“I live in Sayyeda Nefisa [in old Cairo], thank God, far from downtown. I graduated with a degree in business in 1982, I’m the third generation in my family to manage the cafe. This building was built about 55 years ago, and designed for commercial use; I opened the printing press you see behind me, the pharmacy in front of me, and my grandather bought the cafe here the year before he died. Even the Gad Restaurant used to be called “The Dumyati” and the coffee roaster’s used to be a household supply store.

Most of the passageways in downtown are really a mess, they’re supposed to be private spaces for the buildings, so that people with ground floor apartments can open their windows and get fresh air. It used to be that they would make these passageways for pedestrians so they wouldn’t walk on the main streets, but now the shops in the passageways are blocking the windows and the stores have littered downtown with trash.

The passageway we’re in was designed to have shops in it, so we’ve not encroached on or bothered anyone. For the past 23 years, since the end of the 1970s, the visual pollution has made downtown into a lost cause; the shops haven’t been able to maintain themselves, and the visitors aren’t the same as they used to be. People stopped coming here for liesure, not just since the [January 25th, 2011] revolution, this area hasn’t been a spot for liesure since the last thirty years. People who come here now are here to behave badly. 

I’ve got some suggestions on how to fix things:

1. Move most of the government buildings out of downtown, like Sadat City [a planned industrial city about 100km Northeast of Cairo

2. Move any government offices that have to do with local services into local offices in the areas they serve.

3. Basically, we need a new capital city, with ministries, schools and housing.

4. Establishing downtown as a commercial, liesure and promenade district

5. Demolish all the unpermitted shops and kiosks and give these people somewehre else to work.