A Possible Way Out: Formalizing Housing Informality in Egyptian Cities

This book describes a comparative study on informal housing areas in three Egyptian cities – Cairo, Alexandria and Tanta – as part of an effort to suggest alternative approaches to legalizing, integrating and improving informal housing in Egypt. Informal housing is considered here as a significant asset in the effort to improve the economic status of the poor – but also as a valuable factor in contributing to the national economic situation.

The book opens with an introduction to a range of concepts and issues – it discusses distinctions between “slums” and “squatter settlements”; the history of the notion of the “informal” sector; typologies of informal housing; and an overview of land provision in Egypt. This background provides the context for considering the six case studies (two from each of the selected cities). First the broad patterns of growth in each of these cities is considered, along with the development of informal housing for the poor. Current housing policies are discussed, and the fact that, although there is a huge public housing programme in Egypt, this has perhaps predictably failed to produce affordable housing for the poor.
The factors that contribute to informal development in each city are described in some detail, along with the processes of land invasion and the complex and diverse forms that informal housing development takes. This can range from semi-informal housing for which owners have legal tenure, to ex-formal settlements which may have been modified over time in illegal ways, or which may have confused tenure status, to squatter settlements with a range of different levels of illegality and insecurity.

The author describes the gradually more accommodating attitude of the Egyptian government to informal housing, after decades spent trying to eradicate it. Various kinds of partnership are described and reviewed: partnership between public and private sectors in land provision for housing the urban poor; partnerships in tackling cost recovery for housing projects; partnerships in simplifying building procedures and in dealing with land transactions and registration. The author argues that formalizing informal housing areas is critical , for a number of reasons , to improving the operation of urban land markets. Following de Soto (who wrote the foreword for this book), he stresses that informal assets remain hidden capital that lack value for securing loans, and that formalized titles are critical to opening the doors to credit.