Painting the Town The National Organization for Urban Harmony promises to tune Cairo By  Manal el-Jesri

Mohsen Allam/Egypt Today National Organization for Urban Harmony Director Samir Gharib wants to transform the nation’s urban landscape. Beautification projects are already running in Imbaba and Luxor.

AL-TANSEEQ AL-HADARY (Urban Harmony) is an imposing phrase and may even be incomprehensible to some people. Tanseeq means landscaping or design, while hadary comes from hadara, or civilization. That’s why when news that a national organization for al-tanseeq al-hadary was first announced, many people just raised their eyebrows. “Great, we really need some tanseeq, or maybe even a lot, but what can another government office do to add harmony to the chaotic streets of Egypt?” many wondered.

Samir Gharib, the chairman of the National Organization for Urban Harmony (NOUH) had a similar set of questions as he stepped off the plane that brought him home from Rome, where he worked as the director of the Egyptian Arts Academy.

“I was literally taken from the airport to the gihaz (organization). I had no idea what it was about until I became part of it,” the Ministry of Culture official laughs.

With experience as a journalist, writer and art critic, Gharib is uniquely suited for the position he assumed four months ago. Incensed by the architectural and visual atrocities committed daily on Egyptian streets, Gharib is dedicated to overseeing and orchestrating the work of architects, artists and bureaucrats involved in realizing the organization’s goals.

The newly renovated offices of NOUH are inside the walls of the Citadel, where they take up a building that once billeted Muhammad Ali’s soldiers overlooking the Citadel’s mahka (the open-air theater, which, by the way, was restored through the efforts of the Cultural Fund, under Gharib’s chairmanship). They also face the great mosque of Muhammad Ali, who might be interested to know that almost 500 years after he sent for European expertise to help him plan Egypt’s renaissance, the Egyptian government has finally decided to put a stop to the degeneration of Egyptian architecture.

Inside his tastefully furnished office, Gharib speaks of the value of an organization like NOUH. “Necessity is the mother of invention, as the saying goes. Egyptian architecture has entered a state of chaos and ugliness. Life in Egyptian cities and villages lacks beauty, harmony and taste,” he begins. “In the West, and in countries like Japan in advanced nations, that is there is no need for such a place. The people have their modern heritage, there is understanding on both the conscious and subconscious levels that there are certain rules, which they grew respecting. If someone wants to build a new house, or paint an existing one, they would never choose styles or colors that jar the surrounding buildings, without anyone telling them so. They have no need for laws to enforce beauty.”

Egypt was once like that, he says. “When I came to the capital from Manfalout in 1970 to go to university, it was a pleasure to visit downtown Cairo. We used to sit in the cafeterias to look at the girls none of whom were veiled, by the way. None of the girls in my class of 1975, who were the first class of graduates of the faculty of media, were veiled, either. Today, three quarters of the girls are veiled. It is all part of the many transformations that have taken place in the past few years, changing the way things look. In the past 40 or 50 years since the Revolution, planning and landscaping have been scarce, so unplanned shanty towns started springing up,” Gharib says.

There are at least 54 such areas in Cairo alone, he says. “It is scary. The same studies point out that 40 percent of the inhabited areas of Egypt are made up of unplanned and illegitimate residential blocks. In 30 years, this will take up 100 percent of Egypt, which means that we will have a parallel Egypt made up of these haphazard areas.

“Upper-class areas have become jungles,” he continues, “and people are running to Sixth of October City and other expensive residential clusters that will become the new upper-class areas. Heliopolis, once one of the most beautiful areas in Cairo, is now shunned by its original residents, especially when Nasr City sprang up. Nasr City lacks all vestiges of beauty and constitutes nothing but a constant traffic nightmare,” he says.

The NOUH’s task will be to add beauty and harmony to these existing ugly areas by painting building facades, constructing sidewalks, planting trees, introducing lighting and controlling ads and banners. All of that, of course, will require help from lawmakers.

“There is a [draft] law for urban harmony, which is currently being reviewed by Maglis Al-Dawla (the State Council), which will later need the approval of the People’s Assembly. For the time being, we work with the various ministries and municipalities. According to the presidential decree by which the organization was set up, representatives of all the pertinent entities are housed in our offices to facilitate our work,” he says.

Although only four months old, the organization has already launched two important projects, one in Luxor and the other in Imbaba. Gharib points out that NOUH plans to introduce the finished projects as models of what ‘urban harmony’ can do for both tourist areas and unplanned residential districts.

“Our job in Imbaba, by working in the area surrounding the airport, is to introduce some humane conditions. I am not saying that shanty towns can be turned into paradise; we just want people to live in humane conditions.”

There are similar areas illegally built on agricultural land. The government has two options, either to enforce the law and post policemen to stop people from building, or to plan the area to ensure that cars can at least move between the buildings. Aesthetic concerns aside, such developments are not regulated by safety codes. “It is impossible for a fire engine to reach some of these areas,” Gharib says.

Working in districts packed with residents can pose a threat to the safety of the workers, who are mistrusted and feared by the residents.

“We tried to educate the people by working with the municipalities. The logic involved is really simple: If people see that they stand to gain a lot and lose nothing, they will cooperate. We held workshops to show people what we planned to do. Despite that, the work started with daily fights between the residents and the workers. But as they saw that no harm was coming their way, they started offering the workers food and tea, competing to be the first to work with our architects,” he says.

NOUH’s plan for the coming year is to finish composing a set of guidelines to limit further uncontrolled growth. These will then be distributed to municipal offices in charge of granting building permits. The authority is also launching the Qasr El-Nil street urban harmony project, starting at El-Opera Square and stopping at Tahrir Square. How can the organization deal with a street packed with shops often with tasteless windows and peddlers?

“We plan to talk to them, like we did in Luxor and Imbaba. We have to deal with them, it is our job. We do not aim to harm anyone, and we won’t. All of our squares need work, and we will start working on them one at a time. We don’t have a magic wand,” Gharib smiles.  et