Posts tagged policy

Towards a revolutionary Nile front

Is informality being disallowed by government?

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Event: Learning from Cairo, April 12-14

Learning from Cairo seeks to engage the current political and urban transformation unfolding in Cairo as a critical context for examining relevant international case studies and best practices in areas ranging from housing, transportation, public space, and local governance to informality. Learning from Cairo emphasizes a comparative and interdisciplinary approach bringing practitioners, academics, officials and local stakeholders into dialogue, with the objective of generating an ongoing critical urban discourse, and future visions for Cairo.

Friday, April 12th, 2013 
Public Plenary sessions

9:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Oriental Hall, Palace Building
American University in Cairo
Tahrir Campus

Program

(Arabic and English translation will be provided)

9:00 - 9:30 am Coffee and Registration

9:30 - 10:00 am Opening Remarks

Urban Political Change: Southern Perspectives
10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Khaled Fahmy, Department of History, AUC
Gautam Bhan, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Delhi
Mokena Makeka, Makeka Design Lab

Discussant:
Mohamed Elshahed, Cairobserver

12:00 - 1:30 pm Lunch and Prayer

Right to the City: Emergent Practices in Latin America
1:30 - 3:30 pm

Heba Raouf Ezzat, Cairo University
Jennifer Bremer, Department of Public Policy and Administration, School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, AUC
Lindsey Sherman, Urban-Think Tank, Caracas/ Zurich

Discussant:
Diane Singerman, Department of Government, American University, Washington D.C.; Tadamun: Cairo Urban Solidarity Initiative

3:30 - 4:00 pm Coffee Break

Cities in Transition: Public Engagement and Civic Design
4:00 - 6:00 pm

David Sims, Author of Understanding Cairo: The Logic of a City Out of Control
Damon Rich, Division of Planning and Community Development, Newark, NJ
Gregers Tang Thomsen and Selva Gürdogan, Superpool, Istanbul

Discussant:
Ayman Ismail, Department of Management, School of Business, AUC


Saturday, April 13th, 2013 
Cairo Tours
(please register for one tour only)
9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.

Tour 1. Urban Core
Led by: May Al-Ibrashy, Megawra
Mohamed Elshahed, Cairobserver

Tour 2: Desert Cities
Led by:
Nabil Elhady, Cairo University
Rick Tutwiler, Desert Development Center, AUC

Tour 3: Informal Settlements
Led by:
Yahia Shawkat, Shadow Ministry of Housing
Khaled Abdel Halim, Department of Public Policy and Administration, School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, AUC
Kareem Ibrahim, Urban Development Consultant | Co-Founder of Takween ICD

Tours end with a joint lunch in Al-Azhar Park

Sunday, April 14th, 2013
9:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.

Parallel Working Sessions
9:00 a.m.-3:30 p.m.
Falaki Academic Center, American University in Cairo
Tahrir Campus
24 El Falaki Street, Bab El Louk

Coffee and Registration:

9:00 a.m.-9:30 a.m.

Morning parallel sessions:

9:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.

Session 1. Mapping Informality

Omar Nagati and Beth Stryker, CLUSTER
Gregers Tang Thomsen and Selva Gürdogan, Superpool

Discussant: Mohamed Elshahed, Cairobserver

Session 2. Evictions and Urban Citizenship

Gautam Bhan, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Delhi
Yahia Shawkat, Shadow Ministry of Housing, Cairo

Discussant: Joseph Schechla, Housing and Land Rights Network, Cairo

Session 3. Design Innovation and Urban Development

Mokena Makeka, Makeka Design Lab, Cape Town
Mohamad Abotera and Ahmed Zaazaa, MADD Platform

Discussant: Amr Abdelkawi, Department of Construction and Architectural Engineering, School of Sciences and Engineering, AUC


Lunch
12:00 p.m.-1:00 p.m.

Afternoon parallel sessions:
1:00 p.m.-3:30 p.m.

Session 4. Community Activism and Avenues of Participation

Kareem Ibrahim and Diane Singerman, Tadamun
Damon Rich, Chief Urban Designer, Division of Planning & Community Development, Newark, NJ and Founder, Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP)

Discussant: Khaled Abdel Halim, Department of Public Policy and Administration, School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, AUC

Session 5. Security, Segregation and Borders

Aida Elkashef, Filmmaker
Lara Baladi, Artist
Omnia Khalil, Urban Action

Video presentations and panel discussion

Discussant: Samia Mehrez, The Center for Translation Studies, AUC

Session 6. Research/Design Interventions and the Informal City

Lindsey Sherman, Urban-Think Tank, Caracas/Zurich; Chair of Architecture and Urban Design, ETH Zurich
Dina Shehayeb, Shehayeb Consult

Discussant: Magda Mostafa, Department of Construction and Architectural Engineering, School of Sciences and Engineering, AUC

Closing Session, Oriental Hall

Oriental Hall, Palace Building
American University in Cairo
Tahrir Campus
4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.

More information to come.

With support from the Ford Foundation
and the American University of Cairo
Department of Construction and Architectural Engineering, School of Sciences and Engineering
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
School of Global Affairs and Public Policy
School of Business
The Architecture Students Association (AA)


Additional sponsorship by

info@clustercairo.org

Ahram Online: Experts examine Egypt’s informal housing crisis

Ahram Online’s Nada El-Kouny’s report on the one day workshop held last week at CEDEJ on informal urban development and government policies of evictions, among other related topics.

In an attempt to tackle the issue of informal housing in Egypt, primarily following the January 25 Revolution, a joint workshop initiative was held on Monday by the French Centre for Social, Judicial and Economic Documentation (CEDAJ), UN-Habitat and the German Agency for International Cooperation’s (GIZ) Participator Development Programme in Urban Areas.

The workshop, held at the French Cultural Centre in Mounira, Cairo, was attended by approximately eighty people, including urban planners, architects, sociologists, economists, and government representatives, all dealing with the issue of informal housing in Egypt.

The ‘Egypt Urban Futures’ workshop tackled the issue of informal housing—more commonly referred to as ashwaiyat (random) settlements—from a number of different perspectives.

Regina Kipper of GIZ said the main objective of the workshop was to launch a new platform on the urban future of Egypt and its challenges since 2011, by promoting dialogue between civil society, private and public institutions and academics in attempting to work towards sustainable development.

Dina Shehayeb of the Housing and Building National Research Centre provided a brief overview of informal housing in Cairo, stating the phenomenon goes back to the 1950s when there was a major wave of urbanisation, mostly due to the dismantling of the agricultural economy and the increased industrialisation.

Shedding light on more recent statistics, urban consultant David Sims, the author of Understanding Cairo: The Logic of a City Out of Control (2011), stressed there had been an exponential increase in the rate of informal housing in Egypt in recent years. For example, in Geziret El-Warraq in Giza the post-revolution rate of population growth has increased four and a half times compared to its pre-revolution rate, Sims said.

Moreover, the encroachment on agricultural land has increased at a much higher rate. In many villages in Egypt’s Nile Delta farmers have found construction more profitable than agriculture. Referring to a telling statistic, Sims stated that according to the Ministry of Agriculture, 29,486 feddans of agricultural land in approximately 700,000 separate cases, had been built on since the January 25 Revolution.

Conflicting outlooks were presented on the mechanisms used to deal with informal and unsafe housing since the January 25 Revolution, which led to some heated discussions.

Nahed Naguib of the General Organisation for Physical Planning said the issue of informal housing was caused by economic and social problems and her organisation’s work focused on containing the growth of informal settlements. New housing units were being created by the Ministry of Housing and municipalities, Naguib added.

Ashraf Mohamed, head of the informal housing department in Cairo, said: “Just like the Aswan High Dam was built to contain the flooding of agricultural land, we have to stop the increase of ashwaiyat.”

Providing a critique of such a view, Yahia Shawkat, architect and informal housing specialist at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), said the biggest threat to such communities “is the state itself.”

Shawkat also noted that the “real entry point to such a debate has to take into account the agency of these self-built communities that will continue to grow.”

He highlighted a number of cases of forced evictions from informal settlements. He mentioned Qorsaya Island, which has recently experienced violent clashes between police and residents who the army attempted to evict by force, claiming ownership of the Island, despite many residents living there for decades.

Likewise, the government has a controversial “Cairo 2050” plan to clear slums and develop the land. An example of this is Ramlet Boulaq behind the Nile Towers, which planners hope will be replaced with more lucrative projects.

Urban planner Omar Nagati provided a more holistic view on the issue:

“While government officials have attempted to reduce informal neighbourhoods and demolish them, it is important to rethink the way we talk about ashwaiyat. Today, all of Egypt is becoming informal, starting with the street vendors, microbuses, toktoks, etc.”

Link to original article: http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/66652.aspx

The City and the Constitution

Event: Artists as Urban Catalysts in Downtown Cairo

Goethe Institut [5 El Bostan Street, Downtown, Cairo]
December 8, 2012
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm


Panelists:

Tamer El Said, Filmmaker, Co-founder of Cimateque

Heba Farid, Artist, Founding member of Contemporary Image Collective (CIC),
Project Coordinator of the Photographic memory of Egypt program for CULTNAT

Bruce Ferguson, Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, the American University in Cairo

Karim Shafei, CEO of Al Ismaelia Real Estate Developments

Ania Szremski, Curator, Townhouse Gallery

Moderated by: Mohamed Elshahed, Founder and Editor of Cairobserver.


This panel discussion explores the role that artists and arts organizations are playing in the development of Downtown Cairo. A direct dialogue between representatives of Al Ismailia Real Estate Developments and The American University in Cairo with artists and cultural organizations currently staking out cultural outposts downtown (including Townhouse Gallery, Cimateque, and CIC), the panel re-examines the classic appropriation of artists as catalysts for urban regeneration by real-estate developers seeking future gentrification. How might things play out differently in Cairo? How is Cairo different from other cities, such as New York and Beirut, where such cycles of gentrification have taken place? What role may the underutilized AUC campus play in providing a cultural anchor Downtown? What are the advantages and downsides of private sector partnerships between real estate stakeholders and independent artists and arts organizations? Through critical conversation this forum seeks to explore potential local strategies for sustaining artists’ access to the generative contributions they make to urban development.

This program is curated and organized by Beth Stryker and Omar Nagati/Cluster with support from the Ford Foundation and the Goethe Institut. It is part of a series of activities sponsored by the Ford Foundation that aim to provide a platform to facilitate communication and learning among Egyptians working on issues affecting the urban environment.

Diminishing agricultural land around Cairo

Last week the NGO Shagara shared a powerful image on its Facebook page that illustrates the massive loss of fertile agricultural land and the explosive unregulated growth of urban areas around Cairo. The two images combined show satellite views of the city in 1972 and in 2011. In the 39 years of Sadat and Mubarak rule, the West’s favored presidents of Egypt, the agricultural and urban planning situation had spiraled out of control leading to unprecedented poverty, loss of food independence for Egypt, and the missed opportunity for organized and planned urban growth. Both presidents followed infitah, or open door economy: promotion of consumption of Western goods, importation of wheat and lack of support for Egypt’s cash crop, Cotton, and the image of free market capitalism that was not capitalist, nor free. In addition, the collapse of state planning, both urban and rural, has led to the disastrous situation of the present.

Here is an excerpt from an article I wrote last year about the relationship between rural and urban Egypt:

Historically, there has been a symbiotic relationship between Egypt’s urban and rural economies.  One simple example of that relatively successful relationship was the Awqaf system, where profits from agricultural land, which fed both urban and rural societies, were used to maintain urban properties.  All the land on Cairo’s west bank (Giza) was Awqaf land that paid for the maintenance of Cairo’s buildings on the other side.  That system has been canceled since the 1952 regime took over and new urban areas were planned on that land such as Mohandisseen.  With the right global and local politics Egypt has the potential to feed itself and at the same time control its urban development patterns.

For the full article “Bread and Urbanism” on Midan Masr, click here.

So Why is Egypt’s agricultural land diminishing and why is rural-to-urban migration continuing and transforming Cairo into an endless self-initiated urban mass? Watch this video, the latest by Mosireen for some clues:

UPDATE: The Union of Egyptian Farmers (إتحاد الفلاحين المصريين) announced its refusal to accept the current draft constitution which they argue gives the 40 million Egyptians living in rural areas or who depend on agricultural land for their livelihood no more than 50 words in the entirety of the current draft.

The square belongs to whom?

How a restaurant ruined a square (Arabic)

د. ميشيل حنا يكتب: كيف دمر المطعم الميدان

قررت إحدى سلاسل المطاعم الشعبية الشهيرة افتتاح فرع آخر في ميدان تريومف، واحد من أجمل ميادين مصر الجديدة.

في البداية قاموا بقطع شجرتين من أشجار الشارع أثناء عمليات تجديد الدكان، حتى تصبح اللافتة واضحة من جميع الزوايا، وأزالوا بلاط الرصيف الذي كان متجانسا مع أرصفة الميدان من أجل تركيب بلاط بلون مغاير هو لون بلاط المطعم.

عند افتتاح المحل قاموا بتغيير اتجاه ركن السيارات من موازي للرصيف، وهو الوضع الصحيح للركن في الميدان، إلى عمودي، وبالتالي صار اتساع الشارع الذي تمر منه السيارات أضيق، ثم صارت سيارات الزبائن تركن صفا ثانيا خلف السيارات التي تركن بشكل عمودي، تاركة حارة واحدة فقط لتمر منها السيارات العابرة، وانسد المرور في الميدان ليلا ونهارا، خاصة عندما تأتي سيارة شركة المشروبات الغازية الضخمة لتسد المكان تماما إلى أن تفرغ حمولتها، وامتلأ الميدان بسيّاس السيارات بصافراتِهم، ليغلقوا الطريق كلما قررت إحدى السيارات المركونة عموديا أن تخرج من المكان، والنتيجة جلطة مرورية أصابت المكان بالشلل التام، بالطبع يمتد أثرها إلى كل الميادين والشوارع المحيطة.

ثم امتلأت حديقة الميدان بالشحاذين الذين يتوافدون على المكان طمعا في حسنة تتمثل في ساندويتشات يعطيها لهم العاملون في المكان، وتحولت الحديقة إلى مكان لمبيت الشحاذين ثم إلى مزبلة كبيرة، وصار الميدان في غاية القذارة تتطاير فيه أوراق الساندويتشات والأكياس الفارغة طوال الوقت.

وأخيرا وليس آخرا قرر المطعم الاستيلاء على الرصيف، فقاموا بنشر ما يقرب من عشرين طاولة بلاستيكية على الرصيف كل واحدة عليها أربعة كراسي، ونقلوا الكاشير والجرسونات إلى الرصيف الذي تحول إلى حرم للمطعم، في منظر غاية في العشوائية والقذارة.

هذا ما جرى للميدان الهاديء، أو الذي كان هادئا، وهو مجرد نموذج لأفعال تتكرر بحذافيرها في كل شوارع وميادين مصر، تحت بصر وسمع رجال الأحياء ورجال المرور الذين يرون ويسمعون وكأن الأمر لا يعنيهم في شيء.

من مدونة مستنقعات الفحم

8 policy items concerning our cities that need immediate attention

Based on our brief experience with an elected legislative body, it seems those elected need some clues as to what are some of the pressing issues that impact daily life in Egypt, particularly cities. There are many pending issues that are the accumulation of 40 years of mismanagement that need immediate attention. Here is a list of 8 items that should be on the agenda of the next legislative body, or on the president’s desk. 

1. Landlord and Tenant Laws: The current laws regarding rental of residential or commercial space are a mishmash of various legislature that have not guaranteed the rights of owners in many cases such as the case with “old property rent laws” and have not protected the rights of tenants as with the many cases involving forced evictions. Tenant rights should be established and made clear along with placing certain legal conditions that guarantee that landlords will not jeopardize the value of their property. Laws should also consider the protection of property values, guarantee safety and require periodic maintenance and inspections. These sets of laws should also resolve the issue of property title that plague the so-called “informal” housing sector where many families have invested in building their own homes but do not have the proper paperwork to have security of ownership which makes them victims of exploitation by corrupt local officials, the police and the mafia. There are many groups working in Egypt that can provide additional information regarding the problems with the current laws and the potential ways to make the necessary changes. The Egyptian Center for Housing Rights is a possible place to start.

2. Transport: The Egyptian government continues to treat public transport as a secondary priority and many officials see it as charity to the poor. Egypt needs a transport minister who actually rides public transport. There needs to be an urgent and expedited transport plan put in place not only for Cairo but other cities as well as regional networks. These projects will provides jobs, bring investment and solve a pressing issue in Egyptian cities. Cairo’s transport system must be integrated into a single system that links various modes from buses, metro, river transport, trams and regional trains. There should be a plan that leads to a centralized and integrated management of the system such as the Cairo Transport Authority. New transport options should not replace old ones: There is an ongoing effort to replace surface trams with underground lines, instead the plans should update current systems and incorporate them with the city-wide network. These projects should be optimized and Cairo’s proposed metro network must be complete as soon as possible in order to have a visible impact on the city, otherwise by the time the network is completed the city will have outgrown the network and problems will be further compounded. While financing can be part of the problem, it is good to remember that in Cairo it only costs around 2 billion dollars to build a 35 kilometer metro line, one tenth of the cost in most world cities. Alexandria is in urgent need for a comprehensive transport overhaul. Small cities such as Luxor, Ismailia and Port Said would benefit greatly if they each get a single well-designed tram line.

3. Waste Management: One of the many glorious failures of the former regime is its attempt to privatize and contract Cairo’s waste management to a European company. That deal cost Egypt millions of wasted dollars and left the streets dirtier than they had ever been all while destroying the intricate economy of a unique community which for generations has made solid waste collection and recycling the cornerstone of its livelihood. A new policy needs to be put into place immediately as Cairo continues to produce tons of solid waste everyday. The problem’s solution begins with negotiating with the Zabaleen and creating a system that formalizes their work, provides them with the needed tools to do their work better and recognizes their contribution to the survival of the city. In addition this will allow the community to improve its standing and its living conditions. Rather than invest millions in European companies with little know-how of Egypt the government must invest in the local communities that know how to deal with Egypt’s waste best. Beyond collection, recycling activities done by the Zabaleen must be encouraged. Finally landfills are a major problem long neglected and dealt with haphazardly, and environmental groups must be involved in the management of these sites along with the entire solid waste issue.

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The disregarded stakeholders of our cities

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Places@Design Observer: Revolution of the Thirsty

An important essay by Karen Piper has been posted by Places@Design Observer confronting a seldom discussed aspect of the current political struggle in Egypt: Water. Here is an excerpt from the essay and below is a link to the original site:

Within months of privatization, the price of water doubled in some areas of the capital, and citizens started to protest. At one demonstration in northern Cairo, in 2005, “angry residents chased bill collectors down the streets.” [8] Those who could not afford the new rates had little choice but to go to the city’s outskirts to collect water from the dirty Nile River canals. [9] In 2007, protestors in the Nile Delta blocked the main coastal road after the regional water company diverted water from farming and fishing towns to affluent resort communities. “The authorities sent riot police to put down these ‘disturbances,’” wrote Philip Marfleet, a professor at the University of East London, even as “water flowed uninterrupted to the gated communities, and to country clubs and upmarket resorts of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.” [10] In the next few years such demonstrations only grew in intensity. As activist Abdel Mawla Ismail has noted, “Thirst protests or intifadas, as some people have called them, started to represent a new path for a social movement.” From this path the revolution that consumed the nation in 2011 seems inevitable. People can live in poverty for a long time; they cannot live without water.

To read the full article, click here.

Egyptian Urban Action

Our responsibility as architects and urban planners is not transforming or changing the economic status of residents. We do not dream of a Parisian Cairo or another version of New York. But as citizens in this society we are governed by our humanity principals to seek an appropriate and improved life for the neglected sector, and also help to expose the hidden potentials and positive actions within those communities. According to the aim of seeking better a society our initiative Egyptian Urban Action tackles such stereotypes as “Eliminating informal areas”, “the uprising of the hungry ones” and “Thugs”… and the state’s attempts to convince the rest of the population of dangers from ” the informal area residents”, the questions remain …
Do residents of informal areas have the means to develop their own living conditions?
Does the state provide for their basic living rights?
Does providing housing units in a far remote area, Enough?

The initiative and exhibition of Egyptian Urban Action is funded by The British Council, Cairo and Tarek Waly Center. And consists of two halls; the first contains urban analysis manifested in images and maps where we observe cases of urban deterioration with some suggestions, and the second hall will be showing a series of short documentaries (25 minutes) where local residents of such areas express their problems and suggest alternatives.

The scheduled events of the exhibition are:
7th July 2012 Exhibition Opening - 7.00 pm
8th July: Discussions day 1: 7.00 pm
Action planning projects’ experiences in Cairo, Speakers:
Khalil Shaat - Dina Shehayeb - Hany Miniawy
15 July: Discussions day 2 : 7.00 pm
The state policy towards informal areas, speakers:
Manal Tibe - Mohamed Abdel Azim

Open discussions will be in 8th and 15th of July – in the main exhibition hall
For any inquires or questions, please e-mail
omniakhalil@walycenter.org - 0100 125 2473
Partial work of the initiative, published in 31st March 2012

Lessons from elsewhere: Mumbai rent control

Rent control has been the leading cause of the stagnation of Cairo’s real estate economy in the city’s formal center (areas built until the 1950s). Egypt like many other countries around the world created rent control laws decades ago but the law has not been revisited despite the demands of property owners across the country. Since the 1990s several counties have implemented rent control deregulation following different methods. Most recently the Indian state of Maharashtra where the city of Mumbai is located has considered rent control deregulation and the debate there regarding this issue may prove to be very relevant and useful for us here in Cairo.

Robin Houterman, a London-based urbanist who spent some time last year at the Mumbai-based Urban Design Research Institute, has written two useful articles regarding this policy shift. Both articles are published online on The Global Urbanist.

Here is a brief excerpt from Houterman’s critical review of the policy:

In 2011, the Indian Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation produced a new Model Residential Tenancy Act (MRTA), meant to provide a basis for the revision of rent control acts around India. It is a liberal act, proposing the abolition of rent control, and leaving rent levels and revisions to agreement between landlords and tenants.

The act’s publication revives the already decades-long debate on rent control in Mumbai. Like many other countries, India introduced rent control in the 1940s and 1950s as a means to mitigate high prices due to housing scarcity. Although scarceness is still an issue for affordable housing today, on the whole, the necessity and effectiveness of rent control as a means to secure the availability of housing is no longer self-evident. Rent control is often blamed as one of the causes of scarcity in affordable housing.

Some form of deregulation is necessary; however the main argument here is that the MRTA is largely skewed against tenants and is likely to push poor tenants towards inadequate housing.

Read the full article, here.

And here is Houterman’s “Three alternatives for implementing rent control deregulation in Mumbai”:

More gradual deregulation

Reconsider ownership of properties

State support for poor tenants

Read the full article, here.

Property and rent laws in Egypt must be a top priority for Egypt’s legislators as this is an issue which has been neglected by the former regime and completely mismanaged. The negative effects of ignoring these laws has had dire consequences on Egypt’s urban fabric in general but particularly the urban centers which were established prior to the 1950s. The real estate market has also suffered as millions of pounds worth of properties have sat empty, unused and in limbo for decades. Following Mumbai’s debate of the issue could save us a lot of time and energy.

It’s Countryside- Life outside Cairo

A fantastic short film shared by Zawia magazine documents life outside Cairo, particularly in Sohag in Upper Egypt. While the south generates massive state income from tourism in addition to providing much of Egypt’s food, wealth has been in the hands of too few and the money never circulates back into these local economies. Egypt’s highly centralized system has had severe impact on the economy and development of small and medium sized cities.