In May 2021, I was sitting with my Arabic teacher in an informal street restaurant located in a few tight alleyways in Alexandria’s Shatby district. I was asking him about the area. He looked up, “all of these buildings are illegal you know.” I followed his gaze up to the towering constructions tightly packed around us. He pointed to a building that was banking to one side, a modern day leaning tower of Pisa. “People are still living there,” he lamented, pointing to the clothes hanging from the decrepit balconies, “it’s not safe, it will fall.” This is by no means an isolated case. According to a recent report, over two million building violations were recorded between 2000 and 2017. It is a problem that has been brewing for a while now, in 2013 the BBC described it as a “time bomb,” and until last year, very little was done to defuse the situation. A history of neglect The story behind the rise in illegal buildings is inextricably linked to the recent story of Egyptian governance as a whole. Illegal constructions started booming in the latter years of former President…
