The development plan for Luxor
Image by Xavier Fargas via Flickr
The “Comprehensive Development Plan for the City of Luxor, Egypt”, drawn up in 1999, “prepared for the Ministry of Housing Utilities and Urban Communities and the UNDP-sponsored Abt Associates” is to establish and carry out a work plan for environmentally sustainable tourism development that also benefits the local population.”
There is a very real reason why the project is top priority. Tourism is growing. Tens of thousands of visitors arrive in Luxor daily. Groups are bussed in from Hurghada for daily tours, and the Nile Corniche simply cannot accommodate the hundreds of rambling tour busses.
What is historically important unfortunately counts for little in political and economic terms in contemporary Egypt, because tourism is one of the three top foreign-currency earners and weighs too heavily against the protection of archaeological sites. Anyway, it is difficult to differentiate between what appears an unnecessarily ambitious archaeological undertaking, and its part of a comprehensive development plan for the city of Luxor.
I refer to the decision to excavate and restore the Avenue of Sphinxes linking Luxor and Karnak temples with view to “improving the touristic experience, increasing the vitality of the city centre, and forming the centrepiece of an Open Museum”. Back in 1997 no one realised that it was part of a comprehensive plan that would require the demolition of housing, commercial, government and religious buildings intruding on the buried avenue, and include the phased relocation of Luxor residents. Nor did they realise that it would be a pedestrian thoroughfare and that the Nile boulevard would be widened to accommodate tourist buses transporting tens of thousands of tourists to Karnak daily.
Today, 10 years down the line, we finally read the fine print and realise the full extent of what many call a “catastrophe”. As the sandstone sphinxes (some 1,200 of them) continue to be unearthed, we realise that the housing of hundreds of residents are being demolished and they themselves relocated. The project includes “landscaping and enhancing the area with the provision of visitor amenities”, and “modification” of street layout. A clear statement of intention. So why are we surprised?
The plan to increase the size of Luxor ten-fold is frightening. Is it too late to do anything about it?
Excerpted from an article by Jill Kamill for Al-Ahram
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