Cairo, the largest city of the highly urbanized Arab world, faces most of the ills that characterize the new megacities of the so-called Third World. Despite its powerful and highly bureaucratic central government, which retains remnants of the attempt to socialize the state, Egypt is unable to provide more than a bare minimum of services for most of its people. Low-income and very poor Cairenes are left, therefore, to work out their own strategies for coping with an oppressive, economically challenging environment. Viewed from the outside low-income Cairenes have been characterized as consumerist, spendthrift, blindly attached to rural tradition, and prone to create slums around themselves. Recent studies have shown, however, that the stereotypes inflicted on the vast majority of Cairo's people are a very poor fit. Instead this population has thrived in an adverse environment by means of its ability to adapt traditional mores, gender roles, forms of association, and attitudes toward work to the demands of their urban reality. The poverty of this immense low-income group is the impetus behind their struggle--rather than the result of their efforts or lack of efforts.
With a population of 15 million, which is expected to reach 20 million by the year 2000, Cairo has overwhelming problems. In many quarters population density is extreme while "deteriorating physical infrastructure and public services are compounded for the majority of its population by glaring inequities of power and wealth" (Ibrahim 223). In 1952 these inequities were behind the revolution led by Gamal Abd-Al Nasser whose intention was to promote the welfare of the vast lower-middle- and working-class majority. The socialization of Egypt, with nationalization of industry and extensive rent-controls, led to the development of a highly centralized, planning-oriented state that sought to modernize Egypt. The centralization of power in Cairo, along with massive...