Abstract
In the last few years, Egypt’s emerging legitimization of informal markets has played a critical role in the ongoing economic reforms and poverty alleviation strategies. This paper aims to elucidate the mechanism and complexity of housing informality in Egypt’s secondary cities, to contribute to the understanding of participatory planning and to offer local officials and urban professionals insight into how they could integrate informal housing development in the urban fabric. The opportunities created by the government initiative to prepare a General Strategic Urban Plan (GSUP) for secondary cities in collaboration with UN-HABITAT are highlighted. Specifically, the paper aims to contribute to the GSUP by presenting a case study of one of its phases, that of action plan elaboration. The case study concerns an informal settlement located in a peripheral (rural) area seeking to formalize land titles. Understanding the built environment of informal housing developments would enable the state and housing professionals to encompass, eliminate, and integrate informal housing areas within formal areas in Egyptian cities. It concludes that the role of the government should be changed from that of provider or facilitator or enabler into that of an agent of cost recovery.
Published Version
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