Afterwards

The popular perception of the hawari communities in Cairo, as influenced by state media, has been problem areas with limited resources or potential for development. Successive Egyptian governments and planning institutions in Cairo approach city planning as a top-down endeavour, in which the communities and structures are difficult to control or develop without long-term investments. This dismissive view has dogged the old city for a long time with devastating impacts on the quality of living that have been exemplified in underdevelopment, lack of investment as well as absence of distinct architectural practice or quality production. ¹ This book critically reviewed this perspective by shedding light on the comprehensive processes of everyday human production and consumption of space. It challenged the view that the value of the spatial organisation of the hawari lies in their remnants of medieval heritage, or traces of history. Rather, it took the organisation and everyday life of the hawari seriously and dealt rationally with their mechanisms and response to changing needs. In other words, this book was an attempt to learn the dynamics of architecture of home, from bottom-up, through understanding ideals, values systems, social structures and socio-cultural developments that resulted in changing forms of living over time. It tried to bring architecture back to everyday pattern of living as its core drivers. ²