الفهرس 
Understanding Informal Settlements in Broad Sense
Land Readjustment (LR) in Concept, PrincipleOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Urban growth has become a synonymous with informal areas growth in Egypt, Sadly, Informality has become one of the urban and rural areas’ characteristics. The vast majority of Egypt’s urban and rural population lives, works and produces in the Nile Valley and Delta, on about less than 5% of Egypt’s land area. This reflects the spatial imbalance between over crowdedness in the Nile Valley and Delta and the sparsely uninhabited desert land. Over the past decades, the Egyptian government has therefore adopted two major sets of policies to address this imbalance: a) Directing urban expansion outside the Nile Valley and Delta or b) planning existing cities’ expansion. It is becoming a dire need to provide plan-oriented development projects to change the land-use within informal areas’ form or nature to improve public facilities (roads, housing, proper infrastructure, services… etc.) that, accordingly, will promote better housing.
Since Physical, economic and social handicaps are self-reinforcing resulting in spatially concentrated poor and creating a culture of poverty. This research aims to provide a result-based analysis for the Land Readjustment Method (LRM) in Egypt, as an alternative method for urban upgrading strategies with respect to the Egypt’s urban / rural policies’ settings. The thesis presents an in-depth search and analysis of LRM seeking to provide that LRM feasibility in developing countries like Egypt. The research settings take place within a successful Egyptian Case study “El Rezqa Area, Banha, Qalyoubia Governorate, Egypt” where LRM has been applied in a natural policy and institutional Egyptian settings.
In the framework of the Achieving Sustainable Urban Development Project (ASUD), UN Habitat Egypt tackled the rapid urbanization process from a new perspective. This research study will address both sustainability and suitability of the planning of cities, while considering the main focus on the planning of urban/rural expansion areas. The aim has been to enhance the planning process in a controlled and sustainable manner so that the expected socio-economic benefits deriving from this process can be translated into an equitable and efficient urban settlement pattern rather than creation of informal areas. Hereby, the chosen case intends to understand the reasons behind the failing of the current planning process on the one hand and the introduction of innovative concepts and tools like land LRM on the other hand.
Since the growth of informal areas has become a natural indicator of the process of the country’s urbanization. Due to inadequacies in planning, management and provision of basic urban infrastructure and services, the urbanization process is taking place in a haphazard manner with no control and regulation. Accordingly, it was important to address LRM and emphasize how feasible LR can be as a concept and method that can undertake the informal urbanism phenomena in Egypt, while, considering land policies that have been modified to upgrade informal settlements. Some practical actions have been taken place that could help advancing effectively the urban upgrading processes, meanwhile the research will work on assessing how far LR Method was feasible to upgrade El Rezqa Area, in such sense, applying it on other informal areas in Egypt.
The Research will emphasize the following related studies “Land Readjustment (LR) and Informal Urbanization”. The research theoretical part will go through the theories, definitions and existing application that are related to LR approach then the analytical part will go through LR Method as a pre-examined Method in lessening informal urbanization that proved its success in many countries (Turkey, Asian Countries “Korea – Egypt – Japan”, Germany …). Nevertheless, the research will go through El Rezqa Area as the Research case study to measure how LR can be feasible.
The research relies on a well-established online platform (LR.org) for defining the criterion on which it can be possible to check any urban or rural area and measure how feasible the LRM can be implemented as an upgrading strategy. The research depends the most on an exploratory approach, consequently, empirical part that takes place in El Rezqa Area where LR has been implemented.
While considering the potential contribution of LRM and what it can do in playing an important role into informal urban areas reduction this will be reflected through international case studies that have used LRM, while assessing the effects of reactive land use policies and regulations, implemented by some suburban communities in Egypt. It is expected that the overall research provides better insights into the connections between informal urbanism solutions’ movements and land-use changes that will eventually contribute to a better understanding of LRM implementation.