The Concept of Participation in Cairo’s Unplanned Areas

This chapter aims to provide insight into the local implications of the concept of participation in urban contexts characterized by strong sociospatial inequalities. Since the 1990s, urban planning and development projects worldwide have focused on bottom-up approaches. In Egypt, the participation of residents and local communities has been extensively used in urban development programs framing the work of international and local NGOs in unplanned areas (‘ashwa’iyat). Anyway, it is not clear how much participation is actually afforded to local community networks. The chapter investigates the case of Ezbet el-Haggana, one of Cairo’s biggest unplanned areas, and the work of two