Cairo Contracted: Investigating the ᶜAshwā’iyyāt (Informal Settlements) through the Dynamics of Construction

Abstract

Cairo is an exploding megacity that is widely portrayed through stark political, economic, and urban challenges. One of its most prominent characteristics is the prevalence of its so-called informal settlements, the ‘Ashwā'iyyāt, which accommodate a staggering 70 percent of Cairenes, and are in many ways illegally constructed. While Cairo’s informal areas can be regarded as a concentration of problems typically existing in cities of the developing world, their increasing physical enhancement and evolving legal status represent contrasting conditions of an adequately built, and increasingly normalized ‘popular housing’. The literature on Cairo reflects these conditions, ascribing the urban crisis to the state’s failures and exclusionary politics on the one hand, and describing institutional weakness as yielding to the pressure of uncontrollable and resourceful informal sprawl on the other. Alternatively, this research shows that the ‘Ashwā'iyyāt's evolving landscape represents a development dynamic that is enabled by intermediation between state and society and is a local projection of a political paradigm that integrates authoritarian politics with indirect and informal modes of governance and provision. In particular, the dissertation investigates the situation through the ‘Ashwā'i construction industry and through contractors as a class of prominent agents. The work is structured into three parts: first, introducing the Cairene scene and the construction industry’s position within the political landscape; second, investigating the dynamics of ‘Ashwā'i construction and advancement through architectural/spatial strategies and legal procedures; and third, analyzing the variations of contractors’ notability that engender differences in the urban and political status of their districts. The research depends on mixed methodologies and architectural approaches, ranging between drawings, visual and diagrammatic analyses, mapping, site surveys and interviewing. As the ‘Ashwā'iyyāt’s dynamics of construction, evolution, and normalization are synthesized, the role of contractors as local notables is seen to be key. Through contractors’ agencies, intermediations, and inherited know-how, they spatially and politically integrate the informal built environment with the state’s political order and the rest of the city. While they extend clientelist and authoritarian politics to local communities, they simultaneously contribute to the advancement and evolution of the ‘Ashwā'iyyāt’s physical qualities and their strategies of development.