Articles | Volume 81, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-81-207-2026
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-81-207-2026
Standard article
 | 
19 Mar 2026
Standard article |  | 19 Mar 2026

Declining red brick factories in Greater Cairo (Egypt): unveiling military-led urbanization through its productive peripheries

Corten Pérez-Houis

Cited articles

Abul-Magd, Z.: Militarizing the Nation: The Army, Business, and Revolution in Egypt, Columbia University Press, https://doi.org/10.7312/abul17062, 2017. 
Acloque, D.: Recomposition des acteurs et des espaces agricoles égyptiens: enjeux politiques, socio-économiques et alimentaires, Revue d'Économie Régionale & Urbaine, Juin, 457–482, https://doi.org/10.3917/reru.173.0457, 2017.  
Acloque, D.: Conquérir le désert: recomposition des acteurs et des territoires agricoles en Égypte, Karthala, Paris, ISBN 9782384091638, 2024. 
Adham, K.: The Power of the Speculative Image: On Branding Desert Developments and Selling Cairo's Urban Future, Studies on Modern Orient, 479 pp. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110741100-028, 2023. 
Adib, A.: The red brick houses present a gloomy and ugly landscape and I am happy with the presidential initiative to repaint them in one color, al-Hikaya, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkkL-cxQ55I (last access: 4 March 2026), 2019. 
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Short summary
This paper deals with Cairo's contemporary urbanization through one of its main building materials: red brick. Although the Egyptian capital has been expanding for the last few decades, the production of this building material is being challenged. The modernization policies implemented by al-Sisi's government have led to a technical standardization of red brick and an economic marginalization of its factories, with concrete block emerging as a competing material.
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