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Informal areas have largely been responsible for absorbing most of Egypt's growing urban population for the past 30 years. But most Cairenes didn't notice these areas - or ashweyat, as the areas with red-brick buildings and narrow, unpaved streets are loosely called - until the Ring Road was built around the formal city limits about 10 years ago. The road exposed neighborhoods that many residents had never seen before, showing them for the first time that formal Cairo had been completely surrounded by kilometer after kilometer of informal building.