By Dean Murray via SWNS
Incredible satellite images show a new capital city being built in the desert.
Cairo in Egypt has long been blighted by rising population, congestion, and pollution, so the government announced in 2015 that it would build and migrate to a brand-new city in the desert 45 kilometers (28 miles) east of Cairo.
The so-called New Administrative Capital – the city is not yet officially named – is earmarked to cover an area about the size of Singapore. It is designed to house more than six million residents, along with Egyptian government offices, a financial district, and other facilities.
As of March 2024, more than 1,500 families had moved to the city, according to news reports, with that number expected to reach 10,000 by the end of the year.
Government ministries are relocating, the parliament began meeting in its new building, and several banks and businesses were slated to move their headquarters there.
Satellite pictures taken by NASA’s OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 and the OLI-2 on Landsat 9 show progress in August 2017 and August 2024, respectively.
In the earlier image, traces of the city are visible as work on the megaproject had begun by this time. The expansion of the New Administrative Capital is evident in the later image.
Elsewhere, a satellite image from 1984 shows the new location barren and untouched, while in September 2019 progress can be seen.
Cairo’s population has grown from about 8 million to over 22 million since 1984, and this near-tripling of the population has dramatically changed the city’s footprint. In addition to building upward and outward along the fertile floodplain of the Nile River, development has spread to several new satellite cities built on desert plains outside of the city.
Approximately 95 percent of Egypt’s population lives within 20 kilometers of the Nile River and its delta, reliant on its fertile land and water. With increasing domestic and agricultural demands, the country is likely to import more water than is supplied by the Nile by the end of this decade, according to one projection.
