Egypt

Travel: Cairo

Al Ahram Weekly

This has not been designed a travel feature, but anyone who visits Cairo will probably find this special feature about the city to be of interest. There are 10 articles looking at different aspects of Cairo - from plans to upgrade its "quixotic" ambulance service to the development of new roads and various comments about public transport. This is all fascinating stuff. Here's an extract from the lead article Zeno's Paradox:

As the end of 2007 approaches, the average driving speed in Greater Cairo is 21km per hour and going down, remarks Dena Rashed. Perhaps life in the city will come to a complete stop next year?

Jam-packed again? Maybe a car broke down on the fork-less 6 October Bridge, or is it a football match at the Cairo Stadium? A high-profile official may be passing, as it were, prompting complete closure for alleged security reasons. Rush hour? An accident? In reality, of course, the number of vehicles in relation to the space available to them is reason enough for the jam; it is simply that, to while away the time, drivers come up with a variety of (conspiracy) theories to explain away the phenomenon. Designed for 4.5 million people, the metropolis is now home to 17. Cairo has always been full of contradictions. Today, incredibly, low-income neighbourhoods are shoulder to shoulder with the luxurious dwellings of the rich (whose investments have yet to trickle down the class hierarchy, we are told). In the last few decades, planning has gone wild, with building regulations and capacity considerations gone to the dogs: in space enough for 500,000 vehicles there crawl two million. Since different parts of the ever more shapeless city are all interconnected -- thanks, in large part, to the 6 October Bridge, which has its own known technical faults and, though frequently extended, along many stretches has space enough for two lanes only -- a blockage at one end of Cairo could result in congestion at the other end.

- Cairo's Terrifying Traffic Chaos
BBC News Thanks to Tony Marson for this link. Life in Cairo is a do or die race, in which you trample or are trampled. The traffic here is so bad those of a faint disposition will not long survive the daily commute. The struggle with overcrowded roads...

- Restoring The Heart Of Cairo
Al Ahram Weekly (Amira El-Noshokaty) You know you are in Downtown Cairo when your eyes fall upon grand boulevards and even grander buildings with late 19th century and 20th century European-style doorways and sculptures, designed in a combination of art...

- Architect Treads Softly In Shadows Of History
Rocky Mountain News For an architect, it's tough enough designing a huge facility covering 15 acres and housing a cavernous underground garage, a posh hotel and hundreds of thousands of square feet of office and retail space. But to map out a $730...

- Travel: Not Far From Cairo's Madding Crowds
The Sydney Morning Herald (David Wroe) Cairo is, to my mind, one of the world's great cities, whatever its shortcomings. With a population of 18 million, the crush of people is suffocating. If you're a woman, the young men on the street can be...

- Turin's Turn: Museo Egizio
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/living/travel/12498739.htmIt definately appears to be museum day today in the online world of Egyptological news. First off, the above feature looks at the city of Turin, which is to be home to the 2006 Winter...

Egypt