Background

El Azhar Street is the main modern route that cuts through Fatimid Cairo which used to be the capital of Islamic Egypt around the 10^th century. The area is very rich in terms of culture and historical monuments but also for its famous local markets that contain Cairo’s most important wholesale markets and traditional shopping areas (Khalil & El Moamen, 2005). The presence of famous markets in the area has long threatened the historical monuments in the area, due to the presence of marble and wooden workshops and crafts which developed to be a problem in terms of noise, waste, and pollution. Forming one of the most important markets in Egypt El Azhar area attracted a lot of tourists and daily flow of local visitors. The daily flow of visitors and merchants caused a chronic traffic congestion in the area. The central location of the area which connects to different neighborhoods of Cairo exposed the area to a daily flow of passerby traffic. All this along with a decaying housing stock and inadequate services helped in locating this area in the center of the government development plans in order to preserve its historic and market assets and improving means of internal circulation and accessibility to the area (Fahmi, 2012).

In the seventies of the last century, the government decided to build a two level steel elevated highway over El Azhar Street to solve the traffic congestion of the area. The highway which is commonly known as “El Azhar Bridge” was to connect El Darrasa eastern of El Azahar with the city center of Cairo. The main Purpose of the bridge was providing a direct connection between downtown and new high-end areas reached by Salah Salem; namely Heliopolis and Nasr City, by bridging over the congested areas of El Azhar. The bridge was built in the beginning of the eighties transferring the traffic flow coming from El Opera Square to Salah Salem road and vice versa in addition to keeping the on the ground route (Khalil & El Moamen, 2005).

3 The Elevated urban highway of El Azhar is commonly known in official reports and between the public as “ El Azhar Bride” therefore the research will proceed by using the term “El Azhar Bridge” instead of the term “ the elevated urban highways of El Azhar”

48 During the nineties of the last century, new rehabilitation plans for the area appeared. As the area experienced a lot of changes since the construction of the bridge which changed most of the land uses from residential to commercial activities. The heavy traffic on the bridge and the street level developed serious environmental consequences on the monuments of the area adding to the air and noise pollution (Khalil & El Moamen, 2005). Given its high touristic and cultural potentials El-Azhar area was reconsidered in the rehabilitation plans of the nineties with a proposal to build a road tunnel in the area. The main objectives of the tunnel were:

1. To provide an efficient underground means of transport

2. To create a free vehicular surface to enhance tourism and pedestrian activities.

3. To reduce the air and noise pollution on the ground surface.

4. To enhance the appearance of the area by providing a flow underground thus offering an option of removal for the elevated road (Khalil & El Moamen, 2005).

Figure 7 El Azhar bridge shaded in Orange cutting through the dense fabric (Map retrieved from Google Earth,2016)

El Hussien Mosque El Azbakiyah

Garden

49 Construction of the tunnel started in 1998 constructing two parallel tunnels connecting Salah Salem Street to El Opera square. Each tunnel is allocated for one traffic direction and consisting of two traffic lanes. Construction of the two tunnels lasted till 2001 with a length of 2.7 Km each (Burns & Novelli, 2008). Though the original plan was removing the elevated road of El Azhar after constructing the tunnel but this never happened. As the removal ideas were joined with a plan to turn El Azhar Street into a pedestrian street and such ideas were not welcomed by the wholesale merchants of the area. El Azhar is known to be an outlet for traditional materials, crafts, textiles, gold and wholesale markets, therefore the idea of closing the street to car traffic will impact the traditional markets and crafts. The retails shops expected that they will lose their clients if they cannot be reachable except by foot (Burns & Novelli, 2008).

The Minister of Culture from 1987 to 2011 “Farouk Hosny” pushed for the removal of El Azhar elevated road in order to revive El Azhar area as a touristic and cultural area, but many voices were against that (El Dakhakhny, 2008). As experts expected traffic paralysis upon the removal of the elevated road. Experts pointed the fact that the tunnel is not a replacement of the elevated road as the elevated road is used in local trips inside the area while the tunnel is only for passersby between old Cairo and the eastern side (Tamam & Abdelmeneim, 2005).

Figure 8 El Azhar Bridge cutting between the buildings (personal photograph by author. 9. Aug.2016.)

50 Experts pointed out that the tunnel closes regularly for security reasons, it is only 2 lanes so in the case of any accidents inside it, the whole traffic flow in the Downtown area will be paralyzed, therefore the presence of the elevated road is a must. Other experts pointed out that removing the elevated road will cost the country more than 10 million pounds, while with its current condition the elevated road is worth more than 600 million Egyptian pounds (Tamam & Abdelmeneim, 2005). Small trials from the government trying to close the elevated road for a couple of weeks to see how it will impact the traffic flow proved that the idea of removing the elevated road without offering alternatives is not applicable to the current traffic conditions. With the voices and objections of traffic experts, wholesale merchants and other stakeholders of the area plans of removing the elevated road seemed to be postponed until further notice (Tamam & Abdelmeneim, 2005). The Controversy of keeping or removing the elevated road of El Azhar is still present to date with opposing views of the pros and cons of the presence of such structure in a critical area such as El Azhar.