“It is as if I brought fear with me in my suitcase”: the alienation of women in

capitalist cities”
Even the streets of your country have become harsh.” The words of Ahlam - a
woman from whose speech I derived the idea for my article - echo in my mind as I
glance out the car window towards the cornice Road and its endless promontories
after I return from meeting her, and I am struck by a question about the extent of
women’s spatial alienation, and the extent of its impact. On how they live, work and
move in the city, as a daily life experience that oscillates between the harshness of
rapid movement and the madness of hopes stuck in crowding within capitalist cities
and their public economic, political and cultural spheres, in light of the absence of
the concept of Feminist Urbanism from the urban planning that specifies the form of
the public spaces surrounding them. This concept is concerned with challenging the
alleged neutrality of this urban planning, and revealing the bias rooted in it, by
observing women’s experiences in daily life, and making them measurable from the
perspective of urban studies. Cities are not luxurious buildings and silent roads, but
rather bear witness to the stories of their people, as Shakespeare acknowledged
when he said: “Is the city anything but the people” 1
Women Alienations inside cities.
Ahlam2 is an Egyptian woman in her mid-thirties, among millions of women whose
fate is governed by the patriarchal capitalist system. Her origins go back to one of the
agricultural villages of Al-Dhahir in the Egyptian Delta, and she migrated to the city
several years ago in pursuit of her dreams, loaded with slogans of passion and the
inevitability of arrival. Therefore, she used the word “your country” in her speech, as
an involuntary expression of her feeling of alienation within cities that failed her time
after time. Ahlam begins her speech by saying: “All my life I have been afraid of
walking in the streets. The country’s alleys were dark, broken, and dusty, and with
the first winter, they remained “Slippery” (a common word in the Egyptian colloquial
language that means something is slippery); they were originally not paved. But
there is no way out “Ahlam completed her basic education in a house whose design
is far from what the philosopher Alain de Botton calls “The Architecture of
Happiness.” Its worn-out walls are located inside a poor village that did not benefit
from urban development plans. It is connected to life only by one main road, which is
in no less miserable condition than its narrow alleys, and it lacks safe public
transportation, except for a bus used to transport students twice a day, while
residents use “tuk-tuks”. Her family did not allow her to go out for fear of being
1
William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Coriolanus, translated by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, edition of the
Arab Foundation for Studies and Publishing, 1981, Act Three, Scene One, page 122.
2
A nickname to keep her privacy
exposed to danger. Ahlam lived confined within the borders of her village, and when
she joined the university in Cairo, she thought that her path was finally paved, as the
big cities are haven for marginalized villagers dreaming of a better tomorrow.
However, she was surprised by the opposite.

In a sad tone, Ahlam said: “My joy on the first day of university ended when I saw the
streets of Egypt3: large buildings, wide squares, crowded streets, speedy cars running
everywhere, traffic lights far away, high sidewalks, cafés and shops spread out and
taking up all their space. I took a few steps back, and at that time I felt as if I had
brought fear with me in my travel bag.”

Ahlam continues her story: “I got married in the second year of university, and
moved to Alexandria this time. I lived in the Amriya 4 colony, and returned again to
the broken alleys, because it is an area far from services, and after sunset no one can
leave their house. My movement became more difficult after pregnancy and
childbirth, and places to host infants.” Far away and expensive, and I did not know
how to move my son in the middle of the street, so I did not know how to complete
his studies or work without a certificate. I remained like a satiated dipper 5, wanting
to throw myself among people and wander among them, but I did not know, so I
remained a worker like Muhammad Mounir when he said, “And my foreignness, my
friend, hovers around me.”6

Ahlam does not stand alone here. Cities do not compliment their lovers or pay
attention to their rosy dreams. Egyptian novelist Tariq Imam expressed the situation
of Ahlam, her sisters, and others like her in the events of his novel “Cairo Maquette”
which was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2022, after it
took the urban planning of the city and its relationship with the conditions of its
residents as its subject. Imam describes one of the heroes of his story, who was
displaced from the village to Cairo, as having lived moving between two cities with
the same feeling of being stuck on a building’s scaffolding: “Without being able to
look into the sun or look towards the ground, because the only result in both cases
was falling,”7 in reference to the state of spatial alienation. Accompanying a person
as a result of the psychological suffering he experiences within the cities where he

3
The city of Cairo, more than any other Egyptian city, has the name “Egypt” among the people of
marginalized villages.
4
It is located in the Amriya region, west of Alexandria Governorate, and was given this name because
of its proximity to the isolation area for people with leprosy.
5
An Egyptian popular proverb that indicates the state of not being immersed in doing something.
6
A verse from Younes' song, lyrics by Abdul Rahman Al-Abnoudi, Taste of Homes album, 2008
7
Tarek Imam, Cairo Maquette, Mediterranean Publications, 2021, electronic copy on the Abjad
application.
has suffered misery in a way that prevents him from engaging in it. However, this
situation is more clearly evident among women and is represented by their feeling of
isolation, as if they are hidden and invisible, their voices are not heard and their
desires to live smoothly are not respected, as Naguib Mahfouz said in his
masterpiece “Children of Our Alley”: “charity fund is for everyone, and women are
half the being of our neighborhood. It is surprising that our neighborhood does not
respect women, but it will respect them the day 8 it respects the meanings of justice
and mercy.
Capitalist cities women’s unfriendly’

“I turned my question to the architect Aya Mounir, founder of the “Superwomen”

initiative concerned with the situation of women within Egyptian society, and she
explained in the course of her conversation with me that the design of cities to
accommodate cars at a greater rate of population and the abundance of highways in
them has deepened women’s dependency on the car 9, adopting the results of a
previous study published by the University of Pennsylvania, on the impact of cars on
the subordination of women within capitalist cities, along with the opinions of J. H.
Crawford, who wrote two books about cities without cars, in which he emphasized
that the greatest harm caused by cars to society, other than environmental pollution
and road accidents, is in spoiling public spaces and reducing social interaction among
the population. Mounir said: If the life of a man who enjoys the privileges of freedom
of movement whenever and however he wants is not easy within the city without
owning a car, for example, going to the supermarket requires walking long distances
and crossing dangerous highways, not to mention bearing the financial burden of
deteriorating public transportation, then what about the situation of poor women
who... They do not have the luxury of owning a car, and are deprived of walking
freely and safely on paved and lighted roads without harassment. This exacerbates
their feelings of fear while moving around or using public transportation alone in
isolated areas or at late times, as a result of the city’s urban planning ignoring the
requirements of safe movement for women and the fact that high rates of
Harassment without mechanisms to confront it, such as: the presence of security
protection booths, surveillance cameras, and adequate lighting inside public
transportation stations that lack awnings to protect against summer heat and winter
rain Mounir drew attention to the close relationship between the urban planning of
Egyptian cities and the economic empowerment of women, which does not achieve

8
Naguib Mahfouz,” Children of our Alley”, Diwan Al-Masria Publications, 2022, electronic copy on the
Abjad application.
9
carol Sangor, “Girls and the getaway: Cars, culture, and the predicament of the gendered space”,
1995, University of Pennsylvania Law Review 144, p. 705-756
equality between the sexes and fair access to economic resources in light of the
sharp urban fluctuations that we are currently experiencing. She explains: “The
inability to safely and easily access workplaces far from women’s places of residence
represents one of the main reasons for the decline in women’s participation in the
labor market, due to the difficulty of moving around and going to perform work
tasks, or shopping, or taking their children to and from school in areas far from their
headquarters.” They cannot reconcile the needs of family life with the requirements
of their work or even obtain housing at a reasonable price near them, and thus they
are reluctant to apply for various jobs, and employers also choose not to employ
them for the same reasons. As a result of the above, we have a complex situation in
Egypt: cities without Women-friendly, unsafe streets and means of transportation,
and limited job opportunities, especially since the commercial areas located in the
heart of the city are separated from the residential areas located on its outskirts in a
way that increases the urban gap between the poor and the wealthy.”

In fact, non-residential commercial real estate represents 61% of the market value of
the real estate sector in Egypt, according to the report of the Market Line Foundation
for Economic Research, issued in December 2019, and housing prices have risen in
light of the acceleration of inflation rates to an unprecedented degree in parallel with
the scarcity of residential apartments. Vacant

Representation of women in the capitalist city economy

In the same context, architectural researcher Reem Sharif argued, in a series of

articles she published in the Urban Observatory, one of the projects of the Ten Toba
Foundation concerned with urbanization issues, under the title: “Housing Conditions
in Egypt 2022,” that gender is still a neglected axis in planning practices. Al-Omrani
wrote: “The city does not give women any kind of satisfaction in immersing
themselves in the crowded streets and public transportation. On the contrary, the
idea itself raises feelings of fear of violation, and reminds of the trauma of previous
experiences of exposure to violence in public spaces,” which affected proportional
representation. Women in the city's economy in a way that turns women's spatial
alienation into economic marginalization.Egypt ranked 134th out of 146 countries
included in the “Gender Gap for 2023” report, issued by the World Economic Forum,
while a previous study published in 2020, entitled: “Work Obstacles Facing Women
in Egypt,” indicated that difficulties in mobility It hinders women's participation in
the labor market, while World Bank studies have confirmed that if the rate of
women's participation in the labor market matches the rate of men's participation,
the gross domestic product will increase by 34%.

In practice, society does not reap the benefits of its investments in human capital,
and perhaps this is one of the reasons why Egyptian cities - despite the per capita
GDP reaching approximately $3,698 in 2021 according to the World Bank - are
declining on global quality of living indicators. Cairo ranked 226th in Mercer’s quality
of living standards during the current year (i.e. 2023)10

For architect Nermin Baligh, founder of Archimaker, the first virtual engineering
office in the Middle East, architecture aims to achieve human well-being, regardless
of his/her identity, gender, or health and social conditions, even if women are more
particular in urban planning standards for cities. . Baligh says, “Facilitating human
communication within society is the lofty goal of the art of architecture, and this is
what Egyptian city planning lacks in its current form. However, it has been noted in
recent times that the design of new Egyptian cities has begun to be consistent, to a
very simple extent. To begin “With internationally agreed upon architectural
standards regarding facilitating the flow of movement, allocating larger spaces for
safe walking, providing sidewalks with appropriate heights that include ramps for
children’s strollers and wheelchairs to ascend and descend, while implementing
shopping centers that include places designated for breastfeeding mothers, in a way
that achieves the well-being of all members of society.”.

Why are capitalist cities hostile to women?

Cities all over the world are considered the most attractive to young people due to
their expected role in enriching their abilities to face the future. Where 55% of the
world's population lives. The percentage is expected to rise to 68% by the year 2050,
according to United Nations estimates, and in line with economist Edward Glaeser’s
predictions of the “triumph of the city” in his book entitled with the same name
(Triumph of the City), as a result of the abundance of human inventions and the
growth of Intellectual capital during the industrial revolution led by major cities
operating within the framework of a global economic system that relies on
10
Mercer, a human resources consulting company, ranks the world's capitals in its annual quality of
living report, with the aim of helping companies determine the value of compensation for employees
sent to work abroad.
exploitation coupled with the commodification of cities, their spaces and public
commons, and capital’s assault on the process of social reproduction 11 falling on the
shoulders of the family - with women at its heart - for the sake of accumulating the
wealth of the rich. By forcibly changing the patterns of public spaces and
transforming them from commons of movement and daily use for the poor working
class into profit-generating spaces for the benefit of the capitalist real estate
developer. This was expressed by the social and geographical theorist David Harvey
in his book “Rebellious Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution,”
and he described it as a mechanism of “accumulation by abstraction,” in a way that
made the neoliberal city the nucleus of revolutionary movements, and not the
factory, as the philosopher and economic theorist had previously stated. Karl Marx
emphasized that in his famous book, “Capital.” By adopting this lens, we can expand
our vision of class struggle within capitalist cities based on spatial alienation, policies
of urban segregation, and the commodification of public spaces. In fact, this
neoliberal era has become a metaphor for deeper human needs, such as:
environmental justice and adequate housing, along with the unequal right to the city,
as the French philosopher and sociologist, Henri Lefebre, put it in his book of the
same title (Le Droit à la ville), and was published two months before the outbreak of
the student revolution in France in May 1968. Lefebvre explains in his book the
urban problem of exploitative industrial capitalism, the impact of the
commodification of the city and the spatial disparity between rich and poor
neighborhoods in terms of the availability of public services and its impact on social
interactions, The resulting class conflict and the growing feeling of spatial alienation,
hostility and hatred among the residents of one society 12. In addition to the concept
of the right to the city, the eleventh goal of the United Nations Sustainable
Development Goals focused on making cities inclusive, safe, more streamlined, and
compatible with the needs of their people, which require paying more attention to
improving the built environments. Therefore, feminist urbanism places women's
experiences at the heart of urban planning for cities that were not historically built to
be gender neutral due to the failure of planners and architects to recognize the
complex and unequal relations between the sexes, and their adoption of designs
based on affectation, huge buildings, and highways that destroy residential areas in
favor of commercial and industrial areas. This is something that the American writer,
Jane Jacobs, addressed in the fifties of the last century, when she strongly opposed

11
Nancy Fraser, Cesena Arutza, and Thithi Bhattacharya, Feminism for the 99%, translated by
Muhammad Ramadan, reviewed by Elham Aidaros, Safsafa Publishing House, 2019, electronic copy
on the Abjad application.
12
A group of authors, We Buy Everything: Housing and Urban Transformations in Egypt, edited by:
Yahya Shawkat and Shehab Ismail, Dar Al-Maraya, 2022, electronic copy on Abjad.
urban development plans that poisoned cities, and demanded that the already
existing public spaces that provide social interaction not be destroyed for capitalist
purposes, which put her in a confrontation with real estate development companies
after their success in halting a project to build a freeway in Manhattan that would
have bisected Washington Square. In 1961, Jacques published her groundbreaking
book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” in which she asserted that the
grandiosity of capitalist city planning and the encroachment on sidewalks and parks
affected family relationships and destroyed the spirit of nature.

Returning to the story of Ahlam, which I heard while the words of the late writer,
Hanan Kamal, contained in her book “Green Notebook and Letters” were echoing in
my ears: “I will ask God to create me in a beautiful city, for my soul has dried up from
this surrounding ugliness.”13 At the end of her talk, Ahlam joked with me, saying,
“Maybe my luck will turn out better in the metaverse,” in a hint from her for life in
virtual cities, then she asked me “what did your streets do to you? I smiled and
wandered.

13
Hanan Kamal, Green Notebook and Letters, Al Ain Publishing House, 2022, electronic copy on
Abjad