Current Time in Al Qāhirah al Jadīdah, Egypt

Al Qāhirah al Jadīdah, the Arabic name meaning New Cairo, occupies the desert plateau east of the historic Egyptian capital, roughly twenty to thirty kilometres from the Nile. The ground here stands noticeably higher than the river valley, which gives the area cleaner air, cooler nights and long views back towards the haze of old Cairo. Where there was bare limestone desert a generation ago, there are now boulevards, irrigated verges, villas and towers.

Several hundred thousand people live in the city, and its planned capacity is far greater, since it was conceived as a home for millions. Administratively it belongs to Cairo Governorate. Its importance lies in the role it plays in the future of the capital: New Cairo is the flagship of Egypt's long campaign to move population and activity out of the crowded Nile valley and onto the desert plateau, easing pressure on farmland and on the historic core.

The idea of desert satellite cities dates from the 1970s, when Egyptian planners concluded that the valley could not absorb continued growth. New Cairo was formally established in 2000 by merging several earlier settlements, among them the districts still universally known by number as the First, Third and Fifth Settlements. The Fifth Settlement, called Tagamoa el Khames in everyday speech, became the most successful, filling with gated compounds, business parks, private schools and shopping centres, and its growth pulled embassies, banks and corporate headquarters eastwards out of the old city.

The architecture is the attraction here rather than antiquity. The American University in Cairo built a spectacular new campus in New Cairo in 2008, using warm desert stone, shaded courtyards and mashrabiya screens in a contemporary reinterpretation of Islamic design, and it is open to visitors for lectures and exhibitions. The German University in Cairo, Future University and other private institutions have created a genuine academic quarter. Cairo Festival City is one of the largest shopping and entertainment complexes in the Middle East, and the Katameya golf courses and desert riding trails draw weekend crowds.

The atmosphere is quite unlike the old city. Life is car-based, spread out and comparatively quiet, with cafés, international restaurants, sports clubs and cinemas rather than crowded souks. Residents tend to be young professional families, and a significant expatriate community has settled here. The Ninetieth Street corridor is the main commercial spine and the place where the city feels most alive in the evening.

Ring roads and the Cairo–Suez and Cairo–Ain Sokhna highways provide fast connections, the airport is roughly half an hour away, and an electric light rail line and a monorail have been built to link the eastern desert cities with each other and with the new administrative capital further east. Buses and ride-hailing services handle most journeys.

Al Qāhirah al Jadīdah shows Egypt looking forward rather than back, and it is the clearest place to see how the country intends its metropolitan future to look.