„Egyptians call their desert country “the protected” al-mahrousa in homage to its longevity and the idiosyncratic features that have consistently saved it from destitution: a geostrategic location, Nile-fed farmland, and a stunning array of in situ antiquities. While much has remained unchanged in Egypt since the 2011 uprising, including the authoritarian nature of its government, alarming quantities of the country’s precious agricultural and archeological land have been vanishing to make way for cheaply-built homes of low-income citizens. This trend is due to a lack of proper policing since 2011 and the chronic absence of viable housing policies.In the last 30 years, Cairo’s “informal quarters,” sprawling settlements of unlicensed brick and steel-reinforced concrete dwellings, have grown by orders of magnitude. In the 1980s, the roads from central Cairo west to the Pyramids were flanked by fields. Now the city crowds so close to its icons it nearly overwhelms them. Two-thirds of Greater Cairo’s population around 20 million lives in informal housing, which absorbs 75 percent of all new population growth.[1] […]“

via The Lost Land of Egypt | Middle East Institute.