Yahia Shawkat, Egypt's Housing Crisis: The Shaping of Urban Space (New Texts Out Now)

Yahia Shawkat, Egypt's Housing Crisis: The Shaping of Urban Space (New Texts Out Now)

Yahia Shawkat, Egypt's Housing Crisis: The Shaping of Urban Space (New Texts Out Now)

By : Yahia Shawkat

Yahia Shawkat, Egypt's Housing Crisis: The Shaping of Urban Space (The American University in Cairo Press, 2020).

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Yahia Shawkat (YS): Ever since I can remember, there has been a housing crisis in Egypt in one form or another. Now, many cities all over the world go through housing crises and, for some, they end. Egyptian film has portrayed the housing crisis as a main plot almost non-stop between the 1960s and the 1980s, with the subject continuing on in various guises. What surprised me when I dug deeper was how official rhetoric—from government officials, parliamentarians, all the way up to presidents—mentioned it. Through this time, language was carefully chosen, using the then popular “housing problem” in the early 1950s, before moving on to the “housing crisis” within that decade, and then reverting back to the “housing problem” in the mid-1970s until this day. Film and news on the other hand, have stuck with “housing crisis.” Here, I felt that the “housing crisis” was a story that needed to be written as such. I felt that this should be in a form that speaks to a wider audience, rather than the reports or policy notes that I am more used to writing.

And since nothing just happens to be, but is the product of a trajectory of events, I needed to dig into history.

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

YS: In Egypt's Housing Crisis, I try to present the spectrum of how people access homes. In the beginning of this project, I mainly looked at renting and buying, but I quickly found out that self-building is the main method of making a home in Egypt, while over the years housing provided by employers or as social welfare have waxed and waned. Within this main narrative of housing access, the book looks at different dimensions of these methods: the policies, politics, and social demands behind them.

And since nothing just happens to be, but is the product of a trajectory of events, I needed to dig into history. For instance, serious steps to build public or social housing started to be taken in the 1940s after a few decades of half-hearted attempts. Most literature on housing on the other hand starts with 1952, the birth of the Socialist era. For government intervention in villages, and arguably the forerunner to modern urban planning, I had to go all the way back to the 1840s. 

Readers will get an overall impression of housing in Egypt over the last century or so, with case studies on rent, informalization, and government housing.

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

YS: In one way, my book builds on my usual method of using both qualitative and quantitative data to analyze housing. For example, in past articles I have written or edited on the Built Environment Observatory, to work out or explain how housing is becoming more unaffordable, I gather housing price data, read laws on real estate, and speak with people that are looking for a home. 

With this book, however, I had the time and the writing space not afforded to generally short and real-time articles to explore the history of housing by looking at the development of policies over decades instead of years. There is a trove of primary sources out there that very few people have touched, at least those researching housing. For example, I was able to find many speeches and writings for Gamal Abdel Nasser on the Bibliotheca Alexandrina Archive that mentioned his views on housing in much detail. There were even once-private government documents such as cabinet and committee minutes that showed candid views and debates on rent and social housing. Similar documents for later presidents are not available, which means that the book may be a bit unfair on Nasser.

And while I am used to reading through statistics, it was quite an adventure digging up more historic data on housing, such as tenure—renting versus buying and self-building, for example—which, compared to most countries, covers a relatively recent period from the 1960s and 70s. Here, the statistics helped give an idea of whether government promises were kept and whether plans succeeded. 

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have? 

YS: Anyone that has built, bought, or rented a home in Egypt will probably find something in this book that they can relate to. Maybe this will help them see what they have been through—and I can bet they have been through one mishap or another—in a wider context. The problems discussed in my book are not one-off problems, but they affect people across the board. I would hope it starts a conversation that can lead to meaningful solutions.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

YS: I am continuing work on the Built Environment Observatory, and I hope to start working on investigating the myth of property as an investment. 

J: What does the picture on the book cover represent?

YS: Once upon a time I was big on photography, and even freelanced shooting architecture. I also worked on some of my own projects and built up a photo library of housing and many places in Egypt. But I struggled to find a non-cliched image that can complement the book’s title; most photographs did not have people in them—a hangover from my architect days. Then I found this one that I took about ten years ago on the Cairo ringroad, with a man tending to a significant bird collection on his balcony. His building also represents a “typical” self-built family home, standing in the shadow of a higher informal “tower” built by developers as an investment. For me, the photograph captures many topics of the housing crisis: self-building, informalization, and the commodification of housing.  

 

Excerpt from the book

Introduction: The Politics of Shelter in Egypt

Housing is a fundamental cornerstone of Egyptian life: It can make or break marriage proposals, boom or bust the economy, and popularize or embarrass a ruler. It is debated as much as football and religion. Egypt’s airwaves regularly beam footage of neat government housing and chaotic self-built settlements. Facebook is chock-full of people seeking buying advice, complaining about delayed housing projects, and protesting eviction, rent control, or a new development. 

Housing is social. It is the cradle that shelters people’s lives, with an entire spectrum of responses having evolved to suit the means of millions of households. Communities have mobilized to self-build, with construction completely managed by the owner down to the last detail. Other people buy their own homes, while only one-quarter of urban Egyptians rent. Those who cannot afford to build, buy, or rent are compelled to squat, some in cemetery courtyards and vacant government-built housing.

Housing is money. Buying is seen as the most effective way to invest your hard-earned cash, where local and foreign investors, as well as speculators, have taken advantage of a deregulated property market to make what they believe is a guaranteed return. The construction sector is one of the largest industries in Egypt today, employing millions. However, this deregulation by the government has also resulted in an inexorable erosion of affordability, with over half of Egyptians unable to afford median-priced homes, and millions forced to live in inadequate shelter.

Housing is political. Almost every Egyptian ruler over the last nine decades, from King Fu’ad to President Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, has directly associated himself with at least one large-scale housing project. In other words, housing has transcended a whole range of political ideologies—from colonial to neoliberal regimes. Publicly owned housing agencies invest billions every year to build subsidized and for-profit housing. In many instances, government housing has been used as a tool to rally political support or demobilize social unrest—Advertisements for social housing would spontaneously appear in the newspapers during elections, or whenever the streets would tremble with protest. 

Housing is also contentious. While most people associate a home with stability, it is only so for some people, some of the time. Millions of mostly poor, but also middle-income families, live in a state of legal or physical precarity. Those seen by the government as living in informal housing face a constant threat of eviction, and tens of thousands of families have been evicted to make way for urban development projects, or because their buildings were deemed illegal and demolished. Almost one million families live with the threat of imminent disaster, with hundreds of buildings collapsing every year—many of which are damaged, left to decay, or even tampered with on purpose to allow landlords to evict rent control tenants, while the rest are shoddily constructed by unscrupulous developers. 

Egypt’s Housing Crisis delves into this multilayered world, tracing an almost perpetual housing crisis in Egypt. It explores the shift in official discourse over the last eight decades, from an issue of ‘homes’ to ‘housing,’ and from a ‘problem’ to a ‘crisis’ and back to a ‘problem’ again. While this shift in language may have happened quietly, it belies how officials in Egypt changed their view of dwellings over the last century. 

An Overview

Egypt’s Housing Crisis provides an urban history of housing in Egypt over the course of eighty years. It does so through a reading of the main policy elements the government has used to shape housing supply during this time: regulation and provision. Chapters 2 and 3 trace how laws have been enacted to regulate the use of private property—through the self-build process and through the rental market and, briefly, the sales market. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 cover provision in both rural and urban settings. The final chapter shows how all forms of housing have simply unraveled, weighed down by decades of regressive policies that have only been propped up to serve particular interests. Egypt’s Housing Crisis need not be read in any particular order, as each chapter is a standalone essay.

Chapter 1 (Etymology of a Crisis) provides a brief politico-statistical history of housing in Egypt, tracing official discourse from the 1940s to the present, providing the book’s backbone, from which the reader can then branch off directly to the chapters that provide more detail. It starts by outlining the history of the discourse around housing, and then adds statistical background on housing production from the 1960s, as well as tenure patterns from the 1970s onward.

Chapter 2 (Self-builders) looks at the most popular avenue to housing. While most owners do not do the actual building themselves, this chapter details how they acquire the land, design their homes, and manage the entire building process. Chapter 2 also discusses how, despite a raft of laws outlawing many of the self-built homes, along with squatting on state-owned land, the government has de facto tolerated the practice since 1957. This was through a host of amnesties with the goal of helping to ease the homes crisis and even the extension of formal infrastructure to most settlements, but in exchange for what? 

Chapter 3 (Old to New Rent) chronicles changes in rent legislation from the 1940s through the 1990s, and the major effects this has had on housing. Old Rent, which is Egypt’s special blend of rent control—introduced under a colonial regime, bolstered during a socialist one, and maintained through neoliberal times—has been especially contentious. Many landlords have sought to evict tenants by condemning buildings and sometimes fatal actions that include deliberately knocking them down. Its ambiguity has also led to cases of massive fraud. The chapter then details the introduction of New Rent (market rent) in the neoliberal 1990s, with its promise to liberate vacant property and solve the housing problem. Initially it may have helped, but today, almost half of Egyptians cannot afford median rents. Meanwhile, over a million homes are still under Old Rent with growing, anxious demands from landlords to get their properties back. 

Erving Goffman’s concept of a ‘total institution’ helps explain some of chapter 4 (‘Model’ Villages for ‘Model’ Citizens).This chapter investigates how the government sought to control the rural population between the mid-nineteenth century and the end of the twentieth century. The first section of the chapter looks at ‘izbas, private hamlets that were located on large landowners’ estates, which came to house a considerable portion of the population who were ruled by proxy between the 1840s and 1952. The chapter goes on to chronicle the ‘model village’ movement of the 1930s and 1940s, whereby the government, as well as private enterprise, aimed to reconstruct rural housing and remold people into ‘model citizens.’ The movement would also set the stage for later forms of mass rural housing, the New Villages, popularized during the Arab socialist era (1952–70), resettling tens of thousands of people on desert land reclamation schemes in ‘model societies.’ The chapter concludes with the demise of rural population control through government villages by the end of the millennium, to be replaced by a resurgence of private agricultural workers’ camps—a rebirth of the ‘izba.

The story of chapter 5 (Government Housing, a Brief History) is the evolution of urban mass housing over the last century—tracing its origins from the musta‘marat (workers’ colonies) and company towns built by private industry from the 1920s, through their popularization in the 1940s, and their transformation into government housing estates in the 1950s to solve the housing crisis. Egypt’s rulers have associated themselves with mass housing, something that has made it more political than pragmatic, where the uniformity of the housing blocks belies myriad tenure options, and application regimes that changed as the politics did. The chapter concludes with the final major transformation of mass government housing in the late 1970s, from renting to ownership, or from a political social provision to a political commodity, a policy that has remained in place until today. 

Chapter 6 (Government Housing Today) takes an in-depth look at current mass urban housing through two of the largest schemes in its history—Mubarak’s National Housing Project, initiated as part of his election campaign in 2005, and the million-unit Social Housing Project, born amid the 2011 uprising that toppled him. 

The seventh and final chapter (Housing Unravels) delves into the spectrum of informality that pervades not just self-build, but all other housing in Egypt. It examines a number of cases, some that converge from previous chapters on self-build, rent, and government housing, and others that are about state-led gentrification. All are about one form of informal tenure or another, in a climate that looks increasingly like a manufactured informality, and a bureaucratic regime that is structured so that dwellers across the income spectrum rarely have secure and stable tenure. 

New Texts Out Now: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein, guest eds. "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis." Special Issue of Conflict, Security & Development

Conflict, Security and Development, Volume 15, No. 5 (December 2015) Special issue: "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis," Guest Editors: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you compile this volume?

Mandy Turner (MT): Both the peace process and the two-state solution are dead. Despite more than twenty years of negotiations, Israel’s occupation, colonization and repression continue–and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace.

This is not news, nor is it surprising to any keen observer of the situation. But what is surprising–and thus requires explanation – is the resilience of the Oslo framework and paradigm: both objectively and subjectively. It operates objectively as a straitjacket by trapping Palestinians in economic and security arrangements that are designed to ensure stabilization and will not to lead to sovereignty or a just and sustainable solution. And it operates subjectively as a straitjacket by shutting out discussion of alternative ways of understanding the situation and ways out of the impasse. The persistence of this framework that is focused on conflict management and stabilization, is good for Israel but bad for Palestinians.

The Oslo peace paradigm–of a track-one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution–is therefore in crisis. And yet it is entirely possible that the current situation could continue for a while longer–particularly given the endorsement and support it enjoys from the major Western donors and the “international community,” as well as the fact that there has been no attempt to develop an alternative. The immediate short-term future is therefore bleak.

Guided by these observations, this special issue sought to undertake two tasks. The first task was to analyze the perceptions underpinning the Oslo framework and paradigm as well as some of the transformations instituted by its implementation: why is it so resilient, what has it created? The second task, which follows on from the first, was then to ask: how can we reframe our understanding of what is happening, what are some potential alternatives, and who is arguing and mobilizing for them?

These questions and themes grew out of a number of conversations with early-career scholars – some based at the Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem, and some based in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere. These conversations led to two interlinked panels at the International Studies Association annual convention in Toronto, Canada, in March 2014. To have two panels accepted on “conflict transformation and resistance in Palestine” at such a conventional international relations conference with (at the time unknown) early-career scholars is no mean feat. The large and engaged audience we received at these panels – with some very established names coming along (one of whom contributed to this special issue) – convinced us that this new stream of scholars and scholarship should have an outlet.  

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures do the articles address?

MT: The first half of the special issue analyzes how certain problematic assumptions shaped the Oslo framework, and how the Oslo framework in turn shaped the political, economic and territorial landscape.

Virginia Tilley’s article focuses on the paradigm of conflict resolution upon which the Oslo Accords were based, and calls for a re-evaluation of what she argues are the two interlinked central principles underpinning its worldview: internationally accepted notions of Israeli sovereignty; and the internationally accepted idea that the “conflict” is essentially one between two peoples–the “Palestinian people” and the “Jewish people”. Through her critical interrogation of these two “common sense” principles, Tilley proposes that the “conflict” be reinterpreted as an example of settler colonialism, and, as a result of this, recommends an alternative conflict resolution model based on a paradigm shift away from an ethno-nationalist division of the polity towards a civic model of the nation.

Tariq Dana unpacks another central plank of the Oslo paradigm–that of promoting economic relations between Israel and the OPT. He analyses this through the prism of “economic peace” (particularly the recent revival of theories of “capitalist peace”), whose underlying assumptions are predicated on the perceived superiority of economic approaches over political approaches to resolving conflict. Dana argues that there is a symbiosis between Israeli strategies of “economic peace” and recent Palestinian “statebuilding strategies” (referred to as Fayyadism), and that both operate as a form of pacification and control because economic cooperation leaves the colonial relationship unchallenged.

The political landscape in the OPT has been transformed by the Oslo paradigm, particularly by the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Alaa Tartir therefore analyses the basis, agenda and trajectory of the PA, particularly its post-2007 state building strategy. By focusing on the issue of local legitimacy and accountability, and based on fieldwork in two sites in the occupied West Bank (Balata and Jenin refugee camps), Tartir concludes that the main impact of the creation of the PA on ordinary people’s lives has been the strengthening of authoritarian control and the hijacking of any meaningful visions of Palestinian liberation.

The origin of the administrative division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the focus of Tareq Baconi’s article. He charts how Hamas’s initial opposition to the Oslo Accords and the PA was transformed over time, leading to its participation (and success) in the 2006 legislative elections. Baconi argues that it was the perceived demise of the peace process following the collapse of the Camp David discussions that facilitated this change. But this set Hamas on a collision course with Israel and the international community, which ultimately led to the conflict between Hamas and Fateh, and the administrative division, which continues to exist.

The special issue thereafter focuses, in the second section, on alternatives and resistance to Oslo’s transformations.

Cherine Hussein’s article charts the re-emergence of the single-state idea in opposition to the processes of separation unleashed ideologically and practically that were codified in the Oslo Accords. Analysing it as both a movement of resistance and as a political alternative to Oslo, while recognizing that it is currently largely a movement of intellectuals (particularly of diaspora Palestinians and Israelis), Hussein takes seriously its claim to be a more just and liberating alternative to the two-state solution.

My article highlights the work of a small but dedicated group of anti-Zionist Jewish-Israeli activists involved in two groups: Zochrot and Boycott from Within. Both groups emerged in the post-Second Intifada period, which was marked by deep disillusionment with the Oslo paradigm. This article unpacks the alternative – albeit marginalized – analysis, solution and route to peace proposed by these groups through the application of three concepts: hegemony, counter-hegemony and praxis. The solution, argue the activists, lies in Israel-Palestine going through a process of de-Zionization and decolonization, and the process of achieving this lies in actions in solidarity with Palestinians.

This type of solidarity action is the focus of the final article by Suzanne Morrison, who analyses the “We Divest” campaign, which is the largest divestment campaign in the US and forms part of the wider Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Through attention to their activities and language, Morrison shows how “We Divest”, with its networked, decentralized, grassroots and horizontal structure, represents a new way of challenging Israel’s occupation and the suppression of Palestinian rights.

The two parts of the special issue are symbiotic: the critique and alternative perspectives analyzed in part two are responses to the issues and problems identified in part one.

J: How does this volume connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

MT: My work focuses on the political economy of donor intervention (which falls under the rubric of “peacebuilding”) in the OPT, particularly a critique of the Oslo peace paradigm and framework. This is a product of my broader conceptual and historical interest in the sociology of intervention as a method of capitalist expansion and imperial control (as explored in “The Politics of International Intervention: the Tyranny of Peace”, co-edited with Florian Kuhn, Routledge, 2016), and how post-conflict peacebuilding and development agendas are part of this (as explored in “Whose Peace: Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding”, co-edited with Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper (PalgraveMacmillan, 2008).  

My first book on Palestine (co-edited with Omar Shweiki), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy: De-development and Beyond (PalgraveMacmillan, 2014), was a collection of essays by experts in their field, of the political-economic experience of different sections of the Palestinian community. The book, however, aimed to reunite these individual experiences into one historical political-economy narrative of a people experiencing a common theme of dispossession, disenfranchisement and disarticulation. It was guided by the desire to critically assess the utility of the concept of de-development to different sectors and issues–and had a foreword by Sara Roy, the scholar who coined the term, and who was involved in the workshop from which the book emerged.

This co-edited special issue (with Cherine Hussein, who, at the time of the issue construction, was the deputy director of the Kenyon Institute) was therefore the next logical step in my research on Palestine, although my article on Jewish-Israeli anti-Zionists did constitute a slight departure from my usual focus.

J: Who do you hope will read this volume, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

MT: I would imagine the main audience will be those whose research and political interests lie in Palestine Studies. It is difficult, given the structure of academic publishing – which has become ever more corporate and money grabbing – for research outputs such as this to be accessed by the general public. Only those with access to academic libraries are sure to be able to read it – and this is a travesty, in my opinion. To counteract this commodification of knowledge, we should all provide free access to our outputs through online open source websites such as academia.edu, etc. If academic research is going to have an impact beyond merely providing more material for teaching and background reading for yet more research (which is inaccessible to the general public) then this is essential. Websites such as Jadaliyya are therefore incredibly important.

Having said all that, I am under no illusions about the potential for ANY research on Israel-Palestine to contribute to changing the dynamics of the situation. However, as a collection of excellent analyses conducted by mostly early-career scholars in the field of Palestine studies, I am hopeful that their interesting and new perspectives will be read and digested. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MT: I am currently working on an edited volume provisionally entitled From the River to the Sea: Disintegration, Reintegration and Domination in Israel and Palestine. This book is the culmination of a two-year research project funded by the British Academy, which analyzed the impacts of the past twenty years of the Oslo peace framework and paradigm as processes of disintegration, reintegration and domination – and how they have created a new socio-economic and political landscape, which requires new agendas and frameworks. I am also working on a new research project with Tariq Dana at Birzeit University on capital and class in the occupied West Bank.

Excerpt from the Editor’s Note 

[Note: This issue was published in Dec. 2015]

Initially perceived to have inaugurated a new era of hope in the search for peace and justice in Palestine-Israel, the Oslo peace paradigm of a track one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution is in crisis today, if not completely at an end.

While the major Western donors and the ‘international community’ continue to publicly endorse the Oslo peace paradigm, Israeli and Palestinian political elites have both stepped away from it. The Israeli government has adopted what appears to be an outright rejection of the internationally-accepted end-goal of negotiations, i.e. the emergence of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. In March 2015, in the final days of his re-election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which is regarded as illegal under international law. Reminding its inhabitants that it was him and his Likud government that had established the settlement in 1997 as part of the Israeli state’s vision of a unified indivisible Jerusalem, he promised to expand the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem if re-elected. And in an interview with Israeli news site, NRG, Netanyahu vowed that the prospects of a Palestinian state were non-existent as long as he remained in office. Holding on to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), he argued, was necessary to ensure Israel’s security in the context of regional instability and Islamic extremism. It is widely acknowledged that Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israel’s security—against both external and internal enemies—gave him a surprise win in an election he was widely expected to lose.

Despite attempts to backtrack under recognition that the US and European states are critical of this turn in official Israeli state policy, Netanyahu’s promise to bury the two-state solution in favour of a policy of further annexation has become the Israeli government’s official intent, and has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading ministers and key advisers.

[…]

The Palestinian Authority (PA) based in the West Bank also appears to have rejected a key principle of the Oslo peace paradigm—that of bilateral negotiations under the supervision of the US. Despite a herculean effort by US Secretary of State, John Kerry, to bring the two parties to the negotiating table, in response to the lack of movement towards final status issues and continued settlement expansion (amongst other issues), the Palestinian political elite have withdrawn from negotiations and resumed attempts to ‘internationalise the struggle’ by seeking membership of international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), and signing international treaties such as the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. This change of direction is part of a rethink in the PA and PLO’s strategy rooted in wider discussions and debates. The publication of a document by the Palestine Strategy Study Group (PSSG) in August 2008, the production of which involved many members of the Palestinian political elite (and whose recommendations were studiously discussed at the highest levels of the PA and PLO), showed widespread discontent with the bilateral negotiations framework and suggested ways in which Palestinians could ‘regain the initiative’.

[…]

And yet despite these changes in official Palestinian and Israeli political strategies that signal a deepening of the crisis, donors and the ‘international community’ are reluctant to accept the failure of the Oslo peace paradigm. This political myopia has meant the persistence of a framework that is increasingly divorced from the possibility of a just and sustainable peace. It is also acting as an ideological straitjacket by shutting out alternative interpretations. This special issue seeks a way out of this political and intellectual dead end. In pursuit of this, our various contributions undertake what we regard to be two key tasks: first, to critically analyse the perceptions underpinning the Oslo paradigm and the transformations instituted by its implementation; and second, to assess some alternative ways of understanding the situation rooted in new strategies of resistance that have emerged in the context of these transformations in the post-Oslo landscape.

[…]

Taken as a whole, the articles in this special issue aim to ignite conversations on the conflict that are not based within abstracted debates that centre upon the peace process itself—but that begin from within the realities and geographies of both the continually transforming land of Palestine-Israel and the voices, struggles, worldviews and imaginings of the future of the people who presently inhabit it. For it is by highlighting these transformations, and from within these points of beginning, that we believe more hopeful pathways for alternative ways forward can be collectively imagined, articulated, debated and built.