For millennia, the population of Egypt and its economic activities have been heavily concentrated in the Nile valley and Delta. Beginning in the late 1970s, the Government of Egypt, concerned by such spatial imbalance, began to launch multiple efforts to deconcentrate the population and “invade” the desert. These efforts, which have continued over five decades, have included constructing new cities and communities in the desert, developing remote coasts for international and domestic tourism, launching successive irrigation and desert land reclamation schemes, establishing extensive industrial and logistical zones, and building new highways and development corridors outside the Nile valley. Such a concerted spatial development policy, backed by major planning efforts, new legislation, and immense budgetary allocations, have accelerated in the last ten years, notably with the launching of the New Administrative Capital.