transformations in popular attitude, customs and beliefs
TRANSCRIPT
Transformations in Popular Attitude, Customs and Beliefs:
A Framework for the Development of Poor Rural Settlements in Egypt
Ahmed O. El-KholeiProfessor of Urban Planning,
Menofia University, Egypt
The Problem• The UNDP Global HDR rank Egypt among the
third quintile of the Human Development Index. • Egypt is not found in the rich districts of Cairo
and Alexandria• Egypt is in the 1,200 informal settlements, and
4,000 villages and 26 thousand satellites.• The revival of these settlements is possible only
if they were no more exploited.• Egypt is not a country that is rich in natural
endowments.• Countries, such as Egypt, with limited natural
resource base depend on human resources for a sustained development.
The Problem
• The current economic, social and political crisis of Egypt today is the resultant of external and internal factors.
• The most important relationships in a society are those of power, which means the ability to get others to do what you want them to do.
• Power relationships are relationships of domination that allow one person or group to implement new technologies and to reap the benefits of doing so at the cost of whomever.
The Argument
Policy and planning are among the means to promote development.Today development is not the mandate of a government only, but also the responsibility of civil society organizationsThe positive contribution of planning could result from facilitating the achievement of development objectives, quickly and efficiently, than if development followed natural forces
Conceptual Analysis
• The most notable characteristic of today's world is the inequitable income distribution between and within countries.
• Amin (2000) classified the countries of the world into those at the core, i.e., the industrial countries; and three tiers of countries.
• Foreign capital penetration is one of the factors causing within-nation income inequality.
• Globalization is responsible for a shift in capital-labor relations resulting in increases in income inequality throughout the world, as global elites are advantaged over other segments of the population.
Conceptual AnalysisThe following eight propositions to account for the increases in inequality since 1972:
– Transnational economic integration and national disintegration as the interplay of foreign capital penetration reflects income inequality in non-core countries;
– More economic openness and deregulation in the world economy led to increasing inequality;
– The shift from traditional production technologies to new technological style of the information age is thought to increase inequality because the diffusion of new technology tends to be uneven;
– The shift from peripherization to marginalization of peripheral countries manifested by the move away from the importance of agriculture and raw materials toward knowledge-based industries and services;
Conceptual AnalysisThe following eight propositions to account for the increases in inequality since 1972:
– Improved income positions of the higher segments of management vis-à-vis their rank-and-file employees not only favors the organizational elite but also shareholders, with whom they tend to form corporate alliances;
– Capital income from the world stock markets has changed the functional distribution of income in favor of capital;
– The growing importance of continuing education increased the inequality because the skills and certifications in the labor force have become more unequal due, in part, to continuing education and training;
– Wage bargaining between capital and labor shifted from collective to intra-firm bargaining, which served to increase wage differentials.
Conceptual AnalysisForeign capital penetration is also responsible for serious environmental problems in many developing countries. Carbon dioxide is understood to be the most important greenhouse gas believed to be altering the global climate.The least efficient consumers of fossil fuels are some countries within the semi-periphery and upper periphery, specifically those nations which are high exporters, those highly in debt, nations with higher military spending, and those with a repressive social structure.
Conceptual AnalysisForeign capital penetration in 1980 has a significant positive effect on the growth of CO2 emissions between 1980 and 1996. Domestic investment, however, has no systematic effect because:• Foreign investment is more concentrated in those industries that require more energy• Transnational corporations may relocate highly polluting industries to countries with fewer environmental controls• The movement of inputs and outputs resulting from the global dispersion of production over the past 30 years is likely to be more energy-expensive in countries with poorer infrastructure• Power generation in the countries receiving foreign investment is considerably less efficient than within the countries of the core.
Conceptual Analysis
• Linkages to global economy and the imperatives of globalization are not the sole set of reasons for underdevelopment of development initiatives.
• Failure to develop has its own local-internal reasons. The relationship with the core requires establishing the center with coordinating functions to enable the processes of controlling the local periphery, often the rural areas by fostering the ruling group.
• The interest of the ruling class was not the development of a nation, rather the development of the state. Developing the major city is at the expense of secondary cities and rural areas.
Conceptual Analysis
• The real exploitation in a poor, largely rural country might become that of the town-dwellers exploiting the peasants.
• Urban bias provides an explanation why poor people stay poor.
• Because of neglect, peasants have one of three choices: to revolute, withdraw from the market and revert to subsistence farming, or opt to join the urban sector by moving to the city, i.e., rural-urban migration.
Conceptual Analysis
Urbanization and industrialization are often associated, where cities with their economies of scale are seen as
prerequisite for development.This is not often the case in developing countries. Cities
of developing countries are centers for public administration and commerce.
The stronger the relationship with countries of the core and the greater the dependency, measured in terms of
foreign finance, the higher the level of urbanization characterized by regional imbalances, urban primacy and the higher the ratio of services to manufacturing
employment, rural-urban migration and the wide spread of informal housing.
Driving Forces: Demographic
Driving Forces: Demographic
Driving Forces: Demographic%
of
Urb
an P
opul
atio
n
50454035302520151050
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
No.
of
Citi
es p
er R
ank
1000 and more 1000-500 500-250 250-100 100-50 50-25 25 or less
Rank of cities by size measured in 1000 inhabitants
No. of cities per rank% of Urban Population
Driving Forces: Demographic%
of
Urb
an P
opul
atio
n
50454035302520151050
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
No.
of
Citi
es p
er R
ank
1000 and more 1000-500 500-250 250-100 100-50 50-25 25 or less
Rank of cities by size measured in 1000 inhabitants
No. of cities per rank% of Urban Population
Driving Forces:Environmental CrisisThe Egyptian capital has inferior air quality. According to the WHO, the average Cairene has to ingest more than 20 times what are considered acceptable levels of air pollution. When this situation is combined with the SMOG episodes health problems start to complicate. SMOG is the abbreviation of combining smoke and fog, known to Egyptians as "Black Cloud."
Driving Forces:Poverty
Average household expenditures rose in the second half of the 1990s and the poverty level fell from 20 per cent to 16.7 per cent.Despite a significant increase in average household expenditures in the late 1990s, poverty in Egypt remains pervasive.The lower poverty line shows that in 2000 almost 11 million people lived in poverty.Aside of the divide in urban-rural standard of living, however, a new geographical/regional divide emerged in the late 1990s. There are differences in the rates of growth and poverty dynamics among the main regions of Egypt.Poverty predominately among less educated individuals, particularly those working in agriculture and construction, and among seasonal and occasional workers.
Recommendations:Good governance
• Inclusiveness• Effectiveness and Efficiency
• Responsiveness• Rule of Law
• Transparency• Consensus building
• Accountability• Participation
Recommendations:Abandoning the rural-urban dichotomy• The solution for urban ills is to abandon rural-urban dichotomy.
There is a need for a holistic planning approach that is participatory, conducive to the development of partnerships and enables interested parties to own the plans and their projects; monitor and evaluate; and operate and maintain developed projects beyond plan execution.
• The solution is to industrialize rural areas in distressed regions of Lower and Central Egypt by introducing cottage industries in the form of Small and Micro Enterprises (SMEs). This policy option aims to slow down the rural-urban migration rate, and to avoid rural-urban disparities.
• Once the development of both Cairo and Alexandria is managed, then there is an opportunity to develop medium size, secondary cities within these depressed regions, such as Minya and Shebin El-Kom, by encouraging the relocation of manufacturing activities in these cities.
Recommendations:Promoting rural-urban synergies
• In most Egyptian communities, the existing governmental structures that manage local development and provide services are antiquated and fail to meet present-day challenges and needs. Many development and service problems arise from the inflexibilities that antiquated jurisdictional boundaries impose. Urban areas now sprawl beyond the jurisdictional boundaries of the municipalities that are charged with managing urban growth, development, and service provision. Ecosystems themselves often extend across multiple jurisdictions, making protection efforts from a single jurisdiction impossible.
• Promoting rural-urban synergies is the solution. This is possible through better planning and management through improved communication and information generation and exchange; resource mobilization and efficient use, and development of stakeholders’ capacities.
Recommendations:Sustainability through rural-urban focus• There is a need to institutionalize regional environmental
planning and management commissions that can initiate rural-urban synergies by serving as a middle planning level between local and national plans. These commissions should be developed along the lines of public-private partnerships as a forum for decision making and monitoring activities toward sustainable urban and regional development. A policy for regional and urban development is only as good as the structures put in place to implement it.
• Different municipal, provincial and private agencies have conflicting jurisdictions and compete with each other for resources and customers. Decentralization that is often recommended as a solution, need these regional commissions to facilitate inter-departmental cooperation. Effective issue analysis and action planning will produce strategies that address systemic problems.