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Al-Ahram Weekly 31 August - 6 September 2000 Issue No. 497 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 31 August - 6 September 2000 Issue No. 497
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Deflating values
By Nigel Ryan
Newly painted balconies, and shutters, and crudely picked out details on the more ornate facades -- are these the tell tale signs of the beginnings of the gentrification of some downtown blocks of apartments? Lift your eyes from street level and it is surprising how many of the new paint jobs there are. It is not overwhelming, and a far less obvious change than the wholesale repainting of entire buildings -- though only on the main thoroughfares -- that these days appears to pass as a successful exercise in inner-city regeneration. But there is, it seems, a piecemeal renovation of individual flats in blocks that otherwise exhibit all the signs of half a century of neglect. One should not overstate the case, but it does make it possible to believe that there appears to be a beginning of sorts.
Such gentrification is a by now common phenomenon in many Western cities. The pattern is more or less standard. Sections of the middle class rediscover the charms of city-centre living. Property prices in the more desirable suburbs have sky-rocketed in any case, and so they seek cheaper property in the rundown centres of cities -- property that is usually considerably older than its suburban counterpart -- and are happy to spend the difference on renovation. And in their wake come all the service businesses that have become essential in maintaining the lifestyle of the well-heeled middle class -- urban living has become, after all, one of the most hyped lifestyle choices -- and property prices in the city centre then skyrocket, reaching the kind of stratospheric levels that leaves the suburbs in the shade. It is another form of inner city regeneration, less cosmetic than the painting of the facades of blocks fronting the main thoroughfares, and eventually far more exclusive.
The complexities of property ownership, leaseholds and tenancies, though, currently mitigate against the replication of the same pattern in Cairo, as does the structuring of property prices. Owners are unlikely to recoup the investment they have put in renovating an apartment -- which could easily outstrip the purchase price -- when prices are themselves determined by location and square meterage. But the structure of property prices in Cairo is one of the city's great myths, an asset bubble that at the moment no one has the courage, or the incentive, to prick. Affordable homes remain somewhere near the bottom of an ever-growing list of priorities, and will remain so until a more realistic market emerges. And that will take some time, given that it flies in the face of the perceived interests not only of individual property owners, who would be forced to see their most valuable asset stripped of its putative value, but runs counter to the assumed interests of a host of financial institutions. Insurance companies and banks, after all, have amassed huge property portfolios in the centre of town. Yet the fact that the big banks acquired the bulk of their holdings in forced repossessions of buildings the construction of which they had financed by providing loans that the developers could not repay serves only to underline the fact that the paper value of property is all but unrealisable -- these are immovable assets in every sense. Yet the banks themselves, whose massive overexposure is a key factor in a liquidity crisis that has become no more than a euphemism for the downward slide into recession -- would see the value of their assets slashed if the buildings they had repossessed as collateral were actually to be sold at realistic prices -- i.e., at the price people are willing to pay. Similarly the holdings of insurance companies -- their property holdings remain much more impressive on paper, with putative square metre valuations -- than they ever would on the open market.
But back to those newly painted balconies, and shutters. It is a sure bet that behind the windows will be stripped wooden floors, and a heady mixture of oriental and European antiques, many of the former being the kind of objet trouvé that have now become typif of any interior that purports to be design or taste conscious. The disposition of spaces, of course, will be far more generous than in a suburban flat, and if the owner is lucky the apartment will boast a host of original detailing -- mouldings, fireplaces, original windows and interior doors. In Western capitals such details would be advertised prominently by the estate agent selling such an apartment, adding much to the value and desirability of the property on offer.
If downtown Cairo is to have any hope of survival in its current form -- i.e., in an attractively human commercial-residential mix-- an essential first step would be to allow market valuations to operate freely, fixing the prices of apartments at a level that reflects the enormous costs that will inevitably be incurred in necessary renovations. Initially, potential customers will be drawn from a narrow cross-section of society -- that section of the middle class that has over the past decade found itself with a reasonable disposable income, which it is reasonably well-disposed to spend on pursuing its "life-style" choices. The stirrings are there -- just open any of the interior features in the plethora of new glossy magazines, and it is obvious that the effect that is being sought is the kind of decorative scheme that would slot comfortably into the spacious interior of an apartment in a downtown, pre-revolutionary block, but which looks as woefully out of place as the ugly sisters' ankles in Cinderella's glass slipper when shoehorned into the standardised space of a Mohandessin flat.
Whether or not the long term fallout of wholesale gentrification is to your taste is really not an issue: practically, the issue at hand is a strategy capable of saving a city centre that is almost, but not quite, beyond salvation. And ironically, the first step in any such salvage operation, would be to recognise that it is not as valuable as is usually pretended. Prick that bubble -- and it is better to do it under controlled conditions than allow it to occur overnight, which will eventually happen if things are left as they are -- and it just might be possible to steer the ship home.
