The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

Featured image via: The Culture Trip.

Despite the nuisance – and sometimes even ugliness- of some parts of Cairo, we still love our capital and manage to see the beauty of its streets. But sometimes we need a little nudge. And to make that nudge easier, and the beauty much clearer, there have been a bunch of initiatives aiming to right wrongs and fix things up. Today we’re highlighting four of the best initiatives aiming to beautify our beloved Cairo streets.

Cairo without Karro (horse-drawn carts)

While horse riding and fairytale horse carts are good things, the horse carts we see in Cairo are the embodiment of ugliness and animal torture. This is why there an initiative with the aim of replacing those vehicles – mainly used for purposes of transporting goods – with tricycles as a means of making Cairo’s streets look nicer. Not to mention doing a lot of good for traffic. The initiative takes these carts from their owners, gives them back a tricycle, and sends the animals (horses or donkeys) to a shelter.

Planting Cairo’s Roofs

Just like a lot of Arab and European cities, Cairo can become a cleaner city roof by roof. Their rate is quite impressive, as they’re currently cleaning up and turning green 10 roofs per month, free of charge to the owners of the buildings.

Rebranding Kiosks

Perhaps one of the perks of walking down the streets of Cairo is finding a kiosk anywhere on any street. You don’t even need to go across the street, because if you walk a little bit further, you’ll most probably find another one. Unfortunately, these kiosks don’t look very appealing, which is why this initiative is looking to remove unlicensed kiosks, especially those that tap into the public electricity current, and assign the dome shape as the main design for kiosks in Cairo, creating unified, better looking kiosks.

Musical Kiosks

Since the kiosks are an essential part of Cairo, this initiative targets them as well. The idea is to spread kiosks that play classical music, whether Arabic or foreign. This was first implemented in Maadi, and is soon set to be applied in Downtown Cairo in Abdeen Area as well as Al-Sharifain Street. Just something to add a little music to our Cairo streets walks.