Informal networks alongside state efforts in megacity
Late-twentieth-century Cairo absorbed migrants faster than the state could plan for them. Many residents built unlicensed housing on farmland or moved into places like the tomb-houses of the City of the Dead, and got by through family, neighborhood and trade networks and a culture of irony and jokes. Rodenbeck also records government improvements to the city's infrastructure, so informal coping worked alongside official efforts rather than replacing them.