Dr.Hesham Mohamed El-Barmelgy

The term inner beauty and outer beauty of the city was brought forward by one of the world famous Architects (Liu Thai Ker, Singapore) in the 39th forum of the International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISoCaRP) Cairo, Egypt 19-21 October, 2003. He argued that Architects and Urban Designers have been striving for the last decades to achieve the outer beauty of their cities. He asserts that the only way to succeed in achieving such beauty is through achieving the inner beauty of their cities first. The paper attempt to discuss to what extent this asserts is true through a comprehensive study of Fatimid Cairo as a traditional case study where primitivism has managed to achieve the inner and the outer beauty of the city. The discussion is to be extended to take ‘inner beauty’ beyond the abstraction of the term to investigate the ability of sustainable development to achieve the required inner beauty of our contemporary cities.