Manar Moursi Website
"Op-Ed: Where does 'Urban Harmony' Begin?"
Egypt Independent, Cairo, Egypt, 2011
Written on the eve of Egypt’s uprising, this column dissects Cairo’s chronic gridlock—not as a technical glitch but as a symptom of laissez-faire planning, gated-desert sprawl, and government nostalgia for a Belle-Époque “Paris of the East.” Zeroing in on Ramses, Ataba, and Tahrir squares, I critique two National Organization for Urban Harmony design competitions whose closed-door “park-mall” schemes ignore street vendors, informal transit, and the city’s poorest commuters. I argue that true relief demands participatory planning and macro-level mass-transit policy, not cosmetically “beautified” plazas handed down from on high.
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Criticism & Academic Writing