Receding Rurality: Cairo’s Informal Urbanization versus Local Food Production

africanCities, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Energy and sustainability, Essay, High Density, Lorenz Bürgi, Politics and economics, Territory and mobility

Africa, africanCities, Agricultural trends, Agriculture, Cairo, Egypt, Essay, Expanding frontiers, Farming processes, Food production, Housing, Informal economy, Local production, Local resources, Megacities & High Density, Notes towards a History of Urbanism, Photography, Reflection on African Cities, Urban conditions, Urban environment, Urban food accessibility, Urban sprawl

Considered informal because they are built on former agrarian land, these housing settlements are informally constructed, without planning or building permits. The pace of illegal construction on fertile areas at the Egyptian capital’s fringes and in the Nile Delta may have quickened since the 2011 revolution, but the phenomenon is not new. Some 65 percent of the inhabitants of the biggest city in Africa – the seventh-largest metropolitan area in the world, with a population over 20 million – live in informal housing.[2] In the massive agglomeration that comprises downtown Cairo, Giza, Shubra El-Kheima, and eight “New Towns,” urban sprawl has taken a dramatic turn as it expands into already scarce agrarian land.