Farzina Alam

Historically, city centers across the world, from Sydney to Berlin to New York, go through periods of decline and renewal. As the cultural and economic elite disperse from the center to the periphery, property in the downtown area loses its value, leading landlords to slash maintenance costs and lower rents. The result is the decay of the city center.

Typically, urban decay is eventually followed by urban renewal, or gentrification, where the availability of low-cost housing in ‘authentic’ downtown areas attracts, initially, the cultural vanguard of the city: students, artists, intellectuals and trendsetters. The presence of the cool crowd pulls in higher-income residents, who slowly but surely bid up the price of property. Before you know it, cheap, crumbling downtown has become expensive and elitist again, forcing the young, bohemian and trendy to find another home.

Although this cycle typically takes place over a period of a decade, in the case of Downtown Cairo, it’s been over 40 years of consistent urban decay. Once bursting with the foreign elite who initially invested in the area in the early 20th century, it evolved into an upscale business district once its wealthy residents moved out into surrounding suburbs. The 1952 revolution and 1956 Suez crisis saw the exit of the wealthy and the exodus of the foreign, and as a result, Downtown’s glamour began a slow decline. Nasser’s socialist government implemented rent control laws, leading residents to virtually abandon some of the area’s grand buildings. The buildings subsequently fell into disrepair and neglect, the end result being the dusty, faded, aging beauty we see today.

Downtown, also known as Wust El Balad, (literally ‘center of the country’) is no longer the center of elite Cairo that it once was. Where once the cream of society would be seen sipping teas in Groppi’s café, you are now more likely to see tourists, guidebook in hand, searching for the Cairo of old. The present inhabitants mainly consist of the old-school intellectuals who remained as long-term residents, AUC students, tourists and those whose businesses depend on them.

To an extent, Downtown Cairo does remain a center for creative intellectuals. It remains home to some of Cairo’s best galleries and studios, and many areas, including the recently rejuvenated Borsa (stock exchange) district, remain trendy with Cairo’s intelligentsia. If there has ever been a district whose time for urban renewal has been long overdue, it is Downtown.

Mohsen Allam The drawback to Downtown: Coping with the daytime crowds. And the traffic, taban.

The wide boulevards and avenues we see today were laid out almost one and a half centuries ago by Khedive Ismail, who was inspired by his time spent in Europe to build a modern-styled Cairo — you wouldn’t be foolish to mistakenly think you are in a very dusty part of Paris when walking the streets here.

In the dead of the night, it remains a lovely historical walk, and some of its pedestrian areas, such as the Borsa and El-Alfi Street, add to its charm. Easily traversed by foot, Downtown is compact enough to mean that taxis are effectively irrelevant — luckily, given the monstrous rush hour traffic.

Downtown presents a plethora of restaurants, bars, cafés, and, of course, hotels, from the nasty cockroach-infested cheapies to the sprawling grandeur of five-star beauties. It goes without saying that options for eating and drinking are largely at extremes. If you want five-star food, Downtown is home to the Semiramis InterContinental, the Four Seasons Nile Plaza, two Hiltons, and a Hyatt — all lining the eastern bank of the Nile. All these hotels are home to top-class restaurants.

Equally, for the best that baladi food has to offer, you can’t go wrong with the multitude of kebab and kofta places surrounding 26th July Street, Felfela (both its simple take-out storefront and the more upscale restaurant around the corner), and the most famous koshary chain in the country, the legendary Koshary Tahrir. It serves one and only one dish: koshary. Those with a sweet tooth can’t go wrong with the famous El Abd on Talaat Harb Street, home to some of the best Egyptian sweets going round, and some truly excellent ice cream.

For café culture, Downtown excels largely in the lower-to-middle end of the spectrum. If you want trendy, stylish places, go to Mohandiseen or Zamalek. For a plethora of solid ahwa baladi establishments, head to Borsa whose palm-lined, lamp-lit pavements liven up in the evenings with shisha-smokers and zabadi-sippers. For those interested in a cold beer, Horreya on Falaki Square is an institution that needs to be experienced, while the classy 24 hour rooftop bar of the Odeon hotel serves decent mezze, shisha and cold beer, all at reasonable prices.

Shopping was once a quality-experience in this part of town. Then came July 1961, and every significant department store downtown became nationalized. The quality picked up and left for more upscale neighborhoods like Heliopolis, Maadi and today Nasr City and Mohandiseen. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing left to buy. Cheap, local products have flooded the stores here, concentrated mostly around Talaat Harb Street.

Stores to note are Talaat Harb Mall, Omar Effendi, and the shops lining Shawarbi Street. If Egyptian music, DVDs and cheap clothing are what you’re after, you’ve come to the right place. For more intellectual fare, visit the renowned AUC bookstore on its campus, or Madbouli on Midan Talaat Harb, housing mostly Arabic books including a great range of political literature.

One drawback to Downtown is that it is not home to a major supermarket such as Alfa Market or Metro. There are, however, a number of excellent souqs for fresh fruit and vegetables, including Souq Bab El-Louk on Falaki Square and the Tawfikiyya Souq, which runs off of Talaat Harb street.

Downtown is very expensive these days, whether for renting or buying. It’s no longer really ‘residential’, with real estate being gobbled up by the commercial sector. As such, buying a house in the area has become very difficult. Nobody ever tries tosell a place here — most homes are inherited, and if sold or rented out, are usually sold as commercial property and turned into offices or shops. For some years now, it has almost been unheard of to come across anyone selling in Downtown Cairo. There is also no demand for housing here, as Downtown is too crowded and not residential enough.Some people who do buy, sometimes purchase two flats, and then convert them into a small motel.

With very little selling taking place, Downtown has predominately become a rental market with rentals starting at LE 1,000 a month. Downtown remains more affordable than a lot of other expat-infiltrated areas in Cairo, such as Maadi, Heliopolis and Zamalek. Average rent for a two-bedroom furnished apartment is around LE 2,000.

Yet, the cost to rent property in the area can be pricey due to the presence of AUC. One can expect that once AUC relocates to its new campus on the other side of the universe (the move to Qattameya is already taking place and should be completed by 2008), rent prices will fall, as the hordes of international students will cease paying ludicrous prices for their apartments. With both the Mugamma and Egyptian Museum also set to relocate by the end of the decade, a significant amount of the population pressure (and therefore, rents) in Downtown will be reduced.

Drawbacks to being a Downtown resident include the traffic and the pollution. There are no open spaces or anything even slightly resembling trees and green grass. But the privilege of living in the heart of an exciting city like Cairo is unmatched — residents all echo the same words: “You never know what to expect when walking down the streets here, from the bizarre to the curious to the exciting. Life as a Downtown resident never ceases to entertain.”  et