Egypt: New foundations - FT.com:
"For more than 20 years, Sayed Shaalan, a small-business owner, and his neighbours, have been prevented by a government decree from repairing their crumbling homes in the Maspero Triangle area of downtown Cairo. Occupying a prime location of around 85 acres bordered by a row of expensive buildings with panoramic views of the Nile, this warren of rundown streets had been earmarked for an ambitious development plan. Public and private sector companies, which already owned parts of the district, wanted to build upmarket office blocks, luxury hotels and homes for the rich. The residents, some 14,000 people, were seen as an obstacle and the government wanted them out.
“The last forced eviction was a few days before the 2011 revolution [that ousted former president Hosni Mubarak],” says Mr Shaalan who owns an upholstery workshop and sits on a local committee representing the residents. “No one dared protest. Once a house fell and two people were killed so they made it a pretext to evict the residents of an entire street.”
Despite this bitter history and deep mistrust between the people and the authorities, Mr Shaalan says there is now hope of a fair outcome. An agreement has been reached between the residents and investors, shepherded by Laila Iskandar, the minister for urban renewal, a post only created last year in recognition of the problems in the country’s mostly unplanned and overflowing urban communities."
'via Blog this'
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