lip-service to freedom of expression while orchestrating what is known in Arabic literature as manakh tarid , an atmosphere unpropitious to independent cultural praxis which succeeded in pushing many dissenting intellectuals out of the country; subsequent governments have maintained the same traditions. This coincided with the rise of the oil states, Saudi Arabia in particular, to fill the cultural vacuum caused by the ostracization of Egypt after Camp David and the destruction of Beirut by the Lebanese civil war. The same dynamics have underlain the rise of the al-madinah al-'ashwa'iyyah . Cairo's 'third city' developed randomly, without any overall plan, as a short-sighted reaction to the housing crisis. It reflected a terminal loss of faith in the state's ability to fulfil its citizens' basic needs. It was born out of a situation in which the immediate supersedes -- indeed, negates -- the strategic and long-term. Hence the irrationality of the 'third city', full of impasses and dead-ends. The two vast belts of semi-rural dwellings represent a regression from the urban planning of the 'second city', though without any of the bucolic beauty of the rural scene; an aimless return to pre-modern forms in housing, as well as in socio-political relations. The chaotic development of the 'third city' went hand in hand with the recoil from modernity and the return to traditional, even fundamentalist, stances, as underpinnings for the national ideology; with the deterioration of Egypt's broader political culture and the emergence of an inverted scale of social and national values.