Choices and changes in the housing market and community preferences: Reasons for the emergence of gated communities in Egypt

In the mid-1990s, the Egyptian government embarked on selling large portions of public land to private-sector real estate developers – a major policy shift toward privatization of urban development. To date, the development of more than a hundred privately planned gated residential communities indicates a mass trend in new-town urban development on the outskirts of the Greater Cairo Region (GCR). These private gated residential communities offer a wide range of housing schemes, ranging from middle-class to high-end distinctive, luxurious villas and apartments. In contrast with conventional new-town ‘‘master-planning’’ principles, these large housing developments demonstrate novel design, planning and implementation criteria that reflect market-driven forces rather than standard orthodox public-interest norms. This study attempts to articulate these unconventional factors by investigating the reasons behind gated communities’ proliferation from the perspective of developers in the GCR. This paper argues that real estate developers use common grouping factors in their advertising, such as design, planning, and marketing principles, to re-shape people’s desires and wants. The paper concludes that advertisements package a place as a commodity, romanticize a lifestyle, and sell it as an attractive place that is free of problems.