Why Egypt Can’t Afford Its $58B New Capital City | WSJ Breaking Ground

Egypt is building a new $58 billion administrative capital from the ground up. But what began as a ploy to decongest Cairo’s traffic, has quickly racked up criticism over a growing budget and questions about who this new city benefits.

Sitting over 20 miles east of Cairo, the new capital plans to include a miles-long central park, a main business district with a Chinese-built tower and a massive new headquarters for the Egyptian Ministry of Defense, known as the Octagon. But how many people can afford to live in this city designed for 6 million people?

WSJ looks at what this new desert city reveals about Egypt’s plans for the future and looks at the debt it’s racking up to get there.

Chapters:
0:00 Egypt’s new capital
1:02 The goal behind the new capital
3:47 The challenges for the government
4:55 The challenges for the people
6:06 Geopolitics
6:57 What’s next?

Breaking Ground digs into megaprojects around the world, uncovering what these developments might mean for the surrounding region and the ultimate costs.

#Egypt #Megaprojects #WSJ

[ayyoubetta.]

The creation of Versailles, 12 miles from Paris, was one of the factors leading to the French Revolution. It isolated the king from the people so he had no idea what was really happening in Paris. Ignoring the peasants is risky.

[eliomarlacerda]

Brazilian government did something like this here during the 60s and the result was disastrous, a huge debt, especially with the IMF

[AaronTheHarris]

The most depressing thing is not only is car-dependent sprawl the most expensive type of infrastructure to build, it's also the most expensive to maintain, especially in the heat of the desert. Most likely they'll need to be rebuilding their roads and water mains within 25 years, before they even are fully inhabited.

[minimalistic_banhaus]

Very disappointing to see poor countries invest in expensive car-dependent city design/infrastructure.

[tito]

The egyptian miliatry became economic power rather than a miliatry one

Some of miliatry companies include gas stations, mineral water, olive oil and even they sell meat and chicken for customers they became a country inside egypt

[atulkumar]

Openly announcing separation between government areas and public residential areas somewhat kinda feels like the Government will be attracting revolts soon

[TrogdorBurninor]

This is entirely a defensive measure. DC was built (and Paris was redesigned) with very wide avenues that the local population growth wouldn't saturate for hundreds of years, explicitly so that you would be unable to barricade them. In this case, the military is not only afraid of foreign conquest, but of civilian uprising. If nobody lives there but functionaries, you'd barely even notice a shooting war going on in a Cairo insurrection.

[samlosco]

One problem is that, when it comes to future Egyptian population growth, 6 million is barely anything. Egypt is expected to have over 200 million people by the end of this century, meaning their population will almost double despite already being very densely populated. Is Egypt doing anything else to offset the huge demographic problems that are coming?

6 million people being settled in a new city is good, but it's still a small number compared to the almost 100 million additional Egyptians projected to be added to the population in the next 85 years or so.

[Directlite]

Mistake they did here was to try to complete it all at once.
They should have broken it into smaller parts and completed one section and then move to the next. That way, they could start earing before the project is fully complete.

[Deriv]

The real goal is to make it harder for the people to pull another successful revolt in the capital, which the old capital Cairo design couldn't guarantee, but the new one would help prevent any also money going to certain interest groups friendly to the government building the city and getting some of that 58 billion dollars in there pockets

[williamhornabrook]

I'm interested in why they chose to build so much at once. Interest rates and construction costs have exploded since this project was started. I don't understand how you can budget for that.

[Vevxo]

Sad to see Egypt making the same mistake that Brazil did with Brasilia.

[heshamabdou]

Building people is more important than building huge cities
AS an Egyptian young man who lost his life due to bad planning and the control of Egypt by corrupt people and thieves
I say unfortunately that there are millions and millions of geniuses, young and old, who were not benefited from, and whose lives were deliberately destroyed
The most ancient people in the world have been exposed to tragedy since 1798 Until now 💔

[cmwHisArtist]

Real people want neighborhoods, not skyscrapers, steel, cement and five mile trip to buy anything.

[sulaak]

Abuja, Nigeria, was built to decongest Lagos and provide development to central Nigeria. It worked very well. Abuja is now the administrative capital, and Lagos is now the commercial capital hosting the country's stock exchange, oil companies and banks.

[vble]

Egypt doesn’t need to modernize its city, instead they should maintain and build stone structures to keep the history alive. Not every country needs to look like the west or Dubai.

[ofoxtroto]

let's be real, it's a global influence city for the Suez canal

[LeechyKun]

The irony of those construction workers helping to build a base of power safely away from them when things turn for the worst is too amusing.

[momo]

I was born and raised in American but most of my family is in Egypt and it breaks my heart when I talk to my cousins and they have no clue about the true intentions behind the capital. The propaganda is so powerful that even the people unable to eat are celebrating the capital. I’m really afraid that the truth about this capital won’t be realized until it’s to late 😢.

[jhmcd]

I've been to Cairo, and to Sisi's credit, they needed something. I don't think there is any way to really fix Cairo. Its a nice city don't get me wrong, but there is no easy way to update it, and it would have cost way to do so that building this place. I get the fact that it has other benefits, but still.