018-09-18 Category : Social Science ISBN : 9781617978845
Egypt has placed its hopes on developing its vast and empty deserts as the ultimate solution to the country’s problems. New cities, new farms, new industrial zones, new tourism resorts, and new development corridors, all have been promoted for over half a century to create a modern Egypt and to pull tens of millions of people away from the increasingly crowded Nile Valley into the desert hinterland. The results, in spite of colossal expenditures and ever-grander government pronouncements, have been meager at best, and today Egypt’s desert is littered with stalled schemes, abandoned projects, and forlorn dreams. It also remains stubbornly uninhabited. Egypt’s Desert Dreams is the first attempt of its kind to look at Egypt’s desert development in its entirety. It recounts the failures of governmental schemes, analyzes why they have failed, and exposes the main winners of Egypt’s desert projects, as well as the underlying narratives and political necessities behind it, even in the post-revolutionary era. It also shows that all is not lost, and that there are alternative paths that Egypt could take.
A provocative analysis of the roots of Egypt’s housing crisis and the ways in which it can be tackled Along with football and religion, housing is a fundamental cornerstone of Egyptian life: it can make or break marriage proposals, invigorate or slow down the economy, and popularize or embarrass a ruler. Housing is political. Almost every Egyptian ruler over the last eighty years has directly associated himself with at least one large-scale housing project. It is also big business, with Egypt currently the world leader in per capita housing production, building at almost double China’s rate, and creating a housing surplus that counts in the millions of units. Despite this, Egypt has been in the grip of a housing crisis for almost eight decades. From the 1940s onward, officials deployed a number of policies to create adequate housing for the country’s growing population. By the 1970s, housing production had outstripped population growth, but today half of Egypt’s one hundred million people cannot afford a decent home. Egypt's Housing Crisis takes presidential speeches, parliamentary reports, legislation, and official statistics as the basis with which to investigate the tools that officials have used to ‘solve’ the housing crisis—rent control, social housing, and amnesties for informal self-building—as well as the inescapable reality of these policies’ outcomes. Yahia Shawkat argues that wars, mass displacement, and rural–urban migration played a part in creating the problem early on, but that neoliberal deregulation, crony capitalism and corruption, and neglectful planning have made things steadily worse ever since. In the final analysis he asks, is affordable housing for all really that hard to achieve?
Sustainable Water Solutions in the Western Desert, Egypt: Dakhla Oasis by Erina Iwasaki,Abdelazim M. Negm,Salwa F. Elbeih Pdf
This book is a multidisciplinary manuscript bringing together contributions on water issues from natural and social scientists focused on water management and structures in a challenging environmental situation such as Dakhla Oasis in Egypt's western desert. The authors of this book are relevant scientists in hydrology, geology, remote sensing, agriculture, history, and sociology. It is devoted to various critical environmental topics such as geological and hydraulic structure, climate influence, underground water management, irrigation management, and human settlement. The book provides a range of new perspectives on solving different environmental problems in arid zones toward the region's sustainable development, based on the case studies and fieldwork in the Dakhla Oasis (Western Desert, Egypt).
Lumbering State, Restless Society by Nathan J. Brown,Shimaa Hatab,Amr Adly Pdf
Lumbering State, Restless Society offers a comprehensive and compelling understanding of modern Egypt. Nathan J. Brown, Shimaa Hatab, and Amr Adly guide readers through crucial developments in Egyptian politics, society, and economics from the middle of the twentieth century through the present. Integrating diverse perspectives and areas of expertise, including the tools of comparative politics, the book provides an accessible and clear introduction to the Egypt of today alongside an innovative and rigorous analysis of the country’s history and governance. Brown, Hatab, and Adly highlight ways in which Egypt resembles other societies around the world, drawing from and contributing to broader debates in political science. They trace the emergence of a powerful and intrusive state alongside a society that is increasingly politicized, and they emphasize how the rulers and regimes who have built and steered the state apparatus have also had to retreat and recalibrate. The authors also examine why authoritarianism, corporatism, and socialism have decayed without resulting in a liberal democratic order, and they show why Egyptian politics should not be understood in terms of a single dominant force but rather an interplay among many actors. At once current, insightful, and engaging, Lumbering State, Restless Society delivers a powerful and distinctive account of modern Egypt in the modern world.
Deserts, the Red Land, bracket the narrow strip of alluvial Black Land that borders the Nile. Networks of desert roads ascended to the high desert from the Nile Valley, providing access to the mineral wealth and Red Sea ports of the Eastern Desert, the oasis depressions and trade networks of the Western Desert. A historical perspective from the Predynastic through the Roman Periods highlights how developments in the Nile Valley altered the Egyptian administration and exploitation of the deserts. For the ancient Egyptians, the deserts were a living landscape, and at numerous points along the desert roads, the ancient Egyptians employed rock art and rock inscriptions to create and mark places. Such sites provide considerable evidence for the origin of writing in northeast Africa, the religious significance of the desert and expressions of personal piety, and the development of the early alphabet.
Cairo Desert Cities by Marc M. Angelil,Deane Simpson,Charlotte Malterre-Barthes Pdf
Since the 1950s, Egypt has developed a dozen new towns in the desert outside of Cairo. Intended to alleviate a growing demand for housing in the capital, most have never been completed. Edited by Marc Angélil and Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, this book presents the first systematic exploration of these cities, analysing their architecture and urban form, along with their possibilities and shortcomings. Describing their condition as 'permanently emerging', the study identifies the towns' potential through a series of design scenarios which underscore the value of re-engaging with modernist town planning, in hopes that examining past failures uncovers future opportunities.
In the classic literary tradition of Bruce Chatwin and Geoff Dyer, and for readers of Ryszard Kapuscinski and Rory Stewart, a rich and exquisitely written account of travels in eight deserts on five continents that evokes the timeless allure of these remote and forbidding places and their inhabitants. One-third of the earth's land surface is classified as desert. Restless, unhappy in love, and intrigued by the Desert Fathers who forged Christian monasticism in the Egyptian desert, William Atkins decided to travel in six of the world's driest, hottest places: the Empty Quarter of Oman, the Gobi and Taklamakan Desert of northwest China, the Great Victoria Desert of Australia, the man-made desert of the Aral Sea in Kazkahstan, and the Black Rock and Sonoran Deserts of the American Southwest, and Egypt's Eastern Desert. Each of his travel narratives effortlessly weaves aspects of natural history, historical background, and present-day reportage into a compelling tapestry that reveals the human appeal of these often inhuman landscapes.
The building of the Suez Canal was considered the greatest engineering feat of the nineteenth century, but, as Zachary Karabell shows, it was much more than a marvel of construction. It was a moment when the dreams and hopes of two cultures, several states, and thousands of ordinary people converged to change the face of the earth. Parting the Desert describes an extraordinary meeting between East and West. The Egyptians hoped the canal would lead to a national renaissance and renewed power in the eastern Mediterranean. The French expected the canal to enhance world trade and advance Western civilization. Napoleon Bonaparte first raised the possibility of building a waterway during his occupation of Egypt in the late eighteenth century. The idea was kept alive by the utopian followers of Saint-Simon and was then taken up by Ferdinand de Lesseps, the energetic, ambitious French diplomat who masterminded the project. As Karabell points out, Lesseps was often in the right place at the right time, and he had the good luck of forging a friendship with the young Egyptian prince Muhammad Said. In 1854, Said became the ruler of Egypt and granted Lesseps the concession to cut a hundred-mile-long canal across the isthmus of Suez. It would take fifteen years of ceaseless effort before that dream became reality. A brilliant entrepreneur, Lesseps traveled throughout Europe and the Near East to raise support and money. He convinced thousands of ordinary French citizens to invest in the canal company, and though he never won over the British prime minister, Lord Palmerston, he did convince British merchants and businessmen that the canal would benefit them. During years of careful diplomacy, Lesseps neutralized the Ottoman sultan, and with the help of his cousin the Empress Eugénie, he won the backing of the emperor of France, Napoleon III. By the time the canal was completed, it had become a symbol of progress and a sign that East and West could coexist and cooperate, and Lesseps was lionized throughout Europe as a hero of the industrial age. But it was not smooth sailing all the way: the company relied heavily on forced labor, diplomatic intrigues continued to the very end, and technical and financial obstacles constantly threatened the project’s completion. The creation of the Suez Canal captured the imagination of the world. It was heralded as a symbol of progress that would unite nations, but its legacy is mixed. It was supposed to strengthen the Middle East and bridge cultures; instead the gap widened, and the region remains a flash point for conflict.Parting the Desertis both a transporting narrative and a meditation on the origins of the modern Middle East.
This history relates the human consequences of the remorseless spread of the Great Desert that now stretches in almost unbroken continuity from Mauritania's Atlantic seaboard through the Middle East and Central Asia to the Great Wall of China. The author seeks to understand how the great civilizations in the original green lands of North Africa, Ancient Egypt, the Middle East, South Asia and China responded and changed under the pressure of invaders fleeing growing environmental degradation in the surrounding deserts.
When a riverboat gambler's daughter is rescued from unsavory gunfighters by a strong, handsome stranger, she never suspects the true reason for his heroics. A renowned vigilante, he needs her to draw out the real target of his vengeance. But he is to discover that his need for her goes much deeper than revenge.
