Why Egypt Is Building a New Capital City

Focusing the limited efforts of a developing country on massive, non-sustainable "Dubai-style" building projects will only worsen the problems Cairo already has. Cairo desperately needs better public transport, sustainable urban development (housing, parks, sewage, waste management) and massive renewal of crumbling historic substance, in addition to sustainable transportation (bikes, metro, trams) for the future. This is simply a flagship project that Egyptians seem to have a habit of being proud of - IMHO maybe in an irrational way due to the similarity to the ancient monuments. It's certainly in the interest of the military government to prevent people from revolting due to the existing problems with such a shiny project. But it will do nothing to help actually solve the problems the country has, it just creates a new overhead of infrastructure to be maintained. So, IMO, against the hopes of the Egyptian people it sadly worsens the outlooks on the long run for Egypt.