VIRTUAL London.

Abstract

To de-densify cities, new urban developments in the form of satellite cities rarefy the urban mass while promising a utopian life to inhabitants. Although such strategies have attracted scores of inhabitants to these developments, the need to connect satellite cities with the core city has caused the dismantling of the urban nodal structure of existing suburbs. Nodes vitally play a dual role: a utilitarian role as traffic circles to diffuse traffic flow, and an aesthetic role as open spaces to promote the imageability of urban areas. Dismantling nodal fields (“midans”) of the Heliopolis suburb, designed after the garden city model, in Cairo demonstrates the negative side effect of a planning strategy that constructed a series of bridges to link satellite cities. The role of the “midan”, or green traffic circle, in Heliopolis was circumvented to streamline traffic flow to suburbs in New Cairo. This paper demonstrates how forces of urban expansion, though beneficial at the larger urban scale for extending new developments and maintaining their connection to existing ones, resulted in the unmaking of existing livable suburbs such as Heliopolis, jeopardizing its unique heritage mix of European urban planning and Arabic architectural styles. The unmaking of Heliopolis was triggered by effacing the structural and aesthetic roles of its medium-sized traffic circles. Specifically, the paper will highlight the transformation of three “midans,” namely, Safir, Triumph, and St. Fatima Squares while pointing out the uneven sparing of Triumph Square due to the symbolism it acquired, although it has nevertheless suffered partial fragmentation.