SouthMED, North Coast, Egypt · North Africa

SouthMED occupies twenty-three million square metres on Egypt’s North Coast, the long Mediterranean shore Egyptians know as el Sahel, where Cairo empties out to the sea each summer. The sand here is calcareous, ground from shell and coral, and it is what gives the shallows their particular turquoise, its pale carbonate reflecting light back up through the water. Talaat Moustafa Group set out to give this coast a year-round destination, and to give travellers heading west along the shore a reason to stop.

The master plan is organised around interconnected hubs, each a character zone with its own draw, among them retail, sport, wellness, and the marina. Movement between them is part of the design: pathways share the roads with dedicated lanes for cycling and running, an electric bus network crosses the site to cut the need for driving within the community, and the lagoons open onto kayaking and paddleboarding.

More than sixty thousand homes are planned across the development, each with a view of water or the golf course, in chalets, villas, townhomes, and apartments to suit different households. Two thousand hotel keys sit alongside them, with a spa and wellness centre, restaurants and bars, shopping streets, an eighteen-hole golf course, and an international marina with room for some four hundred yachts. SouthMED spans 8 kilometres of Mediterranean beachfront, with 107 kilometres of swimmable lagoons threaded through it.

The master plan carries flexibility deliberately, built to absorb a range of development scenarios as the community’s needs change over the years it will take to complete. It is also built to run lightly, with smart systems controlling lighting and irrigation to hold down energy and water use.