Welcome to the first episode of series two of A Line Traced, How to be Good Ancestors, in which we discuss the economic tools which perpetuate neocolonialism. In today’s episode focusing on Egypt, we are joined by Yahia Shawkat, an architect, housing and urbanism researcher and the cofounder of 10Tooba, a research centre devoted to urban politics. Shawkat will take us on a deep dive into the history of Egypt’s multiple housing regimes and their foreign entanglements, allowing us to examine how debt has been and continues to be levied as a tool of control and submission.
How to be Good Ancestors means rereading our past to disentangle future possibilities from systems of oppression. In this podcast series, hosts and AA students Ferial Massoud, Maria Putri and Aude Tollo retrace the common histories of three nominally decolonised states – Burkina Faso, Egypt and Indonesia – through the systems of debt servitude to which they were condemned in the wake of their independence, and which they remain subject to today. We ask: what are the spatial and material consequences of these systems and how can we begin to undo them?
SHOW NOTES:
- Yahia Shawkat, Egypt's Housing Crisis: The Shaping of Urban Space, 2020
- Yahia Shawkat’s research studio: 10tooba.org
- Lena fil Medina on YouTube
- Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity, 2002
- Robert Vitalis, When Capitalists Collide, Business Conflict and the End of Empire in Egypt, 2018
- David Sims, Understanding Cairo, the Logic of a City out of Control, 2012
ABOUT A LINE TRACED:
As our society continues to unveil fractures within its social and political systems, A Line Traced aims to examine topics that are immediate, prescient and impact the build environment in ways that require urgent architectural responses.
AirAA podcasts are conceived, recorded, mixed, edited and distributed from the Architectural Association School of Architecture, which is based in Bedford Square in London. Special thanks to Thomas Parkes for his contribution to the production of our episodes.
The opinions expressed in AirAA podcasts are solely those of the participants and do not represent the opinions of the Architectural Association as a whole.