Foster + Partners has won a competition to redesign the area around the Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU) headquarters in Cairo’s Maspero area, according to an announcement made yesterday by the Egyptian Ministry of State for Urban Renewal and Informal Settlements (MURIS).

“On the banks of the River Nile, the future of Maspero burns bright,” states Grant Brooker, Senior Executive Partner at Foster + Partners. “And we are sure our sustainable model of development will set the benchmark for urban regeneration throughout the country.”

The Maspero Triangle District Masterplan, as the initiative is called, endeavors to dramatically remake the Nile-adjacent neighborhood while still maintaining its current demographic heterogeneity, which comprises informal settlements of around 12,000 people interspersed among high-end real estate. The plan will rehouse the majority of the low income population in the same area, the press release states, and, unlike others in recent history, this development will not force any evictions, Dr. Laila Rashed Iskandar, the head of MURIS, has claimed.

Smack dab in the center of the site, the ERTU headquarters building bears a particular significance for the city that remains unstated in the project brief. The building, also known simply as Maspero, is the source for much of Egypt’s state-run, and famously censored, media. Despite this, it’s a massive and influential sector, both domestically and abroad. In a country with an illiteracy rate that bubbles over 40%, television wields a lot of power.

“Maspero is one of the most powerful places in Egypt,” a 21 year old filmmaker named Mahmoud told a reporter from Al-Ahram, nearly four years ago. “It broadcasts straight into everyone’s homes; it can control what the nation thinks.”

For several nights, Mahmoud had been camping alongside several hundred other protesters, on a narrow strip of pavement separating the enormous, boat-like ERTU building from the tree-lined Nile corniche. A banner was hung that read, “Down with military rule.” A wall of barbed wire buttressed the building, alongside a heavy guard.

That was in January 2012, just over a year after the initial demonstrations in Tahrir Square that led to the ousting of Hosni Mubarak. Protesters were frustrated with the anniversary festivities that had been staged, and increasingly began to identify the broadcasting organization in their complaints, chanting “The people demand the purge of state media!”

At the time, Egypt was under the rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), a statutory body meant to oversee the country’s transition from 20 years under Mubarak to a civilian government. But rather than some neutral, background party, the SCAF garnered a good deal of distrust for its heavy handed and opaque judicial processes. And like its predecessor governments, it actively utilized the media towards its own ends.

Several months previously, in October 2011, members of Cairo’s sizable Coptic minority gathered to protest the destruction of a church in Upper Egypt. A long-persecuted minority, the Copts were angry not only about the destruction, but also the contradictory statements issuing from the local governor’s office and the media.

The crowd of Coptic demonstrators marched from the downtown neighborhood of Shubra to Maspero. Witnesses reported soldiers shooting wildly at the crowds and armored military vehicles crushed protesters to death. Behind them, the tall antenna of the concrete behemoth radiated manipulated reports that blamed the Copts for the violence. In the days that followed, the state-run media continued its misinformation campaign.

Since then, elections were held, leading to the presidency of the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi. But after he assumed near-unlimited power, Morsi faced renewed street protests that quickly escalated. On July 3, 2013, a military coup forced him out of office and into prison. A crackdown on Morsi’s supporters followed, resulting in some 1,400 dead and 16,000 detained. The former-head of the SCAF, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, assumed power after running essentially unopposed in controversial elections.

Today, the media largely defends and enables Sisi, despite (or because of) reports that more Egyptian journalists are currently imprisoned than ever before. “I would say anything the military tells me to say out of duty and respect for the institution,” the popular TV presenter Ahmed Moussa told The Guardian earlier this year. In Egypt as elsewhere, image control is paramount for political control. 

The Maspero Triangle District Masterplan is intended to be the landmark, initial project of a much larger building initiative. Egypt has a mass housing shortage, particularly in its sprawling capital, that manifests in inadequate and often dangerous informal settlements. Sisi knows that he will have to grapple with this, as well as resource shortages and widespread unemployment, if he is to maintain his position. Notably, the government recently announced they would build an entire new capital – capable of housing some 5 million – in the desert between Cairo and Suez.

In an image of the model for the masterplan, the colossal Maspero TV building still clearly dominates the area, although more because of its scale than anything else. Here it is rendered in wood – matching the rest of the city – rather than the clear plastic or glass used for the new Foster + Partners-designed waterfront towers. A triangular “Lagoon” has been excised from the pavement directly to the building’s left, and the press announcement promises that “a number of cafés, restaurants and shops…will make [the Lagoon] a highly desirable leisure destination.” 

The new commercial and residential spaces are sited along the edge of the Nile, while the dense interior will remain mixed-use. The plan includes a slew of parks, open space in the center of the neighborhood, and several large, new avenues to connect the pedestrian-oriented paths.

The master plan also includes an incremental development schedule, one of its most compelling components.  “Following a flexible approach, the first phase will fill the empty spaces within the district with greenery to enhance the vibrant public realm in the community,” the press release states. “This will improve the quality of life in the district and benefit the existing community immediately. Subsequently, the parts of the residential and commercial areas will be built in tandem creating a sustainable model of development.”

Indeed, there’s reason to hold out hope for the Maspero Triangle District plan. Iskander, the head of MURIS spearheading the initiative, is recognized as having a solid record of social entrepreneurship (a fraught term, admittedly – something she has acknowledged herself). She defends a “rights-based approach” that would provide residents of informal settlements with land rights, and work directly with them to decide whether to renovate their homes or relocate. So far, granting property rights has also helped quiet the protests of gentrification-wary residents who had taken to the streets earlier in the year.

But, frankly, it’s hard to imagine that the gleaming, photogenic cityscape rendered by Foster + Partners can emerge from a piecemeal, rights-based approach that truly privileges resident-approval over other criteria. Rather, more insidious potentials orbit around the Maspero Triangle District Masterplan. In the model, the dense neighborhood is cut up, organized and clarified by a series of palm-lined avenues, inadvertently invoking the specter of Paris’ Haussmannization. Wide avenues aren’t just photogenic, they’re also tactical.

The gleaming, screen-friendly renderings provided alongside the announcement bear little resemblance to the videos and images of Maspero’s recent past. One depicts an anesthetized street scene that looks like it was it plucked straight from a mall development project in Southern California, save for the vaguely-Islamic wooden grilles, the hijab-wearing women, and the djellaba-clad man leading a goat. In the other, an elderly man pours tea on a rooftop decorated with hip wooden furniture while, in the background, the tall antenna of the Maspero building scrapes the sky, ready to beam out more images just like these.

Correction: An article recently published in the Guardian on the Maspero District plan notes that Iskander was forced out of her position as head of MURIS in September 2015.