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 Cairo’s 74-acre Al-Azhar Park is the former site of one of the city’s largest dumps for rubble and garbage. The Cairo Citadel, with its delicate spires, looms on the horizon. |
Weekend Edition Sunday, May 4, 2008 · Amid Cairo’s sprawling cityscape, there’s a lush retreat where Egyptians can find some breathing space.
Like New York’s Central Park, the 74-acre Al-Azhar Park is a green getaway for the city’s 17 million residents. But less than a decade ago, Al-Azhar Park was little more than a mound of dirt and trash — a 500-year-old garbage dump.
“It was … the shame of the city,” says Thomas Taha Rassam Culhane, founder of Solar Cities, a group that is installing environment-friendly solar hot-water heaters in Cairo’s slums.
At a cost of $30 million, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture hired world-class Egyptian, European and American architects who worked with the city and local residents to create Cairo’s first new green space in more than a century.
Ismailimail 