TILTING AT PYRAMIDS: INFORMALITY OF LAND CONVERSION IN CAIRO

Professor Ahmed Soliman Architecture Department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt ahmsoliman@yahoo.com

Summary: This paper assesses the conversion of agricultural land in Egypt during its socioeconomic and political transformations. The focus is on the diverse mechanism behind the complexity of urban housing informality on agricultural land as well as the legal political process that recently flourished all over the Egyptian cities by which housing informality has come to account for 35-40% of the total housing production. The real economics of land conversion in El Matarya area on the periphery of Cairo is investigated to show that a remedial approach and public policies cannot be dissociated from planning directives, and city management strategies. The paper predicts that economic and governance reforms as well as the contribution of the grassroots would create a common ground for facilitating or enabling the legitimization of land conversion in a sustainable way that also yields potential economic efficiency.

Key Words: Housing informality, security of tenure, land conversion, land reform, agricultural land

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TILTING AT PYRAMIDS: INFORMALITY OF LAND CONVERSION IN CAIRO

I. INTRODUCTION

The land question is central to economic analysis. Its use in an urban context is crucial in shaping how effectively cities function and who gets the principal benefits from urban economic growth (Stilwell & Jordan, 2004). This paper assesses the conversion of agricultural land in Egypt during its socioeconomic and political transformations. The focus is on the diverse mechanism behind the complexity of urban housing informality on agricultural land as well as the legal political process that recently flourished all over the Egyptian cities by which housing informality has come to account for 35-40% of the total housing production. Most Egyptian cities are surrounded with belts of informal housing built on agricultural land. Between 1982 and 2004, an estimated 1.2 million faddans1 of agricultural land has been decimated through such development (World Bank, 2007). Agricultural land is being lost at an estimated annual, daily, and hourly rate of 54545, 149.4, and 6.22 faddans respectively. Fuelled in part by remittances from Egyptians working in Gulf countries in the 1980s, a tremendous amount of new construction has been built illegally on agricultural land. Urbanization, rapid population growth, and increasing housing demand for the urban poor are among the causes of many houses being built, renovated, or enlarged throughout the cities without recourse to zoning and construction regulations. About 88 percent of housing in Egypt has been built in violation of the building code. It is estimated that at least 17 million Egyptians reside in informal areas in Egyptian cities (Egypt Human Development Report, 2010), and the value of informal housing construction in Egypt is around US$ 241.4 billion (De Soto, 2000). The vast majority of recent urban informalization has occurred on agricultural areas surrounding Egyptian cities. The result is a growing divergence in Egyptian cities: between the old and the new areas of urban agglomeration, a Great Divide between "establishing", struggling and emerging urban spaces. The former space is the new gated communities of the elites of the society, the middle, is the formal city and symbolizes the community that follows the prevailing laws, while the latter is the peri-urban informal settlements which mirrors the marginal groups. Cairo and the other Cairos within the city, the formal city, informal city and desert city in The Egyptian landscape" (Silver, 2010; Sims, 2010; AlSayyad, 2009). Today, the total population of Egypt is approaching the figure of 90 million, the largest population in North Africa (CAPMAS, 2011; UN-Habitat, 2010). About half of the population is concentrated in two major urban centers: Cairo and Alexandria, while the remaining half is scattered in 221 small and intermediate urban settlements along the Nile river valley and delta.
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One faddan = 0.42 ha, each faddan constitutes 24 Qirat, each Qirat constitutes 175 square meters.

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Most of the General Strategic Plan for 221 cities and 4600 villages indicates expansion on adjacent agricultural areas. It is expected that Egypt will lose formally around 66,300 and 13,8000 faddan of the best fertile areas surrounding Egyptian cities and villages respectively by the year 2027 (Soliman, 2010). During one and a half years after the 25 January revolt of 2011, Egypt has been lost between 10,0000 -120,000 faddan. The total population of Egypt will reach around 145 million by 2050 (CAPMAS, 2011) where 62.4 percent will be urbanized (UN-Habitat, 2008). During the inter-census period (19962006), the annual urban housing production is conservatively thought to have grown to reach 263,838 units. Of these, 55.6 percent were formal and 45.4 percent informal. Many studies on Egyptian informal housing enumerated as many as 8.5 million informal housing units, of which; 4.7 million units on agricultural land within or outside municipal boundaries; 0.6 million on government-owned desert land within municipal boundaries; and 3.2 million outside administrative village boundaries. In Cairo, 81 percent of informal units sit on privately owned agricultural land, with 10 percent on government owned desert land and the remainder on stateowned agricultural land (World Bank, 2007; Cities Alliance, 2008; Habitat, 2010). It is not the intention to deal much with the mechanisms of how informal settlements get started as discussed elsewhere (Soliman, 2004). The study adopts ethnographic method, in which ethnographic observation is used in conducting the field survey, while ethnographic interviewing relied on personal and official documents and informal interviews with stakeholders (local municipality, local residents, planners, NGO's, real estate agents, and land developers). The paper predicts that economic and governance reforms as well as the contribution of the grassroots would create a common ground for facilitating or enabling the legitimization of land conversion in a sustainable way that also yields potential economic efficiency. The differences between costs, value, and benefits of agricultural land conversion within Egyptian cities are highlighted. The paper examines the above hypothesis through three main arguments. First, for so many years the international donors and local governments failed to upgrade or at lest to eliminate the perpetuation of informal settlements in developing countries (Hasan, Patel, and Satterthwaite, 2005). As cities have expanded, so have the informality developed residential areas, especially on agricultural land. Second, the need for illegal occupation of land and informal dwelling arrangements stems from a deep marginalization and exclusion from formal access to land and development (Al Sayyad, N. and Roy, A., 2004, Soliman, 2004; Sims, D., 2012, Huchzermeyer, M. and Karam, A., 2006). Third, informality has made it possible for the survival of a large percentage of the urban population, enabling a range of precarious livelihoods, and at the same time, it changed land uses, and urban spaces in the major urban centers. The way informality does this is not compatible with formal urban process. Therefore, this paper sheds lights on the mechanism of housing informality on agricultural land that recently flourished all over the Egyptian cities, with emphases on a case study of El Matariya area in Cairo city. The paper is structured as follows: the second section explores the perpetuation of urban housing on agricultural land, and its effect on land uses, urban pattern, and urban spaces and it tracks

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mapping cities' growth and land reforms, and the reason behind conquering agricultural land. Section three examines a case study to present a critical review of housing informality on agricultural land in El Matariya area in Cairo city. A concluding section offers directions for the applicability of an adapted model to housing informality that it is hoped to assist in enhancing the environment, supporting national and local economic development, and making a common ground by setting priorities for urban informality, and sustainable development needs. II. PERPETUAL CHALLENGE OF SPACE: LAND, REAL ESTATE AND HOUSING INFORMALITY The following section addresses the perpetuation of informal settlements in Egypt through mapping cities' growth on agricultural land and land reforms by which urban informalization on Egyptian landscape has occurred. Also, the main causes that led the urban poor to conquer agricultural land are examined. There are interesting parallels in the evolution of the literature on informal housing and on the informal economy and, over time, their scale, importance and complex linkages with the "formal" economy and housing production were recognized (De Soto, 2000; Bromley, R., 2004). It is estimated that around 40 percent of Egyptian economy is informal, by which it contributed largely in the spreading of housing informality. 1. Mapping cities' growth and land reform

Historically, most Egyptian agglomerations were not predominantly urban areas and it has never been classified as distinct by the state. The historic city (medina), such as Cairo and Alexandria, typically consists of a dense agglomeration of dwellings, with commercial uses on the ground floor. As illustrated in figure (1) the urban form of these cities consists of a series of historic layers, epitomized by relatively homogeneous land markets, each with their own rules. Small and intermediate Egyptian cities are originally characterized by a compact rural agglomeration, which formulated the first layer of the urban fabric, and by the time, more district layers were added on. Over time, many properties have deteriorated for lack of maintenance by absentee owners, or of the conflict of the fragmented ownership patterns. On the eve of the 1952 Revolution, ownership of agricultural land was heavily concentrated in a few hands. About 0.1 percent of owners possessed one-fifth of the land and 0.4 percent controlled one-third, in contrast to the 95 percent of small owners with only 35 percent of the land, and 44 percent of all rural inhabitants were landless (Osman, T., 2010). The land reform Law No. 178 of 1952, and the subsequent laws No. 127 and No. 15 of 1961, and 1963 respectively limited individual ownerships to 50 faddan per an individual and a total landholder for a family of 100 faddan. It targeted the property of the upper class of landowners, dubbed "feudalists" by the government, for distribution to the poorest villagers and landless. According to these laws, the agricultural land ownership is right kind original on the land and gives its owner the power to use, abuse, and dispose of the fact that the land is for an agricultural use that leads to a definition of property of this description. During this era, urban growth on adjacent agricultural land was prohibited, and planning control was in force. At the beginning of the sixties significant improvements to public spaces, streets, markets, historic buildings, and new districts has been made in the majority of the Egyptian cities, which
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formulated the second layer as planned cities. The awqaf and Agrarian Land Reform foundations own significant proportions of new added district properties. Planned extensions on agricultural land were added on with distinct neighborhoods reflecting the socioeconomic mix of the population, such as El Mohandseen district in Cairo, through a combination of public improvements and private investment. By June 1966, the pyramid of landownership truncated at the top part and widened at the base part while large holdings were not entirely eliminated, the share of those owning fifty faddan or more dropped to 15 percent. The 95 percent of owners came to the control of 52 percent of the land instead of the 35 percent they have owned before the reforms (Hopkins, H., 1969). The third layer is the scattered-urban informal urbanization that started in the mid 1970s and has accommodated most of Egypt's sustained annual urban demographic growth rates of 2 to 3 percent since the 1980s. Most of this expansion occurred on privately owned land that were distributed according to Agrarian land reform. From 1975 to 1985, urban land values doubled every three to four years while prices on agricultural fringes rose up but by less than the prices of urban land. The number of small owners, those with fewer than five faddan, increased to nearly 3.29 million in 1984 from 2.92 million in 1961, while the area they owned dropped from 3.17 million faddan to 2.9 million faddan (Osman, T., 2010). Because of low revenue of agricultural production, many of small landowners sold their properties for private developers who converted these areas into informal residential development. This suggested that land fragmentation worsened, because of the continual division of land among heirs in accordance with Islamic inheritance laws. The number of landless families also rose up due to the population growth.

Figure 1: Various layers of urban growth for selected small cites in Egypt
Source: GOPP, 2012

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Fig. 2 Urban development of Cairo city in various phases

Source: GOPP, 2012

Fig 3. Informal areas in Cairo city

Between the 1970's and 1980's, the Open-Door Policy of Sadat and the privatization policy of Mubarak was diminished as the government relaxed its controls over agricultural land. However, land reforms resulted only in the redistribution of about 15 percent of Egypt's land under cultivation, and by the early 1980s, the effects of land reforms in Egypt drew to a halt as the population of Egypt moved away from agriculture. The issuance of law 96 in 1992 revoked the former Agrarian Land Reform of 1952 that had given tenants security of tenure and legalized the right to inherit tenancy agreements. The new law fully enacted in October 1997 after a five-year transition period, but the rent after 1992 was increased from 7 to at least 22 times the fees of the land tax. After the enactment of the new law, all landowners could take back their land and charge tenants market-based rent, which in some cases increased to 300400 percent. Despite contract renewal, the tenants remain vulnerable and insecure because of threats of eviction from proprietors. During this era, the fourth layer appeared by which the peri-urban informal urbanization was dominating the new fabric of urban areas. This trend was facilitated by traditional tenure systems where the privately owned land was subdivided into three types. Privately registered owned land is an area guaranteed full land registration and has a permanent security of tenure. Privately no registered owned land, with Hiyazah (land holding) is an area with de Jure tenure recognition but has not full security of tenure. Privately in doubt, ownership is an area with de facto recognition but has not tenure title. With this type of urban informalization, un-serviced parcels cannot be legally subdivided, and buildings in these informal settlements are therefore encumbered with three instances of non-compliance: (a) illegal agricultural land subdivision; (b) change in use; and (c) unauthorized construction. The fifth layer, occurred in parallel to the fourth layer, is the planned urban extensions which existed in new towns, gated communities, and development corridors, but it is located only in Cairo and Alexandria, and other scattered cities that have back desert areas (Singerman, D., 2009). Several factors have historically been associated with urban informalization on agricultural land in Egypt. Firstly, the government, either directly or indirectly, had played a major role in all cases. Due to the land-reform measures of the early 1960s, and changes in official economic policy have taken economic power away from the traditional landholders and spread ownership across a wider section of the society. The original owners of the allocated land, who received land parcels according to law No. 178, after so many years died and left his/her land to his/her
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heirs, who were always in a conflict and were forced to put in sale their land shares to other people, but this often results in parcels being abandoned when multiple progeny cannot agree over subdivision or sale. Alternatively, if a proprietor dies without children, his property is transferred to Nasser Bank (Bait-Elmaal). Most of these lands have converted to housing informality, and fragmentation of ownership became inevitable. Secondly, the enactment of land policy in the early 1990's has stimulated greater inequality in land holdings, and it has been seen as a far safer investment in uncertain times than industrial production. Finally, further instability was created by the Agrarian Land Reform which resulted in the change of large ownership areas from a private freehold to a public title, then to a private ownership, and vice-versa. This had a major impact on the agricultural land patterns, and led to the insecurity of land tenure. In sum up, the various land reform laws, socioeconomic and political transformations associated with a lack of land delivery system have contributed directly or indirectly in changing agricultural land pattern by which opened the door for land speculators and private developers to conquer agricultural land and changed its use into illegal residential areas. Also, the dynamic process of urban informalization has reflected in various ways on urban spaces in which housing informality became the dominant features of these spaces. 2. Why do people conquer agricultural land?

Scattered researches examined informal housing typologies (Sims, D., 2010; Soliman, 2004; 2007) that have provided a basis for analysis of the mechanisms of demand and supply by which housing on agricultural land (housing informality), as a main type of housing delivery system, became inevitable to accommodate the urban poor. In Egypt, there are three mechanisms for carrying out a housing project for low-income groups; formal, organized, and housing informality (see figure 2). The latter two involved self-help technique, while the former is a complete product. Formal housing constructed by government bodies have to pass through several governmental agencies, and complicated procedures, starting from the Ministry of housing and ending at various local governmental departments. To implement an organized housing project several effects on housing production are occurred; scarcity of fund to carry out the project; long and complicated procedures for the approval of the project; and long time span of the implementation process.

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Figure 4: Methods for carrying out housing projects for low-income groups
Source: Authors elaboration

On the other hand, the mechanisms of housing informality to be developed off the ground are remarkably fast, taking no more than a few weeks, and less costly than the official methods. The production of housing informality is influenced by those who produce them (usually the private developers, either formally or informally), the organizer or regulator (the government), the intermediaries (who are regulating the process of exchange of goods and services among the beneficiaries), the consumers (the residents of informal housing areas) and the market forces all managed the housing production. However, the urban poor conquer agricultural land taking into account the following factors. Firstly, housing informality is developed on agricultural land for which the owner has some sort

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of legal tenure, a formal occupation permit (Hiyazah), and the possibility for improving services and economic status and promoting the development of smaller enterprises through a combination of housing and a place for work. Secondly, housing informality often is developed in advance of the principal lines of urban growth and roads, and in close proximity to job opportunities, social community networks, and amenities. Thirdly, the residents have adopted their own methods and their own procedures on incremental process without restricted regulations and procedures in providing suitable shelter for themselves. The variation of land plots size, housing types, their quality, and level of investment and improvements on housing construction are tailored solely according to the degree of security of tenure, as well as, to match the varied needs and resources of the residents. Fourthly, the informal credit system (Gamaiyyat) exist through a co-operation between the stakeholders -whatever the range - and the households, the intermediary, the landowner, and an informal contractor (Soliman, 2010). Financial collective action is operated in a way that coincide the stakeholders' preferences in agricultural land development process, where the cost of the construction of a housing unit is paid on incremental basis, with a down payment between 25-30 percent of the total current cost, and the rest to be reimbursed on monthly basis over 3-5 years. Therefore, these settlements offered the possibility of changing their status from illegal subdivision into a legal situation and have the possibility of becoming an owner-occupier in the near future, and the future prospect of the locality to be a part of, or within, the city boundary. The future prospect of using land plots as an asset to secure the residents from the inflation, to facilitate the development of home based enterprises, and to give them attractive financial returns. The designs and standards of the houses within housing informality were customized according to the resident's requirements and needs. It is therefore, housing informality provides a wide range of plots' size with the conservation of local planning conventions for its residents (Soliman, 2010) which provide considerable flexibility in designing layouts and enable any imbalance in demand and supply to be corrected. In sum up, the perpetuation of housing informality is a response to a shortage of affordable housing, scarcity of land supply for low-income groups, the relaxation of law, and the weakness of planning management. Therefore, housing informality is not developed through established or state-regulated procedures, and it does not utilize the recognized institutions of housing and housing finance. However, the government is unable to compete with the preferences of housing informality neither in the implementation process nor in the local credit system. III. INFORMALITY OF LAND CONVERSION IN EL MATARIYA AREA The following part examines the development of El Matariya area and how informality of land conversion operated during the last six decades. 3. Historical background

In Egypt, urban informalization is as old as modern urbanization and urban development, which have existed in Cairo for more than nine decades ago. Janet Abu-Lughod (1971), whose main research covered the 1957-61 periods, did not mention the phenomenon at all; neither did David Sims (2010). Evidences are indicated that the appearance of urban informalization in Cairo dates back to the 1900's when squatters' areas (Ezbet El Saiaada, Ezbet El Lemon, Ezbet Abu Toyalhia
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and Tall El Hosen) were found in El Matariya area north west of the city of Cairo (GOPP, 2012). These squatters areas were accommodated the workers who came from Upper Egypt for the construction work of Heliopolis Oasis which was built between 1906 and 1929 by a Belgian, Baron Edouard Empain (Ilbert, R., 1984). The agglomeration of housing informality on agricultural land in El Matariya began to appear in the 1930s and expand in the 1950s as small rural agglomeration called Ezbs such as Abu Toyalhia, where little interest in what was at first a very marginal and not very visible phenomenon, neither from government nor academics. At the beginning of 1950's, the government was increasingly preoccupied with creating new socialist society through the modernisation of all sectors in Cairo, and it could afford to ignore a few informal developments on the periphery. El Matariya area is a part of Ain Shams area (zone 3) and its urban fabric is consisted of several unplanned development layers and has little non builtup areas left. The total area of El Matariya is about 1626 faddan with a population of 0.831 million people with a very high residential density of 511 persons/faddan (GOPP, 2012). As illustrated in figure (3), in the early 1930s, there were six main edges limited El Matariya area; railway track in the eastern side; Ismailia Canal form western edge; El Tawfekyia canal on the north; a public sewage pipe was crossing the site diagonally from north towards the south; and El Hawary road extended from Obelisk site in the north perpendicular on the public sewage pipe headed towards the southern part of the area. Scattered Ezbs were spread across the area. Now, three edges are existed; Port Said Street (adjacent to Ismailia Canal) connects the area with downtown and it extends and intersects to the Cairo Ring Road in the north. Railway track became a metro line, and El Tawfekyia canal became the area's ring road. Three historical sites are located in the area; Obelisk site and Tall El Housen (hill fort) in the northwest and Tree of Mary in the southeast, all of which are separated by farmland adjacent to them.

Figure 5: The process of illegal agricultural land subdivision and conversion in El Matariya area in the city of Cairo. Left: Agricultural fields before urban development, Middle: Consolidated illegal urban development, Right: Built-up area according to agricultural land subdivision
Source: GOPP, 2012

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El Matariya community was often forged based on prior family ties and shared backgrounds. Most of El Matariya's population originates from Upper Egypt, the poorer provinces `up' the Nile in the southern part of Egypt. Much of the population claims to be Sa`idi (Upper Egyptian) but had been living previously in other squatter settlements in the periphery of El Matariya, mainly Ezbet El Lemon. They have settled in unregistered, unofficial, but lawful activities, such as wood retail sales, building and construction, and providing security for people or things. The processes of agricultural land subdivision and land conversion in El Matariya are examined below. 4. Agricultural land subdivision and institution

Virtually all agricultural land in El Matariya, as applied on the fringes of Egyptian cities, was composed of irrigated, intensely cultivated, mostly under family freehold tenure. Some lands are awqaf lands (under the Ministry of Religious Endowments trusts), but farmed by smallholder tenants. In addition, 70 percent of the site were allocated to people according to Agrarian Land Reform of 1952 (Islah El Zirhaa, under the Ministry of Agriculture), again farmed by smallholder tenants, by which the rights of tenants are strong, approaching those of freehold tenure. In El Matariya, as in any agricultural area in Egypt, there are a number of main and secondary irrigation canals (Turaa and Missqa) and drains (Mussaref) whose rights-of-way represent the only lands in the public domain, by which are considered the key drivers for land subdivision. These are normally between 10 and 30 meters wide (including associated embankment roads), with a length varied between 2000-2500 meters. In El Matariya, as in other urbanized informal areas, it is these rights-of-way, which has been converted to main streets (see figure 3). On the stages of the different periods, the farmland, as underlying agricultural field patterns were rigidly rectangular, and it could be that this order itself is translated into subdivisions that appeared planned. Any attempts at legal conversion of these agricultural lands for urban use confront three main problems; lack of legal, up-to-date registration; extremely fragmented land holdings in long narrow strips; and finally, fringe informal subdivision of agricultural land into building plots. According to Islamic law, all heirs obtain a share of the heritage, but a son inherits a share double that of a daughter. Such a process of subdivision is dynamic and occurs piecemeal over a locality, increasing disparities in parcel size. However, since each new plot must have access to an irrigation canal and a communal path, the result is generally one of linear parcels (Ahwad) up to 500 meters long and 150 meters wide. Generation after generation, such plots have been further subdivided into narrower strips separated by small irrigation channels (Missqa). Some today are as narrow as 15 meters. As localities become increasingly urbanized, some canals dried up and added to the width of contiguous roads, such as El Tawfekyia canal. Furthermore, as disputes arise among heirs, courts have often transferred judgment to engineers with expertise in subdividing land according to Islamic law. Such subdivisions usually occur according to a measurement of faddan, which constitutes 24 Qirat (175 square meters). Since each Qirat contains 24 Saahim (7.29 square meters), the characteristic width of many plots is 7.29 meters or some multiple thereof. Large agricultural parcels (Ahwad) were usually subdivided within the pattern of large irrigation canals and drains, and each Hoaad (large parcel) must have side reservations for paths and canal

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cleaning. The pattern of the old irrigation system thus usually defines the main and secondary streets. According to the above outline of agricultural land subdivision, three types of streets within El Matariya area are existed. First, the major inter-settlement arteries; second narrow streets which form the boundaries of the residential blocks and third, passages within the blocks, which are semi-public, (known as hara- darb- atfah), by which formulated the interior paths within the blocks, and allowed access to private land plots. After the subdivision of the agricultural land into small plots (varied in size between 175 - 350 square meters, or one-two Qirat), then the landowners are proclaimed the sale of these small pieces of land for people who are looking for land plots cheaper than the prices in the official land market. 5. How agricultural land conversion markets operates

The conversion process in El Matariya area was characterized by three stages of growth: scattered expansion, collective expansion, and consolidated expansion. Scattered expansion started with government intervention in the early 1950s when some buildings were erected, as popular residential blocks close to Mary's Tree, and a central hospital on the southern edge of the site. These buildings have been spread along the main road adjacent to Kablat Street. Other educational and social buildings have been built in the northeast of the site, and the Obelisk site on the northern edge was left without development. Some rooms were built close to the railway tracks to house railway inspectors. In the early of the 1960's, urbanization occurred in the country and a growing shortage of housing within Cairo encouraged speculators to buy large tracts of agricultural land in El Matariya area. Agricultural land sub-divisions and conversion were organized by the landlords and often carried out with the help of university students. Typically, allocating a plot of land to a private buyer would take between two and three days with a contract between the parties agreeing on terms for down payments and credit. Over a period of ten years, the whole site was sold and the area was consolidated. Collective expansion began with the erection of the main road (Tourelly Street) in the late 1960's that replaced the public sewage pipe by a road that crossed the area from southwest to northeast (figure 3). This provided a diagonal shortcut across the fields from the railway track to Kablat Street and it was soon looked upon as a main public service road that became a major "spine" for residential development. People were encouraged to build on both sides and Tourelly Street soon became a suitable path to and from their dwellings. The residents considered this street as the first step towards permanent settlement, and more buildings were erected on vacant plots close to accessible paths. Two forms of consolidated expansion took place. First, as the settlement's potential was recognized by speculators, more illegal land sub-divisions took place and more buildings were erected. The demand for apartments rose and small developers and contractors started to build more houses. The site became valued as a new residential area for low-income groups offering an alternative to crowded inner-city rented flats. The low land prices (compared to land closer to the city centre), the availability of vacant land with access to various facilities, and increased job opportunities within the site have all encouraged a growing number of people and speculators to invest in housing construction. This has helped a substantial number of low-income groups changed their status from tenant to owner - occupier. The second form of consolidated expansion

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was vertical expansion. With increasing land prices and building materials costs, new storeys have been added to existing buildings according to the resources of each household and the needs of the owners. Private developers often took the first steps in conversion of agricultural land within El Matariya and they could often obtain a good return for their investment in a very short time. The level of development within El Matariya increased considerably as soon as the area was incorporated into the city's boundary or as soon as local authority or central government changed its status from illegal sub-division into a legal and regulated area. The state has played an indirect role in the initial development in most of housing informality in Egyptian cities, and its role has changed over time according to the socioeconomic and political transformations of the country (Soliman, A., 2012). The residents took the initiative of adopting the site and building their houses according to their needs and requirements by which they were dominated with, and influenced by the market forces and development within the country. IV. RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT As has been described housing informality does not operate in isolation as a commodity, rather it depends on the domination of capital, labor, collective resources and a cooperation among the stakeholders, by which the governmental institutions are included. The first lesson to be learned is to recognize people as potential: to invest money, to manage and maintain the physical environment, to control the local resources, and to participate in national economy. The second lesson is the need for the government to adopt an approach that supports what people do, and to regulate to the benefit of the collective resources. One priority should be the development of housing sites by which enabling affordable housing standards, rather than standards so unfeasible that they leave most of the housing stock unregulated. The third lesson to be learned from urban informality is the importance of local planning convention: where street layout and distribution of commercial activities promote sustainability, where value-for-cost is maximized, thereby allowing residents the opportunity to control the built environment, and where people are encouraged to invest in the shared amenities and maintenance of their neighborhood. The fourth lesson is local financial convention which is introduced among the beneficiaries in a way that suite their financial needs, requirements and responsibilities through issuing unofficial documents between them to guarantee the rights of each of them. Also, social networks and cultural norms are the organizational bases that dictate those rules and the means through which they are enforced. The constraints within housing informality grow; their location on agricultural land, the entrepreneurial initial subdivision, and the ex-post to introduction of infrastructure have all led to several major shortcomings in the quality of life for those living there. Also important in this regard are the poor quality of roads and of means of transportation, the poorly ventilated dwellings, and the unregulated construction, which may vary in terms of safety depending on the know-how of local contractors. As well as the great loss of vast area of agricultural land. Housing informality markets and land conversion procedures need to be formulated in line with socioeconomic reforms and poverty alleviation strategies, as well as, with the context of socioeconomic needs of the bottom strata of the society. This requires indirect/direct intervention

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and public investment to produce democratize access to land and promote overall urban reform. Such processes should aim not only at recognizing individual land ownership, but mainly at promoting the communal-spatial integration of informal settlements. Social networks in informal areas, which extend beyond kinship, remain overwhelmingly casual, unstructured, and nonpolitical. The Gamaiyyat, the informal credit system, is perhaps the most important form of neighborhood networking in Egypt. The weakness of civic or non-kinship cooperation at the community level only reinforces traditional hierarchical, paternalistic relations with people depending more on local elders and problem solvers than on broad-based social activism. The question of agricultural land conversion and real estate today concerns the majority of the inhabitants of regional metropolises, as well as those of secondary cities. Furthermore, from the perspective of an over all control desired by the local powers, the passage from a policy of containment to a policy of integration has become vital and it represents an inescapable reversal. The housing informality is finally being considered as integral part of the urban matrix. As well as, the absence of both planning control and urban management over the built environment within Egyptian cities has led into urban informality. However, throughout the various potentialities, constraints, and the facts that Egypt has been magnified by the political goal of saving and rescuing agricultural land, it is possible to explore a model in order to increase land delivery system for the urban poor, as well as to eliminate housing informality. This model implies the three magnets forces; the state, community; and market, all of which are operated in some way together or on individuality bases or both, by which the final output is urban development. The view of urban informality as a cooperation or an arrangement or relationship (whatever the level and the type of urban informality), is the result and the functions of capital - whatever the amount and sort- state involvement and the nature of community concerned. Therefore, public/private cooperation in urban informality is considered as the outcome of capital which is generated by a number of different interest groups (public and private, whatever their legal form and economic status) utilizing the main collectives resources within the market (land, labor, material etc., as well as, the legislative process which controls the operation of these resources) in facilitating and controlling land provision for housing, interacting within the development strategy of the government. Within this conceptualization, the in between the three magnets, is the final product, and the line parallel to the triangle is the output of the integration between the three magnets and the product as it is reflected in the triangle in figure (4 ). The model suggests that each line in the triangle is a response of the interaction between the various forces in the triangle. The importance of this model is that how to reduce the tension between the state, market and community in favor of facilitating land delivery system for the urban poor, and in eliminating housing informality. In summary, housing informality can be viewed from an institutional perspective and from a behavioral perspective. From an institutional point of view, it is concluded that housing informality can take different formal, legal shapes, but have in common that they are (to different degrees) hybrid institutions that deal with competing drivers stemming from public, market and community forces and values. These drivers occur in varying combinations, sometimes reflecting the origins of these organizations and affecting the motivations of the key stakeholders involved. From a behavioral perspective, housing informality have in common that they (again to different extents) adopt entrepreneurial strategies to fulfill their objectives (versus traditional

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bureaucratic or management-oriented behavior); conflicts between principles are played out in organizational strategies and day-to-day decisions. This model can be used as a basis for comparing similarities and differences between housing informality within and between countries at a much deeper level than the traditional comparisons based on tenure or other formal organizational characteristics. Thereby it can also generate interesting information for policy makers to see to what extent different political, social, economical, and institutional contexts lead to different behavior by housing informality providers. Furthermore, the model may also be useful for professionals, to assess to what extent their housing informality organization is being consistent concerning what they say they (want to) do and what they actually do. However, for all purposes, more measurable information (indicators) has to be obtained by applying the model to individual housing informality sites, which will be a main task for further research.

Figure 6: Position of housing informality between State, market, and community

Source: Authors elaboration

V. BIBLIOGRAPHY Abu-Lughod, J. (1971) Cairo: 1001 Years of the City Victorious, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. AlSayyad, N. (2009) "Whose City?," In Singerman, D., and Amar, P., editors. Cairo Cosmopolitan: Politics, culture, and urban space in the new Globalized Middle East, the American University in Cairo Press, Cairo, p 539-542. Bromley, R. (2004) "Power, property, and poverty: Why De Sotos Mystery of capital cannot be solved," in Roy, A. and AlSayyad, N., editors. Urban informality: Transnational perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America, and south Asia.. Lanham: Lexington Books, p 271-288.

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CAPMAS (2011) General Statistics for Population and Housing: Population Census, Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, Cairo, Egypt. City Alliance (2008) Slum upgrading up close: experiences of six cities, Washington: City Alliance. De Soto, H. (2000) The mystery of capital: Why capitalism triumphs in the west and fails everywhere else, Black Swan Books, London. Egypt Human Development Report 2010 (2010) United Nations Development Programme, and the Institute of National Planning, Egypt. GOPP (2012) The detailed plan of El Matariya area in Cairo city, The General Organization for Physical Planning, Cairo. Hasan, A., Patel, S. and Satterthwaite, D. (2005). "How to meet the millennium development goals (MDGs) in urban areas." Environment and urbanization, 17 (1): 3-19. Hopkins, H. (1969). Egypt, the crucible: the unfinished revolution of the Arab World, Seker & Warburg, London. Ilbert, R. (1984) Heliopolis: colonial enterprise and town planning success? In The Expanding Metropolis coping with the urban growth of Cairo, proceeding of seminar nine in the series architecture transformations in the Islamic World, November 11-15, pp. 36-42, Cairo. Osman, T. (2010) Egypt on the Brink: from Nasser to Mubarak, Yale University Press, New Haven and London. Silver, H. (2010). "Divided Cities in the Middle East." Community and development, 9 (4), 345357. Sims, D. (2010) Understanding Cairo: the logic of a city out of control, The American University in Cairo Press, Cairo. Singerman, D. (ed.) (2009) Cairo contested: governance, urban space and Global modernity, The American University in Cairo Press, Cairo. Soliman, A. (2004) A possible way out: Formalizing housing informality in Egyptian cities, University Press of America, Lanham, USA. Soliman, A. (2007) Urban Informality in Egyptian Cities: Coping with Diversity, Paper presented at the 2007 World Bank Fourth Urban Research Symposium, Washington, DC Soliman, A. (2010)."Rethinking urban informality and the planning process in Egypt." Journal of International Development Planning Review, 32 (2), 119-143.

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Soliman, A. (2012). "Building bridges with the grassroots: housing formalization process in Egyptian cities." Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 27 ( 2), 241-260. Stilwell, F. and Jordan, K. (2004). "The political economy of land: putting Henry George in his place." The Journal of Australian Political Economy, 54 (December). UN_Habitat (2008) The State of African Cities 2008: A framework for Addressing Urban Challenges in Africa, Nairobi: Kenya World Bank (2007) Analysis of housing supply mechanisms, Washington, D.C. UN-HABITAT (2011) Islamic Principles and Land: Opportunities for Engagement, Nairobi: Kenya. UN_Habitat (2010) The State of African Cities 2010: Governance, inequality, and Urban Land Markets, Nairobi: Kenya.

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