Luxor development plan: use the past to build its future
Image via Wikipedia
Out with the new and in with the old: this is Luxor in a nutshell. With plans to turn the city into one of the world’s largest open air museum, the Egyptian government has busily set about demolishing eyesores such as the New Winter Palace and obstructions such as the hardscrabble village of Gourna. Meanwhile, they are preserving everything that is fine and ancient– all so that tourists can commingle with a carefully curated version of Luxor’s past.
In July 2004 Samir Farag was appointed governor of Luxor by President Hosni Mubarak with a mission to renovate Luxor’s antique sites and redevelop the city as a world-class tourist destination. The task entailed removing all the signs of human habitation that had, over the years, built up on and around the city’s historic sites.
Farag’s first task was to modernize the city’s infrastructure: electricity, sewage, water, phone lines and roads. He is opening up the Avenue of the Sphinxes, a three-kilometer pathway, once lined with thousands of Sphinxes, that links the Karnak and Luxor temples, which was used each year as a processional route during the festival of Opet to celebrate the seasonal flooding of the Nile. Go there now and you see a vast open area that permits, for the first time in hundreds of years, a view of the Nile and the temple of Hatshepsut high up on the Theban Hills.
There are now highways linking Luxor to the Red Sea resorts of Hurghada and Marsa Alam, so that people on holiday there can make day trips to the city. Six thousand tourists make that journey every day now, all of them bringing money to spend in Luxor. The city has an airport terminal that can now accommodate up to seven million passengers a year; a new railway station and souk; a hospital; a cultural center providing work and training for the city’s 30,000-strong Nubian community; a women’s center; a large wireless internet zone; a library and a heritage center. An Imax cinema is also on the way.
Overall the governor says the city has spent 1.2 billion Egyptian pounds on infrastructure since he’s arrived – changes that have already had an impact on the city’s economy as a whole.
But still the opposition persists: earlier this year a demonstration of 3,000 people outside Karnak almost turned into a riot. A court case protesting the Gourna evictions is pending – marking the last hope of Old Gourna’s few remaining few residents.
But that only means it’s time for the next stage of the plan, Farag believes. Just around the corner is a development sure to create new livelihoods for the inhabitants of places like Gourna. The governor says he’s building new resorts capable of holding tens of thousand of people outside the city; that Luxor will soon have the biggest youth hostel in the Middle East; that a forest of jatropha trees, whose seeds contain up to 40 per cent oil, is being grown to provide the city with engine oil; that treated wastewater is being used to irrigate 22,000 acres of farmland; that investment zones are being opened to bring in new businesses. Farag thinks the city can double the annual number of tourists it currently hosts. In the end, he says, people will appreciate what he’s done.
Excerpted from an article by Simon Mars for The National
More re Luxor Development Plan
Image via Wikipedia
Jane Akshar of Luxor News has posted an article by Ray Johnson, Director of the Epigraphic Survey Chicago House about the urban renewal program in Luxor and its effects on the local population, tourism, antiquities preservation, and the archaeological community. The following is an excerpt:
Since I started working for the Epigraphic Survey in 1978, I have witnessed the transformation of Luxor from a sleepy, charming, provincial town into a 21st century tourist mecca. In 1978 the horse and carriage and a few battered Mercedes were the main modes of transportation; Peugeots came later, and I remember when the first big tour bus hit town in the 1980s. I have witnessed a series of development programs that were launched largely due to increasing tourism. The most radical until now was the riverbank development project of the late 1980s that transformed the natural, tree-lined riverbank of Luxor into a concrete, terraced mooring and touristic area four kilometers long. In that project the existing infrastructure along the Corniche was respected, the riverbank was extended outward, the Corniche was widened, and a pedestrian walkway with garden areas was created along the edge of the riverbank for the local families and tourists alike which is still tremendously popular with everyone.
This current development program is the most ambitious one to date and is more radical than anything ever seen (even in the pharaonic period, which is saying something). As has been stated, the program has its good and its bad points.
The issues that the new development program address have been of concern to the Government of Egypt (GOE) and the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) for a long, long time, but until now the SCA alone did not have the resources to deal with them properly. The main issues are:
1. The need to enlarge and upgrade Luxor’s infrastructure and antiquities site facilities to accommodate radically expanded tourism, east and west bank.
2. The encroachment of the modern community on antiquities sites, east and west bank.
3. The excavation and development of new antiquities sites (like the sphinx road between Luxor and Karnak temples) for tourism, but which (the thinking goes) will also safeguard the sites from future encroachment.
As most of you know by now, the Chicago House facility and its neighbors along the several kilometers of the Luxor Corniche are being directly affected by a new Corniche widening and development program sponsored by the GOE. Chicago House can live with these changes. But some of our neighbors are not so fortunate. One of the saddest parts of Luxor’s new development program is that rather than encouraging the mingling of the tourists with the local population, which enriches the visitors’ experience (and generates valuable income for the locals), the GOE’s policy promotes segregation of the two groups.
A related issue is the encroachment of the modern community on the antiquities sites. The city’s clearing of the residential area around Karnak and creation of a huge plaza all the way to the river, occurred at the same time the residents of Gurna and Dra Abu El Naga were moved from their homes - which were then torn down - and re-settled in the newly constructed community of New Gurna to the north. This form of site management - clearing away all modern encroachment from the vicinity of antiquities sites - has been the ideal of the GOE and SCA for generations, conceived when there were far, far fewer buildings around Karnak or houses over the Gurna necropolis.
As has been noted, the sad reality for the scientific community and local population in Luxor - and in many cultural heritage sites all over the world - is that the prime motivation for the city’s new development program is increased tourism. The entire GOE is behind Luxor’s program, and the goal is clear: to create the means by which the maximum number of tourists can visit the maximum number of sites in the shortest time possible. The challenge of our community is to continue our conversation with the city, the SCA, and the local population to help Egypt mitigate any potentially negative affects on the antiquities sites that we are all committed to preserve.
Click on Luxor News for the full article.
