The General Organization for Physical Planning (GOPP) is

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...

's national level regional planning body and is affiliated to the Ministry of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities.

History

The GOPP started life in 1965 as the Greater Cairo Planning Commission or GCPC as a planning body for the

Greater Cairo The Greater Cairo Region (GCR; ar, القاهرة الكبرى, Al-Qāhira al-Kubrā) is th an economic region with no administrative body comprising the three governorates of Cairo, Giza and Qalyubia. Within it lies the largest metopolitan are ...

metropolis. It has been said the body has often set unrealistic goals such as to "halve the population of a city". As the government gave more importance to planning outside of the capital, the GCPC was elevated from a regional to a national planning body in 1973, becoming the General Organization of Physical Planning (GOPP) by Presidential Decree 1093/1973, making it responsible for drawing national policies for sustainable urban planning and development. In 2008, with the founding of the Cabinet level Supreme Council for Planning and Urban Development (SCPUD), the GOPP became its technical office, furnishing it with expertise, though still being a part of the ministry of housing.

Examples of work

The GOPP works on preparing national plans, regional plans, strategic masterplans for cities, as well as urban plans for towns and villages across the country. It has produced a series of masterplans for

, including the infamous Cairo 2050/2052 plan, that faced immediate criticism for its top-down mandates delivered as

megaproject A megaproject is an extremely large-scale investment project. According to the ''Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management'', "Megaprojects are large-scale, complex ventures that typically cost $1 billion or more, take many years to develop and ...

s that promised to displace large numbers of residents in an effort to turn Cairo into a " global city." On a regional level, the GOPP produced the Egypt 2052 Urban Development Plan, chief among its aims is doubling the size of inhabited land to 14% by building more

new towns A planned community, planned city, planned town, or planned settlement is any community that was carefully planned from its inception and is typically constructed on previously undeveloped land. This contrasts with settlements that evolve ...

and land reclamation schemes in the desert, as a measure to curb what it believes to be high population densities in the existing cities and villages on the

Nile The Nile, , Bohairic , lg, Kiira , Nobiin: Áman Dawū is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa and has historically been considered the longest ...

Valley and

Delta Delta commonly refers to: * Delta (letter) (Δ or δ), a letter of the Greek alphabet * River delta, at a river mouth * D ( NATO phonetic alphabet: "Delta") * Delta Air Lines, US * Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19 Delta may also ...

. The GOPP also partners with international organisations working to support urban planning and housing in Egypt including the United Nations Development Program (

UNDP The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)french: Programme des Nations unies pour le développement, PNUD is a United Nations agency tasked with helping countries eliminate poverty and achieve sustainable economic growth and human dev ...

References

{{Reflist, 33em 1965 establishments in Egypt 1981 disestablishments in Egypt Organizations established in 1965 Organisations based in Cairo Urban planning in Egypt