Resource information
The objective of this paper is to
present a succinct and up-to-date review of the urban sector
in Egypt, with a focus on issues for which there is new
insight or emerging government interest. The two main themes
of the report are the challenges facing the urban sector and
the policy implications at various levels of government.
Some of the reports mains findings are: urbanization in
Egypt takes on forms and processes which are not well
understood and as a consequence urban policies are sometimes
weak or counter productive; until now policies and actions
in the urban sector have mainly consisted of State driven,
supply-side interventions; due to the focus on development
in the desert, the dynamics of urbanism in the Nile Valley
and Delta, which together contain over 95 percent of the
country's population, have largely been ignored; and
finally it is rare that government of Egypt's urban
development projects include a strategy of capturing the
appreciation value of their investments ("unearned
increment"), cross-subsidization or cost recovery. The
note concludes with a set of recommendations of ways to
improve the government's response to the urban challenge.
