Fire In The As-Yet-Unnamed New Capital Of Egypt

A few weeks ago, the Egyptian government announced plans to build a new city to serve as it's capital. That's ambitious, but not unusual, since a number of countries have planned, purpose-built capitals. Brasilia, Brazil is perhaps the most famous, since it was only built in the 50's. But history buffs may know that both Washington, D.C. and Canberra, Australia were originally planned to be capitals. There's also New Delhi, India and Islamabad, Pakistan, though they were both extensions of existing cities. And the new country of South Sudan proposed using its new oil wealth to rebuild its capital, Juba, in the shape of a giraffe.

It's easy to see why a country (particularly a new or growing one) might want a new capital: you can avoid the rivalry between existing capitals and regions when choosing who gets to be capital. And since the capital is a sort of global face of the country, it's impressive if you have a nice shiny new one. Though it does reflect poorly on your country if you look at your existing cities, then decide you'd rather just start from scratch.

And that's the big downside of a planned capital: it costs a fortune. They're talking about $45 billion for the new Egyptian capital. And their economy isn't doing too well. No one wants to invest in a country that pauses every couple of years to change dictators. And the usually-lucrative tourism industry has been hurt because no one feels comfortable visiting the country where the religious party seems like the voice of reason. So people are taking a believe-it-when-we-see-it attitude.

But this issue does raise an interesting question: it’s hard enough to design a city from scratch, but if it’s going to be a national capital, how would that affect the design? You’d want it to be impressive and awe-inspiring, and you’d have to leave plenty of room for government offices and international embassies. You’d also want lots of nice, friendly places for photo-ops. But I don’t think the planners could put in all that work without yielding to the temptation to make sarcastic little touches, like having all the bureaucrats’ buildings be featureless grey cubes. It would also be nice if you could arrange it so that the poorest neighbourhood is between the nicest neighbourhood and the government offices, forcing the politicians to have an educational commute everyday.