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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 fa
by lisardo 6y ago
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.
- mc32 6y agoIndonesia 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 6y ago> relieve pressure from Cairo. * relieve pressure for the elites in Cairo
- mc32 6y agoThey 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.
- fakedang 6y agoYou're going to believe the numbers of what is essentially a vanity project?
- Ericson2314 6y agoLowering population is not how cities become better. Building more floors and more public transit is.
- mc32 6y agoNot if it's overcrowded and unhealthy. Cities improve by obviating slums/shanties and overdensity and by modernizing.
- Ericson2314 6y ago"overdensity" as people per land area or per floor area? Because I pretty firmly believe the former doesn't exist.
- pasttense01 6y agoThe Cairo area was previously projected to grow another 6 million people in the next 12 years. https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/22812/cairo/population https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/22812/cairo/population It will take longer than 12 years for this new city to reach 6 million people. So what will happen is the population growth will slow some in Cairo; there will be NO population decline there.
- jkhdigital 6y agoYes, 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.
- flycaliguy 6y agoThis ivory tower has a lot of well planned security features.
- riskable 6y agoAs long as they're not inconveniences that make people think, "why would I want to put up with that every day‽"
- arethuza 6y agoThe list of purpose built national capitals is actually pretty interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_purpose-built_national_capitals 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?
- raverbashing 6y agoInteresting list Both the Canadian and American cases are not a relocation that made it too far from the original place
- cafard 6y agoByzantium was a city for centuries before Constantine was born, and a fine place to control the grain trade from the Black Sea.
- arethuza 6y agoThere 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/ https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/making-constantinople/
- rayiner 6y agoThe 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-city-area-3.png 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/List_of_Michelin_starred_restaurants_in_Washington,_D.C https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Michelin_starred_resta..... For decades, it ranked (in the US) only restaurants in SF, NYC, and Chicago.
- softwaredoug 6y agoNot 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 6y agoTo 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 6y agoDMV?
- softwaredoug 6y agoDC - Maryland - Virginia. Basically Northern Virginia to Baltimore as one larger metro area.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoTo 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 6y ago[deleted]
- sarsway 6y agoTo 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 6y agoBrasília 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.
- Someone 6y agoAlso, 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 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-growth-rate 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.
- Hankenstein2 6y agoI 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.
- distribot 6y agoKinda curious now, are there other examples of cities like this? Rome? Jakarta?
- umeshunni 6y agoFunny you mention Jakarta. Indonesia is also moving its capital out of Jakarta https://www.npr.org/2019/04/29/718234878/indonesia-plans-to-move-its-capital-out-of-jakarta-a-city-thats-sinking https://www.npr.org/2019/04/29/718234878/indonesia-plans-to-... https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2020.00005/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2020.0000...
- TheRealWatson 6y agoWhen 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.