Metropolis now

Welders work near the rising central business district of Egypt’s New Administrative Capital, which includes the 394-metre-high Iconic Tower (centre)

Welders work near the rising central business district of Egypt’s New Administrative Capital, which includes the 394-metre-high Iconic Tower (centre)

For two years Nick Hannes has been photographing the world’s newest cities, many of which are – or are destined to become – their country’s new capital. The project has taken him to Kazakhstan, where  Astana became the new seat of power in 1994, to Sejong in South Korea, designed to replace Seoul, and to Brasília, the model city inaugurated as Brazil’s capital in 1960. Hannes has also visited the sites of three cities-to-be. In Egypt he saw 700 square kilometres of desert being transformed into the New Administrative Capital [NAC], in Nigeria the building of Centenary City – a city within the capital – and in Indonesia a stretch of rainforest where Nusantara will one day replace the capital, Jakarta.

Hannes has found each one of them fascinating. “In theory, developing a new city should be the ideal situation,” he says. “You’re starting from scratch, you have everything open to you. You could create the perfect place. The results, however, are often far from perfect.”

A salesperson gives prospective clients a tour of the scale models on display at the Centenary City sales office. Centenary City is a planned 1,300-acre city, fenced off from the rest of Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory

The only way is Dubai

Hannes has noticed recurring themes in the cities he has documented, one of which is that the developers all seem to be emulating one place in particular. “Many of these new capitals are really inspired by Dubai,” says the Belgian photographer, who is publishing a book on new cities in April 2024. “The spokesman of the company building the NAC in Egypt literally said, ‘Dubai is our example… our inspiration’. It was the same in Nigeria. In [the capital] Abuja they are building Centenary City, and the sales office is littered with pictures of Dubai’s skyline. It’s interesting to see how this model is being copy and pasted to other countries around the world.”

Hannes says the Dubai template is based around three key things: skyscrapers, cars and bragging rights. “In Egypt’s NAC they’re building the biggest mosque, the biggest church, the tallest flagpole, all these new records. The centrepiece is going to be called ‘Iconic Tower’ – that will be the actual name of it, loud and clear. It is going to be almost 400 metres tall and the people behind it told me it was going to be the highest tower in Africa. Then again, in Centenary City they also told me that they will build the highest tower in Africa. So I don’t know if they are communicating with each other.”

People relax in the Sky Beach Club located inside the Khan Shatyr mall, Astana. The city is 900 miles from the nearest coast

Astana’s Khan Shatyr mall, designed by renowned British architect Norman Foster, towers over a more ramshackle building

In Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana – funded mostly by oil money – Hannes found another very familiar cityscape, with a dramatic skyline featuring buildings including the pyramid-shaped Palace of Peace and Reconciliation and the distinctive Khan Shatyr shopping centre, designed like a tent. “It all feels very Dubai,” he says. “As do things like the indoor beach clubs inside shopping malls. It all feels very interchangeable.”

But why is Dubai such an inspiration? “Dubai is considered an economic success story by a lot of people around the world. It’s a big example of how you can create a largely new city and make money without worrying too much about ecological and social issues while also gaining prestige and status.”

A woman cleans around the golden cast of the hand of former president Nursultan Nazarbayev in Bayterek Tower, Astana, while visitors stand in line to put their hands in the cast

We built this city

This prestige of creating these new cities is key, says Hannes, particularly when you look at the driving forces behind many of them. “Another thing that most of these projects have in common is that they are the ideas of very powerful, ego-driven male personalities,” he says. “Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan, Joko Widodo in Indonesia, el-Sisi in Egypt. They all want to write themselves into the history books and they see these cities as part of their legacy.”

Kazakhstan’s founding president Nursultan Nazarbayev is so closely connected to the development of the country’s capital that, for a while, the city was named after him. Nazarbayev maintained a vice-like grip on power in Kazakhstan for 30 years, both under the USSR and following independence in 1991. Even after stepping down as president in 2019, he retained the constitutional title of elbasy, or ‘leader of the nation’. One of the first moves of the current president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, was to change Astana’s name to Nur-Sultan in honour of his predecessor, but following widespread protests against corruption, poverty and inequality in 2022 the former name was restored. Nazarbayev has also lost his elbasy status, but his shadow still looms large. “He’s everywhere in the city,” says Hannes. “There are statues of him, he has his own museum, there’s even a cast of his hand in gold that is kept in a tower. Visitors can put their hand in it to make a wish. It’s a lot of self-glorification.”

There are similar plans for Indonesia’s new capital to honour the country’s president, Joko Widodo. “The presidential palace is going to be the first building in the new city,” says Hannes, who was shown a scale model of the planned structure. “The building symbolises the Garuda Pancasila, the eagle-shaped national emblem of Indonesia, with open wings. To me, it looks scary, like something from a fantasy movie.”

A man prays in front of a billboard featuring President al-Sisi on a roundabout in Egypt’s New Administrative Capital

Architect Sofian Sibarani, head of urban design studio Urban Plus, surveys plans for the new Indonesian capital, Nusantara

In Egypt, Hannes says that some critics believe self-preservation as well as self-glorification is behind President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s support of the NAC. “During the Arab Spring in 2011 we saw this massive uprising against [former president Hosni] Mubarak,” says Hannes. “Such huge demonstrations will never be possible in the new capital. [The way the city is designed] with so many cameras, so much security, means it will be difficult for an uprising to gather momentum.  So the new city is about moving the power – the ministries, the presidential palace, and so on – and putting it somewhere where the population can be more controlled.”

Hannes says there are a lot of concerns about the connections between developers, the military and the government. “In Egypt it was very interesting to see the president being depicted on billboards for real estate companies. It says a lot about how political power and real estate are connected,” he says. It is estimated that the NAC, which will include a crystal pyramid, a vast presidential palace and a military complex seven times the size of the Pentagon, will cost $59 billion. A lot of that money will go to the military, which owns the land on which the capital is being built. “The military is a very powerful entity in Egypt, not only in defence terms, but also economically,” says Hannes. “It owns seven percent of Egypt’s hotels, and a lot of the tourism infrastructure, and is connected to construction companies and developers.”

In April el-Sisi announced that $203 million a year of taxpayers’ money would be paid to the military-owned Administrative Capital for Urban Development to rent ministries and other official buildings in the NAC. Over the nine years since he became president, Egypt’s national debt has tripled. “There’s a lot of criticism about the cost of this new capital,” says Hannes. “People argue that there are very urgent needs in Cairo that are not being addressed, but all the money is flowing to this prestigious new city where few from the old capital will be able to live because they cannot afford it.”

Workers tile a courtyard in front of the new Misr mosque in Egypt’s New Administrative Capital. One of the largest mosques in the world, it will be able to accommodate 100,000 people

A resident puts organic waste into a disposal unit installed in an apartment complex in Sejong. The bags fall down into an underground pipe system, which is connected to the city’s waste facility

Pyramid schemes

Another similarity Hannes has noted between the people creating the new cities is a belief that if you build it, they will come. The developers of Egypt’s NAC claim it will eventually be home to seven million people. Indonesia’s Nusantara, little more than mud and trees at the moment, is expected by the government to have two million residents by 2045. Hannes isn’t convinced these predictions will turn out to be accurate. “You’re talking about people leaving their homes, their families, the culture of the old city and moving to somewhere new – that’s not easy,” he says. “A new city lacks the social fabric of an old one and that’s a difficult thing to replicate. They talk about Dubai, but 90 percent of the population of Dubai are [migrants], not people moving from one part of the country to another.”

As an example of the difficulty of getting people to move, Hannes cites Sejong, founded in 2007 as the new administrative capital of South Korea. A smart city, it is meticulously planned and boasts automated rubbish collection, electric car charging, zero-waste food disposal and solar-powered buildings, all designed to make it comfortable and sustainable. Still, many seem reluctant to live there. “The government relocated ministries to Sejong and encouraged employees to build their lives there,” says Hannes. “But a lot of employees are just commuting [for 80 miles each way] because they don’t want to live in a boring city. They prefer Seoul, with all the culture, social life, restaurants and bars. It will take generations to make these new cities lively and organic.”

The Brazilian capital is a case in point. “Brasília was inaugurated in 1960 and only now can you feel it starting to come to life,” says Hannes. “But the design of the city means you will always have these empty, eerie spaces. A lot of the other new cities used the same kind of layout. They’re very car-centric, with wide avenues and lots of car parks. They’re spread out, so you don’t get the density, but often it’s the density that gives a city life.”

Hanok Village, a new district with luxury houses built in the traditional Korean style, situated in Sejong

Brasília’s Metropolitan Cathedral, designed by Oscar Niemeyer

Paradise cities?

In both Egypt and Indonesia, however, the density in the current capitals is not sustainable. Cairo is creaking under the weight of its mushrooming population, with high levels of pollution, gridlocked traffic and stuttering infrastructure. It is estimated that more than 22 million people live in the greater metropolitan area today, compared to 2.4 million in 1950. “Some 60 percent of these inhabitants live in informal settlements,” says Hannes. “That means millions living in illegally-built buildings. It’s been going on for decades and you cannot turn it back.”

Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, meanwhile, is literally sinking under the weight of its population. Forty percent of the city is technically below sea level and the subsidence is getting worse – some districts are sinking by more than 25 centimetres a year and certain low-lying sections are already permanently flooded. With sea levels rising as the city sinks, scientists predict that by the middle of the century most of Jakarta will be permanently flooded. “In the long run it won’t be possible to live there,” says Hannes. Relocating one of Asia’s largest cities, with a population of over ten million, is no mean feat, but in 2019 it was announced that an area in excess of 2,500 square kilometres had been earmarked in Borneo’s East Kalimantan province, over 1,000 km from Jakarta, as the site for the new capital.

In its 2024 budget, Indonesia allocated $2.7 billion to the construction of the new capital city, which is expected to cost $32 billion by the time it is completed. At present, however, there is very little of Nusantara to see. “It’s quite hard to imagine that two million people will live there at the edge of the rainforest,” says Hannes. “I photographed a blue marker that represents ground zero, the centre of the new city, and it seems like it is in the middle of nowhere at the moment. But there are people living there. There are about 70 villages of indigenous tribes.”

WALHI, the largest and oldest environmental advocacy NGO in Indonesia, has described the new capital as “a massive ecological disaster” while the Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of Nusantara has warned of people being “pushed out of their land” and estimates that at least 20,000 indigenous people will be relocated. Hannes has heard similar warnings in the other cities he has photographed. “The biggest question that should be asked when building new cities is how to make them sustainable and socially inclusive, with a place for everybody,” he says. “The examples that I photographed are not that. A lot of people I spoke to believe they will never be able to afford to live in these new places… That these are just cities for the happy few.”

Many of the new cities, Hannes says, actively market their separation from the rest of society. “There is an architecture of fear,” he says. “Gated compounds, barbed wire and checkpoints.” Egypt’s NAC has promised that over 6,000 cameras will monitor the city’s streets while Centenary City in Abuja advertises itself as a “city within a city”, access to which will be controlled by “screening” and with certain areas which people will need an invitation to enter. “It feels like it is literally dividing society to create an enclave for the rich,” says Hannes.

With increases in global population and urbanisation, the need for new cities seems set to rise but Hannes points out that there is the danger of a gap opening between the kind of places where developers want to build and the places people want to call home. “Developers have plans for safe islands that are very predictable,” he says. “But people don’t want to live in a boring city. I’ve walked around these places and I’ve seen the plans of those yet to be built and, honesty, I wouldn’t want to live in any of them.”

Visitors take pictures at Titik Nol, or Ground Zero, where a blue marker indicates the spot where the centre of Indonesia’s new capital, Nusantara, will be

Children washing clothes in a slum settlement outside the security wall of a luxury estate in Abuja

Posted on Wednesday, June 19th, 2024 - Categories: #52 - Jul-Sep 2023, App Issues.