Summary: “overengineered”.
I’ve been looking for further info on the new capital, and something that caught my attention was how often it’s compared with a trainwreck project from the government that I pay taxes to: the construction of Brasília.
The fact that the military junta started a few years after Brasília’s construction is not a coincidence, this sort of project puts a huge burden on the public coffers, and thus on the general population of a country.
Furthermore, I encourage anyone here to look at satellite views of Brasília… or rather around it, its “satellite cities” within the Federal District. Even today, the class segregation there is egregious - while some parts of the Federal District have living standards comparable to Europe, some are better compared with those North American countries like El Salvador and Nicaragua.
Egypt’s new capital will likely develop exactly the same way - with a ruling “caste” living in the city strictu sensu, then the lower “castes” (who can’t afford living in the overengineered city) building shanty towns around it.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the pressures prompting the Egyptian government to throw their capital into the middle of nowhere was similar to Brazil in the 1950s-60s: “the government lives too close to the population, what if it rebels against our Rightful Rule®?”. Now if you want to protest against your government, you need to cross the desert. And yeah the government will totally not find a thousand ways to prevent you from doing so.
If they were actually concerned about excessive relative demographic density, or the development of the desert, they would be creating cities (plural) for people. Not for a government.
/rant
Summary: “overengineered”.
That’s a good summary of the first half of the video. Watch the entire video and you realize that it’s not just an unnecessary, overengineered, wasteful, artificial city, but it’s actually all about dictatorship and oppression.
Furthermore, I encourage anyone here to look at satellite views of Brasília
Just did this, it’s crazy, it doesn’t look like a city with 3 million residents at all.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the pressures prompting the Egyptian government to throw their capital into the middle of nowhere was similar to Brazil in the 1950s-60s: “the government lives too close to the population, what if it rebels against our Rightful Rule®?”. Now if you want to protest against your government, you need to cross the desert. And yeah the government will totally not find a thousand ways to prevent you from doing so.
That’s exactly what’s happening in Egypt and it’s the reason this city is built. I encourage you to watch the entire video, it explains this really well.
If they were actually concerned about excessive relative demographic density, or the development of the desert, they would be creating cities (plural) for people. Not for a government.
Agreed
It’s… kind of obvious that I only watched the first half of the video, when I commented, right? My bad. (I did watch the rest afterwards.)
Nah it’s fine, your decision I guess. It’s just funny that you predicted what would happen later, and exactly that happened in the second half of the video.
