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It’s all in keeping with the mantra of Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, the former army man who came to power in a 2013 coup, ruthlessly quashed the country’s Islamists, and has since entrenched his rule through the ballot box. Sissi has insisted the priority for Egypt is economic uplift, and he invokes the imperative of guaranteeing stability when dismissing criticism of the country’s shocking human rights record during his rule.

“We have been making sure Egypt is attractive to investment through ensuring stability. This is of the utmost importance,” he said last week in an interview with The Washington Post. “Just give us a chance to develop.”

Unsurprisingly, some Egyptians aren’t that impressed. “We, Cairenes and Egyptians, were not informed, let alone consulted about this move,” writes historian Khaled Fahmy, in a Facebook post. He said the vast amounts of money lavished on this new project ought, instead, be used to “improve the living standards of millions of Cairenes and of Egyptians who, at best, are dealt with as second-class citizens in their own country.”

The impulse for a leader to create a new capital is as old as history itself. Nothing is more symbolic of the centralizing authority of a new regime than a shining edifice, built in its supposed image. That’s why an array of countries in the mid-20th century — from Brazil to Nigeria to Pakistan — constructed new capitals from scratch, eager to replace legacies of division or colonial rule with soaring modernist visions of unity and the future.