theresponsivecity

TReCairo [Marwan Fayed and Diana Ibáñez López] are mapping the dynamics of urban densification in Cairo, a city whose population estimates vary wildly between an “official” 16m and a popularly assumed 30m. This extraordinary margin of error is in fact a reflection of a very real margin of unofficial growth; the city attracts hundreds of people daily. Despite an overloaded infrastructure and lack of housing, Cairo continues to densify and expand, improvising an adaptive urbanism of need-driven layering.

“Peripheral” actions [legally, socially and spatially] represent a creative drive which offers solutions, albeit sometimes wobbly ones, to an officially unsustainable speed of amalgamation. TRCairo is focusing on the diverse nature of this alternative urbanisation; cumulative, additive, corrosive, competitive, absorptive…in order to distill innovative or popular approaches to using and developing the city.

These observations will prepare the groundwork for a Mapping Workshop in/of Istanbul, April 2010. TReC will trigger the discussion of Istanbul’s densification potential by drawing parallels, inspiration and experience from Cairo.