The Nile Valley covers a mere 5 percent of Egypt’s territory but provides a home for 95 percent of the country’s population. This thousand-kilometer-long fertile strip of land embedded into the smooth topography of the valley, forms a unique cultural landscape and is birthplace to one of the world’s most ancient civilizations. Since ancient times, life in the Nile Valley is enabled solely by the waters of the Nile River, and marked by a sharp edge to the barren desert. 

Today, this “linear oasis” is experiencing strong population growth; global modes of production and distribution have arrived, challenging the economy still largely based on small-scale subsistence agriculture. Within a habitat restricted by the Nile’s limited water resources, urbanisation almost always occurs at the expense of productive farming land. Thus, both water availability and food production are increasingly threatened in this fertile region. However, our most stunning observation is that the Nile Valley continues to support a fast population increase, despite enormous challenges related to land and water. The ETH Studio Basel has studied this specific mode of urbanisation of limited resources within a selected territorial section of the Nile Valley at Assiut. The study was carried out in collaboration with Assiut University.