With new Egypt capital being built, what becomes of crowded Cairo?

Cairo - Cairo may soon witness an exodus by well-heeled residents, state employees and foreign embassies to the New Administrative Capital.

Billboards across Cairo advertise luxury homes with "breathtaking" views in compounds with names like "La Verde" or "Vinci" in Egypt's new capital that is under construction in the desert, miles from the Nile-side city which has been the seat of power for more than 1,000 years.
Often, what lies behind the billboards are Cairo's most overcrowded neighbourhoods, with shoddily built homes and dirt roads frequently inundated with sewage water.
A city of some 20 million people combining charm and squalor, Cairo may soon witness an exodus by well-heeled residents, state employees and foreign embassies to the New Administrative Capital, as the vast project in the desert is provisionally known.
The new capital - a proper name has yet to be found - is the $45 billion brainchild of general-turned-president Abdel Fattah El Sisi, the biggest of the mega-projects he launched since taking office in 2014. He contends the projects, ranging from new roads and housing complexes to a Suez Canal expansion, attract investors and create jobs.
Senior officials boastfully compare what has been built under El Sisi to monuments like the Giza Pyramids.
"History will do justice to this generation of Egyptians and our grandsons will remember its achievement, a wave of construction unprecedented in modern-day Egypt," Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouly, also the housing minister, proclaimed.
The government argues that Cairo is already bursting at the seams and will grow to 40 million by 2050.
The new city is being built on 170,000 acres about 28 miles east of Cairo and nearly twice its size. Construction began in 2016, and the first of its forecast 6.5 million residents are scheduled to move there next year.
The city will house the presidency, Cabinet, parliament and ministries. Planners promise a 21-mile-long public park, an airport, an opera house, a sports complex and 20 skyscrapers, including Africa's highest, at 345 meters.

• MENA