Housing in Benghazi city∗

Abstract

One of the three cardinal aspirations of Libya's 1973–1975 Three-Year Development Plan was to build regime support by redistributing her oil wealth as extensively as possible among the various segments of her population. Housing was a key redistributive mechanism, with 18.4% (the highest) of the total budget for the Plan Period being allocated to it. Similarly, the Five-Year Transformation Plan of 1976–1980, which was designed as a rational supplement to the 1973–1975 Plan, used housing programmes to perform dual operations: a redistributive function by providing heavily subsidized mass housing and a productivity role by encouraging Libyans to acquire building construction skills. Housing investment by the Libyan State has thus intrinsically been a function of political and social, rather than economic, considerations. Benghazi City has been a major beneficiary of this subsidized mass housing policy. This is because Libya's settlement pattern, which is marked by a high degree of primacy and intense spatial inequalities among regions, is fundamentally separated into two disjointed urban systems polarised on Tripoli and Benghazi. It is against this background that this paper explores the context in which housing activity has been undertaken in the city especially during the 1973–1975 and 1976–1980 Development Plan Periods. A proper understanding of the city's settlement system in its social, spatial and hierarchical dimensions is essential for the definition of programmes for spatial expansion and in appraising the repercussions of alternative housing programmes.