cairo

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Cairo

CAIRO

Cairo (Arabic: القاهرة transliteration: Al-Qāhirah), which means "The Vanquisher" or "The Triumphant", is the capital city of Egypt. While Al-Qahirah is the official name of the city, in Egyptian Arabic it commonly shares the dialect's name for the country, transliteration: Masr. Inhabitants of Cairo are called Masrawi rather than Masri within Egypt.

It has a metropolitan area population of about 17.285 million people. Cairo is the sixteenth most populous metropolitan area in the world. It is also the most populous metropolitan area in Africa.

The city was founded in 969 AD as the royal enclosure for the Fatimid caliphs, while the actual economic and administrative capital was in nearby Fustat. After Fustat was destroyed in 1168/1169 to prevent its capture by the Crusaders, the administrative capital of Egypt moved to Cairo, where it has remained ever since.

Cairo is also in every respect the center of Egypt, as it has been almost since its founding in 969 AD. 20% of all Egyptians live there. The majority of the nation's commerce is generated there, or passes through the city. The great majority of publishing houses and media outlets and nearly all film studios are there, as are half of the nation's hospital beds and universities. This has fueled rapid construction in the city—one building in five is less than 15 years old.

This astonishing growth until recently surged well ahead of city services. Homes, roads, electricity, telephone and sewer services were all suddenly in short supply. Analysts trying to grasp the magnitude of the change coined terms like "hyper-urbanization." On the ground planners struggled. Only bits of the Cairo Master Plan of 1970 and the Greater Cairo Master Scheme of 1982 were ever implemented