Architecture Department, The Higher Institute of Engineering in El-Shorouk City, Cairo, Egypt
Abstract
This paper shall discuss heritage railways and tramways in Egypt to illustrate their contemporary state, as the Egyptian transportation heritage didn’t yet get the proper attention of the authorities, professionals and researchers. Both railways and tramways were implemented in Egypt in the nineteenth century and since the early years of the twentieth century they were considered to be essential public transportation systems for the Egyptians. After several decades, the cities became over crowded by population and the trams speed were much less than that of the cars and buses beside cross circulations that used to exist at points of intersections between tramways and cars mobility. So, the state adopted a trend of removing tramways to give more space and clear the way for cars mobility. The problem lies in adopting the removal action instead of directing the strategy to upgrade or evolve the transportation heritage systems where modern needs can be accommodated and heritage is conserved. Such removal caused cities’ essence and identity loss, lowed heritage awareness specially for the young generations and eliminated number of development opportunities that could have taken place. Objectives: to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the heritage railways and tramways in Egypt in-order to conclude a strategic framework that achieves community needs and heritage conservation. Methodology: The paper will adopt the analytical and comparative approaches through three phases. The first one will introduce the history of railways and tramways in Egypt, where it will be analyzed in means of the surrounding contexts as the political, economic, social and others. The analysis aims to conclude the multi-contextual role, advantages, factors of success and problems related to such transportation system. The second phase will represent similar cases listed as world heritage, where listing criteria are analyzed and compared to the local case in order to understand the possibility and conditions of listing the Egyptian heritage railways and tramways. The national and international practices, shall be also analyzed, in-order to propose conservation methods applicable to deal with the local case. Finally, a four stages strategic framework shall be displayed
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