Egypt's New Capital is an Ozymandian Nightmare

The Arabic subtitles are now up, thanks for those who made the effort! They asked to remain anonymous for their own safety.

As an american, hearing city designers intentionally want to design “american style suburbs” is eldritch insanity.

When they want a 20-lane highway just for military parades, that's a red flag the size of the world's biggest flagpole

2023 update from Egypt: He ran out of foreign currency now and couldn't finish his cartoon project. Interestingly, he is blaming the people at the moment. We're fu*ked 😂

This Egyptian idiocy is still a thousand times more sane than Saudi's The Line.

At least Egypt’s leader is making the old pharaohs proud. They also loved building biggly big vanity projects in the desert.

Dude you are the first to critisize this dumbass project. Seriously, thank you. As a half Egyptian, It is nice that somebody actually did the math instead of saying "BIG BUILDINGS = BIG COOL"

Egypt: "We have the biggest flagpole in the world!" Average RV Retailer in the US: "Challenge accepted"

As an African and Architecture student this makes me realize that some African countries may be in a phase of 'wanting to speed up development, but not tackling the problems that DO matter and instead going for flashy developments at the cost of the less fortunate citizens or ALL of the regular citizens'... and my country is one of them🤦‍♀️. I empathise with the citizens negatively affected by these developments. I also have seriously been ruminating over this question, 'What are our leaders' priorities??!' Because it seems it's not the general citizens and their welfare.☹️

Fining poor people for repairing their homes and then condemning the buildings is truly next-level. Solidarity to every single Egyptian who is getting shafted by this bullsht.

This is kinda like when the old pharaohs of Egypt would build a new capital city in a useless patch of desert every time a new dynasty came into power, allegedly because of important reasons like defence or trade or whatever, but its actually so they can ignore the original capitals. Edit: I noticed that a lot of people like to call out how I worded this comment originally and how they seem to think that this has only happened once in history, so I’m going to address that here for people who care. There were many times in Egypt’s history when a new dynasty would come into power, they’d build a new city (or at least convert the site of a town or small city) and call it their new capital. For example during the rule of the twelfth dynasty in the Middle Kingdom period they changed the capital of Egypt from Thebes to the city of Itjtawy, which was founded by the first pharaoh of the twelfth dynasty King Amenemhat I. Another good example of this phenomena happened when the Hyksos invaded and settled northern Egypt, founding the new capital of avaris, another city founded in a patch of desert just to be the seat of a few pharaohs. And of course this also happened loads of other times until the Persians invaded, got kicked out, put themselves back in charge, then Alexander the Great came around and built the city of Alexandria where many of the future rulers of Egypt will sit. Idk why people think this is a rare occurrence, it’s not like this is something that’s entirely unprecedented, many other countries like China and Germany and India also had this happen. If you’re going to make statements like that then go and learn the history first.

i am 100% sure every Egyptian citizen who watched this video wants to share it but we r afraid of being arrested☠☠

Thanks Adam. As Egyptians, no one dare criticize the system or his individual figures. Seeing this video is a release. Thanks 🤍

There was a Economist here in Egypt that used to go on air in popular shows and talk about problems in Egypt and actually suggest solutions to them. He even suggested solutions to almost every problem the country had bit apparently he spoke too much that he was *killed*.

Egyptian here: we have food shortages, high inflation rates, high unemployment, underfunded healthcare and education, and high rate of corruption.then mr el sisi wants to build a fancy expensive capital for the rich assholes to live far away from our impoverished population. Nice video Adam.

The American military headquarters is a Pentagon yes? Yes. And a pentagon has five sides correct? Yes sir. I want our complex to have eight, make it a full-on octagon. And make it magnitudes bigger than their Pentagon. But sir, the Pentagon is enormous already... Bigger! With eight sides! Sir, our military is a fraction of the size of the United States military. We really don't need a... BIGGER!!!

Yeah, that's worth subscribing. Not only pointing out the flaws in the project, but taking a strip off of people who are cheerleaders for insane garbage like this without bothering to consider what they actually support.

The worst part of these projects is that when the working classes say "why don't you pay us better? provide security? healthcare? help us make the country a better place for everyone?", the response is always "who's gonna pay for it??". But when the rich and powerful want to build stuff like this, using public funds is patriotic.

Unfortunately, as an Egyptian, we never see people publicly criticizing this dumbass project. The media is controlled by the government and if you even post a criticism about this on your personal social media account and it got enough exposure, they're eventually going to take you down and you will essentially disappear. Thank you for making this video.

True that regarding the flagpole. I mean if you look at the top 6 before Egypt took the top spot, the tallest flagpoles are in Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, North Korea, Iran, and Turkmenistan...all dictatorships in some shape or form (Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, but that's just a fancier dictatorship). And it gets better, Azerbaijan will now have an even TALLER flagpole. The last flagpole was 162 m/531 feet but it was dismantled in 2017 because the flag being ripped by the wind many times. With help from Turkey, they'll have the second tallest flagpole at 191 m/627 feet, beating Saudi Arabia's 171 m/561 feet. Also, they're building an urban park just to own Central Park? Bruh, Central Park isn't even the biggest urban park. That title goes to Table Mountain National Park in Cape Town, South Africa with over 74,000 acres