Cairo 2050 Plan Makes Big Shifts in City

The city is the main population center of the country, and its greater area accounts for 43% of the nation's urban population. But some worry the new plan goes too far.

"Cairo 2050, spearheaded by the ministry of housing, intends to redistribute the city's population, create 50,000 feddans of green area, move industry outside city limits and add 15 metro lines and two new railway stations in order to improve the quality of life and allow the capital to enter the global cityscape of the world's best.

According to the ministry, each Cairo resident has only 30 square centimeters of green space, far below the international standard minimum of 12 meters square. Needless to say, the city wealthiest residents are looking at the project with optimism.

"If we leave the situation as it is, in the year 2022 we will probably be living in a city of 28 million people. We have to do something, this is not a choice, this is not something we can wait on. We must move now," Housing Minister Ahmed el-Maghraby told a conference at the American Chamber of Commerce in 2007, even before the project was fully initiated."