The al-Sisi regime has hired a Dubai-based "private real-estate investment fund" called Capital City Partners, whose founder, Mohammed Alabbar, built Dubai's iconic Burj Khalifa skyscraper, to build the new capital. I just wonder what will happen to Cairo, Egypt’s capital for more than a thousand years? By that time, Cairo — currently home to nearly 20 million — would have doubled in size. The Egypt Economic Development Conference that opened Friday... (Associated Press) 
 
 Housing Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced the plan at the opening of the 3-day international economic conference held in this resort city and attended by hundreds of business executives and world leaders. In other words, the cost of the new capital could cover the cost of building over thirty metro lines in Cairo.  SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AP) — Egypt's government announced Friday plans to build a new capital adjacent to Cairo, in a massive new project that in its first phase would cost $45 billion and take up to seven years to complete. "The very manner in which the decision to move the capital outside Cairo has been taken," he wrote, "is the best illustration of our government’s insistence on ignoring us."
– Cairo has served as Egypt's capital for more than a millennium, but its long run may be ending: The Egyptian government announced plans Friday for a new capital right next door that would take seven years and $45 billion just for the first stage, the AP reports. Egypt's housing minister said the Capital Cairo project is meant to ease congestion and overpopulation in the current capital over the next four decades, during which time Cairo will reportedly double in size. The initial phase will include 150 square miles (about the size of Denver, the Atlantic notes) of development in Cairo's outskirts, adding a new governmental center, universities, hospitals, and an international airport. Expansion would eventually reach 270 square miles and link up with the Suez Canal area, the AP notes. The Cairo Capital website has plenty about this "momentous endeavour to build national spirit … and provide for long-term sustainable growth." Khaled Fahmy's take in the Cairo Observer, however, isn't quite so rosy. Announcing that "we, Cairenes and Egyptians, were not informed, let alone consulted about this move," Fahmy goes on to say how "unsuitable" it is to model the new city after Dubai (Egypt hired a Dubai-based private investor group to build the city, per the Atlantic). He also wonders why the estimated $66 billion final cost isn't simply being reinvested into Cairo itself. "With [$66 billion] we could solve the problems of Cairo's inner cities, where 63% of the city's inhabitants live," Fahmy writes.