[HN Gopher] Egypt prepares to start move to new capital, away fr...
___________________________________________________________________
Egypt prepares to start move to new capital, away from the chaos of
Cairo
Author : wslh
Score : 206 points
Date : 2021-03-19 11:34 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| jjice wrote:
| Well I feel pretty dumb now. I have been wondering the name
| origins of the "libcairo" for a while now.
| emanueldima wrote:
| https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/cairo/2003-July/00018...
| yesenadam wrote:
| Luxor, "a Julia package for drawing simple 2D vector
| graphics", "a high-level easier to use interface to
| Cairo.jl", is so named because it's Cairo "for tourists!"
|
| https://github.com/JuliaGraphics/Luxor.jl/
| max_ wrote:
| brilliant!
| ohduran wrote:
| Haven't this people read Seeing like a State?
| voldacar wrote:
| almost certainly not. that book would be like bug repellent but
| for bureaucrats and central planners
| DC-3 wrote:
| These projects are usually driven by vanity not reason. They
| don't always fail though - Australians may want to weigh in but
| as far as I know Canberra works alright?
| yesenadam wrote:
| It was planned around 1900, and "the Sydney-Melbourne rivalry
| was such that neither city would ever agree to the other one
| becoming the capital. ...Eventually, a compromise was
| reached: Melbourne would be the capital on a temporary basis
| while a new capital was built somewhere between Sydney and
| Melbourne."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Canberra#20th_centu.
| ..
| buro9 wrote:
| I mean... Egypt has form:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_capitals_of...
|
| Althought it has been a while since the last move.
| qwertox wrote:
| I didn't know this was happening. So I went to Google Maps and
| checked it out, and it is a huge project.
|
| I understand how Dubai and similar places get to expand so
| quickly, but this does not make much sense for Egypt.
|
| Looking at what is being built, it starts to look familiar: huge
| city sectors which are multiplied in layout and construction
| style, a massive "design part of city once and reuse multiple
| times" like it so often is happening in China.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=china+egypt+new+capital then
| yields the answer.
| csomar wrote:
| This is not the first time Cairo had a planned city. They have
| lots of them, and they have been relatively successful in
| attracting upper middle-class and keeping them there. The city
| is unlikely to fail, mainly due to the large number of civil
| servants / military Egypt already has (they are a 100m nation
| after all). So it'll get a boost, and if policies are well
| implemented, they can attract a few other millions.
| sakopov wrote:
| A $2.2 billion loan to a country with a concerning GDP [1] and
| a third of its population in poverty is one way to expand your
| reach. China is really busy.
|
| [1] https://tradingeconomics.com/egypt/gdp
| imtringued wrote:
| China has a huge migrant population ready to move to any newly
| built city. They can afford it because of the sheer population
| size. Not to mention they already figured out how to build
| functioning cities. Building a dozen more isn't a challenge.
| Meanwhile egypt still has to pull itself up on its bootstraps.
| A failed city would be a huge setback.
| Arrath wrote:
| I wonder if this will end up as much of a cluster as Canberra.
| [deleted]
| lisardo wrote:
| Brazil undertook a similar project and moved the capital from Rio
| de Janeiro to Brasilia in 1960. This was a big mistake. Brasilia
| is like giant robot very far away from the people and with no
| connection with society. Brasilia has the highest income per
| capita in Brazil and it doesn't produce anything. Rio Janeiro,
| the old capital, was left with no alternative and has been
| decaying ever since.
| sarsway wrote:
| To be fair its not like they are moving the capitol hundreds of
| miles away inland. The new location is almost a suburb. Also
| Cairo gotta be one of the biggest craziest urban jungles in
| existence. Having grown organically since the beginning of time
| basically. Not to say this isn't political motivated, but
| sometimes is better to build up from scratch.
| forinti wrote:
| Brasilia could have been set up at Goiania, which is not too
| far. But the president wanted it be be built at exactly the
| centre of Brazil.
|
| This certainly made it much more expensive as it was the
| middle of nowhere and there wasn't any infrastructure there.
| distribot wrote:
| Kinda curious now, are there other examples of cities like
| this? Rome? Jakarta?
| umeshunni wrote:
| Funny you mention Jakarta. Indonesia is also moving its
| capital out of Jakarta
| https://www.npr.org/2019/04/29/718234878/indonesia-plans-
| to-...
|
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2020.000
| 0...
| ars wrote:
| Jerusalem probably.
| distribot wrote:
| Jerusalem definitely has the age, but it's never struck
| me as a place of intense urban activity. Am I wrong?
| ars wrote:
| Depends where you go. The old city maybe not, but head to
| the rapidly growing neighborhoods on the edges of the
| city, and construction doesn't stop.
|
| They keep growing the city larger and larger. Leave for
| 20 years and come back, and you don't recognize the
| scenery anymore.
|
| Actually that's true in the old city as well - there is a
| huge commercial sector and it's very dynamic and alive.
| Hankenstein2 wrote:
| I want to echo this. I am stunned anything productive gets
| done in Cairo. Flip a coin whether the traffic nightmare lets
| you get to a meeting on time or even the office in less than
| 4 hours.
|
| I, probably naively, took this as more of an efficiency move
| rather than political.
| Someone wrote:
| Also, the population of Cairo is growing by about 2% a year.
| That means it will double in about 35 years.
|
| Looking at
| https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/22812/cairo/population,
| that's a slight slowdown from the 30 years it took them to go
| from 5 to 10 million or from 10 to 20 million, and looking at
| https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/EGY/egypt/population-g.
| .., it may slow down further, but they need to build a lot of
| houses fast to accommodate that.
| mc32 wrote:
| Indonesia is doing something similar for some of the same
| reasons as well as due to subsidence.
|
| Brasilia was hundreds of Km from the original capital, this
| move is 45Km away.
|
| It will probably produce some stratification but also relieve
| pressure from Cairo.
| fakedang wrote:
| > relieve pressure from Cairo.
|
| * relieve pressure for the elites in Cairo
| mc32 wrote:
| They expect to have six million people on the new city. If
| six million are elite, then they have a pretty good ratio
| of elite to commoner in Cairo.
|
| Anyhow, lowering Cairo's pop by six million should make it
| more livable traffic and smog wise.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Lowering population is _not_ how cities become better.
| Building more floors and more public transit is.
| fakedang wrote:
| You're going to believe the numbers of what is
| essentially a vanity project?
| jkhdigital wrote:
| Yes, one has to be astonishingly ignorant of history to think
| that cloistering a society's leaders in an ivory tower will
| result in long term stability and prosperity.
| arethuza wrote:
| The list of purpose built national capitals is actually
| pretty interesting:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_purpose-
| built_national...
|
| Constantinople lasted over 1100 years.... and Washington
| seems to be the capital of a reasonably prosperous and stable
| country?
| v77 wrote:
| Ottawa, Canada wasn't purpose-built but was an
| insignificant city meant to be a neutral choice of capital
| between Anglo and Francophone Canada. This has also worked
| fine.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Interesting list
|
| Both the Canadian and American cases are not a relocation
| that made it too far from the original place
| cafard wrote:
| Byzantium was a city for centuries before Constantine was
| born, and a fine place to control the grain trade from the
| Black Sea.
| arethuza wrote:
| There was a city there but it wasn't _that_ large and was
| dramatically redeveloped after it became the new capital:
|
| https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/making-
| constantinople/
| danjac wrote:
| Not to mention being closer to the Silk Road trade routes
| through Asia.
| fakedang wrote:
| Constantinople was a major port way before Byzantine times.
| Calling it a purpose built capital is a joke. It was a
| purpose-assigned capital though.
| flycaliguy wrote:
| This ivory tower has a lot of well planned security features.
| riskable wrote:
| As long as they're not inconveniences that make people
| think, "why would I want to put up with _that_ every day!?
| "
| rayiner wrote:
| The U.S. avoided this outcome for a long time, but it's in the
| process of happening to D.C. too. D.C.'s median household
| income was only slightly higher than the national average in
| 2006. But by 2015 it was almost 40% higher:
| https://www.washingtonian.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2016/09/DC-....
|
| Not surprisingly the Michelin Guide started handing out stars
| for D.C. restaurants in 2017: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lis
| t_of_Michelin_starred_resta..... For decades, it ranked (in the
| US) only restaurants in SF, NYC, and Chicago.
| mjklin wrote:
| Christopher Hitchens had a good piece on why Washington and
| other politically-necessary cities are so insipid:
| https://www.city-journal.org/html/search-washington-
| novel-13...
| acchow wrote:
| "D.C.'s median household income was only slightly higher than
| the national average in 2006. But by 2015 it was almost 40%
| higher"
|
| Isn't this just another way of saying D.C. is defined to be a
| highly urbanized area?
| cafard wrote:
| Under Anthony Williams, Washington, DC, made progress on
| improving city government. Under Adrian Fenty the school
| reforms included an openness to charter schools. I suspect a
| fair number of upper-middle-class households decided that it
| was better to stay in the city and send the kids to Yu Ying,
| Washington Latin, etc. than to move to Bethesda or Potomac.
|
| The increase is probably driven largely by these people, who
| 20 years ago would have been in Fairfax, Arlington,
| Montgomery or Howard Counties.
|
| And the area has always done fairly well. An uncle by
| marriage had planned to move back to Long Island after
| finishing up at Georgetown Law. Then he read that Arlington
| County topped the list of US counties ranked by average
| income for lawyers. He moved across the river and didn't look
| back. That would have been about 1950.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| I'm willing to bet it's almost entirely more money being
| made from contracting and lobbying. None of the people
| living high on the hog in DC send their children to public
| or charter schools.
|
| How much has the federal spend increased in that same time
| period? A lot.
| showerst wrote:
| I don't mean this as an attack, but do you live in DC?
| The stereotype is actually that the very wealthy
| lobbyists and contractors live in VA where the taxes are
| lower.
|
| There's plenty super-rich here, but they're not
| particularly tipping the scales out of 700,000 people.
| The rise of DC's wealth has largely been a huge influx of
| young professionals in the past 20 years. Most of whom
| are probably government-adjacent, but we're talking
| people making 120k/year, not 10MM. It's the same pattern
| as a dozen other big US cities over the past 10 years.
|
| DC public schools enrollment is up 10% in the past 5
| years, and DC Charter school enrollment is up nearly 30%.
|
| https://dcps.dc.gov/release/dc-public-schools-enrollment-
| sur.... https://dcpcsb.org/student-enrollment
|
| Sorry I know i'm taking the bait, the lazy stereotypes of
| DC as a non-city with a few zillionaire lobbyists just
| irk me.
| jfengel wrote:
| An influx of young professionals and a consequent push of
| older, browner folks out. A bunch of neighborhoods in
| Southeast have changed character substantially in the
| last couple of decades.
|
| Not that places have to remain static, but these are
| neighborhoods with a long and interesting history. DC
| isn't just a government seat. It's a real city,
| sandwiched between the Confederate capital and a
| slaveowning but non-seceding state. That gave rise to a
| unique culture -- including having one of the nation's
| most prominent Historically Black Colleges and
| Universities.
|
| That culture persists and evolved, and it's worthwhile to
| consider that rather than simply replacing it. Exactly
| how to do that, though, is an ongoing challenge.
| showerst wrote:
| Yeah for sure. Hopefully we can continue to evolve ways
| to share all the new gains, especially with people who
| got pushed out who weren't property owners.
| cafard wrote:
| High on the hog by the standards of the big coastal
| cities, or high on the hog by the standards of Midwestern
| or Southern small towns?
|
| A fair portion of the upper middle class, mostly "west of
| the park" (Rock Creek Park) uses the public schools:
| Eaton, Deal, Wilson is a common progression. And some
| those who can use the public magnets, Banneker, School
| Without Walls, Ellington. I am not talking here about the
| really rich, whom I do not know, but about the
| prosperous.
|
| Yes, lobbyists, but there have always been lobbyist. Yes,
| contractors, but the DOD contractors tend to be in
| Virginia. Again, I don't think that there prosperity of
| the region as a whole has changed that much, rather the
| share of the region's prosperous who live in the
| District.
| rayiner wrote:
| > High on the hog by the standards of the big coastal
| cities, or high on the hog by the standards of Midwestern
| or Southern small towns?
|
| Does it matter? Coastal cities have been rich for a long
| time. DC pulling away from the median dates to 2006.
| 9935c101ab17a66 wrote:
| What do you mean it's happening in dc? Are there plans to
| move the capital? I think the two data points you provided,
| while interesting, don't make much sense on their own.
| SllX wrote:
| No but some Departments are moving more of their
| bureaucracy out of the capital to avoid paying higher
| salaries in a higher cost of living area.
| madenine wrote:
| ...and as a part of a deliberate effort to reduce the
| size and effectiveness of government agencies.
|
| If you relocate a government agency HQ to an area that
| doesn't have any competitive jobs, you're making it more
| difficult for that agency to attract and retain tallent.
|
| Just by moving the office in the first place you'll
| hemorrhage experienced personnel who don't want to move
| their lives across the country.
|
| To proponents - that's a feature not a bug. Less
| effective regulation (and eventually deregulation) being
| the goal.
| rhino369 wrote:
| Talented people are in DC for the jobs, not the other way
| around.
|
| If my wife's job got moved to a more affordable place,
| I'd love to leave.
| [deleted]
| bpodgursky wrote:
| This is wildly overstated. The big example here is the
| Department of Agriculture moving headquarters to Kansas
| City.
|
| But... that's also much closer to the _people they are
| actually regulating_. And if you think Kansas City isn 't
| a "real city" able to attract competent bureaucrats, you
| are way too deep in the swamp.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Not sure it's the same, DC is effectively part of a connected
| set of Northeastern US cities starting in Boston (or NYC) and
| going down to DC. So there's a lot of cultural linkages and
| travel between those areas. It's not in the middle of nowhere
| disconnected from society.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| To play devil's advocate DC is more a part of the urban DMV
| area than it is anything else and most of middle America
| and the south (and a sizeable minority on the west coast)
| would argue that both the DMV and the northeast corridor
| are disconnected societies from the rest of the country.
| andybak wrote:
| DMV?
| 5555624 wrote:
| I'm not sure who first used it; but, millennials and
| other young people started using the term about 15 years
| or so ago to refer to the Washington DC metro area --
| District Maryland Virginia. The local media picked up on
| it and started using it. Old farts like me still think
| "Division of Motor Vehicles."
| ericmay wrote:
| I hadn't heard that term before either. Always just
| (maybe incorrectly) referred to the greater area is NoVa.
| showerst wrote:
| NoVa is specifically the northern Virginia part, people
| here wouldn't consider that to include any of DC or
| Maryland.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| DC - Maryland - Virginia. Basically Northern Virginia to
| Baltimore as one larger metro area.
| [deleted]
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| D.C. Maryland Virginia
| [deleted]
| yardie wrote:
| DC, Maryland, Virginia. The 3 share common borders and
| most of the DC politicians and workers actually live in
| the 2 states. It's only fairly recent that having a
| residence in DC became fashionable.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| DC, Maryland, Virginia. Really as far as I know it just
| means like DC and its various exurbs. Not sure if even
| Baltimore is considered in the DMV.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Baltimore is a very distinct city with a distinct
| identity, although the border between DC suburbs and
| Baltimore suburbs is kind of vague; I wouldn't consider
| Baltimore part of the DC area.
|
| My general cut of it would be Frederick - Leesburg -
| (follow US 15 south) - Gainsville - Quantico - La Plata -
| Waldorf - Bowie - Laurel - back to Frederick, although
| I'm not high confidence of the cuts on the MD side of the
| line.
| mncharity wrote:
| It does look like that maybe cuts MD tighter than VA: htt
| ps://app.traveltime.com/search/0-lng=-77.03656&0-tt=45&0-
| ...
| jcranmer wrote:
| As my sibling comment points out, VA sprawled a lot
| further than MD did. The US-15/Quantico line in the VA is
| really quite close to the boundary between suburban
| sprawl and true rural. Cross the Potomac, and you cross
| from sprawl on the VA side to rural lands on the MD side:
| the western and northern reaches of Montgomery County are
| definitely rural, similarly for the southern reaches of
| Prince George's County.
|
| An additional factor to consider in the DC area is that
| the DC central business district is relatively weak
| compared to other major jobs centers: Arlington, VA (just
| across the river) has hefty job concentration, as does
| the Dulles-Tysons corridor; on the MD side, there's an
| additional jobs concentration on Rockville-Bethesda.
|
| The final factor is of course the Baltimore-Washington
| divide. As you head northwest in MD, more people start
| commuting to Baltimore instead of Washington. So instead
| of there being a relatively clean sprawl/rural divide you
| can point to as a boundary, there is instead a more or
| less continuous sprawl that transitions from DC suburbs
| to Baltimore suburbs, and the mixing zone (particularly
| the Laurel-Columbia belt) is more accurately a suburb of
| both rather than one or the other.
| jfengel wrote:
| Virginia wanted to grow its exurbs, and Maryland didn't.
| Virginia created a lot of large houses on former
| farmland, where Maryland preserved more of it.
|
| Maryland also did a better job of spreading out its
| employers. A lot of those Virginia exurbs still commute
| into DC, or at least Northern Virginia, making traffic a
| nightmare, at least during rush hour.
|
| Another thing that slightly confuses that map: Virginia
| has much better arteries into DC. You get into DC from
| the south on I-395 and I-66, and they take you all the
| way downtown. Maryland has only surface streets. (It was
| supposed to have I-95 connecting straight through the
| city to join up with I-395, and I-595 where New York
| Avenue is, but that would have destroyed a lot of
| neighborhoods in exactly the way they were destroyed in
| building 66 and 395.)
|
| That means that there's a fair bit of Virginia that is
| technically 45 minutes away from the center of the city,
| but not during rush hour. The 45 minute line in Maryland
| is pretty close in, but the 1 hour line turns out to be
| quite broad, because you can reach it on Maryland's
| interstates that flow pretty freely (parts of it, even
| during rush hour).
|
| Of course you really should be taking public transport,
| except during a pandemic. The driving and parking are
| both horrible.
| riskable wrote:
| In my head every time I see that acronym I think,
| "Department of Motor Vehicles" but in this context it
| means:
|
| DC - Maryland - Virginia
|
| aka "The greater Washington, DC metro area"
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| Is DC any more different from middle America than any
| city is from distant rural areas? Take NYC vs Upstate or
| Chicagoland vs Southern Illinois. Or even Louisville-
| Frankfort-Lexington vs rural Kentucky.
| jfengel wrote:
| Less so, arguably. Although DC is part of the Boston-New
| York-Washington corridor, it has a thriving culture that
| originated with the migration of black people out of the
| south. It is in no sense a rural culture, but it has
| roots and relatives in rural parts all over the south.
| rhino369 wrote:
| Lack of good BBQ in the district calls into question its
| southern roots :)
| jfengel wrote:
| Sadly, it's not a great BBQ town. A buncha years ago the
| Washington Post ran a contest for a local food, and they
| best they could come up with was the half-smoke. Though I
| suppose you could put some mumbo sauce on it.
| khuey wrote:
| 1 in 6 Americans live somewhere in the Northeast corridor
| so it can't be _that_ disconnected. There 's plenty in
| common with the other large urban centers too.
| [deleted]
| showerst wrote:
| Almost 1/3 of the US population lives within about day's
| drive of DC -
| https://www.statsamerica.org/radius/big.aspx. That's
| pretty central given how spread out America is. You could
| certainly argue that they're culturally different from
| places like the midwest, but I don't think 'disconnected
| society' makes sense when they're such a substantial
| fraction of the total.
|
| [1] Let's say a day's drive is around 400 miles, since if
| you go north traffic is rough.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| The US is a large and diverse country, no matter where
| you put the capital it will be in a society disconnected
| from the rest of the country. You could build the capital
| in a corn field in ohio and it would be culturally
| disconnected from the coastal areas which, importantly,
| is also where most of the people live.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Only about 40% of the population lives in a coastal
| county.
| matwood wrote:
| Are you defining coastal county as a county with at least
| one border on the coast? That's pretty misleading, as
| someone could live a 1/2 hour from the beach and not be
| in a coastal county. But, I think most people including
| that person, would consider themselves to be living on
| the coast.
| jonwachob91 wrote:
| YUP! I live in Orlando FL, a city with no county boarders
| on the ocean. Orlando is 1 of 2 "inland" cities in the
| state (the other being Gainesville), but I drive 35m east
| and I'm at a beach on The Atlantic Ocean, or I can drive
| 90m west and be at a beach on the Gulf of Mexico. We are
| definitely a coastal city even if we aren't a coastal
| city :)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Only about 40% of the population lives in a coastal
| county
|
| Counties have a variety of shapes and sizes, so that
| doesn't really tell you proximity to the coast, but a
| majority of the population lives within 50 miles of the
| coasts.
| riskable wrote:
| "Coastal counties" is super misleading. About 82% of the
| US population lives in coastal states and that figure
| goes up a little bit every year.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Coastal states is a hell of a lot more misleading than
| "coastal counties"
|
| The people of Bangor Maine and Buffalo NY have a hell of
| a lot more in common with the people of Cincinnati Ohio
| than they do with the people of Portland Maine and NYC.
|
| On the west coast the "wealthy urban and suburban areas
| on the coast" vs "literally everywhere else" difference
| is even more stark. And I'm not talking about just the
| urban vs rural divide. The people of secondary cities
| resent being ruled by the interests of the major
| metropolitan areas as much as the rural folks do.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| What is a coastal state?
|
| Nearly 100% of Michigan is 150 miles or less from an
| international border that is in navigable waters. Is it a
| coastal state?
| rafram wrote:
| No, because nobody talks about the "north coast."
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yes, the great lakes are usually included as coasts (when
| not included, their exclusion is typically explicitly
| noted.)
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| Exactly. I got downvoted unfortunately, which means that
| at least someone thought it was a ridiculous question.
| It's not.
|
| Navigable Waters of the United States has a specific
| legal definition [1] and it has nothing to do with
| whether it's salt water or fresh water. So the question
| of whether a particular state is "coastal" based on
| proximity to salt water a valid question!
|
| [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/33/2.36
| pchristensen wrote:
| Ah, the snobby, coastal elite cities of El Paso,
| Amarillo, and Fairbanks :)
|
| Cities/MSAs are the drivers of cultural identification in
| America, much less so than states.
| TheRealWatson wrote:
| When you put it like this it sounds like Brasilia doesn't have
| any life or non-government people living there. Over the last
| few decades Brasilia has changed a lot and it is considered by
| many a good place to live. It also has developed suburbs
| (satellite cities) in its vicinity, just like any other major
| metropolitan area in the country.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| To be fair, this is a much smaller move. It's like Wall St.
| moving to Warren NJ. I suspect new development will just fill
| in the middle.
| [deleted]
| christkv wrote:
| Useful to avoid the mob and easy to defend militarily I guess.
| programmertote wrote:
| That is likely the main reason. In Myanmar, they did the same a
| little over a decade ago. By moving up north to a newly built
| city with 20-lane highway and lots of bunkers to hide (I only
| saw photos of them being built and they are most likely for the
| military government and their families to hide out before they
| move away if something happens), the military thinks it can buy
| some time and defend better in case of civil war or foreign
| invasion.
| james_pm wrote:
| This project literally is the foreign invasion.
|
| > Some international financing has been secured for rail
| links, and a $3 billion Chinese loan has helped fund the
| business district, built by China State Construction
| Engineering Corp (CSCEC).
| yhoneycomb wrote:
| When the west does it - aid, human rights, charity work
|
| When the east does it - foreign invasion
| ReadFList wrote:
| When the west does it - Colonization When the east does
| it - Charitable Chinese living to Communist ideals,
| totally not trying to subjugate a country economically
| when they can't pay back loans.
|
| It's actually a bit of both.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| I was curious what it's name is, but apparently it's still
| unnamed. Maybe they should just call it "New Administrative
| Capital" forever!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Administrative_Capital
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Egyptia sounds good.
| ivanvanderbyl wrote:
| Here's an video overview of the project and all three stages of
| development. The yet unnamed City is expected to be finished in
| 2050. B1M https://youtu.be/P0fkucDtTRE
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Been tried in Egypt before. Didn't last.
| mprovost wrote:
| Sure, Alexandria was only the capital for 973 years.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Conveniently forgetting the other 18 capitols in ancient
| times, that lasted just a Pharaoh or two (including Thebes 3
| times). And then the 4 'modern' capitols.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Just entertained myself staring at some Google maps satellite
| imagery. I'm not sure how up to date that is. But a couple of
| observations:
|
| - This certainly is a huge scale setup. Very ambitious.
|
| - From a transport point of view, it looks like this is
| accessible by car only. Lots of highways; large distances, etc.
|
| - It looks like it is obviously designed to keep "undesirables"
| out. It looks like an easy to defend by design very exclusive
| large scale resort. As others are pointing out; that probably is
| no accident.
|
| - I know megalomania when I see it. This is definitely looks like
| it. But then all the great capitals in the world have some of
| that in their history. I've been to Rome, Washington, Paris, etc.
| And I live on what got built on the ruins of the Third Reich
| (Berlin). Same deal, different eras. So, who are we to blame the
| Egyptians for a bit of megalomania? The ultimate in megalomania
| is probably the nearby pyramids. And they remain a popular
| tourist destination.
|
| - It's a desert. Presumably it gets warm there. Is that even
| going to stay livable in the next decades? E.g. the Saudi's are
| planning to move some of their cities to more coastal regions. I
| guess AC is not going to be optional there. But still, it does
| not look like a pleasant place to hang out. I guess, they can
| desalinate water and pump it inland to green up the area a bit
| and keep it cool. That would be an interesting project in it self
| and an interesting use of e.g. clean plentiful energy potential
| the country definitely has.
|
| - This looks like some serious spending is happening. And given
| the local kleptocracy; one wonders who is getting rich here. And
| given the warm relationships with e.g. the US also who benefits
| over there? Following the money often yields interesting results.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| The desert part can be a positive. I lived in Jordan when I was
| a kid and the coast (Aqaba) weather was worse than the desert:
| at Aqaba the humidity made the heat much harder to support,
| while in the north (Amman) it was dry and more pleasant and my
| skin and t-shirt were always dry.
|
| Also in the desert solar energy is plenty and cheap, with many
| sunny days. That energy powers the AC that is needed in that
| region no matter what.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Indeed it's quite sad to see a whole new city built from
| scratch, and designed to car-centric models from the 60s.
| Cramped buildings with little space for life to happen, wide
| crossroads. A 10km block of grass does not alleviate those
| problems.
| vondur wrote:
| Indonesia is also moving their capital. I think the fact that
| Jakarta is sinking has much to do with that decision.
| skywritergr wrote:
| In Greece Athens wasn't always the capital. For a brief moment of
| time the capital was in the city of Nafplion.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nafplio
| tazjin wrote:
| Just a minor comment (I currently live in Egypt):
|
| > Control centres will monitor infrastructure and security
| electronically, roofs will be covered in solar panels, payments
| will be cashless
|
| Good luck with that - a huge number of places don't even put
| prices up because everything is negotiable and cash is king. If
| they only want the kind of Western-style stores with explicit
| prices in this area, then this could be restated as "we don't
| want the poor part of our population here".
|
| Cairo (and to larger degree, Giza) have a very intense, unique
| feel inside the city and I don't think this move will change
| anything about that.
| riskable wrote:
| Hey now... Just because a payment is cashless doesn't mean you
| can't haggle the price down. I've been in plenty of shops where
| you bring the item to the counter and the cashier enters the
| price directly into the register. No bar code necessary!
|
| Even if you use a barcode there's no reason why the price can't
| be entered in directly or modified at the behest of the
| cashier. In the West we just don't trust our cashiers enough to
| do that sort of thing so we lock out that power ("Manager
| assistance needed at isle four!").
|
| What the world needs right now is cashless payments that don't
| have absurd (>0.1%) transaction fees. I used to work at First
| Data (largest credit card processor) and you know how much it
| costs them to execute a credit card transaction? NOTHING. It's
| literally nothing.
|
| It's not even a factor of, "we have this many servers in this
| many data centers and here's how much the electricity costs,
| divided by the total number of transactions in a given day."
| Why? Because every customer that uses First Data still pays a
| _monthly fee_ that more than makes up for the cost of all the
| employees, data centers, software, etc etc.
|
| If all First Data ever collected was that monthly fee they'd
| still be profitable (assuming all they did was handle credit
| card transactions).
| maya24 wrote:
| A majority of credit card fees goes to the issuing bank. Like
| a huge percentage of it. Visa and credit card processors take
| a much smaller percentage relative to the banks.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Yes - the banks then hand a substantial portion of these
| fees back to the customer via credit card rewards.
|
| We have a bizarre system where retailers mark everything up
| an extra 2%, to give their more well-off customers (that
| pay with decent credit cards) an effective 2% discount and
| the ability to dispute charges.
|
| I think retailers would love a new system with less
| transaction fees, but banks definitely would not, and some
| customers may not either if it means sacrificing their
| credit card rewards and perks.
| tazjin wrote:
| There's still more to this than just having payment
| infrastructure.
|
| People need to have cards, the cards need to have money on
| them - both of these are already assumptions that aren't
| guaranteed to hold for a lot of people.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Moving to cellphone payments is actually easier than having
| cards though.
| tazjin wrote:
| Cell networks are only semi-reliable here, a significant
| portion of people don't use smart phones (or really care
| about their phones), and that also needs to be linked to
| some electronic "value store".
|
| Sure, it's possible to overcome all of these things in
| theory - but at what benefit to the population? Cashless
| payments are not a goal in and of themselves.
| subsaharancoder wrote:
| You don't need a smartphone to enable cellphone financial
| transactions, check out Kenya's Safaricom Mpesa
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa which is SIM card
| based, doesn't use any data, has the option of using USSD
| or Mobile App. It's already available in Egypt.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| What do University of South Sudan denars have to do with
| Kenya?
| gdsdfe wrote:
| I don't think it's about price entry, it's much much more
| tangible to someone when your 'flashing' cash while haggling
| than showing them your phone or credit card
| M277 wrote:
| It's not just the fixed pricing, but everything is more
| expensive there. Much more. The poor part of the population
| couldn't even dream to live in the new capital.
|
| There's a theory that the recent minimum wage increase for the
| government sector was actually because some government workers
| now have to live there, but they financially can't.
| 0xcoffee wrote:
| We have cashless markets over here and they just key in the
| price. Cashless != fixed price
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| > If they only want the kind of Western-style stores with
| explicit prices in this area, then this could be restated as
| "we don't want the poor part of our population here".
|
| We both know that's exactly what they want.
| rover0 wrote:
| Even if there are workarounds for this specific problem, the
| signal being sent is clear.
| m0llusk wrote:
| This reminds me of the old joke: A weary traveller reaches Cairo
| and makes his way along the crowded and bustling streets. Upon
| finding a small hotel he enters and tells the clerk "I just want
| a nice quiet room."
|
| The clerk looks astonished and exclaims "In Cairo?!"
| trhway wrote:
| classic feudal times scheme - the lord is in the castle up on the
| hill and the populace in the village down. The lord easily
| projects the power while being practically unassailable back -
| that asymmetry naturally allows the lord to practice unlimited
| unchecked power.
|
| I've never encountered similar interpretation when it comes to
| Moscow, yet Stalin actually did a lot of major changes to the
| Moscow center (as well as to the centers of other major cities)
| where the government is located in that "anti-street-rebellion"
| style of Paris mentioned by the other commenters, and the major
| part of society alive at the time in the USSR had experienced the
| Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 where street barricades and tactical
| "takeover of the central postal office and telephone and
| telegraph station" were among the key parts of the action.
| fbn79 wrote:
| If you are interested about human rights in Egypth:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Giulio_Regeni
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Patrick_Zaki
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| No comments on the political motivations of this move. In the
| 1800s, Parisian neighborhoods were demolished to make way for
| wide boulevards, as they were harder to barricade and easier to
| move troops through.
|
| Similar situation in Cairo. Moving the government to a far off,
| easily protected location means mass protests are dramatically
| less effective.
| zaphirplane wrote:
| Or it could be to hide excavations of the star gate in the
| pyramid If we are speculating to support a pet theory
| OnlyMortal wrote:
| Didn't you see the reality show? It's already under Cheyenne
| Mountain.
| exdsq wrote:
| Egypt has had an idea of splitting into several large cities
| each specialising on a particular thing (science, governance,
| etc) since the 90s. This could just be the start of that plan.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| And that itself is a great way to kill innovation and
| advancement. The core reason cities are good at economic
| growth is the mixture of dissimilar ideas.
| exdsq wrote:
| I believe it's what they've done in China which seems to
| work well, with Shenzhen (their research capital) being
| 2000km south of Beijing
| fakedang wrote:
| Yet Beijing is still home to some of the best
| universities in the country and the world. Honestly I've
| heard of Shenzhen as the manufacturing capital or the
| tech capital, but it's the first time I'm hearing of
| Shenzhen as a research hub.
|
| China is also not segregated by cities' expertise but by
| provincial policy. For example, some cities, like
| Hangzhou had a very preferential treatment towards tech,
| by virtue of the provincial investment fund being
| invested in tech companies compared to the usual state-
| owned steel mill crap.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| The reason cities are good at economic growth is because of
| agglomeration. If anything if you look at the actual
| characteristics of innovative communities they are very
| homogeneous, not dissimilar. See Silicon Valley or the
| Manhattan Project, or the Prussian bureaucracy, or Soviet
| scientific communities.
|
| Most innovative communities aren't some bleeding-heart
| melting pot but actually look like cults weary of
| outsiders.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Silicon Valley grew out of 1960s counterculture, which
| gets pretty close to ,,bleeding heart melting pot".
|
| The other examples strike as somewhat peculiar, and
| probably not anybody's idea of the Ideal, innovative
| city.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Californian counterculture today still has a self image
| of diversity but in reality it has its roots in a very
| like-minded white, middle-class bohemian culture, which
| is not coincidentally the exact class that dominates
| tech.
|
| Counter-culture later merged together with business into
| what was called the 'Californian ideology' in the 90s,
| and while it has this sort of melting pot burning man
| aesthetic going for it, intellectually it is incredibly
| homogeneous, extremely distinct from the rest of the US,
| and politically streamlined.
|
| Counter-cultures almost always are paradoxically
| 'melting-pots' of insanely like-minded people, the
| stubbornness is what makes them so effective. Once
| counter-culture starts to bleed into the mainstream (the
| actually diverse population) it dissipates.
| rayiner wrote:
| What? It grew out of the defense industry and California
| Republicanism: https://www.desertsun.com/story/opinion/co
| lumnists/2019/10/2...
| mlinhares wrote:
| That was very effective in Brazil, Brasilia was built in the
| middle of nowhere, far away from any of the existing large
| population centers and has basically no economy other than
| working for the government so if you live there you want the
| government to stay as it is.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Similar situation in Cairo. Moving the government to a far
| off, easily protected location means mass protests are
| dramatically less effective.
|
| Indeed, primarily by distancing the rulers from people poor
| enough to not to have anything to loose.
|
| How much big of a part of Cairo is a gigantic slum? Cairo is
| not a small city, 20 million at least in the conurbation.
|
| On other hand, having a standing out compact garrison city in
| the desert will make bombing Sisi out of existence much easier.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| See Washington DC today, essentially the same thing is
| happening there as the Capitol complex and building that the
| citizens used to be able to just walk into and knock on their
| representatives' office like any other government office, has
| now been surrounded by concertina wire and fencing and
| militarized like the green zone in Iraq was.
|
| I have been saying this for a while, the globalist ruling class
| all around the world is essentially trying to separate
| themselves from the rabble ... or is it cattle? ... around
| them.
| oblio wrote:
| You missed the archetype for these moves, from France :-)
|
| Versailles. Versailles was a safe residence for the French
| king, far from the crowds in Paris.
|
| During the revolution, they actually mandated that he move back
| to Paris.
| vermontdevil wrote:
| King moved to Versailles so that he could control the
| nobility in one central location.
| oblio wrote:
| Partly. The other reason was the long strings of revolts in
| Paris.
| enqk wrote:
| look-up "La fronde"
| jorge-d wrote:
| And during the 1870s Paris uprising they moved the government
| to.... Versailles !
| [deleted]
| keenreed wrote:
| That is bit too paranoid, some people want to live, not just
| protest. 18th century Paris was filthy place and needed
| makeover.
|
| Cairo is very congested and dirty city. Protests are last
| problem in there.
| tjalfi wrote:
| > That is bit too paranoid, some people want to live, not
| just protest. 18th century Paris was filthy place and needed
| makeover.
|
| Parisian urban revolts were a regular occurrence[0]; it was
| an explicit goal to make them more difficult.
|
| The following quote is from the SlateStarCodex review[1] of
| Seeing Like a State.
|
| "This was a particular problem in Paris, which was famous for
| a series of urban insurrections in the 19th century (think
| Les Miserables, but about once every ten years or so).
| Although these generally failed, they were hard to suppress
| because locals knew the "terrain" and the streets were narrow
| enough to barricade. Slums full of poor people gathered
| together formed tight communities where revolutionary ideas
| could easily spread. The late 19th-century redesign of Paris
| had the explicit design of destroying these areas and
| splitting up poor people somewhere far away from the city
| center where they couldn't do any harm."
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of
| _Pa...
|
| [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-
| lik...
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| And, and we killed those kings out of loving kindness. That's
| just how we do things in France.
| gerikson wrote:
| Eh, it was one king. Only Legitimists consider Louis XVI's
| son to have been king, and his death was from illness
| (perhaps hastened by neglect), not a formal execution.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Sure, you can s/kings/nobles if you prefer precision over
| humour.
| gerikson wrote:
| I do prefer precision in my humor, yes.
|
| Seriously though, I find the entire period fascinating
| (mostly via the Revolutions postcast, and reading Hilary
| Mantel's _A Place of Greater Safety_ ). The French
| Revolution is such a pivotal point in Western history
| that I believe that precision is important.
| mrwh wrote:
| Just another plug for A Place of Greater Safety: it's a
| wonderful book, rather overshadowed by Wolf Hall.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| s/nobles/farmers,nuns,priests,kids
|
| * 200,000 farmers in the Vendee
|
| * tens of thousands of priests and nuns
|
| * ordinary people, children, and eventually themselves.
|
| The stench of the bodies was so great they moved the
| guillotines outside the city. One day after beheading a
| convent of nuns that refused to stop praying, next up was
| a young boy caught stealing. As he was led up to the
| guillotine, a shout could be heard from the crowd
| "Please, no more children!"
|
| But hey, at least they replaced their King with an
| Emperor.
| saalweachter wrote:
| You can advance the science of chemistry, you can set up
| a democratic republic, you can establish the metric
| system, but you execute ONE KING, and all that people
| will remember--
| garmaine wrote:
| > You can advance the science of chemistry
|
| The revolutionaries were quick to behead Lavoisier, who
| was a member of the establishment and tax collector for
| the king. He did his best work under the monarchy.
|
| Not sure you can give revolutionary France credit for
| that field.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Yeah, but I needed hendiatris to make the joke work, and
| couldn't think of a better third.
| zucker42 wrote:
| I suggest you look up the history of Kazakhstan's capital
| move. Capital moves are often used by authoritarian leaders
| to consolidate their power by using the move as an excuse to
| punish and reward underlings, isolating themselves from
| threats to their power, and using geography to keep
| politically influential people under their control.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| The move of the capital from Almaty to Astana wasn't just
| about Nazarbaev increasing his own personal power. It was
| also an attempt to keep the country viable in its current
| borders by lowering the chances of the ethnic-Russian-
| dominated north seceding.
|
| Also, most of Kazakhstan's political elite continued to
| reside in Almaty and just flew back and forth from the new
| capital for business, so Astana wasn't even an example of a
| capital built to secure the rulers from the population.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Egypt literally had a revolution a decade ago.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Failed revolution. The military then immediately seized
| control in a coup d'etat and threw the new and popular
| president in jail planning to execute him before he died of
| a heart attack.
| [deleted]
| DSingularity wrote:
| Allegedly a heart attack. Send mighty convenient for him
| to die for those in power.
| alpha_squared wrote:
| Popularity was and continues to be heavily disputed. The
| citizens voted for democracy and got yet another
| backslide to autocracy.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| In multiethnic states, revolutions only have a claim to
| be legitimate popular revolutions if they have the
| support of all major ethnic groups. In Egypt, the new
| regime after the revolution did not have the support of
| the Copts at all.
| bosswipe wrote:
| Don't know where you're getting the rules for legitimate
| revolutions. The revolution led to a fair democratic
| election. Winners of democratic elections are considered
| legitimate, not just if a 6% minority disagrees, but even
| if 49% disagree with the result.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Again, winners of democratic elections are often only
| considered legitimate if they protect the rights of
| ethnic minorities. Otherwise they are viewed as
| oppressors supported by the dominant ethnicity. Mob rule
| != democracy.
|
| Consider how a number of nascent democracies in Europe in
| the 19th and early 20th centuries are now widely regarded
| as having had a democratic deficit because of their
| treatment of Jews or of other ethnic minorities, in spite
| of the governments being elected by a majority of voters.
|
| And in this case, the percentage that the Copts make up
| of the Egyptian population (which is infamously disputed,
| so giving a figure like you did is risky) is completely
| irrelevant, because any modern democratic state is
| obliged to respect various freedoms regardless of the
| amount of the population keen on them.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| > Mob rule != democracy.
|
| Actually that's precisely what it means: "demos" = mob +
| "kratos" = rule; hence "demokratia" = the rule of the
| mob.
|
| Funny, huh?
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| _Demos_ in Greek didn't mean 'mob' but rather 'body
| politic'. The word for 'mob' was _ochlos_.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| Oops, was I a bit sly? Perhaps that equation should be
| amended to read "(occasional) mob rule".
|
| The people become "ochlos" crowd when in sub-groups, or
| perhaps when they start causing irritation "ochlesis".
| Before that, the demos is just a bunch of people.
|
| Originally demos refers just the people of a particular
| land, from Homeric "demos" = land, and expanded over time
| to include particular bunches of people (e.g., of a
| village or town, or a band of people).
|
| The political sense of the people as free and sovereign
| citizens (the body politic; Latin "plebs") is a later
| meaning. Before that, demos used to refer to the mass of
| subjects contrasted to the "basileus" king.
|
| Of course, both demos and ochlos can refer to a crowd (as
| can "plethos"). One could say that demos has a common
| attribute (e.g. place of origin) giving it stronger
| cohesion, while an ochlos may be ad hoc.
|
| Still, ochlos is mass/multitude of people, with the
| ability to exercise influence in a democratic assembly.
| It is that characteristic of democracy as mob rule -
| alright, occasionally, that generated early critique (but
| also gave rise to rhetoric and dialogue as more benign
| means of persuasion).
|
| (Source: LSJ and a bit of Lampe)
|
| From your name I gather you are from, or interested in
| the study of, the Mediterranean?
| ngc248 wrote:
| By definition any government would be unpopular then,
| since there was always be some minority who does not like
| those in power.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Depends on the minority. The ever-present minority of
| people with merely different political views who can just
| comfortably wait until the next election, do not make an
| election illegitimate. But if it's a religious or ethnic
| minority and its basic human rights and prosperity are
| threatened by the new regime, then that does suggest that
| the new government lacks legitimacy even if a majority of
| the population voted for it. And that was definitely the
| case with Egypt's first post-Tahrir Square government and
| the Copts. A population cannot vote its universal human
| rights away.
| bosswipe wrote:
| I think instead of "legitimacy", which doesn't mean
| anything, what you're really saying is "approved by the
| West and Israel". Similar to Gaza's election or many
| South American socialist governments, if people make the
| wrong choice then democracy is discarded.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| It is a typical retort to anyone criticizing Egypt's
| first Tahrir Square government that they are
| representative of "the West and Israel", when in fact the
| notion that there exist certain universal human rights
| that any state is bound to respect, is upheld even in
| many countries outside of the West and Israel.
| g_sch wrote:
| Madrid, Amman, Naypyitaw, Brasilia, Washington...history is
| replete with examples of governments who wanted to move out of
| unruly urban centers and start with a "clean slate".
| vondur wrote:
| Washington was located where it is for different reasons
| other than moving out of unruly urban centers.
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| Oh my sweet summer child...
|
| The
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Mutiny_of_1783
| is specifically what convinced Congress that the capitol
| building needed to be moved to an isolated area not in an
| existing city.
| vondur wrote:
| I was just reading a recent "George Washington's Final
| Battle" which details Washington's struggle to get the
| capital built where it is. The main reason for the
| location was to be somewhere halfway between the Northern
| and Southern states; any other more partisan location may
| have caused a breakup of the Nation. (at least that's
| what Washington believed)
| dsr_ wrote:
| ...but it was, nevertheless, moved away from New York City
| and Philadelphia (the prior centers of government) and not
| located in Richmond or Baltimore (both of which existed as
| cities in the general area).
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Also Ottawa, after the Burning of the Parliament in Montreal
| by a mob [0] relatively similar to the recent January 6th one
| here in the US.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_the_Parliament_B
| uil...
| oblio wrote:
| I can't anything about Madrid.
| ihaveajob wrote:
| Here's a [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/c
| omments/1kalgn/why_d...) that matches my recollection from
| elementary school.
| g_sch wrote:
| I believe in some cases a capital was moved to a minor but
| already-existing city. Amman and Madrid are examples of
| this, so maybe they don't count as "purpose-built".
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Can you explain what you want to tell about Amman? I
| lived there when I was a kid (and the city a lot smaller)
| and it is the only major city in Jordan the the only
| logical choice as a capital. The position is also good
| for a capital city, there is nothing in the south (I
| lived in Aqaba first).
| g_sch wrote:
| Amman is the largest city in Jordan by some distance
| _now_, but when it was designated as the capital in 1921,
| it was much smaller. Its growth has come almost
| exclusively since then, and as a result of its
| designation as the captial, it became the largest city in
| the country.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Bonn, Germany's capital from 49(?) to 1991 would also fit
| that pattern. There were far larger cities such as
| Munich, Hamburg, and Frankfurt in West Germany. Nobody
| wanted a strong German capital.
| zvr wrote:
| There's a Wikipedia page for these:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_purpose-
| built_national...
| disabled wrote:
| Egypt may just be following trends nearby: Equatorial Guinea
| (in Africa) is relocating its capital from Malabo (which is on
| an island) to Ciudad de la Paz (on the mainland). The country
| is ranked in the top 10 most corrupt in the world, by
| Transparency International. It is an outright kleptocracy, and
| living there is quite an experience, according to people I
| know. Interestingly, you can go there visa-free as an American,
| but if you are British, you better not even think about setting
| foot there. Construction of Ciudad de la Paz is being funded by
| countries that are either experiencing illiberal trends or have
| horrendous human rights records:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_de_la_Paz
| tfsh wrote:
| I'm curious; is there anti british sentiment there?
| Clewza313 wrote:
| They don't really like the British after a failed coup
| attempt by a bunch of British mercenaries and financed by
| Maggie Thatcher's son:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Equatorial_Guinea_coup_d
| %...
| disabled wrote:
| No: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Equatorial_Guinea_co
| up_d'...
|
| The 2004 Equatorial Guinea coup d'etat attempt, also known
| as the Wonga Coup, failed to replace President Teodoro
| Obiang Nguema Mbasogo with exiled opposition politician
| Severo Moto. Mercenaries organised by mainly British
| financiers were arrested in Zimbabwe on 7 March 2004 before
| they could carry out the plot. Prosecutors alleged that
| Moto was to be installed as the new president in return for
| preferential oil rights to corporations affiliated to those
| involved with the coup. The incident received international
| media attention after the reported involvement of Sir Mark
| Thatcher in funding the coup, for which he was convicted
| and fined in South Africa.
| zaphirplane wrote:
| A fine ! How proper the nobles are ransomed back while
| the peasants are executed
| grecy wrote:
| > _Interestingly, you can go there visa-free as an American_
|
| They won't let you on the mainland, even with a valid visa.
| They don't want you to see what the global oil companies have
| done (and are doing) to the environment.
|
| I tried to go.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Is 'have done (and are doing)' not visible from overhead?
| SirSourdough wrote:
| Lots of details to be seen on the ground that can't be
| seen or confidently established from satellite
| photography.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I understand that. I just assumed if it was BigOil behind
| the scenes that wells/refineries must be involved which
| are visible. What kinds of shenanigans are going on? I'm
| totally not up to speed on what is occurring there.
| stuaxo wrote:
| I wonder if part of the reason Britain is moving The Lords
| and the BBC away from London is to avoid scrutiny from both
| of those.
| anthomtb wrote:
| Dumb American question: Is "The Lords" shorthand for "The
| house of Lords"?
| tim333 wrote:
| Yeah https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-53432776
|
| I'm a brit and had to google. Apparently they may move
| temporarily while refurbing the usual location.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The Lords is an irrelevance which should be abolished, and
| the BBC has a UK-wide remit. There's already quite a chunk
| of the BBC in Manchester.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| It has and does act as a check on the HOC
| pjc50 wrote:
| Is it really the best we can do in the 21st century?
| bobthechef wrote:
| Human nature doesn't change. Conditions might.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Yes, and imagine having that role played by elected
| members.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Why do you assume elected members must necessarily be
| better? I think a mixed system can balance the dangers
| (and each has their dangers) of each.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Because the UK is the worst bastion of social classism?
| hcho wrote:
| They would be beholden to political machinations which
| get them elected and not do a very good job at it.
|
| There are a lot of things with HoL but being unelected is
| not one of them.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Yep, it's the only reason.
|
| Sisi wants to make sure that there's no second Arab Spring some
| day.
|
| It's so weird that media does not pick up on how this is a
| repressive move and nothing else. Eg when Kazachstan moved
| their capital to the frozen, desolate, middle-of-nowhere
| northeast, there were lots of giggly BBC articles about how
| that weird President over there moved his capital because a
| dream had told him to, haha! But few media wrote about how all
| that was cheap smoke and mirrors for making sure that everybody
| who lived near the capital was a civil servant, ie dependent,
| with their livelihoods, on a stable government.
|
| EDIT: I changed my mind, I jumped to conclusions. This capital
| is only ~30km away, a suburb of Cairo really, which means that
| likely civil servants will be able to live in Cairo and commute
| to work (and vice versa some day). I bet protests will still be
| harder to organize than on the Tahrir square, but not
| impossibly so (unlike eg Kazachstan, Equatorial Guinea,
| Myanmar, Brazil etc)
|
| In fact I wonder _why_ they didn 't build it 500km further down
| the Nile (but I'm glad they didn't), that's exactly what I'd
| expect of an authoritarian government like Sisi's.
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| Thirty km is far enough to build a far more secure capitol,
| with defensible street design, and large clear zones for tank
| maneuvering.
| tim333 wrote:
| It may be close to Cairo but it has massive walls with tower
| like structures. The walls look rather like Trump's wall
| prototypes. Without knowing about it I drove past it on a bus
| the other week and was think that the hell is that thing? It
| looks a bit like a huge military base but grander. The
| entrance gates are quite something, about the size of 10
| story buildings.
|
| Pic I took from the bus, assuming it's the right thing
| https://imgur.com/bb5KE9Y
|
| It looks surrounded by open ground and looks made with
| security in mind.
| skissane wrote:
| > I bet protests will still be harder to organize than on the
| Tahrir square, but not impossibly so (unlike eg Kazachstan,
| Equatorial Guinea, Myanmar, Brazil etc)
|
| Brazil's capital was moved from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia to
| try to solve the perceived problem that the Brazilian federal
| government was focused on the needs of the coastal area
| around Rio, and moving it to a more central location would
| make it more responsive to the needs of the country as a
| whole. I don't think avoiding protests was a major part of
| the decision. It was planned for decades - article 3 of the
| 1891 constitution [0] said the capital should be moved to
| central Brazil, but the move wasn't actually implemented
| until 1960.
|
| Australia is another country with a planned capital -
| Canberra. In Australia's case, both Sydney and Melbourne
| wanted to be the capital. The compromise [1] was that the
| capital would be located in a federal territory to be carved
| out of New South Wales, more than 100 miles from Sydney, and
| Melbourne would serve as the temporary capital until then.
|
| [0] https://pt.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitui%C3%A7%C3%A3o_de_
| 189...
|
| [1] https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_pra
| cti...
| skrebbel wrote:
| I had always assumed that that was just the official story,
| but that not getting millions of angry rioters over was a
| key (unspoken) motivation. But it seems I was wrong about
| that, too. I can't find a single source to back up my
| assumption, I don't know where I got it from.
|
| I really should stop assuming.
| brabel wrote:
| Brasilia is, today, a large metropolis of nearly 3
| million people (the 5th most populous metropolitan area
| in Brazil). One of the stated motivations to build the
| city near the geographical center of the country was
| exactly to get more people to move to that region of
| Brazil, which was, and still is to some degree, severely
| underpopulated compared to the coast (and has a great
| terrain for sustaining large populations). Very large
| protests are commonplace, so if getting away from angry
| rioters was in the mind of certain politicians at some
| point :) it definitely did not work (as others said, the
| project was planned since 1891, started in the 1920's and
| only finished in 1960).
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| You are not wrong, Brasilia has a large population, but
| the poor regions can't really reach the center of power
| just by walking (it's an extremely pedestrian-unfriendly
| city). It also has a flat landscape, unlike Rio that has
| lots of mountains - which makes this city of city
| planning much easier.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| As long as you remain open to change your mind, you're
| doing better than almost anybody online. Keep assuming as
| you please.
| akgerber wrote:
| This is supposedly a 'new capital' but it's really more of a new
| district on the current fringes of Cairo connected by rail
| service that will likely take less than an hour-- more to the
| nature of Shibuya/Shinjuku (which only became busy districts
| after WWII) versus the old Chuo of Tokyo as opposed to Brasilia
| hundreds of miles away from the old cities. And Egypt is growing
| fast enough that the intermediate areas will probably get built
| out.
| jungturk wrote:
| It echoes the development of Putrajaya in Kuala Lumpur.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putrajaya
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Or Paris to Versailles :/
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