"With a new Postscript: Revolutionary Cairo one year on"-- Cover.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 335-345) and index.

Imaging Cairo -- Cairo is Egypt and Egypt is Cairo -- A history of modern Cairo : three cities in one -- Informal Cairo triumphant -- Housing real and speculative -- The desert city today -- Working in the city -- City on the move : a complementary informality? -- Governing Cairo -- Summing up : serendipity? -- Postscript: revolutionary Cairo one year on.

Trying to make sense of the urban giant that is Cairo. "This book moves beyond superficial generalizations about Cairo as a chaotic metropolis in the developing world into an analysis of the ways the city's eighteen million inhabitants have, in the face of a largely neglectful government, built and shaped their own city. Using a wealth of recent studies on Greater Cairo and a deep reading of informal urban processes, the city and its recent history are portrayed and mapped: the huge, spontaneous neighborhoods; housing; traffic and transport; city government; and its people and their enterprises. The book argues that understanding a city such as Cairo is not a daunting task as long as pre-conceived notions are discarded and care is taken to apprehend available information and to assess it with a critical eye. In the case of Cairo, this approach leads to a conclusion that the city can be considered a kind of success story, in spite of everything" -- Cover.