7/30/2019 Planning the Urban Image: Re-Making Bulaq Abul Ela in Colonial Cairo

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5th Annual Research Student SymposiumA R C H I T E C T U R A L H U M A N I T I E S R E S E A R C H A S S O C I A T I O N ( U K )

Leicester School of Architecture, De Montfort University 3 December 2008

ABSTRACT 18

Gehan M. Selim

University of Sheffield, School of Architecture

Planning the Urban Image: Re-Making Bulaq Abul Ela in Colonial Cairo

The study explores politics of place re-making within complex urban planning and designconditions in Cairo during the British colonization in 1882-1952. This period was markedby social and ideological reform resulted from the extensive contact with Europe undercolonization. The main aim of the study is to trace the politics of reshaping the physicalbuiltscape within the context of Cairo. In particular, it focuses on the process of re-shaping Bulaq Abul Ela, the old port of Cairo during the role of the Mamluks andOttomans regimes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The district was mergedwith Cairos urban fabric during the French expedition in 1798, and finally became thefavourable waterfront of the city since the early twentieth century, forming in its innersections a declined industrial and deteriorated Cariene district. To locate this study in itstemporal and spatial setting, the first master plan for reshaping this district, drafted in

the 1920s will be analyzed to explore the influence of political thoughts and ideologies ofthe state. The master plan was prepared by the Egyptian, British-educated engineer,Mahmoud Sabry Mahboub, who was the first Egyptian engineer appointed as theDirector-General of the Tanzim, Department at the Ministry of Public Works in Cairo.

The massive lack of character and legislative regulations of the existing fabric suggestedthe profound influence of the states desires to re-make the traditional urban fabric,opening the way for a new modern and European image situated by approving the useof zoning schemes for the first time. This movement emerged based on ideas, whichcombined the concept of healthy, attractive and economic layout of neighbourhoods, andfacilitated with states policies and governmental support and modelled in physicalpatterns for planning. Studying this process of change provide a historical evidence of

the politics of place-making at the early of 20th century, a long and outstanding projectthat continues until the current day, while addressing the broader context of politicaldesire of remaking Cairo in general. Hence, the study investigates issues of inevitablechange in the physical structure of Cairo and politics of re-making the urban landscape,which led, as the study argues, to the formation of a new collective imagery of the citysrepresentation during the colonial era. In terms of production, the then modern Cairo hadexpanded according to European urban planning principles. In terms of process, theurban transformation of the city called for a further upgrading of the Tanzim departmentinto an administrative Egyptian department, applying British regulations and legislations.The outcome is an account of the state policies for remaking Bulaq Abul-Ela whichserved the urban imaginaries of the state, the private planners and developers whilepotentially emerging a new pattern of discourse.