About

Background & Purpose 

After thirty years of building gated communities and expanding the suburban landscape of Cairo, a much needed research on the quality of life and dynamics between residents as citizens, developers as private-governance, and dwelling as a place beyond the market commodity. Since 1991, particular compounds acted as milestone in shaping this state-supported/developer-led project of privatizing the housing market. Compounds have forever changed the relationship between the city and its edge with utopian promises for liberties, citizen-rights and security. However, these promises have been continuously challenged and won through activist tactics of residents’ homeowner associations in compounds; it has never been a linear process especially with the advent of Iraqis post the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and fleeing Syrians post 2011 Arab Spring, making compounds more cosmopolitan and diverse. The purpose of this urban ethnographic research is to uncover thirty-years of discursive practices of how space is actually produced and experience beyond the state and developers’ advertised slogans. What are the spatial qualities of gated communities through daily dialogues and struggles for rights? These Cairene experiences contextualize the globally imported model of Los Angeles compounds, and make them relevant to the spatial politics of Egypt. By un-gating and analyzing this immediate history of suburban growth, we can contribute with a theory from the ground on Cairo’s gated communities that stand different from those of the global north as well as different from the Dubai model, or those of Sao Paolo and South African cases from the global south.