“But there was something inhuman about living inside a cocoon of tinted glass and stainless steel, air-conditioned, carpeted, stereophonic tape-decked, power optioned, isolated. It thwarted some deep human need to congregate , to be together, to see and be seen.”

—Micheal Crichton, The Terminal Man

This post ties into the same thought stream/brain dump from this one:

Cities create a social depersonalization syndrome¹. Motor vehicle dependency and traffic does not only induce social aggression, but  also infuse an atmosphere of alienation and dilutes social bonds.

But not all big cities are alike in this respect. Personal anecdotal evidence can be cited in comparing Cairo and Dubai². Both are huge urban centers. Both have an intractable traffic problem. Cairo is old, dusty and smelly, with lots of character. Dubai is new, shiny and (mostly) clean, yet very soulless.

Dubai reminded me of the car-centric areas in the US, especially Los Angeles. It reminded me of various cities in the Arabian Gulf that I have visited over the past few years, where life pivots on the automobile.

Here is another quote from The Terminal man:

Los Angeles had no sidewalk cafes, because no one walked; the sidewalk cafe, where you could stare at passing people, was not stationary but mobile. It changed with each traffic light where people stopped, stared briefly at each other, then drove on…Los Angeles was a town of recent immigrants and therefore strangers; cars kept them strangers…

You can substitute “Los Angeles” for “Dubai” in the above quote, and Crichton’s description will still be perfectly befitting of Dubai.

Cairo, on the other hand, has no shortage of sidewalk cafes. It is congested, dirty and polluted, but you can walk in downtown Cairo. You can sit in a sidewalk cafe, drink your tea, and watch the bustle of city life. You are never a stranger in a place like Cairo. The subtle importance of this characteristic is often overlooked and discounted. Maybe the human connections maintained by this under-appreciated quality is what keeps a city like Cairo from collapsing under the pressure of 16+ million people, a sea of motor vehicles, and inadequate infrastructure.

1. I reserve the right to make up, coin or otherwise mash-up new terms as I go. Remember that these are semi-raw brain dumps [↩]
2. I am a resident of Cairo, and have visited Dubai at least five or six times in the past three years [↩]