Contenu du sommaire : Géographie sociale de l'Egypte : ouverture et cloisonnement

Between 1986 and 1996, the population of Egypt increased by 1 1 million people to reach to 59 million. Thus, over ten years, the population increased by an amount equivalent to the total in 1907. In order to devise a typology of population growth and the articulation between urban and rural areas, the settlement pattern over the last century has been studied at the intermediate scale of the district. This analysis provides a geography of temporal change and different forms of agglomeration, not all of which can be explained by the process of metropolitan growth. The diversity of local destinies suggests that any attempt to totalise the concept of over-population should be rejected. This phy- siocratic conception of settlement boundaries is a barrier to understanding the spatial dynamics of development.

Using a population census of Cairo and maps dating from the end of the 19th century, this article analyses the city's limits at a key period of its urbanization ; over the previous 50 years, the population had doubled. The comparison of morphological indicators (city perimeter, density) with statistical markers of urban development shows that the distribution of the population was not homogenous. Thus, rural settlers living in an urban environment were far more numerous than urban dewellers who resided in the countryside. The city seemed impervious from the interior towards the surrounding area, but easily accessible in the opposite sense. Transport means and particularly the railways played an important role in explaining this difference. In addition, the major contrast which delimits the three concentric zones which have been identified relates not only to differences in the population but above all to differences in the composition of these populations. The outskirts of the city are very homogenous whereas it is in the center that major contrasts exist within a very small area. Finally, even though the distribution of the population was organized around an east-west axis, a north-south divide separated the former urban fabric from the extensions dating from the end of the 1860s which had a different morphology. Urbs and civitas were both united within a single ensemble ; however, their limits were not superimposed but rather concentric in character.

This article focuses on the relationship between social and spatial changes in Egyptian villages. It discusses the extent to which recent changes in the Egyptian countryside have led to a transformation of settlement patterns from a traditional system of kinship related neighbourhoods to one based on economic differentiation. The paper presents case studies of two villages, one in the region of al-Minya in Upper Egypt and the other in the central delta area in al-Gharbiya region. The Upper Egyptian village of Zuhra represents a traditional type of rural settlement where extended kinship groups live together in separate neighbourhoods. One of these groups consists of the descendents of migrant farm labourers who settled here a century ago. Today only a few members of this un- derpriviledged group own land, so that many of them are forced to make a living from activities in the informal sector. Conse-quently, informal sector industries - such as brick making - are concentrated in the quarters of the poor. The village of Sibrbay in the Delta is quite different from the first case. The example of one extended family is presented to show how kinship-related neighbourhoods have dissolved during the past three decades, and how a new form of spatial organisation has emerged because of the enormous increase in land prices.

In this article, the author examines the problem of high densities resulting from the concentration of population in the Nile Valley and delta regions of Egypt, as well as government efforts to redistribute the population throughout the unhabttated parts of the country. Five major projects are discussed, with particular attention given to the "El-Salam canal" sheme and to its feasibility.

The harsh conditions of the Mediterranean coast contrast with those of the Nile valley. The coast is also an area of strategic importance, a frontier with Israel. These factors have justified the substantial development of irrigation in the area around the Suez canal. Further east, the harnessing of water resources, initiated by the Israelis, has given rise to an original form of agricultural development. The future of the region is conditioned as much by its water resources as by the problematic international litigation over the Nile's waters.

The term globalization attempts to capture the complexity of a contemporary word which projects itself at a new scale and in many different ways. This renders the conceptual formulation of the expression difficult. In Egypt, globalization results from the opening up of the economy over the last decade, putting the country into contact with the 'world system', despite its position on the margins of the world's integrated economies. From a geographical perspective, this contact has renewed spatial tensions within society in the form of a false paradox : the emergence of new spatial developments in Egypt has reinforced the importance of Cairo's centralřly, the city representing a privileged interface between the country and the rest of the world.

Since the 1970s, the urban growth of the Greater Cairo region has been analysed from remote sensing data. Using data from the first Landsat satellites, a methodological base was created, notably to ensure that the digital data met with the objectifs of the classification and the multitempo- ral analysis. The subsequent use of Spot data appears to offer new possibilities, but confirms the basic rule of the need for a detailed knowledge of the site and for continuous verification. The results obtained allow the spatial forms of urban growth in the Greater Cairo region to be clearly identified. Compared with the zones of colonisation and their spectacular forms in empty regions of the desert, urban development in the valley is more complex. Urban expansion has occured by stages, at the same time integrating the older built-up areas of agricultural villages. Growth is retained within the limits of the Greater Cairo ringroad.