Some call happiness artificial. Fleeting. Ephemeral. Vain. It depends on how you define it. In Old Norse, the term happ meant “luck” or “chance.” In Old English, hæpic connoted “equal.” But thousands of years before tongues of the Thames and dialects of Albion gave birth to English, ancient Egyptians issued a similar sounding utterance Hapi : name of the life-giving Nile River God.

Hapi (ḥꜥpj) was the arbiter of the annual flood, depositing rich silt and minerals all along the river, deep into riparian valleys. Without it, crops could scarcely grow, and never at what we’d consider an industrial scale. Animals couldn’t survive or thrive. Soil couldn’t swiftly replenish itself. Only the floods–attributed to a mythical lever entrusted to Hapi—made Egypt a superabundant producer of a treasure more valuable than gold: food.

Fast forward 4,000 years.

Greater Cairo boasts a population well north of 22M souls. What it lacks is the programmatic daily attachment to the river. Cairo is mostly a dry driving city. An LA city. A smog city. Not a river-borne metropolis with a transport system reminiscent of either Venice or the pharaonic dynasties. Instead we see heavy construction. Congestion. Pollution. Not pestilence. These are the problems that doggedly plague contemporary Egypt; not frogs, lice, or hail. We were inspired by the unique chance to rethink the current scheme, and believe we’ve found (or revived) at least one approach. It’s a concept we call HAPI Cairo.

Scroll down. Peruse. Critique freely. For approval, credit Rich Stangroom