ABSTRACT
This chapter reinterprets the Greater Cairo metropolitan area as one of multiple layers with diverse fragmented communities. This seemingly deconstructed social morphology is characterised by the proliferation of fragmented enclaves scattered throughout the city landscape, from ruralisation of urban fringes and the emergence of spontaneous peripheral and informal settlements (poverty belts), to the establishment of suburban gated communities within the eastern desert settlement of New Cairo City. Therefore Cairo’s urban scenery incorporated both the poor and dispossessed who were forced to move out of historical core areas (for land development and speculations) to urban fringes in spontaneous settlements (poverty belts) and the rich affluent groups who chose to leave the city with its high density, traffic congestion, and environmental pollution and move to new suburban houses (gated communities) (Kuppinger, 2004; El Araby, 2002).
