Land readjustment as a mechanism for New Urban Land Expansion in Egypt: experimenting participatory inclusive processes

ABSTRACT

This article examines land readjustment program as a tool to alleviate the arbitrary development of New Urban Land Expansion in Egypt. Also, it explores Participatory and Inclusive Land Readjustment (PILaR) as a mechanism to shorten the gap between the current Egyptian planning policy with its regulations and requirements and the existing reality of people’s needs and demands. Draw from a case study in Benha city, this article assumes that PILaR can be formulated and implemented on the ground with ‘technical enablement.’ The gap between the government policy and the capacity of the community should be narrowed to identify what is of critical importance and what is required for people concerned. The government should adopt PILaR and act as an agent for the avail of local citizens and for the compatibility and sustainability of rescuing agricultural lands and encourage the urban development in the back desert of Egypt.

KEYWORDS:

• Land readjustment
• social networks
• urban informality
• Participatory and Inclusive Land Readjustment (PILaR)
• New Urban Land Expansion
• informal land subdivision

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to Mrs. Salma Mousallem of UN-HABITAT, Cairo office, for her time, energy and support during the process of the project, and for her constructive comments throughout the process of building scenarios of this paper. I am also grateful to both Mrs. Clarisa Bencomo, for her continuous support, and for the Ford Foundation in Cairo, for securing the necessary fund to attend the 2015 World Bank conference in Washington DC, USA, in which an early draft of this paper was presented The two anonymous reviewers’ comments were helpful for improving the paper, for whom I appreciate their valuable comments. The valuable comments and positive support of Prof. Ramin Keivani are very much appreciated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Technical team (TT) consisted of UN-Habitat’s members, Mrs Rania Hedeya, Dr M. Nada, Mrs Salma Mousallem, and a private consultant, who is the author of this research. Mrs Mousallem has played an important role in communicating with female landowners, as well as helping to set up the three scenarios. All opinion in this research is the sole responsibility of the author, and it does not imply any opinion whatsoever on the part of either the GOPP or UN-HABITAT.

2. Ashwaiyyat the plural for ashwaiyya (literally meaning ‘half-hazard’) is the term used in public to refer to the informal settlements in Egypt and is referring to illegal arbitrary housing development on the periphery of urban centers.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ahmed M. Soliman

Ahmed Soliman received his Ph.D. in Social Sciences, Urban Planning and Housing studies from the University of Liverpool, UK from 1981 to 1985. He is currently working as an emeritus professor of urban planning and housing Studies and was a former Chairman of Architecture Department in the Faculty of Engineering at Alexandria University (2007-2012), Egypt. He was the Dean of the Faculty of Architectural Engineering at Beirut Arab University, Lebanon from 2000 until 2004. He has published widely on issues of urban planning, urban housing, and informal settlements in several distinguish international journals and contributed in chapters in various books. He worked with Hernando De Soto twice, the first time was in 1997 and the second time was in 2000, studying the informal settlements in Egypt. He is the author of A Possible Way Out: Formalizing Housing Informality in Egyptian Cities (2004), University Press of America, USA.