Expropriation between a legal figure and an approach for urban development: global trends and Egyptian reflections

Abstract

Expropriation of land is considered a crucial instrument of any development practice. The legitimacy of expropriation is essentially reinforced as it is employed for the public interest, often implied as infrastructure and public services. While in the private property on one side and the public interest on the other, urban development acts to be the art of getting the right balance. Despite urban development paradigms significantly affecting expropriation practices, most reviewed literature focused on legal aspects of expropriation. However, few were attentive to addressing the relation between expropriation and the urban universe. What are the current trends of the expropriation function and how extensively is it used for urban development? It can be elaborated as the study’s core question, while the research aims at mapping the development of the expropriation function and how extensively expropriation is used across time and space. Therefore, the study adopts a qualitative comparative approach to explore the global trends of expropriation for urban development and map convergence and deviations. The proposed criteria for comparison aim to discover how extensively expropriation is used, the legal changes and the institutional contexts. In addition, the applied part of the study uses a case study analysis method. A chronological timeline analysis of the Egyptian case was conducted to explore the nature of expropriation practices of Nasser’s time (1956–1970) to Mubarak’s time (1981–2011) in Egypt.Globally, expropriation practices have a heterogeneous nature. Certain features, however, are common enough to justify classifying practices for this study. The research comes up with a schematic mapping intending not to be comprehensive but flexible enough to be applied as a framework to analyse and compare other cases in different contexts. Finally, the research concludes by comparing and positioning the Egyptian case in the light of the global trends and provides principal lessons to planners, governmental parties, and policy-makers.