- Urban Transitional Zones in Cairo   1483 kb by    Salheen, Mohamed & Attia, Amr | salheen@yahoo.com    Short Outline This paper attempts to understand the emergence of Urban Transitional Zones (UTZ) in Cairo and to trace their development. The paper then arrives at defining the UTZ and highlights their problems and opportunities. Abstract Cairo has developed over time according to an incremental process. Each increment was added at a certain stage or era during the development and growth of the city; and most of them have had their own distinctive character. This paper attempts to analyse the evolution of these distinctive increments and the development of the so called ‘Urban Transitional Zones (UTZ)”, which are zones (gaps) that exist between two or more distinct and well defined urban areas. The sequential urban additions that Cairo has been experiencing over time were sometimes quite limited and in other times they were surprisingly massive (Abu-Lughod, 1971). Yet, the fast growth of urbanisation of Cairo towards the East and West necessitates that town planners prepare for the expected consequences . One of these consequences is the informal development of the Urban Transitional Zones (UTZ) in the areas in between, and adjacent to, the newly urbanised parts of Cairo. Various segregated internal zones have been neglected in the previous city development plans and thus had become barriers and physical constraints between various parts of the city. Therefore, the concern of this paper is to identify the properties, opportunities and problems occurring from the segregation of the UTZ. Keywords Urban Transitional Zones, Greater Cairo Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2003: Planning in a more globalized World   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper