Introduction
“A place cannot be understood without reconstructing it in time, without considering its evolution” (Fernandes and Carvalho 2016, 121). This essay examines the developments taking place in two areas East of Cairo, New Cairo, and the New Capital city project, underway since 2014 in Egypt, as part of a set of procedures to express and assert the regime’s power in various ways. The NAC occupies a suburban space considered administratively to be part of Greater Cairo, which has been developing rapidly into representing the vision of the current regime’s centralized hegemony over the state in Egypt. As part of the new capital project that lies on the Eastern border of Cairo with the Suez governorate, the NAC hosts the administrative capital, an economic hub, a social elite space and forms the state apparatus’ shield from the disruption by future uprisings. On the same side, closer to downtown Cairo, is New Cairo, which has been witnessing a rise in gated community projects an...