Abstract:
Since its urban boom around the mid 1980s, the Cairene residential district of Nasr City has been the hub for a unique housing phenomenon. It has seen middle class professionals appropriating its apartment building typologies into households for their extended families. Over the past ten years, however, many of those families have been aiming to relocate their households to the emerging suburban developments on Cairo’s periphery. This desire seems to be driven by nothing more than their aspiration for the simulacrums of luxury and social status associated with suburban living. Apart from superficial stylistic variations in architectural expression, the housing typologies in these suburbs offer the same functional arrangements as those in Nasr City; and as per their building bylaws they accommodate the co-existence of fewer extended family generations. These facts, coupled with the increased financial hardships involved in acquiring a new suburban dwelling, highlight the absurdity of the middle class professionals’ desire for such relocation. Not only does it deplete their monetary standing in an Egyptian society that now recognizes affluence as the only measure of social status, but it also debases the solidarity inherent in their characteristic intergenerational living. That is to say, it compromises the basis of the very social status they are aiming to preserve.
This
thesis
tracks
the history
of
11
El-Insha
Street,
an
apartment
building–extended
family
household in
Nasr
City,
as
well
as
the
history
of
the
street
it
stands
on,
over
the
span of
30
years.
That
narrative
serves
as
the
basis
for
a discussion
of
the evolution
of
the
Egyptian
middle
class,
Nasr
City,
and
the
apartment
building
– extended
family
house
typology.
Through
an
extensive
analytical
framework
of demographic
and
urban
data,
the
discourse
of
this thesis
tracks
the
link between
middle
class
professionals
and
that
particular
housing
typology;
its particular
prevalence
in
Nasr
City
once
upon
time;
and
the
current
trend
of
its extinction
as
its
inhabitants
relocate
to
the
suburbs.
The examining committee is as follows:
Supervisor:
Committee Members:
Val Rynnimeri, University of Waterloo
Rick Haldenby, University of Waterloo
Tammy Gaber, Laurentian University
External Reader:
Dr. Luna Khirfan, University of Waterloo
The
committee
has
been
approved
as
authorized
by
the
Graduate
Studies
Committee.
The
Defence
Examination
will
take
place:
Thursday
January
15,
2015
11:00AM
Architecture
Room
2026
A
copy
of
the
thesis
is
available
for
perusal
in
ARC
2106A.