The New Administrative Capital: Smart City, Vanity Project or Military Stronghold?
A geographical map for the position of the NAC of Egypt (Image Source: The Capital Egypt)
By Rose Joyce
The process of moving a capital city is complex and ambitious, yet throughout world history, many countries have attempted to take on this impressive feat. A notably recent and successful example of this is Nigeria, who between the 1970s and late 1990s, moved its capital city from Lagos to Abuja in order to “create a more central government closer to its people, and to ensure political stability.” Whereas Lagos is closer to the coast, and was experiencing a population boom in the 1970s and 1980s, the vision that Abuja fulfilled was one of stability: located right in the center of Nigeria, and not under the control of any singular ethnic group, Abuja presented the prospect of a more accessible capital for all Nigerians.
The idea of building entirely new and dedicated capital cities due to political factors isn’t an entirely novel concept—Ottawa, Washington DC, and Canberra were all built as capital cities, and were similarly chosen as a middle ground between the most important regions of their respective countries. More recently, countries like Indonesia, South Korea, and Egypt have also proposed developmental plans to move their capitals for a number of reasons, including for the sake of consolidating and securing government power, as well as escaping aging infrastructure and overcrowding.
Egypt’s New Administrative Capital (NAC) is the most interesting of the aforementioned three projects, as it is currently leading the way in regards to current progress, but their project also presents the strongest implications. Aiming to eventually house 6 million citizens, the Egyptian government began relocating government employees to the area this past January. As a whole, the NAC seeks to combat overcrowding and consolidate Cairo’s government buildings into a new and more compact central district.
In addition to these benefits, creating a new urban landscape would reduce living costs in Cairo, which currently holds around 20% of Egypts total population, and has a population density of 50,180 people per square mile, making it the 37th most densely populated city in the world. As a frame of reference, New York City, the most densely populated city in the United States, has a population density of only 29,938 per square mile. Expansion would therefore reduce congestion times around government buildings, which are set to relocate to the NAC, whilst also relieving existing housing stresses in Cairo.
Right now, in the Greater Cairo Metropolitan Area (GCMA), cars are the dominant means of transportation, with traffic volumes ranging from 3,000 to 7,000 vehicles per hour, per lane on major corridors, and congestion lasting for most of the day. The causes of high congestion lie in limited metro coverage, low walkability, and poor traffic enforcement. Although these are issues that theoretically could be resolved, the Egyptian government argues that fixing this infrastructure is a lost cause, and that the NAC is the solution to relieving pressure on the area. This creates the implication that rather than solving the severe traffic congestion plaguing one of the world’s largest cities, the Egyptian government would rather invest into an entirely new city instead, leaving behind aging infrastructure with the hope that there is enough demand and potential for Egyptians to relocate.
Congestion during the day on the major corridors in the GCMA. (Image Source: World Bank)
The Egyptian government could certainly find viable solutions to overcrowding and congestion within Cairo through more fiscally viable paths than building an entirely new city, including building more reliable and efficient public transportation in the GCMA. This issue pivots the NAC into a project of power, national renewal, and a development haven for the wealthy and government, over that of pure smart development.
National renewal in the form of a megacity is tricky for a country struggling economically. In the past six years, the International Monetary Fund has given Egypt three loans totaling $20 billion to alleviate financial crises. Yet, despite this massive financial injection, the government has plowed on with the NAC project, leaving poor and middle class Egyptians to bear the burden of the megacity through taxes and cuts in social welfare. As a result, Egyptian political analysts like Maged Mandour criticize the project as a “massive city for the rich.”
But is the NAC really just nothing more than a city for the ultra-wealthy and Egyptian government? After all, it does seem to be being pitched that way: a new, ultra-modern smart city, with a minimum completion cost of 30 billion euros. Indeed, the proposals do seem quite promising—upon completion, the city will offer 15 square meters of green space per inhabitant. Furthermore, the rooftops of the 21 residential areas will also be outfitted with solar panels, creating the largest solar panel project in the world with an estimated capacity of 130 megawatts, capable of powering 117,000 homes. The NAC is also fitted with a smart irrigation system, and will eventually sprawl a total of 700 square kilometers, including a park two and a half times the size of New York’s Central Park, and even a theme park four times the size of Disney World.
At the same time, the very location of the NAC does seem profoundly antithetical to the very concept of a sustainability-oriented city, being located in the desert 50 kilometers away from Cairo, and far from the Nile River and the Red Sea. Building a city from scratch in the middle of the desert is no doubt an unsustainable move. On the other hand, proponents of the project tout the location of the new capital as an extension of Cairo—in the long run, the NAC’s greater metropolitan area could potentially expand outwards, into the desert and towards Cairo or the Suez Canal, thereby creating a city center closer to the nation’s vital economic arteries. The NAC also hopes to innovate their way out of these harsh desert conditions, with plans that include a 35 kilometer long manmade river, positioning the city as a secure center with a modernist architectural appeal, whilst also raising questions about comprehensive financial and environmental sustainability in its massive projects.
Perhaps the NAC’s location is better explained not by sustainability but by state security. Moving all government employees and buildings out of Cairo, and into a centralized area, with over 6,000 surveillance cameras, bolsters the stability and security of Egyptian President Sisi’s administration. For context, President Sisi served in the Egyptian military, and was a member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which took over the Egyptian government following a military coup. He has been in office since 2014, transitioning Egypt from a republic into a dictatorship. Unsurprisingly, Sisi’s administration also has a detailed history of human rights violations, including failure to consistently punish or prosecute corrupt or abusive government officials, censorship of journalists, restrictions on free speech, and extrajudicial killings. Since coming into power, Sisi has pursued multiple vanity and mega-infrastructure projects, giving disproportionate favor to military owned firms. Some examples of these include the Rod El Farag Suspended Bridge, Al-Fattah Al-Aleem (the largest Mosque in the world), and of course, the NAC.
The Egyptian military will reap enormous profits from the NAC, as it is in charge of selling housing units in the capital and overseeing the movement of government organizations and the sale of the prime real estate they vacate. The justification for this is that profits for the military reduce the defense budget, allowing the military to replace the government in awarding contracts, and managing civilian housing and infrastructure. Having led a coup with the military, Sisi is clearly giving out money and power to an organization he trusts, yet at the same time crowding out private businesses and pouring money into unsustainable projects. The NAC specifically is being overseen by the Administrative Capital for Urban Development (ACUD), of which is 51% owned by the military and 49% owned by Egypt’s ministry of housing. In total, this move both sustains the military’s power and prevents uprisings against the government, stabilizing President Sisi’s regime while being exceedingly unsustainable for Egypt as a whole.
In conclusion, authoritarianism is juxtaposed with the sustainability and modernist appeal of the NAC. The city serves as a beacon for investment and development, but at the same time is a clear shield for an authoritarian regime. For a country in perpetual financial crisis and continuing to take out loans, this contradictory practice of spending disproportionately on luxury infrastructure projects over basic sustainable retrofitting reveals the NAC for what it really is: a vanity project with a message to the world that authoritarianism in Egypt isn’t going to give itself up.
Rose Joyce is a sophomore at New York University from Massachusetts, studying economics and public policy. She is passionate about coffee, and the very broad topic of how governments legislate infrastructure. In her free time you can find her at Le Fournil (home of arguably the best pastries and coffee in all of Manhattan).
