! Attention ! Seating is limited, so coming in time is advised. Doors open at 5:30 and close at 6:15 or earlier when we have reached full capacity. Reserving a seat for friends who will come in later is not allowed.

'Egypt's Desert Dreams: Development or Disaster?' was published in January 2015, and it looked at the record of Egypt's various desert development schemes as they appeared from 1952 through 2014. Focus was on agricultural land reclamation, new cities and settlements, tourist development, and industrial zones. The book took a critical stance, measuring achievements against stated goals and targets, and pointing out that it seems that lessons were never learned. One over-arching goal of all desert schemes has been (and continues to be) the massive movement of population out of the crowded Nile Valley and Delta into the wide uninhabited spaces, and an exercise was carried out that shows this to be a complete failure. The book concludes with recommendations to dramatically reform the management of public land in Egypt, without which past mistakes (and waste) will continue to be repeated.

Since research for the book was completed in early 2014, the government's preoccupation grand desert schemes has continued and even accelerated. This lecture will focus on some of these.

David Sims is an economist and urban planner with extensive experience on development projects in Egypt, starting in 1974. He is the author of Understanding Cairo: The Logic of a City Out of Control (The American University in Cairo Press (AUC Press) 2010 and 2012).