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Egypt's Urban Bias
| Article
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11502 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1986 |
2,967 Words |
| Author
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Hoda M. Sobhi
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Egypt is highly urbanized for a country with its economic structure and per capita income. This phenomenon is not of recent origin but has characterized the country from the beginning of the twentieth century. Over-urbanization is real and has increased with time.
Many observers have noted that Egypt's over-urbanization is outdistancing its economic development in general and its industrialization in particular. Compared with Western societies, which launched industrialization in the nineteenth century, Egypt is said to have twice as many urban dwellers as these societies had during their economic takeoff.
An opposite point of view exists, however. Gamal Hamdan, a distinguished Egyptian writer, does not think that Egypt is over-urbanized. He argues that modern civilization has reached a stage quite different from that of the post-industrial revolution. Urbanization is no longer a function of the degree of industrial growth; therefore, it is possible, and even natural, to have bog cities without big industries. Or, at least it has become possible for the growth of big cities to precede industrial development as long as industrialization comes later and corrects the imbalance. In short, he considers the high rate of urbanization without industrialization a new pattern in modern societies and a natural outcome of modern advanced technology.
Of course, there is no doubt that urbanization, provided it takes place within the right limits and necessary prerequisites, is a healthy and natural phenomenon. It is a sign of progress on the national level, since it conforms with long-term global trends. However, inasmuch as the greater portion of Egypt's scarce capital is diverted away from industrial development in order to relieve the strains on urban infrastructure and services, there exists a problem of over-urbanization.
A dramatic rise in the percentage of urban dwellers is shown in Table I. The major change came during World War II, when the proportion of those living in urban areas suddenly jumped to 30 percent. For a whole decade after that, the urbanization process continued rapidly. Then it began to slow down. This trend is expected to continue until, by the year 2000, Egypt's urban population hits 50 percent. This will give Egypt the same urbanization rate as the rest of the world by the beginning of the twenty-first century.
The situation is complicated by the fact that Egypt's pattern of urbanization has been dominated by the growth of the country's capital, Cairo. The largest city in the Middle East and Africa, Cairo ranked the sixth largest among the capitals of the world in 1980. Moreover, Egyptian regimes have been strongly urban biased for centuries, long before important substitute industrialization strategies were know. This urban bias has always meant and continues to mean a bias in favor of the capital.
Cairo became a city of one million inhabitants for the first time in 1927. In the following two decades it doubled in size, and by 1927 it comprised 10 percent of the country's inhabitants. By 1960, the Cairene population reached 3.4 million, which was more than 13 percent of the total population. And the growth continues unabated.
The Egyptian population grew 5.7 times in one century (1882-1976) while Cairo grew
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