The Right to Land: To Whom Belongs after a Reconciliation Law in Egypt

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25034/ijcua.2022.v6n2-1

Keywords:

Reconciliation Law, Housing, Property, Regulations, Building Violations, Land Management, Egypt

Abstract

A revolutionary book by De Soto to formalize land tenure by changing “dead capital” to “life capital” has become the trademark in Egypt of issuing a temporary reconciliation law of 2019 and its amendment to approve a legal certificate to the violators against a certain fee. The question is does this law legalize informal housing? Is it enough to introduce a legal certificate to secure land tenure for the violators? How would this law apply on the ground? Depending on the deductive methodology, this paper traces sociotechnical transitions concerning legalizing the status quo of building/land, tenure security, real-estate markets (formal/informal) caused by laws on buildings violations reconciliation. The idea is to take a step back and look at a wide-angle of the problem in the future to arrive at a clear picture of the influences of the introduction of a new law on the land market, before making a decision. The paper assumes that the temporary reconciliation law in Egypt is opening the debate on the alteration of land management to govern the status quo of the chaos of the right to land. It concludes this temporary reconciliation law has created a state of decayed/wealth, social inclusion/exclusion of the bottom of the social pyramid nevertheless to whom the justification is affected.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Professor Dr. Ahmed M. Soliman, Architectural Department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Egypt

Ahmed Soliman is a Professor Emeritus of Architecture, and Urban Planning at the Architectural Department, Faculty of Engineering, University of Alexandria, Egypt, where he also served as Chair for four years of the Faculty of Architecture of Beirut Arab University and served as Chair for five years of the Architectural Department, Faculty of Engineering, University of Alexandria. Currently, he is the head of the Scientific Committee of the Supreme Council of the Egyptian Universities. He is a founder of the Architectural and Planning Studies Center as a private firm by which he carried out several urban planning projects in Egypt and Lebanon. He has published enormous papers and contributed to book chapters on housing informality in international journals and distinguished books. He has authored numerous books among them Urban Informality (2021), A Possible Way Out (2004), The Poor in Search of Shelter (2013), and Sustainable Housing (in Arabic) (1996).

References

Archambault, C. S., & Zoomers, A. (Eds.). (2015). Global Trends in Land Tenure Reform: Gender Impacts. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315765822

De Soto, H. (2003). The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. London: Black Swan.

Denis, E. (2012). The Commodification of the Ashwayyiat (s): Urban Land Market Unification and De Soto’s Interventions in Egypt. Popular Housing and Urban Land Tenure in the Middle East, 227-258. https://doi.org/10.5743/cairo/9789774165405.003.0010

Doherty, G. (2010). Diane Singerman and Paul Amar, eds., Cairo Cosmopolitan: Politics, Culture and Urban Space in the New Globalized Middle East (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2006). Pp. 564. $39.50 cloth, $29.95 paper. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 42(4), 725-726. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743810001133

Dorman, W. J. (2013). Exclusion and Informality: The Praetorian Politics of Land Management in Cairo, Egypt. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37(5), 1584-1610. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01202.x

Durand-Lasserve, A. (2005). Land for housing the poor in African cities: Are neo-customary processes an effective alternative to formal systems?'. Urban futures: Economic development and poverty reduction, 160-174. https://doi.org/10.3362/9781780446325.012

Durand-Lasserve, A., & Selod, H. (2009). The formalization of urban land tenure in developing countries. In Urban land markets (pp. 101-132). Germany: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8862-9_5

Gazette, O. (2019). Building Violations Temporary Reconciliation Law (in Arabic). Gazette, Official, volume 14 Duplicate G, 8th April. http://admin.mhuc.gov.eg//Dynamic_Page/636990508748531932.pdf

Gazette, O. (2020). Amendments of Temporary Reconciliation Law (in Arabic). Official Gazette, 1(1), 2-6, Duplicate D, 7th January. Retrieved from: http://admin.mhuc.gov.eg//Dynamic_Page/637292033212837096.pdf

Gilbert, A. (2012). De Soto's The Mystery of Capital: reflections on the book's public impact. International development planning review, 34(3), V. https://doi.org/10.3828/idpr.2012.15

Guerzoni, E. (2009). Cairo's Informal Areas Between Urban Challenges and Hidden Potentials. Portugal: Norprint SA.

Home, R. (2020). Land Issues for Urban Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52504-0

Kanger, L., & Schot, J. (2019). Deep transitions: Theorizing the long-term patterns of socio-technical change. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 32, 7-21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2018.07.006

Khalifa, M. A. (2011). Redefining slums in Egypt: Unplanned versus unsafe areas. Habitat International, 35(1), 40-49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2010.03.004

Lipton, M. (2009). Land reform in developing countries: property rights and property wrongs. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203876251

McAuslan, P. (2013). Land Law Reform in Eastern Africa: Traditional or Transformative?: A critical review of 50 years of land law reform in Eastern Africa 1961 – 2011. UK: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203491867

Payne, G., Durand-Lasserve, A., & Rakodi, C. (2009). Social and Economic Impacts of Land Titling Programs in Urban and Periurban Areas: A Short Review of the Literature. In Urban Land Markets Improving Land Management for Successful Urbanization (pp. 133-161). London: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8862-9_6

Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674369542

Shawkat, Y. (2021) Law Versus Optimization - Development Brief (in Arabic), The built Environment Observatory. Retrieved from https://marsadomran.info/policy_analysis/2021/07/2222/

Sims, D. (2011). Understanding Cairo: The logic of a city out of control. Cairo: America University Press in Cairo. https://doi.org/10.5743/cairo/9789774164040.001.0001

Sims, D. (2015). Egypt's desert dreams: development or disaster? Cairo: American University Press in Cairo. https://doi.org/10.5743/cairo/9789774166686.001.0001

Soliman, A. (2012a, October). Tilting at pyramids: informality of land conversion in Cairo. In Sixth Urban Research and Knowledge Symposium (pp. 336-387). Rethinking Cities: Framing the Future, Barcelona, Spain: World Bank.

Soliman, A. M. (2012b). The Egyptian episode of self-build housing. Habitat International, 36(2), 226-236. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2011.08.004

Soliman, A. (2004). A Possible Way Out: Formalizing Housing Informality in Egyptian Cities. Lanham: American University Press.

Soliman, A. (2021). Urban Informality: Experiences and Urban Sustainability Transitions in Middle East Cities. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68988-9

Suzuki, H., Murakami, J., Hong, Y. H., & Tamayose, B. (2015). Financing Transit-Oriented Development with Land Values: Adapting Land Value Capture in Developing Countries. Washington: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. https://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-0149-5

UN-Habitat. (2021). Egypt Human Development Report. The United Nations Development Programme, Ministry of Planning and Economic Development, Egypt: UN-Habitat. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/279512021_VNR_Report_Egypt.pdf

Published

2022-02-14

How to Cite

Soliman, A. M. (2022). The Right to Land: To Whom Belongs after a Reconciliation Law in Egypt. Journal of Contemporary Urban Affairs, 6(2), 96–111. https://doi.org/10.25034/ijcua.2022.v6n2-1