Nasr City

Notes

Nasr City was officially established in 1958 by presidential decree from Nasser. The plan was to develop land to the northeast of the heart of Cairo and south of the suburb of Heliopolis. This was to become the largest expansion of Cairo in its history, and initially Nasr City was pronounced as the “city of the revolution.” Several architects and planners including Mahmoud Riad, who at the time was head of the Cairo Municipality, modified the Sayed Karim plan. The project included new government offices in stark modernist blocks surrounded by superblocks of middle-income residential units in a variety of prototypes ranging from individual homes to apartments and duplexes. After an initial phase of construction, the outbreak of the 1967 War halted the project which was later continued by private contractors during the 1970s and 80s, who sought to maximize profit and abandoned the initial density plan for the city.
(Mohamed El Shahed)

Sources

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