Abstract
In Egypt, since 2011, the “formal city,” the areas of the city designed and planned by public services, has been partially obstructed. The revolution appears to have brought to a standstill the urban projects that had been negotiated between the highest offices of state and an oligarchy of businessmen controlling real estate. This was the case, for instance, of the “Greater Cairo 2050” plan from the Mubarak era, which had been created in the spirit of international competition and the conquest of the desert. In addition to the postponement of major projects, every institution involved in their development became lethargic, including those responsible for planning, who were threatened with layoffs, local authorities who did not get involved, as well as public and private real estate developers paralyzed by their financial difficulties. The army still controls access to city centers—where protesters assemble—by building walls, verifying the identities of pedestrians and drivers, or impeding road maintenance.
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Notes
Ananya Roy, “Slumdog Cities: Rethinking Subaltern Urbanization,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 35, no. 2 (2011): 223–238.
Dana Kardoush and Meredith Hutchinson, “The Lens of Land,” Cairofrombelow, 2012. Available at http://cairofrombelow.org/2012/07/07/the-lens-of-land-egypt/ (accessed February 1, 2015).
Sara Ben Néfissa, “La vie politique locale: les mahalliyyât et le refus du politique,” in Vincent Battesti and François Ireton (eds.), L’Égypte au présent: inventaire d’une société avant révolution (Arles: Sindbad/Actes-Sud, 2011), pp. 343–366.
Oxford Business Group, The Report: Egypt 2012 (OBG: Oxford, 2012). Available online at http://www.oxfordbusinessgroup.com/egypt-2012–0 (accessed March 3, 2015).
This decision was nevertheless strongly criticized by the opposition for involving private—and therefore nontransparent—arrangements that would not give all developers an equal chance. Khaled Ali, former presidential candidate, believes that this decision would only contribute to an increase in preexisting corrupt practices. Bassem Abo Alabass, “Housing Ministry Calls for Reinstatement of Controversial Land Law,” Al Ahram online, 2012.
CEDEJ, “Murs,” in Les Carnets du CEDEJ, 2013. http://egrev.hypotheses.org/755 (accessed February 1, 2015).
David Sims, Understanding Cairo. The Logic of a City without Control (Cairo/New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2010).
As Eric Denis has argued, “[I]n this mix, we can find the active concentrations of substandard housing, which in many ways, hold considerable promise of promotion. We can also find the precarious convergence of nearly impossible social mobility and survival as a day-by-day concern. All nuances are possible.” See Eric Denis, “Le Caire: aspects sociaux de l’étalement urbain,” Egypte Monde Arabe, no. 23 (1995): 77–130. Y. Elsheshtawy took this idea further when he wrote about cities throughout the Arab world: “Informal urbanization enriches the lives of city inhabitants and in many ways strengthens cities’ livability.” See Yasser Elsheshtawy, “Introductory Article: The Informal Turn,” in Informal Urbanization—special issue, Built Environment, vol. 37, no. 1 (2011): 5–10.
Judson W. Dorman, The Politics of Neglect, PhD thesis (London, SOAS, 2007).
Asef Bayat, “Un-Civil Society: The Politics of the Informal People,” Third World Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 1 (1997): 53–72.
It is important to recall that the global economic crisis increased the importance of the informal economy, as jobs are axed in other activity sectors. See Jean-Pierre Cling, Stéphane Lagrée, Mireille Razafindrakoto, and François Roubaud, L’économie informelle dans les pays en développement (Paris: AFD, 2012).
However, Philip Jamie Furniss wrote that two major pioneering projects of the World Bank in Egypt— First Egypt Urban Development Project in 197 7 and Greater Cairo Urban Development Project in 1982—relied heavily on rehabilitating the informal sector (infrastructure development, support to waste collectors, etc.): Philip Jamie Furniss, Metaphors of Waste: Several Ways of Seeing “Development” and Cairo’s Garbage Collectors, PhD thesis (University College, Oxford, 2012).
Francesco Cavatorta, “Arab Spring: The Awakening of Civil Society. An Overview,” in Le réveil de la société civile en Méditerranée, IEMED Meditarenean Yearbook (Barcelona: IEMed, 2012), pp. 83–90. Available at http://www.iemed.org (accessed March 3, 2015).
Pierre-Arnaud Barthel and Safaa Monqid, Le Caire: Réinventer la ville (Paris: Autrement, 2011).
Some observers are pessimistic, arguing that international aid policies have shown too few signs of change since the beginning of the Arab uprisings. Yousry Mustapha, “Donors’ Responses to Arab Uprisings: Old Medicine in New Bottles?” The Pulse of Egypt’s Revolt, IDS Bulletin, vol. 43, no. 1 (2012): 99–109.
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© 2016 Roman Stadnicki
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Stadnicki, R. (2016). An Urban Revolution in Egypt?. In: Rougier, B., Lacroix, S. (eds) Egypt’s Revolutions. The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-56322-4_13
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