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Mapping Cairo Cairo, Venice, 2015-2016
The workshop Mapping Cairo, organized by Studio Meem in collaboration with the Japan Foundation Office in Cairo, took place over ten days in November 2015. Participants, including local architecture students, GIS experts, graphic designers, and geographers, were tasked with creating original maps based on data about Cairo. While Cairo has expanded dramatically in recent decades, certain growth patterns have persisted for centuries, even as various rulers and regimes introduced distinct changes by establishing new centers of urban growth outside the city core. Our mapping aimed to visualize these shifts and highlight the diversity of these fabrics and growth patterns over time. By tracing these configurations and mutations, we began to understand some of the continuities and paradigm shifts in the city, identifying in this way, potential strategies for future development.  

The historical urban shifts we studied began with the Fatimids, who designed the city to protect it from the Nile’s annual floods. Ottoman expansion later prioritized modernization and development near the river, particularly in the Bulaq and el Azbakiya districts. During the Khedival period, French urbanist Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s influence led to the creation of monumental squares and boulevards that still define downtown Cairo. Colonial powers, inspired by the Garden City movement, shaped green suburbs like Maadi and Garden City, while post-independence nation-building under Nasser introduced new neighborhoods such as Nasr City. However, rapid population growth led to informal development that outpaced formal planning. Under Sadat and Mubarak, neoliberal policies spurred industrial towns and desert housing developments, while informal settlements expanded on agricultural land. In the workshop, we also examined the city's economic activities, the distribution of green and public spaces, transportation lines, land use, housing, and population growth, both historically and in the present. I encouraged participants to creatively visualize this data, correlating different phenomena to identify core problems and potential target areas for future planning.

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