Popular Housing and Urban Land Tenure in the Middle East: Case Studies from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey

by Myriam Ababsa (Editor)

Overview

Irregular or illegal housing constitutes the ordinary condition of popular urban housing in the Middle East. Considering the conditions of daily practices related to land and tenure mobilization and of housing, neighborhood shaping, transactions, and conflict resolution, this book offers a new reading of government action in the cities of Amman, Beirut, Damascus, Istanbul, and Cairo, focusing on the participation of ordinary citizens and their interactions with state apparatus specifically located within the urban space. The book adopts a praxeological approach to law that describes how inhabitants define and exercise their legality in practice and daily routines. The ambition of the volume is to restore the continuum in the consolidation, building after building, of the popular neighborhoods of the cities under study, while demonstrating the closely-knit social relationships and other forms of community bonding.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789774165405
Publisher:	American University in Cairo Press, The
Publication date:	08/20/2012
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Myriam Ababsa is a research fellow in social geography at the French Institute for the Near East in Amman. Her work focuses on the impact of public policies on regional and urban development in Jordan and Syria.



Baudouin Dupret is a research fellow at the French National Center for Scientific Research, based in Paris, and a lecturer in Islamic law and socio-legal sciences at the University of Louvain. He has published extensively in the fields of the sociology and anthropology of law, legislation, and media, especially in the Middle East.


Eric Denis is a senior research fellow affiliated with the French National Center for Scientific Research, and is based at the French Institute in Pondicherry, India. He has published widely in the field of urban studies and geography of the Middle East.

Table of Contents

Forms and Norms: Questioning Illegal Urban Housing in the Middle East
Myriam Ababsa, Baudouin Dupret, and Eric Denis

The Production of Forms and Norms from Within
Mukhalafat in Damascus: The Form of an Informal Settlement
Etienne Léna

Selling One’s Property in an Informal Settlement: A Praxeological Approach to a Syrian Case Study
Baudouin Dupret and Myriam Ferrier

Securing Property in Informal Neighborhoods in Damascus through Tax Payments
Myriam Ferrier

Inhabitants’ Daily Practices to Obtain Legal Status for Their Homes and Security of Tenure: Egypt
Marion Séjourné

Vertical versus Horizontal: Constraints of Modern Living Conditions in Informal Settlements and the Reality of Construction
Franziska Laue

The Politics of Sacred Space in Downtown Beirut (1853–2008)
Ward Vloeberghs

Shared Social and Juridical Meanings as Observed in an Aleppo ‘Marginal’ Neighborhood
Zouhair Ghazzal

Public Policies toward Informal Settlements: From Eviction to Self-help Recognition (or Legitimization) and Back

Secure Land Tenure? Stakes and Contradictions of Land Titling and Upgrading Policies in the Global Middle East and Egypt
Agnès Deboulet

The Commodification of the Ashwa’iyyat: Urban Land, Housing Market Unification, and de Soto’s Interventions in Egypt
Eric Denis

Public Policies toward Informal Settlements in Jordan (1965–2010)
Myriam Ababsa

Mülk Allahindir (‘This House is God’s Property’): Legitimizing Land Ownership in the Suburbs of Istanbul
Jean-François Pérouse

Law, Rights, and Justice in Informal Settlements: The Crossed Frames of Reference of Town Planning in a Large Urban Development Project in Beirut
Valérie Clerc

The Coastal Settlements of Ouzaii and Jnah: Analysis of an Upgrading Project in Beirut
Falk Jähnigen