|
|
January, 2000
RESEARCH INTEREST
AHMED EIWEIDA
'Development' is difficult to define. The relationships between development and urbanisation, as well as in particular forms of urbanisation and urbanism, are complex with opinions ranging over time and place spaning from positive to negative causal interrelationships. What these have had in common is apparent. 'Development' has caused rapid urbanisation in Third World countries and insufficient investment in reproduction, as opposed to production, while much of the population involved has been unable to participate in capitalistic land and property markets. Thus concerntartion on production alone does not constitute development for the majority; economic gains do not 'trickle down' to generate effective demand in market terms.
A wide variety of arrangements of access to land for housing the poor has come into being in the cities of Egypt, resulting in the creation of large numbers of slum and squatter areas. The majority of these settlements are created illegally. This issue is important in so far as these informal practices continue to provide the great majority of the low-income housing stock, while official attempts to provide housing fail to compete with illegal arrangements on any significant scale.
Titled "Socio-economic characteristics and environmental problems posed by squatter settlements and possible solutions in Egypt: An integrated framework", the MSc thesis aimed to assess the mechanisms involved in efficient and successful upgrading of slum and squatter settlements in Egypt. After examining the general origins of these areas, the socio-economic characteristics, the articulations of land supply, the governmental attitudes and responses, it focused on the concept of 'self-help' which directs the formation and upgrading of these areas. The in-depth analysis examined and addressed three points.
The first concerns the major domestic factors which influence this problem in Egypt- namely, the quality of political and economic climate; the quality of developmental policies; the applicability of urban planning and housing standards and the efficiency of the institutions concerned.
The second was a case study of a squatter area in Aswan where a mutual co-operation and 'self-help' upgrading scheme has been ambitiously carried out by three partners: The residents of the area, the Egyptian government and the German government. The project aimed at involving both the target group and the institutions concerned to work collectively in achieving sustainable development of the institutional performance, the socio-economic and legal status of the residents, and the physical environment of the area. Theoretical and empirical models were utilised to examine the impact of land security and socio-economic status on the physical conditions of housing.
Finally, the thesis asserted that the 'self-help' housing represents a positive organisation. It mobilises a human labour force hitherto redundant or under-utilised. Squatter housing processes and their economy employ a substantial amount of the national inputs.
The thesis draws constructive conclusions about the bases required for sound upgrading that can grant replicability elsewhere in the future. These include: restructuring or raising the existing capabilities of the institutions concerned so as to be able to design long-term goals and work hand-in-hand with the target beneficiaries; participation and 'self-help' processes, which can contribute to the development of collective consciousness aiming on long-term community-action programme; self-financing, to grant the independence of the project, the sustainability and the self-administration of the target group.
Following the MSc conclusions, which drew distinctive attentions on the necessity of restructuring the existing institutions responsible for urban upgrading in Egypt, the PhD research aims at understanding and analysing the institutional system by which the 'Local Government' functions to upgrade squatter and slum settlements with people?s participation.
The research focuses on sustainability of urban upgrading of low-income housing at the local level, both in the context of collaborative participation for community development and of accountability of local government. This starts with the premise that urban (re)development of low-income areas does not simply mean the physical improvement of the existing housing area and its surrounding environment. Sustainability is a process with specific institutions and incentives that ensure the continuation of valued benefit outcomes and the availability of services to the citizens. Hence, it requires an awareness from both the civil society and the local government of how capital costs to provide, operate and maintain services might be obtained. The research argues that the conceptualisation of 'development'-urbanisation relationship in narrow economic terms is inadequate to shed light on the state of low-income urban housing, to explain the significance and dynamics of their neighbourhoods, or the sustainability of the existing ones.
Economy, society and politics are more transitional than ever. The reality of urban economic change involves a more complex interplay between forces of localisation and globalisation, structure and agency, fragmentation and integration, contingent and general forces, and economic and political factors than has tended to be suggested so far (Graham 1995: 87). Urban restructuring and collaborative policy making is thus extremely dynamic and variant process which makes the use of such 'crude' dualities unreliable. Meantime, it is imperative that power relationships at a range of scales- international, national, regional, local and community- and their role in shaping urban processes be understood. The prevailing perspectives on urbanisation often ignore, minimise or inadequately address the web of relations that increasingly synchronises the lives of people on a global scale (Smith and Tradanico 1987: 92). This entails greater analysis of the origins, functions and internal working of formal and informal institutions so as to appreciate their potential to harness resources- financial, social and organisational- collectively to improve the quality of urban life by and for the majority.
Building on the developmental participation theory (Sharp and Bath 1993) and the institutionalist framework (Healey 1997), the research examines the extent to which participatory initiatives can work as a means of activating the possibilities that are present within existing structures and systems. It then evaluates how far a 'good-practise' participatory project can enhance both citizens 'political awareness' resources and local government performance and meanwhile builds collaborative and institutionalised planning capacity, either directly or indirectly. The detailed analysis concerns issues of society's basic microstructures, i.e. households, networks of households and related informal social networks connecting the workplace and community life, which comprise the primary units of material and cultural reproduction. These microstructures have great impact in shaping society's knowledges and building the practical awareness of its members' daily life. Collective action and the dynamics of 'community-governance networks' are embedded in, and spring out of, this awareness.
The approach utilised, citizen governance (Box 1998), helps to test the forces leading to change in the qualities of places in low-income urban areas, as well as citizen?s transformation from being active during the upgrading project into being politically active afterwards. Meanwhile, it offers ideas about the forms and processes of governance through which stakeholders and local political communities can come together to work out what to do and how to act collectively. This is applied in different contexts throughout cities of both developed and less-developed countries.
Turning to the case study, the research takes a broad perspective on the development of participatory systems as exemplified by Egypt and explored through the detailed case studies of two projects, in which the participatory upgrading experience has been relatively extensive. The practices of the German Agency for Technical Co-operation (GTZ) and the Department for International Development (DFID), previously the British Overseas Development Association (ODA), to promote pilot urban upgrading schemes with their respective municipal counterparts in the Egyptian cities of Aswan and Ismailia are reviewed and compared. Their respective provincial programme initiation and management systems provide comparative insights into the potential benefits and pitfalls of different project conception and legislative approaches, particularly in light of the diversity of techniques that International Donor Agencies (DAs) and local government in both projects have tried over the years. The aim is not to determine which scheme has been more successful, but rather to evaluate variations in the role of internal and external institutions as enablers in the housing process. There are many forms of conditionality, and the aim is to examine the circumstances under which they have been, or are likely to be, successful and sustainable.
Due to the distinctive nature of this research, a multi-method approach is sought to be the best-fitted formula. Subjective/qualitative technique relates here to the level of institutional phenomena and uses 'semi-structured' forms of data collection- both interviewing and observation. This is necessary to understand local's, central government's and DAs' performance and policies, and the participatory role of private sector consultants and experts. Qualitative technique is also applied in the form of open-end case-study interviews for some selected household individuals and groups living in the case study areas. This investigation aims to understand the squatter settlers? explanations for the complex 'real world' in which they live in, and tries to say something sensible about their endurance and struggling throughout life difficulties. On the other hand, objective/quantitative refers to society's microstructures level. Quantification is applied at the level of head of household's life, work, family, mobility and interrelationships with other agents involved. It aims at translating knowledges and data into numeric forms condensed into categories and generalisation.
By clustering the respondents into three groups, 'activists', 'watch-dogs' and 'free-riders' (terms drawn for conceptualising citizenship along a continuum of desire to affect the local public policy process) the major forces that cause and shape participation may be analysed, shedding light on the conditions for political mobilisation, the characteristics of each cluster and the direction (valence)of citizen involvement.
Egypt is presently in a state of transition, facing manifold challenges and competing urban, socio-economic and political-cultural forces, which will not easily be resolved by the national government per se but rather by means of effective local government and empowered civil society. Although Egypt has always had locally defined provinces and districts along the Nile Valley, the prime purpose of central government has always been to control specific agricultural and commercial activities. Such divisions have never supplied local autonomy or any normative commitment to a democratically organised system of local structures and institutions. The result is that 84% of the new housing has been originated from a development process labelled as 'informal' housing or squatter by the government (UNDP 1993). While core areas deteriorate, informal housing settlements provide essential access to employment opportunities and housing for low-income families. However, they do this at a cost. Most informal settlements take place on agricultural land and thus they are a prime contributor to the loss of scarce agricultural land. Hence, legal recognition of squatter settlements is the first step required to institutionalise upgrading policies. It is a matter of growing importance to indigenous or customary groups trying to survive in a world characterised by increasing interdependence and escalating threats to local ties. Legal recognition is important for strengthening a group's ability to negotiate and transact with non-group members. At the same time, it can be a valuable tool for protecting the group against undue interference from government and other outsiders. On the other hand, recognition can also have detrimental effects, particularly if recognition involves the excessive imposition of rules, procedures and institutional forms that are alien to a group. The dilemma, therefore, is how to provide the potential benefits of legal recognition without at the same time undermining a group's cultural integrity and disrupting its ability to operate according to community-based laws and institutions.
The Aswan case, the Nasriya Upgrading Project (1987-1998), proved the possibility of maintaining an existing squatter area while affording the required infrastructure and improvement with the least amount of costs by means of applying the people's participation approach. The Nasriya project in particular has confirmed that participatory approaches can be welcomed by target groups while the local government performance is improving over time. The project succeeded in enhancing the self-administration processes of the citizens and offered them increasing empowerment. One of the most important issues of the Nasriya project centres in its organisational model which aimed to involve a fairly large community development association (CDA) covering the whole of the Nasriya area. This is an indication that the project?s goals have been achieved. It is not only a question of an infrastructure network being laid out and connected to every house, but of showing how the project components, can be articulated and implemented, overcoming many technical or organisational difficulties, with effective community self-administration.
The Ismailia case study, the Hai El-Salam project (1978-date), was considered to be at the forefront of urban development practice in the 1980s. In the urban upgrading context, it broke new ground in its attempts to bring informal sector housing practice into an official project. The evidence suggests that while the project succeeded in purely physical structural terms, the initial approach of participation did not go beyond consultation and did not place enough attentions on avoiding urban gentrification and speculation. The major critique of the project philosophy is perhaps associated with its land management policy. At present, urban land management in Ismailia is faced by enormous technical and administrative problems.
There are various side effects of the granting of tenure which should be confronted by means of sound legislation. Due to mismanagement of land policy and regulations, in addition to underestimation of population mobility, the area is currently faced by a series of socio-economic repercussions structured by class and state power. The poor are continuously evicted from the area and replaced by higher income groups. At community level, the upgrading project did not entail the 'awareness' of beneficiaries, raise their socio-economic status and intensify community self-reliance by means of effective participation, civic-empowerment, promoting pluralism and job creation. Land legislation process ignored people's participation in collaborative policy making, and the result was the adoption of land tenure policies which have only reinforced land value inflation and diverted funds which could have been put instead to more productive economic uses.
Urbanisation is not only inevitable, but a positive phenomenon. Cities are growing because they offer opportunities and the promise of a better life. In cities, it is possible to integrate human, economic and technological resources in an efficient way. Well-managed cities are also a pre-condition for successful rural development. However, in many cities, poor governance and wrong policies have led to severe environmental degradation, increased poverty, low economic growth and social exclusion, particularly of women. There is no doubt that cities have the potential to be safe and healthy for all their residents. But in an increasingly urbanised world, sustainable urban development depends largely on improved management of cities, which require institutional readjustment. Improved management critically depends on the active participation of public and private partners in urban affairs. Meanwhile, successful popular participation means citizen transformation from participation and being active during the project's time into sustainable political participation. If participation is not successful and citizens are not activated, even though they find the government's economic development activities and agenda objectionable, they may be candidates for exit, the ultimate withdrawal from the community, and thus characterised as alienated and politically apathetic.
Hitherto, with the paradigm shift from 'things' to 'people' and from top-down supply-push planning to bottom-up demand-pull participation, professionals? interactions with people still need further shift from motivating/controlling to enabling/empowering. In practice, it seems that the tools required to implement such a shift, namely local government, have not been widely accessible in many cities throughout Third World countries. Successful collaborative participation requires major material transformation from normal professionalism, bureaucracy, careers and training, which combine in top-down standardisation and pressures for speedy action, into enabling professionalism, decentralised bureaucracy, and a more diverse methods and local rules in careers and training. This may be achieved by calling further attention of donor's support in these areas.
Box, R.C. (1998). Citizen Governance. Leading American Communities into the 21st Century. London, Sage.
Graham, S. (1995). The city economy. Managing Cities: The New Urban Context. P. Healey, S. Cameron, S. Davoudi, S. Graham and A. Madani-Pour. Chichester, John Wiley & Sons.
Healey, S. (1997). Collaborative Planning. Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies. Hampshire, Macmillan Press Ltd.
Sharp, E. and M. Bath (1993). Citizenship and economic development. Theories of Local Economic Development. Perspectives from Across the Desciplines. R. Bingham and R. Mier. Lonon, Sage.
Smith, M.P. and R. Tradanico (1987). Urban theory reconsidered: Production, reproduction and collective action. The Capitalist City. Global Restructuring and Community Politics. M.P. Smith and J.R. Feagin. Oxford, Basil Blackwell Ltd.
UNDP (1993). Report on Human Development. New York, United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
World Bank (1994). The World Bank and Participation, fourth draft. Washington D.C., World Bank.
World Bank (1995). Governance: the World Bank's Experience. Washington D.C., World Bank.
World Bank (1997). Arab Republic of Egypt, Country Economic Memorandum. Washington, D.C., World Bank.
HOME
BACK TO AHMED EIWEIDA
HOMEPAGE
