Plans for the establishment of an environmentally-friendly ‘smart city’ in Egypt’s southern governorate of Aswan was announced on Sunday by governor Magdy Hegazy, al-Masry al-Youm reports. The new city, which is to be built on approximately 4000 feddans in the Western Desert, is to be part of a new urban expansion scheme aiming to accommodate the increasingly growing population in the old city of Aswan. Hegazy, on a field visit to the site of the new city along with officials from the ministries of Urban Planning, Environment, Health and Manpower, said that the new urban expansion project is named Aswan 2052. The city plan includes various housing schemes that would accommodate different socio-economic classes, an ear-marked area for investment in tourism, areas for commercial activities such as malls and theaters as well as public green spaces, the governor said, according to Youm7. He added that the city is also to house a complex of medical centers that would be built according to an “international architectural style”. Egypt has been building so-called ‘new cities’ in its vast desert since the late 1970s when the government initiated a large-scale urban expansion program….
