Innovations for Land Management, Governance, and Land Rights for Sustainable Urban Transitions: The Middle Eastern Perspectives

The transformation of the built environment during the last few decades has placed enormous demands for land. About 7.7 billion people live on the planet, which is expected to increase by 2.5-3.0 billion in just 30 years, with the highest growth projected to be in less developed regions. The spreading of urban informality in cities of the Global South leads to chaotic informal economies and an inability to capitalize on urban-rural economies of scale and exchange. The combination of socioeconomic and climate change vulnerability in urban centres is having a “double impact” on already poverty-stricken and marginalized groups (especially women, racialized, and ethnic minority groups) – leading to what has come to be known as “climate injustice”. Land constitutes a main component of urban development and is the main asset for informal urban communities in the Middle East region. The State and urban planners can aim to regulate the growth of informal land markets or represent the interests of the citizens. However, in reality the increasing retreat or absence of the public authorities, the crisis of confidence between the governed and governing, and the deficit of urban policies to address the multitude of generated challenges cannot be concealed. This volume examines three main themes: land management and governance in the era of sustainability; Legal, informal, and illegal land tenures; and the broader socioeconomic changes impacting land (and housing) delivery. It investigates the correlations, transitions, and interactions between the various forces and multi-stakeholders that control and adjust the land delivery system for low-income groups and the urban poor.  This includes exploring mechanisms for correcting urban inequalities between central and peripheral quarters and the modes of shared governance.  Finally, the volume also discusses developing national land policies based on legal instruments that connect the implementation of the SDGs, land, and tenure security as critical drivers for more sustainable land delivery realization.

Ahmed Soliman: During more than thirty years of professional practice, Professor Soliman has undertaken consultancy, research, training and teaching assignments in Egypt, Lebanon, Britain and Algeria. He established a consultant office in the early 1980s under the name of Architectural and Planning Studies Center, located in Tanta city, to practice architecture and planning carrier. Soliman holds the chair of the Architecture Department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Egypt (2007-2012), and was the Faculty of Architectural Engineering dean at Beirut Arab University, Lebanon (2000-2004). He has also written, edited or contributed to many publications and participated in international and national conferences and workshops. He specializes in urban housing, urban development, and architecture design. He has supervised and designed several premises in Egypt. He had worked for international agencies and organizations in Britain and Peru. He is an external associate adviser to Egypt's Ministry of Housing, Utilities, and Urban Communities. He is also a GIS specialist (Geographic Information System) and has carried out several planning projects using GIS tools. Prof. Soliman authorizes A Possible Way Out: Formalizing Housing Informality in Egyptian Cities, University Press of America, 2004, and Urban Informality: Experiences and Urban Sustainability Transitions in Middle East Cities, Springer,2021.

Ramin Keivani is a full professor and head of School of the Built Environment at Oxford Brookes University. He is an urban development specialist with a particular interest on the interface of economic globalization, development of land markets and urban growth and their impact on urban equity, particularly in relation to urban land policy and low-income housing delivery in the global South and transition economies. He has also worked on other projects on affordable housing delivery in the UK and healthy urban mobility with his most recent work focusing on urban social sustainability. After completing his Ph.D. at University College London,  he worked for a period of time in the Middle East on urban development and planning in a number of cities in Iran before returning to the UK in 1997 to pursue his academic career. He taught at UCL and London South Bank before joining Brookes in 2003 to lead research and teach in the then Department of Real Estate and Construction and its successor: School of the Built Environment, which he now leads. Professor Keivani is on the steering committee of the UN-Habitat World Urban Campaign and the Global Network for Sustainable Housing. He is also the Founding Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development.