Urban Informality

This book develops an analytical framework for a serious investigation of the historical specificities of cities of the Global South within three Mediterranean areas and inland territories. Its starting point is the research on urban informality in three different environments; one has experienced tremendous socio-economic transformation, while the other two have experienced the conflict that occurred in the Middle East under a free-market-oriented imposed system. The book provides a unique overview of urban informality within the region.
This book draws upon experience and intensive work on the definitions and taxonomies of urban informality in the Global South. It investigates urban informality as a site of transitions in different socioeconomic, socio-spatial, and political contexts, concerning theories and practice, to strengthen understanding of sustainable transition processes. It explores how urban informality operates in the context of comparative cross-national perspectives that meet the SDGs and the NUA. The book enables policymakers, planners, and designers to think about urban informality as a dynamic multi-dimensional phenomenon, or as a site of transitions, within a built environment embedded in specific contexts. It arrives at the full package of resilient benefits provided by urban informality and even the different basic ways in which a better way of life can become manifest. This book opens a new scientific discussion between urban informality and sustainability transition perspectives, between conceptual and empirical, and between structural and practical.
Geoffrey Payne, Geoffrey Payne and Associates

It is often assumed that informality is simply the opposite of formality – a binary structure of opposites. However, the academic literature has exposed it as far more layered and complex than this and the analysis by Professor Soliman demonstrates convincingly and comprehensively, the multi-layered nature of urban informality in Egypt and the Middle East in general. Overlapping legal forms of land tenure and property rights, together with variations both within as well as between settlements, make it vital to understand this complexity in order that policies to address it are evidence based.

This book offers a synopsis of urban informality in the Middle East, ongoing research on the governance of sustainability transitions and how to deal with urban informality in the context of sustainability transitions. This provides an essential foundation for understanding the complexity of informality, reasons why it exists, the positive as well as negative features and the options for reducing it. It is essential reading for all involved in addressing the issue in a region of the world where the relationship between formal and informal development of land and housing is critical to social and economic development.