Understanding Cairo: The Logic of a City Out of Control

by David Sims

This book moves beyond superficial generalizations about Cairo as a chaotic metropolis in the developing world into an analysis of the ways the city's eighteen million inhabitants have, in the face of a largely neglectful government, built and shaped their own city. Using a wealth of recent studies on Greater Cairo and a deep reading of informal urban processes, the city and its recent history are portrayed and the huge, spontaneous neighborhoods; housing; traffic and transport; city government; and its people and their enterprises.The book argues that understanding a city such as Cairo is not a daunting task as long as pre-conceived notions are discarded and care is taken to apprehend available information and to assess it with a critical eye. In the case of Cairo, this approach leads to a conclusion that the city can be considered a kind of success story, in spite of everything.

Kindle Edition

Published April 1, 2012

About the author

David Sims is an economist and urban planner with forty years of experience in Arab, African and Asian countries. He is the author of Understanding Cairo: The Logic of a City Out of Control.