The rehabilitation of Old Cairo

While Islamic Cairo or Old Cairo can be disputed as being the equivalent of other North African medina cores, the approaches to its urban conservation and the related heritage problems certainly bear comparison. The rehabilitation approach has been advocated for Old Cairo with the built environment setting being deemed as important as the individual Islamic monuments. More piecemeal restoration and renovation approaches are challenged, in part because they use parallel conservation policies to those employed in the medinas of Tunis and Algiers. Despite the availability of the 1980 UNESCO Plan and the 1997 UNDP Plan for Old Cairoʹs rehabilitation, government policies remain insufficient and fragmentary with a tendency to favour tourist-orientated projects. The local populationʹs attitudes and potential participation remain largely ignored.