This book moves beyond superficial generalizations about Cairo as a chaotic metropolis in the developing world into an analysis of the ways the city's eighteen million inhabitants have, in the face of a largely neglectful government, built and shaped their own city. Using a wealth of recent studies on Greater Cairo and a deep reading of informal urban processes, the city and its recent history are portrayed and mapped: the huge, spontaneous neighborhoods; housing; traffic and transport; city government; and its people and their enterprises. The book argues that understanding a city such as Cairo is not a daunting task as long as pre-conceived notions are discarded and care is taken to apprehend available information and to assess it with a critical eye. In the case of Cairo, this approach leads to a conclusion that the city can be considered a kind of success story, in spite of everything.
"In a rigorous presentation of Cairo's growth and geography in the last four decades, Sims has done a masterful job to present the city as an exceptional case of urban logic. While Cairo is often included in studies of the global south, Sims argues that the city is in fact one that follows its own logic, often in spite of deliberate policies of the Mubarak regime to address problems and issues. Th
The Global Ministries
"[Sims] is one of Cairo's sharpest observers."
Los Angeles Review of Books
"This volume describes the urban development of the Egyptian city of Cairo over the past half century, concentrating on issues of land and housing use and development, as well as intersecting issues of economic organization, transport, and governance. The central theme that arises in nearly every aspect of the proceedings is the contradiction between the authoritarian (but often ineffective) state
