4th Urban Meta Mapping International Conference: City Transitions: Society and the Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Change, Saarland University, Saarbrucken, Germany
“The research was conducted by myself and my junior colleague and former student, Sofia Dawoud. The generous travel grant from the RSA supported my travel to present the research at the 4th Urban Meta Mapping conference at Saarland University. I was able to get to know the research group and society that is working on similar topics and also to learn about current techniques for conducting similar research. I believe that the overall benefits and added values exceeded my expectations.“
The research attempted to analyze the transformation caused by the recent waves of immigration from conflict zones on the housing sector in Cairo, with a focus on selected districts. It also tried to understand the slow, gradual gentrification and demographic changes happening in some districts in Cairo and the impacts on the city’s image. Throughout the last decade, Egypt has been a destination for immigrants coming from neighboring countries such as Syria, Yemen, and Libya. These immigrations were caused by the revolutions and conflicts that stormed the MENA region in the last decade. Another wave of immigration towards Egypt is currently ongoing because of both the civil war in Sudan and the war in Gaza. The number of foreign immigrants in Egypt is estimated to be somewhere between 9 to 14 million inhabitants, with possibilities of further increase as these conflicts do not seem to be ending soon. As such, the impacts of these waves are clearly visible in Egyptian cities, including Cairo. The housing sector is significantly affected economically, demographically, and physically. Economically, a significant increase in rent values withing the real estate sector took place, which came beyond the capabilities of Egyptian tenants to cope with, as the increase tripled in some cases. Accordingly, several cases of gentrification started to take place across several locations in Cairo. This, in turn, started to affect the demographic structure in some districts in Cairo, as well as having a tangible impact on the city’s image.