ABSTRACT
There are many definitions of landscape which encompass both landscape as territory and landscape as something much more than just the physical environment. Common and customary understandings indicate that landscapes are understood to be physically real as well as something that can be viewed, perceived and imagined (Wylie 2007). Landscape can be conceived in terms of a mixture of the past, present and future; as something which is spatially distributed over the earth’s surface as well as above and below that surface (Kaplan 2009). Landscapes are definable through social, visual and ecological understandings that encompass community, justice, nature and environmental equity (Mels 2003) and exchanges between the natural, cultural, social and economic systems (Wood and Handley 2001). Within the context of these various understandings of landscape, this chapter uses the term landscape to refer primarily to the designed landscape and it aims to examine the emerging upmarket designed housing landscapes of Cairo and to discuss how these new landscapes reflect changing cultures and people’s relationships with ideas and ideals of landscape in Egypt.
