A town without shortcuts

People who move from an old Cairo neighbourhood to one of the new towns in the desert complain about the same things.

There is no man on the corner who fixes everything. No shop that will hold a parcel for you because it knows your mother. No alley that cuts ten minutes off the walk. Nobody knows which plumber answers at night or which mechanic is honest. It all feels thin.

The old neighbourhood has all of that because it has had a century to collect it. Every shortcut was once a problem someone solved. Every arrangement, every exception, every favour that became a habit was added one at a time, after something went wrong and somebody patched it.

That is how every system grows. We improve it by adding to it. A rule here for an awkward case, a workaround there for a broken part, until it fits its people like an old shoe and is impossible to explain to an outsider.

A new town cannot have any of that yet. Criticising it for lacking character is like criticising a newborn for lacking opinions.

The better question is about its bones. Are the streets laid out so that small shops can open on the ground floors? Is there room for a market to appear where people actually gather? Will it bend when the residents start using it in ways the planners did not expect?

Those are the things worth noticing in anything new: a town, a shop, a way of working. Its polish will come, if the structure allows it.

The old neighbourhood is far more useful than a fresh plan. But it was a fresh plan once, and nothing gets to be worn and dependable without first being new.