THE GOVERNANCE OF RESILIENT SOCIETIES The Case of Cairo Informalities

Abstract

The undergoing processes of formalization of the informal city in Cairo present a change in paradigms. This requires a deep understanding of all the actors involved, starting from the policy makers, to the city residents, and identifying the role of urban planners, theorists, and practitioners, within that changing urban order. This paper attempts to highlight the governmental approaches dealing with the informal sector, in relation to the formalization initiatives that is currently practiced on ground, by the informal city inhabitants. Addressing and questioning the role of the urban planner, within the discourses of theory and practice, in dealing with the formal and informal cities, that are continuously changing the city landscape. Applied research has shown that when the poor realize that investments in the built environment benefit them directly, they are willing to pay. The more value-for-cost, the more they pay. Once again, the informal areas hold lessons for policy makers in this regard. Unfortunately, the huge investments that residents are making is not recognized as a potential source of income by the government, and there is still a lack of interest in understanding when and why residents of informal areas are willing to invest in their residential environments. The state’s seeming inability to clear potentially threatening informal areas on a large scale reflects not simply an absence of material capacity or the bottom-up resistance of their inhabitants but also constraints embedded in the political order and its logic of top-down rule. This suggests that any comprehensive approach to urban informality requires giving such neighbourhoods a measure of legal recognition and allowing them to develop a measure of social autonomy (Dorman, 2009). These processes have to be studied in relation to the governmental approaches to deal with the informal sector. The governance of these resilient societies needs to be rethought with the contemporary changes providing innovative solutions that engage community participation.