The zeal of coverage would appropriately be scaled to the fraction of respective national GDP each project costs. Which would give us about 1/10th of a single letter on the DC Triumphal arch if this article is the baseline.
An example of such a new city which went reasonably well is Brasilia. The new capital in the far interior was an important catalyst for developing the vast areas which are now feeding the world.
china's done this before domestically. Ordos/Kangbashi was the famous ghost city for years, but by 2018 it hit 150K residents. the fill came when beijing mandated SOE relocations and government offices moved in. the question for Egypt is whether Sisi can replicate that lever. China can build the city but it can't relocate Egyptian civil servants.
great reporting. truly thought provoking. I would however suggest that there reason that the US does not have decent infrastructure is due to a system where those with private capital compete with each other for the continuing expansion of money that they need. Often simply to hold their place in life and try to pass something on to their children. So they fight with desperation against the building of new housing that would taint the exclusivity premium of their home, their central investment. In Massachusetts in Concord, my former home, hundreds of millions have been recently spent on new showcase school buildings. These in turn attract buyers intent on getting their kids into elite schools. These buildings are funded by loans supported by property taxes, that themselves rise with the rising home values. This is a kind of real estate industrial complex, in a small town of about 30,000 people. This is the micro to the macro of systems like stock indexing to the S&P 500 and the mag 8. People who can afford to invest in stocks are professionally advised that they have to buy in at some point, or else their literal position in society will drop as inflation steadily rises in the background. This in turn maintains growth in the S&P stocks and the index. The gap between those who are in and those who are out grows. And meanwhile the need for money grows as free living conditions erode. Walking in affordable towns and living on slow-growing incomes in towns with affordable taxes is a thing of the past eras. Commons like walkable streets and free public libraries decline--further spreading the distance between those on the escalator of rising incomes and investment and those walking. This overall situation is not an accident, it is the result of a kind of free floating coalition building that is the feature of the US type of political system--where those with capital and understanding how to preserve and use it are able to participate in arraignments that are more or less invisible or unnoticed by those who cannot play. The great organization theorist Chris Argyris suggested that when you see a persistent problematic situation that seems to make little sense, the situation might be "designed incompetence" where the design serves some people very very well, and yet to others seems incompetent and accidental--e.g. gridlock or polarization or whatever. It is very convenient for those served by designed incompetence to see problems as intractable and unsolvable.
Ghost cities are spreading abroad. Whether they ultimately survive and succeed is a story for future historians. I agree that there needs to be a route between the two extremes that can achieve positive results for people and society without either paralysis or excess, both of which are ruinous long term. An interesting alignment of your two poles is that the glorification of Sisi mirrors the deification we see of our great leader in America today, but in an environment that does not and cannot plan nor build.
why don't you compare this to the US expenditure on the US/Israeli war machine and the US's mutli-year campaign of destruction of the nations that surround Israel: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan (by way of destabilizing flows of victims from adjacent Iraq)--and including Iraq, Afghanistan, and last but not least not only destroying Palestine but blocking its gaining the status as a nation at all. I would rather be producing empty new cities than bombed out nations. You criticize the Chinese building industry--but you don't criticize the US defense industry. Both have overcapacity and look for new business opportunities. The Chinese industry builds roads and dams and soccer stadiums here in Costa Rica, and sells affordable EV cars. And solar and wind technology. This industrial capacity is greatly appreciated here. The other, the US, sends prisoners and trades them for special Visas for local officials. And "trains" troops in adjacent Panama.
The distinction between authoritarian and democratic used here is completely meaningless. The USA is the most authoritarian wealthy state in the world. You're using shallow political analysis to try and answer questions about economic incentives. The USA isn't terrible at building things cos it's just so gosh darn democratic, it's because the country is run by the capitalist class and the profit motive is the only politically acceptable reason to do anything. You could easily have found many wasteful ozymandias style relics built by American capitalism to make the exact same argument the other way around. The hyper loop? The Las Vegas dome? Ai data centres?
I love the observation that much of this development is constructed to look impressive from a drone shot. That feeling is so tangible in the low-population oil-rich Gulf countries with their sprawling and disconnected megaprojects, of which Sisi is likely jealous of.
I eagerly await for washington's triumphal arch to be covered with the same amount of zeal
The zeal of coverage would appropriately be scaled to the fraction of respective national GDP each project costs. Which would give us about 1/10th of a single letter on the DC Triumphal arch if this article is the baseline.
An example of such a new city which went reasonably well is Brasilia. The new capital in the far interior was an important catalyst for developing the vast areas which are now feeding the world.
Excellent piece, fascinating!
Great piece, thanks much! I had Ozymandias ringing in my head even before your denouement.
Great reporting. Thanks for travelling out here
On "countries with entrenched rule of law and weak political consolidation", this probably operates by design under the liberal model, as outlined in this article: https://leonardoburlamaqui.substack.com/p/mapping-the-maze
china's done this before domestically. Ordos/Kangbashi was the famous ghost city for years, but by 2018 it hit 150K residents. the fill came when beijing mandated SOE relocations and government offices moved in. the question for Egypt is whether Sisi can replicate that lever. China can build the city but it can't relocate Egyptian civil servants.
great reporting. truly thought provoking. I would however suggest that there reason that the US does not have decent infrastructure is due to a system where those with private capital compete with each other for the continuing expansion of money that they need. Often simply to hold their place in life and try to pass something on to their children. So they fight with desperation against the building of new housing that would taint the exclusivity premium of their home, their central investment. In Massachusetts in Concord, my former home, hundreds of millions have been recently spent on new showcase school buildings. These in turn attract buyers intent on getting their kids into elite schools. These buildings are funded by loans supported by property taxes, that themselves rise with the rising home values. This is a kind of real estate industrial complex, in a small town of about 30,000 people. This is the micro to the macro of systems like stock indexing to the S&P 500 and the mag 8. People who can afford to invest in stocks are professionally advised that they have to buy in at some point, or else their literal position in society will drop as inflation steadily rises in the background. This in turn maintains growth in the S&P stocks and the index. The gap between those who are in and those who are out grows. And meanwhile the need for money grows as free living conditions erode. Walking in affordable towns and living on slow-growing incomes in towns with affordable taxes is a thing of the past eras. Commons like walkable streets and free public libraries decline--further spreading the distance between those on the escalator of rising incomes and investment and those walking. This overall situation is not an accident, it is the result of a kind of free floating coalition building that is the feature of the US type of political system--where those with capital and understanding how to preserve and use it are able to participate in arraignments that are more or less invisible or unnoticed by those who cannot play. The great organization theorist Chris Argyris suggested that when you see a persistent problematic situation that seems to make little sense, the situation might be "designed incompetence" where the design serves some people very very well, and yet to others seems incompetent and accidental--e.g. gridlock or polarization or whatever. It is very convenient for those served by designed incompetence to see problems as intractable and unsolvable.
Ghost cities are spreading abroad. Whether they ultimately survive and succeed is a story for future historians. I agree that there needs to be a route between the two extremes that can achieve positive results for people and society without either paralysis or excess, both of which are ruinous long term. An interesting alignment of your two poles is that the glorification of Sisi mirrors the deification we see of our great leader in America today, but in an environment that does not and cannot plan nor build.
why don't you compare this to the US expenditure on the US/Israeli war machine and the US's mutli-year campaign of destruction of the nations that surround Israel: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan (by way of destabilizing flows of victims from adjacent Iraq)--and including Iraq, Afghanistan, and last but not least not only destroying Palestine but blocking its gaining the status as a nation at all. I would rather be producing empty new cities than bombed out nations. You criticize the Chinese building industry--but you don't criticize the US defense industry. Both have overcapacity and look for new business opportunities. The Chinese industry builds roads and dams and soccer stadiums here in Costa Rica, and sells affordable EV cars. And solar and wind technology. This industrial capacity is greatly appreciated here. The other, the US, sends prisoners and trades them for special Visas for local officials. And "trains" troops in adjacent Panama.
Thank you for the reporting! Throughly enjoyed this piece.
Jane Jacobs would not approve. It may work as garage space for aerial drones and terrestial robots but what will they do?
The distinction between authoritarian and democratic used here is completely meaningless. The USA is the most authoritarian wealthy state in the world. You're using shallow political analysis to try and answer questions about economic incentives. The USA isn't terrible at building things cos it's just so gosh darn democratic, it's because the country is run by the capitalist class and the profit motive is the only politically acceptable reason to do anything. You could easily have found many wasteful ozymandias style relics built by American capitalism to make the exact same argument the other way around. The hyper loop? The Las Vegas dome? Ai data centres?
I love the observation that much of this development is constructed to look impressive from a drone shot. That feeling is so tangible in the low-population oil-rich Gulf countries with their sprawling and disconnected megaprojects, of which Sisi is likely jealous of.
As a Chinese , the appearance of the New Administrative Capital looks all too familiar...
首先，这是一篇很好的游记，写得很细致，让人感同身受；
不过，实在不能认同部分观点：先把威权之类的说辞放在一边，也把腐败、形象塑造放在一边，在自己的国家打造一座面向未来的城市，我觉得作为一种天然的假设，是对生活在这片土地上的人民的某种承诺和愿景的展现。
因为一旦试着加入腐败和形象塑造，似乎事情就变得丑陋多了。没错，形象塑造或许是为了巩固自身的统治，腐败则产生大量的浪费和不公，这是很多人不能忍受的。对于这些，我并不反对，但，从纯粹经济分析的角度看，上述都可以纳入交易成本的环节。于是，真正的命题变成，打造这样的城市，从收益成本的角度看，未来能否产生不断加强的良性循环。
30年前的上海浦东，同样也是一片荒芜，当时的上海人宁肯浦西一张床也不愿要浦东的一套房。。。不是当年的上海人傻，而是没人知道未来会变成什么样，大家更愿意拥抱确定性。
所以，读完后我真正想了解的是，从埃及对新首都的规划，有什么对国家未来发展的洞察？为了达成目标，除了新首都，埃及政府还有怎样的产业规划？能否与区域形成协同效应？对中东地缘有什么影响？
如果排除了所有收益项而无法自圆其说，再进入对威权，对腐败的批判是否更有说服力？