Seven years after the introduction of Women-Only Metro carriages in Cairo, former resident Mae Wiskin explores what this intervention means for the city, public space and gender politics within Cairo and Egypt as a whole.
Cairo's street vendors have benefited from the turmoil of post-revolutionary Egypt, but their demands still fall on deaf ears at the national level.
Witness' documentary People Before Profit portrays forced evictions around the world, expressing the trauma that citizens feel when their homes and possessions are violently taken from them.
Often neglected by political dictators as well as by urban theorists, small cities played a role in sparking the Arab uprisings in several countries.
Forced evictions are usually illegal, yet they are increasingly routine for many governments, assisted by international institutions. Rather than helping governments justify evictions, institutions need to steer governments towards true 'voluntarism'.
Cairo governorate spokesman Khaled Mostafa acknowledges that the government is changing tactics: "instead of chasing them, the governorate has a new policy--trying to organise them. The old method of chasing them and confiscating their goods had catastrophic consequences..."
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The Global Urbanist is an online magazine reviewing urban affairs and urban development issues in cities throughout the developed and developing world.
Its readers are drawn from the urban policy and international development sectors, and include urban planners, officers in local, national or international government agencies, civil society leaders, and researchers.
