Mixed-use that actually mixes

The test of a mixed-use scheme is its hourly profile. If offices empty at five, retail opens at eleven, and residents are elsewhere all day, the ground plane is dead for most of its life regardless of the tenant mix on paper.

Designing for overlap means putting the small, daily uses — bakery, pharmacy, clinic, nursery — at the pedestrian entrances rather than reserving frontage for anchor tenants who generate one visit a week.

Parking strategy decides more of this than design does. Shared parking between complementary uses is what makes the density work; dedicated podiums per use make the scheme both expensive and inert.

In the Egyptian context, evening is the primary trading period for eight months of the year. A scheme that is not planned around evening use is planned around the wrong city.