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No comments on the political motivations of this move. In the 1800s, Parisian neighborhoods were demolished to make way for wide boulevards, as they were harder
by ceilingcorner 6y ago
No comments on the political motivations of this move. In the 1800s, Parisian neighborhoods were demolished to make way for wide boulevards, as they were harder to barricade and easier to move troops through.
Similar situation in Cairo. Moving the government to a far off, easily protected location means mass protests are dramatically less effective.
- exdsq 6y agoEgypt has had an idea of splitting into several large cities each specialising on a particular thing (science, governance, etc) since the 90s. This could just be the start of that plan.
- Schiendelman 6y agoAnd that itself is a great way to kill innovation and advancement. The core reason cities are good at economic growth is the mixture of dissimilar ideas.
- exdsq 6y agoI believe it’s what they’ve done in China which seems to work well, with Shenzhen (their research capital) being 2000km south of Beijing
- fakedang 6y agoYet Beijing is still home to some of the best universities in the country and the world. Honestly I've heard of Shenzhen as the manufacturing capital or the tech capital, but it's the first time I'm hearing of Shenzhen as a research hub. China is also not segregated by cities' expertise but by provincial policy. For example, some cities, like Hangzhou had a very preferential treatment towards tech, by virtue of the provincial investment fund being invested in tech companies compared to the usual state-owned steel mill crap.
- Barrin92 6y agoThe reason cities are good at economic growth is because of agglomeration. If anything if you look at the actual characteristics of innovative communities they are very homogeneous, not dissimilar. See Silicon Valley or the Manhattan Project, or the Prussian bureaucracy, or Soviet scientific communities. Most innovative communities aren't some bleeding-heart melting pot but actually look like cults weary of outsiders.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y agoSilicon Valley grew out of 1960s counterculture, which gets pretty close to „bleeding heart melting pot“. The other examples strike as somewhat peculiar, and probably not anybody’s idea of the Ideal, innovative city.
- Barrin92 6y agoCalifornian counterculture today still has a self image of diversity but in reality it has its roots in a very like-minded white, middle-class bohemian culture, which is not coincidentally the exact class that dominates tech. Counter-culture later merged together with business into what was called the 'Californian ideology' in the 90s, and while it has this sort of melting pot burning man aesthetic going for it, intellectually it is incredibly homogeneous, extremely distinct from the rest of the US, and politically streamlined. Counter-cultures almost always are paradoxically 'melting-pots' of insanely like-minded people, the stubbornness is what makes them so effective. Once counter-culture starts to bleed into the mainstream (the actually diverse population) it dissipates.
- rayiner 6y agoWhat? It grew out of the defense industry and California Republicanism: https://www.desertsun.com/story/opinion/columnists/2019/10/24/republicans-shaped-california-so-why-do-they-loathe-today-joe-mathews-connecting-california/4091330002/ https://www.desertsun.com/story/opinion/columnists/2019/10/2...
- disabled 6y agoEgypt may just be following trends nearby: Equatorial Guinea (in Africa) is relocating its capital from Malabo (which is on an island) to Ciudad de la Paz (on the mainland). The country is ranked in the top 10 most corrupt in the world, by Transparency International. It is an outright kleptocracy, and living there is quite an experience, according to people I know. Interestingly, you can go there visa-free as an American, but if you are British, you better not even think about setting foot there. Construction of Ciudad de la Paz is being funded by countries that are either experiencing illiberal trends or have horrendous human rights records: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_de_la_Paz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_de_la_Paz
- tfsh 6y agoI'm curious; is there anti british sentiment there?
- Clewza313 6y agoThey don't really like the British after a failed coup attempt by a bunch of British mercenaries and financed by Maggie Thatcher's son: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Equatorial_Guinea_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Equatorial_Guinea_coup_d%...
- disabled 6y agoNo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Equatorial_Guinea_coup_d'%C3%A9tat_attempt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Equatorial_Guinea_coup_d'... The 2004 Equatorial Guinea coup d'état attempt, also known as the Wonga Coup, failed to replace President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo with exiled opposition politician Severo Moto. Mercenaries organised by mainly British financiers were arrested in Zimbabwe on 7 March 2004 before they could carry out the plot. Prosecutors alleged that Moto was to be installed as the new president in return for preferential oil rights to corporations affiliated to those involved with the coup. The incident received international media attention after the reported involvement of Sir Mark Thatcher in funding the coup, for which he was convicted and fined in South Africa.
- keenreed 6y agoThat is bit too paranoid, some people want to live, not just protest. 18th century Paris was filthy place and needed makeover. Cairo is very congested and dirty city. Protests are last problem in there.
- BiteCode_dev 6y agoAnd, and we killed those kings out of loving kindness. That's just how we do things in France.
- gerikson 6y agoEh, it was one king. Only Legitimists consider Louis XVI's son to have been king, and his death was from illness (perhaps hastened by neglect), not a formal execution.
- BiteCode_dev 6y agoSure, you can s/kings/nobles if you prefer precision over humour.
- rsj_hn 6y agos/nobles/farmers,nuns,priests,kids * 200,000 farmers in the Vendee * tens of thousands of priests and nuns * ordinary people, children, and eventually themselves. The stench of the bodies was so great they moved the guillotines outside the city. One day after beheading a convent of nuns that refused to stop praying, next up was a young boy caught stealing. As he was led up to the guillotine, a shout could be heard from the crowd "Please, no more children!" But hey, at least they replaced their King with an Emperor.
- BiteCode_dev 6y agoWe didn't call that period the terror for its joyful tenderness.
- g_sch 6y agoMadrid, Amman, Naypyitaw, Brasilia, Washington...history is replete with examples of governments who wanted to move out of unruly urban centers and start with a "clean slate".
- zvr 6y agoThere's a Wikipedia page for these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_purpose-built_national_capitals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_purpose-built_national...
- oblio 6y agoI can't anything about Madrid.
- g_sch 6y agoI believe in some cases a capital was moved to a minor but already-existing city. Amman and Madrid are examples of this, so maybe they don't count as "purpose-built".
- AdrianB1 6y agoCan you explain what you want to tell about Amman? I lived there when I was a kid (and the city a lot smaller) and it is the only major city in Jordan the the only logical choice as a capital. The position is also good for a capital city, there is nothing in the south (I lived in Aqaba first).
- g_sch 6y agoAmman is the largest city in Jordan by some distance _now_, but when it was designated as the capital in 1921, it was much smaller. Its growth has come almost exclusively since then, and as a result of its designation as the captial, it became the largest city in the country.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y agoBonn, Germany’s capital from 49(?) to 1991 would also fit that pattern. There were far larger cities such as Munich, Hamburg, and Frankfurt in West Germany. Nobody wanted a strong German capital.
- baybal2 6y ago> Similar situation in Cairo. Moving the government to a far off, easily protected location means mass protests are dramatically less effective. Indeed, primarily by distancing the rulers from people poor enough to not to have anything to loose. How much big of a part of Cairo is a gigantic slum? Cairo is not a small city, 20 million at least in the conurbation. On other hand, having a standing out compact garrison city in the desert will make bombing Sisi out of existence much easier.
- oblio 6y agoYou missed the archetype for these moves, from France :-) Versailles. Versailles was a safe residence for the French king, far from the crowds in Paris. During the revolution, they actually mandated that he move back to Paris.
- jorge-d 6y agoAnd during the 1870s Paris uprising they moved the government to.... Versailles !
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- baud147258 6y agothe government moved to Versailles just before the start of the uprising
- vermontdevil 6y agoKing moved to Versailles so that he could control the nobility in one central location.
- skrebbel 6y agoYep, it's the only reason. Sisi wants to make sure that there's no second Arab Spring some day. It's so weird that media does not pick up on how this is a repressive move and nothing else. Eg when Kazachstan moved their capital to the frozen, desolate, middle-of-nowhere northeast, there were lots of giggly BBC articles about how that weird President over there moved his capital because a dream had told him to, haha! But few media wrote about how all that was cheap smoke and mirrors for making sure that everybody who lived near the capital was a civil servant, ie dependent, with their livelihoods, on a stable government. EDIT: I changed my mind, I jumped to conclusions. This capital is only ~30km away, a suburb of Cairo really, which means that likely civil servants will be able to live in Cairo and commute to work (and vice versa some day). I bet protests will still be harder to organize than on the Tahrir square, but not impossibly so (unlike eg Kazachstan, Equatorial Guinea, Myanmar, Brazil etc) In fact I wonder why they didn't build it 500km further down the Nile (but I'm glad they didn't), that's exactly what I'd expect of an authoritarian government like Sisi's.
- skissane 6y ago> I bet protests will still be harder to organize than on the Tahrir square, but not impossibly so (unlike eg Kazachstan, Equatorial Guinea, Myanmar, Brazil etc) Brazil's capital was moved from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília to try to solve the perceived problem that the Brazilian federal government was focused on the needs of the coastal area around Rio, and moving it to a more central location would make it more responsive to the needs of the country as a whole. I don't think avoiding protests was a major part of the decision. It was planned for decades – article 3 of the 1891 constitution [0] said the capital should be moved to central Brazil, but the move wasn't actually implemented until 1960. Australia is another country with a planned capital – Canberra. In Australia's case, both Sydney and Melbourne wanted to be the capital. The compromise [1] was that the capital would be located in a federal territory to be carved out of New South Wales, more than 100 miles from Sydney, and Melbourne would serve as the temporary capital until then. [0] https://pt.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitui%C3%A7%C3%A3o_de_1891_dos_Estados_Unidos_do_Brasil/I#Art.3%C2%BA https://pt.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitui%C3%A7%C3%A3o_de_189... [1] https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Constitution/~/link.aspx?_id=C35446C31199453CA339251CE317C7B1&_z=z https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practi...
- zaphirplane 6y agoOr it could be to hide excavations of the star gate in the pyramid If we are speculating to support a pet theory
- OnlyMortal 6y agoDidn’t you see the reality show? It’s already under Cheyenne Mountain.
- mlinhares 6y agoThat was very effective in Brazil, Brasilia was built in the middle of nowhere, far away from any of the existing large population centers and has basically no economy other than working for the government so if you live there you want the government to stay as it is.
- frankfrankfrank 6y agoSee Washington DC today, essentially the same thing is happening there as the Capitol complex and building that the citizens used to be able to just walk into and knock on their representatives' office like any other government office, has now been surrounded by concertina wire and fencing and militarized like the green zone in Iraq was. I have been saying this for a while, the globalist ruling class all around the world is essentially trying to separate themselves from the rabble … or is it cattle? … around them.
- vondur 6y agoI think Ataturk moved the Turkish capital to Ankara to make a break with all of the entrenched interests in Istanbul.
- ardacinar 6y agoKind of. I mean, that's pretty much the reason it stayed there after being the provisional capital. Why was it the provisional capital? Well, the major cities (Istanbul, Izmir) were occupied. Ankara was * Controlled by Ataturk's government * Centrally Located * Decently Large (i.e. not a village)