The village capital Larger Khartoum is the second largest city of Muslim North Africa. But apart from the colonial downtown, there is very little here differentiating it from villages around the country. Low scale one-storied houses stretch out for miles in all direction, out from the river junction that has given the capital its name.
Paved streets are rare.
Upper class quarters have now shrunk in, and has more in common with the surroundings that higher middle class live in elsewhere in the Arab world. Khartoum could have been a melting pot for all of Sudan's peoples, but has become a blender. Clothes worn, by women in particular, still manage to fascinate, but that's more or less it. When people here have managed to put up a house, just enough to give shelter and some feeling of privacy, then there are few incentives to move them on. A shop or a stall selling basic commodities will be the most advanced act.