The wide leaps we are witnessing today, for instance, in telecommunication have

turned comprehensive national planning into a much complex process than it used
to be half a century ago. The variables are dramatically increasing and their
interactions are getting more complex, which implicates that countries should
depend on a collective mind rather than individual minds in capable of producing
an acceptable efficiency towards a future that has to be properly imagined and
forecasted in order to produce an efficient plan to deal with.
It was inevitable to start with such long and dry introduction as a
foundation for a series of articles I intend concerning “Planning”. Those
articles cannot be limited to Physical (Urban) planning which could not be
addressed in isolation from other economic, social and environmental plans.
Furthermore, it is inevitable to discuss planning without diving into politics, as it
represents the vessel that carries theoretical plans into practical application. Egypt
suffered in recent years from massive instability, and is now on the edge of a new
era of its long history; a stage that implicates the reliance on comprehensive
national planning able to move the country from decline into revival. Long
decades were wasted in disoriented journeys and inconsistent paths that locked
Egypt within a vicious circle and prevented the country from moving forward,
surpassed by other nations that did not waste their efforts and wealth in
adventures orchestrated by the individual minds of the rulers and their entourage.
All what they did was relying on collective minds that planned their future in
isolation from political turbulences and change of systems.