Order and Disorder: Urban Governance and the Making of Middle Eastern Cities 9780773549760

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order and disorder

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McGill-Q ­ u e e n ’ s S t u d ie s in Urban Governance Series editors: Kristin Good and Martin Horak In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in local politics and the governance of cities – both in Canada and around the world. Globally, the city has become a consequential site where instances of social conflict and of cooperation play out. Urban centres are increasingly understood as vital engines of innovation and prosperity and a growing body of interdisciplinary research on urban issues suggests that high-performing cities have become crucial to the success of nations, even in the global era. Yet at the same time, local and regional governments continue to struggle for political recognition and for the policy resources needed to manage cities, to effectively govern, and to achieve sustainable growth. The purpose of the McGill-Queen’s Studies in Urban Governance series is to highlight the growing importance of municipal issues, local governance, and the need for policy reform in urban spaces. The series aims to answer the question “why do cities matter?” while exploring relationships between levels of government and examining the changing dynamics of metropolitan and community development. By taking a four-pronged approach to the study of urban governance, the series encourages debate and discussion of: (1) actors, institutions, and how cities are governed; (2) policy issues and policy reform; (3) the city as case study; and (4) urban politics and policy through a comparative framework. With a strong focus on governance, policy, and the role of the city, this series welcomes manuscripts from a broad range of disciplines and viewpoints.

1 Local Self-­Government and the Right to the City Warren Magnusson 2 City-­Regions in Prospect? Exploring Points between Place and Practice Edited by Kevin Edson Jones, Alex Lord, and Rob Shields

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3 On Their Own Women and the Right to the City in South Africa Allison Goebel 4 The Boundary Bargain Growth, Development, and the Future of City–County Separation Zachary Spicer

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5 Welcome to Greater Edendale Histories of Environment, Health, and Gender in an African City Marc Epprecht

7 Order and Disorder Urban Governance and the Making of Middle Eastern Cities Edited by Luna Khirfan

6 Still Renovating A History of Canadian Social Housing Policy Greg Suttor

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ORDER AND DISORDER Urban Governance and the Making of Middle Eastern Cities

Edited by Luna Khirfan

McGill-­­Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

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©  McGill-­­Queen’s University Press 2017 ISB N ISB N ISB N ISB N

978-0-7735-4974-6 (cloth) 978-0-7735-4975-3 (paper) 978-0-7735-4976-0 (eP DF ) 978-0-7735-4977-7 (eP UB)

Legal deposit second quarter 2017 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the University of Waterloo. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Order and disorder: urban governance and the making of Middle Eastern cities / edited by Luna Khirfan. (McGill-Queen’s studies in urban governance; 7) Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. ISB N 978-0-7735-4974-6 (cloth). – IS BN 978-0-7735-4975-3 (paper). – ISB N 978-0-7735-4976-0 (eP DF ). – IS BN 978-0-7735-4977-7 (eP U B ) 1. City planning – Middle East – Case studies. 2. Cities and towns – Middle East – Case studies. I. Khirfan, Luna, author, editor I. Series: McGill-Queen’s studies in urban governance; 7 HT169 M628 O73 2017

307.1'2160956

C 2017-900183-3 C 2017-900184-1

This book was typeset by Marquis Interscript in 10.5/13 Sabon.

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Contents

Tables and Figures  ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction: The Urban Governance Conundrum in M E N A 3 Luna Khirfan pa rt o n e   t h e s tat e a n d c i v i l s o c i e t y

  1 Governing Majorities in the Arab World: Urban Life beyond Neoliberalism 35 Christopher Harker   2 Cairo Unplanned: Informal Areas and the Politics of Urban Development 57 Elena Piffero   3 Tracing Participatory Planning in Amman  79 Luna Khirfan and Bessma Momani pa rt t w o   t h e s tat e a n d t h e m a r k e t

  4 Exporting Dubai to Cairo or Capitalism by Proxy?  105 Khaled Adham   5 The Processes of Neoliberal Governance and Urban Transformations in Amman, Jordan  132 Eliana Abu-Hamdi pa rt t h r e e   t h e m a r k e t a n d c i v i l s o c i e t y

  6 The New Centre and the City Citizen  157 Tamam Mango

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viii Contents

  7 Islamized Postal Savings: A Model for Risk Sharing  189 Sarah A. Tobin Concluding Remarks: Order and Disorder in the Making of Middle Eastern Cities  212 Seteney Shami Contributors 221 Index 225

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Tables and Figures

ta b l e s

4.1 Announced real estate development projects by large-scale Gulf developers between 2005 and 2008  114 4.2 Residential projects in Greater Cairo Region by large-scale Egyptian and Gulf developers as of 2010  117 6.1 Which of the following features does Abdali provide?  171 6.2 Who will Abdali’s customers be on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 as most prevalent?  171 7.1 Certified comparative study, 1995–2006  201 figures

0.1 Urban governance as the nexus of the interactions among the state, the market, and civil society – the three constituents of social order  4 0.2 The urban governance conundrum in M E N A cities  16 3.1 Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation  85 3.2 The homogeneous hills of Amman’s older neighbourhoods. Image courtesy of Luna Khirfan  95 3.3 The lanes dedicated to the B R T along the University Street (Shari‘ al-Jami‘a) have been standing unused since the halting of the project in July 2011. Image courtesy of Luna Khirfan 97 4.1 First Residence, a prime example of high-end residential ­projects constructed in the 1990s. Image courtesy of Khaled Adham 112

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x

Tables and Figures

4.2 Large-scale urban residential development projects began to appear during the 1990s. Image courtesy of Khaled Adham 119 4.3 Uptown Cairo, site of Emaar’s flagship development in Moqattam Hills. Image courtesy of Khaled Adham  121 4.4 Billboard advertisement for Emaar’s Uptown Cairo. Image courtesy of Khaled Adham  122 4.5 Showroom of Madinaty. Image courtesy of Khaled Adham  123 5.1 The Jordan Gate Towers in context with their surrounding areas. Image courtesy of Saad Khrais  144 5.2 The site model of the Abdali project, on display at the head office. Image courtesy of Eliana Abu-Hamdi  147 6.1 Abdali project impressions  167 6.2 Priorities as defined by Amman’s residents  172

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Acknowledgments

This book benefited from the financial and in-kind support of various institutions. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSH R C ) funded the research project titled “The  Middle East’s New Urban Landscape: Inclusive Planning or Democratic Deficit?” during which the idea to organize a book workshop emerged. This workshop was generously hosted and supported by Columbia Global Centers, Amman, where I was a visiting fellow between 2010 and 2012. The University of Waterloo’s Office of Research also provided financial assistance for this workshop. Throughout the evolution of this book project, many individuals lent their support. At the University of Waterloo, I wish to thank my friend and colleague Dr Bessma Momani (Political Science) for planting the seed of this book project and for encouraging me to pursue it to the end. I am also grateful for my mentor and colleague Dr Pierre Filion (Planning), who read several drafts of this book and generously offered his valuable insights and unwavering support. As the book approached the final stages of production, Dr George Dixon (vice-president, Research) kindly stepped in and provided the funding needed to complete this project – for this, I am immensely appreciative. Throughout the various funding application processes, Tom Barber (Office of Research) graciously offered his guidance and support. At Columbia Global Centers, Amman, I extend my gratitude to the director, Dr Safwan Masri, and to Hanya Salah, Rita Salameh, and Nadine Kharouba, among many others, who contributed to a successful book workshop that kick-started this project. At McGillQueen’s University Press (MQ UP ), I especially thank Jacqueline Mason for her interest in this book project since its inception in 2012

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xii Acknowledgments

and for her support since then. I also extend my deepest gratitude to the reviewers at MQ UP who generously shared with me and with the authors and co-authors their constructive feedback and valuable insights which helped shape this book in its current form. In Cairo, I am particularly obliged to Her Excellency Charlotta Sparre, the Swedish Ambassador to Egypt, and to her gallerist Barbara Rowell for allowing me the use of Her Excellency’s artwork for the book’s cover. Last, but not least, I thank the authors and co-authors for their contributions, for their patience, and for their commitment throughout the review and editorial approval processes.

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order and disorder

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introduction

The Urban Governance Conundrum in M E NA Luna Khirfan

In the wake of the “Arab Spring” and the plethora of reforms and institutional restructuring that followed, the discourse on governance in the Middle East and North Africa (M E N A) region has taken a new turn. The credence of citizen action as a force for positive change and the potential for proposed administrative reform to achieve improved and equitable access to resources present broadening areas for further research and analysis. The consideration that “governance [is] a conceptual framework for political change and progress in the local arena” (McCarney 2003, 51) renders urban governance a fitting conceptual underpinning to ground the debate on future directions in ME NA . This edited volume considers urban governance  the nexus of the interactions among the state, the market, and civil society – the three constituents of social order (figure 0.1). The complexity of these interactions generates an urban governance conundrum that ensues from three interrelated dynamics. The first occurs between the authoritarian state’s technologies of power and civil society’s technologies of citizenship; the second between the state and the market through neoliberalism’s concomitance with MEN A ’s economic push and pull factors; and the third as a concurrent tug between the market’s tendency to exclude civil society from the governance scheme and civil society’s inclination to actively engage in it. The following three sections, which also echo the three parts of the book, dissect this urban governance conundrum to elucidate the nuances of ME NA ’s governance gap and to set the stage for the case studies presented in this volume.

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Luna Khirfan Civil Society

Urban Governance

State

Market

Figure 0.1  Urban governance as the nexus of the interactions among the state, the market, and civil society – the three constituents of social order

i   t h e a u t h o r i ta r i a n s tat e ’ s t e c h n o l o g i e s of power vis-à-vis civil society’s technologies of citizenship

A state-oriented discourse of governance underscores the efficiency and accountability of government institutions (McCarney 2003). International bodies like the World Bank normatively associate good governance with the efficiency of both the economy and the mana­ gement of development (Pierre 2005; World Bank 1992). Political scientists, in their discourse, emphasize accountability, linking gov­ ernance and the authority of the state by encompassing notions of  democracy, power, and legitimacy (Pierre 2005; Stoker 2000). These notions come together under liberalism, which places decision-­ making powers in the realm of the constitutional state, hence bestowing on the state the responsibility for maximizing the formal and legal freedoms of both citizens and economic actors (Jessop 2002, 453). Liberalism thus inherently leads to hierarchical (i.e., top-down) governance arrangements that democratically legitimize such powers through representational political citizenship and a combination of delegation, accountability, and control (Swyngedouw 2005, 1994). In explaining his notion of governmentality, how the state governs by exercising control over its subjects, Michel Foucault resorts to the lens of political rationality, which discerns the problems that face governmentality (e.g., problems that the state faces in establishing control over its subjects, then moulding these subjects to achieve its policies) and develops pertinent strategies and interventions to tackle

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The Urban Governance Conundrum in mena 5

them. Accordingly, political rationality deploys various technologies of power in its governance scheme. To understand urban governance and its frameworks, we must understand authority and decisional powers. These range from bureaucratic rule, bio-political ­knowledge, and policing to governing tools like institutional structures, political procedures, and regulatory frameworks – ­rendering authority and decisional power key factors in the investigation of urban ­governance frameworks. Foucault expands the concept of the liberal government beyond merely the state’s political control to encompass “the close link between power relations and processes of subjectification in all aspects of life” where government becomes “the conduct of conduct” and “ranges from ‘governing the self’ to ‘governing ­others’” (Michel Foucault in Lemke 2001). The conduct of conduct among M E N A governments centres around the latter more than the former. MEN A countries are perceived to suffer from a governance gap due to their defective rankings in indicators like institutional quality (e.g., bureaucratic efficiency, corruption levels, and internal accountability) and accountability (political participation, civil liberties, and government transparency) (World Bank 2003). It is possible to attribute this governance gap to a political rationality among M E N A regimes that combines their technologies of power and the menu of manipulation. The menu of manipulation refers to how electoral authoritarian regimes control elections to “reap the fruits of electoral legitimacy without running the risks of democratic uncertainty” (Schedler 2002, 36–7). Since the economic liberalization of the 1950s, ME NA ’s regimes have struck “authoritarian bargains” with their citizens, providing economic development and welfare services while their citizens conceded to restricted civil liberties, limited political participation, and decreased government transparency (Yousef 2004, 96). A delicate balance between legitimization and power enabled these semi-authoritarian regimes to claim democratic legitimacy based on conventions such as representation, delegation, and accountability, and to simultaneously avoid the political risks of democratic processes (Ottaway 2003; Schedler 2002). As opposed to totalitarianism, which imposes a singular ideology and establishes absolute control over society and its political structures, authoritarianism falls between, though is considered neither, democracy nor totalitarianism (Jebnoun 2014). Regardless of the cultural, economic, and political variations in  the specific authoritarian narratives of M E N A countries, their

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authoritarianisms similarly share distinguishable characteristics. These include autocracy, which concentrates authority in the leadership of one person (monarch or president) and exclusive, powerful, and corrupt networks of elites that dominate the political and economic arena (Brynen et al. 2012; Jebnoun 2014). Furthermore, these authoritarianisms are adaptable. And their adaptability, also dubbed authoritarian upgrading by political scientists, entailed reconfiguring governance according to the constantly shifting political, economic, and social milieus (Heydemann 2007). In addition to ensuring the entrenchment, longevity, and resilience of these regimes, authoritarian upgrading yielded liberalized autocracies “whose institutions, rules, and logic defy any linear model of democratization” (Brumberg 2002, 56). In urban governance, these characteristics – autocracy, domination, and adaptability – are captured in Clarence Stone’s (1989) regime theory which centres around the role of leadership. According to regime theory, in addition to a policy face that is concerned with setting policy, leadership maintains a regime face that effectively controls the modus operandi of governance through the dual advantage of its pre-emptive power: the power advantage and the resource advantage. The power advantage inherently ensues from assuming the leadership position and entails the ability to anticipate and be prepared for the potential responses of other actors – enabling the leadership to limit, disqualify, or even eliminate other alternatives altogether. The resource advantage stems from the leadership’s upper hand over institutional and other resources that are then geared to exclude rivals from governance (Stone 1989). Indeed, ME NA ’s authoritarian regimes have, thus far, successfully deployed this dual advantage to continually adapt their governance arrangements to shifting cultural, political, and economic milieus; to create an exclusive network of political and economic elites; and to control civil society’s engagement in the governance scheme. This outcome manifests a menu of governance whose constituents, which are not mutually exclusive, range from placation to repression and include duplicity, manipulation, and exclusion. Placation refers to the limited reforms that seek to pacify civil society. Duplicity denotes the oscillation of alliances depending on the current political, economic, and cultural milieu. Manipulation entails co-opting regulatory frameworks and rigging political representation processes. Exclusion entails ostracizing dissidents from the governance processes by accusing them of conspiracy and of being agents of foreign

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The Urban Governance Conundrum in mena 7

powers, or through harnessing socio-cultural cleavages. Last, the outright forceful repression of dissent uses the state apparatus (e.g., intelligence services, army, and gendarmerie) – usually under the pretext of safety and security (for examples of these outcomes from Egypt, see Brynen et al. 2012, and from Jordan see Muasher 2011; Robinson 1998; Schedler 2002; and Yom 2009). Thus the constituents of the menu of governance render municipal councils in both Egypt and Jordan, as elsewhere in ME N A, extremely weak (on Egypt, see Ibrahim and Singerman 2014; on Jordan, see Clark 2012 and Lust 2009). It would be naïve, however, to assume that civil society in MEN A remains passive in the face of this menu of governance. Civil society, “the public life of individuals and institutions outside the control of the state” (Harpham and Boateng 1997, 66), is considered pivotal in contesting power relations in the governance scheme through socially transformative and innovative action (Swyngedouw 2005, 1997). Although regime theory elucidates the dynamics of the  authoritarian leadership’s pre-emptive power in M E N A, there remains a need for an approach that captures the intricacies of the interactions between this regime’s (and its affiliates’) pre-emptive power and civil society. In this regard, a cultural approach addresses civil society’s socio-political and cultural identity and underscores collective action at the local scale (DiGaetano and Strom 2003; Ross 2009). Indeed, researchers on urban governance in M E N A highlight how the locality transcends merely being a context to becoming an actor through the workings of democracy, empowerment, participation, and partnership (Majdalani 2001). The simultaneous emphasis on structuring dynamics and the locality’s micro-politics agrees with this volume’s objective to address not only the effects of a formative and controlling “authoritative power” that seeks to shape and control, but also to demonstrate the dynamics of the “generative power,” the power to “learn[ing] new practices and creat[e][ing] new capacities” (Coaffee and Healey 2003, 1982). A cultural approach thus accounts for civil society’s generative power, manifesting at any point on a continuum between two extremes: negotiating capacity and revolution. At the point of negotiating capacity are what Asef Bayat (2013, 4) dubs “social non-movements” that, in defiance of the state’s authoritarian upgrading, resort to their power of negotiation to manoeuvre the political landscape. Conversely, at the other extreme end, revolution represents “shock moments,” like the Arab Spring uprisings. According to Erik Swyngedouw (2005, 1997), such

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moments denote “painful shocks,” by escalating “socioeconomic tensions,” triggering governance restructuring so as to sustain the economy and maintain the social order. MEN A ’s authoritarian regimes continually exercise their authority to stifle oppositional social movements, to curb their political activism, and to impose restrictions that hinder the governance efforts of civil society actors by limiting their activities to a supply-side role that centres on the provision of social services (see, for example, Clark 1995; Jebnoun 2014; Posusney 1998; Moore and Salloukh 2007; Wiktorowicz 2002). Nevertheless, through their power of negotiation, civil society actors in both Egypt and Jordan, whether labour unions, movements like Egypt’s 2004 Kefaya (Enough!), or Jordan’s Islamic Action Front (the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm) remained defiantly active in their demonstrations against unemployment and the rising costs of food and fuel, and in their demands for better governance, including less corruption and more democratization (Brynen et al. 2012). The uprisings have been partly attributed to the shifting allegiances of the middle class away from the authoritarian bargain and its autocratic order to a more democratic order in response to neoliberal economic agendas (Diwan 2014). In addition to organized movements, individual actors have recently gained prominence with the Arab Spring uprisings. Certainly, the Arab Spring epitomizes a “moment” of significant change in the relationship between civil society, authoritarian states, and the market in MENA through the activism of individual civil society actors – primarily unemployed and disenfranchised youth and the middle class, who were frustrated with their authoritarian regimes. Such activism reflects a self-esteem movement that heralded a revolution to change the status quo of politics, power, and social relations. According to Barbara Cruikshank (1993, 340), self-esteem represents a “technology of citizenship” that counteracts the government’s technologies of power and is defined as “a social movement that links subjectivity and power in a way that confounds any neat separation of the ‘empowered’ from the powerful. Most important, the self-esteem movement advocates a new form of governance that cannot be critically assessed by mobilizing the separation of public from private, political from personal” (341). Self-esteem thus galvanized these diverse individuals to face their authoritarian regimes’ technologies of power. Unlike the established and formal opposition parties in ME NA – mostly, the Islamist parties

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The Urban Governance Conundrum in mena 9

– these individual actors self-organized in leaderless and horizontal networks devoid of logical structure, aided by social media. This both contributed to these actors’ resilience and precluded their forceful repression by the state (Brynen et al. 2012; Jebnoun 2014). The advent of the Arab Spring uprisings also extended to the municipal realm where discontent led to demonstrations that focused on municipal issues, as in Amman’s protests against the new municipal boundaries and the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT ),1 in Cairo’s demands for equitable distribution of municipal services,2 and in Beirut’s You Stink! demonstrations over the ineptitude of – privatized – urban services.3 Although some describe Amman’s municipal demonstrations as tribally based (for example, see Clark 2012), in fact, akin to the ones in Cairo and Beirut, Amman’s demonstrations clearly transcend and blur all socio-cultural and political lines. i i   t h e s tat e a n d t h e m a r k e t ’ s n e o l i b e r a l i s m t h at i s c o n c o m i ta n t w i t h m e n a ’ s e c o n o m i c p u s h a n d p u l l fa c t o r s

Municipal politics are subject to the contradictions of neoliberal economic policies that M E N A countries have been following since the last decade of the twentieth century (as examples, see Clark 2012 on Jordan; Ibrahim and Singerman 2014 on Egypt; and Fawaz 2009 on Lebanon). But to pin down the dynamics of neoliberal policies and their implications for urban governance, it is first essential to contextualize liberalism and neoliberalism within M E N A. Liberalism advocates, through accidental or designed institutional frameworks, rational actors’ free choice in organizing economic, political, and social relations primarily to advance their own material or ideal interests. Simultaneously, liberalism favours the free market economy, which entails the commodification – through free monetary exchange – of all aspects of production, including labour and social practices. Neoliberalism expands the free market notion further through a combination of three strategies. The first underscores intra- and international liberalization and deregulation of economic transactions; the second strategy advocates either totally privatizing the public sector’s enterprises and services or converting them into market proxies; and the third strategy inverts the premise of public welfare spending from one based on domestic demand to one based on international market costs (Jessop 2002). Neoliberalism

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thus reinvents the dynamics of governance between the state, the market, and civil society (Brenner et al. 2003). The emergent governance forms under neoliberalism selectively transfer responsibilities (e.g., policy-making, administration, and implementation) from the state’s domain of governance to market and civil society actors. They are distinguished by a threefold restructuring of the technologies of government that parallels neoliberalism’s three strategies. The first restructuring manifests as a withdrawal of the state that reduces its (welfare) services by externalizing its functions through privatizing, deregulating, and / or decentralizing them (Swyngedouw 2004). Such externalization asserts the dominance of the market in the urban governance scheme, especially in producing and providing services that had previously been the prerogative of the public sector (see, for example, Harpham and Boateng 1997; Minnery 2007; Stone 1989, 147). The second reflects a global market standpoint in which ­governance is rescaled upward to global and international organizations whose policy regimes underscore the effectiveness of this global market’s economy by harmonizing and standardizing economic and social policy (Jessop 2002). Examples abound, including the European Union, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and even global urban development corporations, which often assume state-like forms and powers (Brenner et al. 2003). The third restructuring shifts the state’s regulatory com­ petence by transferring its social responsibility onto responsible and  rational individuals by down-scaling governance to “local” practices through arrangements that underscore local distinctiveness, such as local non-profit and non-governmental organizations, and through empowering new social actors (Foucault in Lemke 2001; Swyngedouw 2005). The neoliberal governance restructuring raises two contrasting points of view regarding the hegemony of the market and the authority of the state. The first claims that when the state selectively transfers its powers through rescaling governance arrangements upward, sideways, or downward, neoliberalism becomes a hegemonic project that advances the interests of transnational capital (Jessop 2002). Thus, instead of the liberal notion of the state supervising the ­market, it is the market forces that control the neoliberal state, ­rendering these market forces “the organizational principle for the state and society” (Foucault in Lemke 2001, 200). The other point of view claims that while the emergent polycentric, networked, and

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The Urban Governance Conundrum in mena 11

multi-scaled neoliberal governance arrangements insinuate power sharing, the state nevertheless still holds all the power (Hajer 2003, 175; Swyngedouw, Moulaert, and Rodriguez 2002, 556). Moreover, the state exerts its control, whether directly by intervening, through its institutional and regulatory apparatuses, or indirectly, by deploying its techniques of government, however without assuming responsibility for individual actors (Foucault in Lemke 2001, 201), and often under the pretext of intervening to resolve neoliberalism’s low fiscal resilience and its economic bubbles (Jessop 2002, 2010). Thus, “the state in the neoliberal model not only retains its traditional functions, but also takes on new tasks and functions” (Foucault in Lemke 2001, 201). This seems to indeed be the case in M E N A, where, rather than fostering political liberalization, neoliberalism further cemented authoritarianism by extending the authoritarian bargain of the liberalization period (1950s to 1970s) (Desai, Olofsgård, and Yousef 2009) – albeit with a twist: these new bargains have been struck between the state and the market instead of being a social contract between the state and civil society. M E N A entrepreneurs contributed to maintaining authoritarianism by lobbying to curb reforms in exchange for advancing their economic and political interests (Alissa 2007). In return, these regime-affiliated entrepreneurial elites were at the receiving end of the economic benefits of neoliberalism while ensuring, in the process, their power in the governance scheme, prompting scholars like Noureddine Jebnoun (2014, 14) to dub the outcome “crony capitalism.” The neoliberal governance arrangements and their ensuing dynamics are compounded in ME NA ’s urban realm through the interplay between economic push and pull factors. Pull factors refer to how MEN A cities have encouraged development in recent years through incentive programs and greater privatization of major industries, despite the pre-existing barriers to foreign investment, including ­tariffs, the colonial experience, government legislation, and weak links to global financial markets (Abed and Davoodi 2003). Push factors are attributed to the oil price boom between 2003 and 2008 which led to significant quantities of Gulf petrodollars being recycled through investments in the economically liberalized M E N A countries. The shift away from exporting monetary capital to the United States in the wake of the events of 9 / 11 created numerous ­Gulf-owned stock exchanges, in addition to increased investments in  telecommunication, banking, and tourism in the Middle East

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(Siddiqi 2009; Smith 2007). Some cities in M E N A – those perceived by Gulf investors as more “economically liberalized,” such as Beirut, Cairo, and Amman – experienced massive investments. During this transformative period, these investments translated into major urban planning and development projects, exemplified by the rising numbers of residential and commercial high rises, tourist resorts, and entertainment complexes (Daher 2008). Many of the urban transformations that ensued in the wake of these push and pull factors paralleled the formation of new city plans, such as Amman’s Master Plan and Cairo 2050. Yet, even though these plans and the ensuing initiatives involved international consultants from western countries, where inclusive and participatory planning are institutionalized, those notions were completely overlooked when these plans were created and implemented (see Khirfan and Jaffer 2012 on Amman; El-hefnawy 2010 and Tarbush 2012 on Cairo). Thus, although neoliberalism supposedly “responds to stronger ‘demand’ for individual scope for self-determination and desired autonomy by ‘supplying’ individuals and collectives with the possibility of actively participating” (Foucault in Lemke 2001, 202), this participation remains absent from any discussion in M E N A’s urban politics. iii  the market and civil society: tendencies for exclusion from and engagement in the governance scheme

As cities became the locale of experimentation in innovative governance arrangements and policies, the outcome varied between further entrenching the neoliberal agenda or triggering civic action to alleviate the economic and social tensions that resulted from this agenda. Ideally, the emergent governance forms give rise to urban and regional governments as autonomous partners for market actors (Jessop 2002). Also, the withdrawal of the state and the infiltration of the market supposedly support the involvement of new stakeholders through neoliberal governance arrangements (rescaling) and simultaneously cementing new technologies of government, such as participatory governance (Swyngedouw 2005, 1993). In particular, both downward and sideways rescaling – which entail decentralizing government services and representation – are more relevant to  the discussion on urban governance than upward rescaling because they transfer power to local governments and to civil society

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actors, and also because they link national and urban governance (Harpham and Boateng 1997; Stren 2003). Decentralization is supposed to create decision-making power and urban management potential at the micro-level, thus bestowing autonomy and legal authority on local governments (see van Dijk, Noordhoek, and Wegelin 2002; Mathur 2003; Stren 2003). Sideways rescaling may involve horizontal (e.g., participatory governance) and  /  or networked (e.g., partnerships) governance arrangements that – ideally – promote and foster inclusive processes and increase the negotiating capacity of civil society actors (Schmitter 2002; Swyngedouw 2005; van Dijk, Noordhoek, and Wegelin 2002). Advanced by the neoliberal project’s notions of “community” and the “plurality of self-organizing communities” (Jessop 2002, 455), these horizontal and networked governance forms involve civil society in two ways. The first transforms governance into “processes of societal coordination and steering toward collective objectives” (Pierre 2014, 873) that steer away from a “power over” model toward a “power to” model of societal control – enabling, in the process, the “capacity to act” (Stone 1989, 144). The second shifts the focus toward the decision-making processes, including how public policy decisions are produced and implemented (Minnery 2007; Rae 2003, 24). Throughout traditional and now with neoliberal governance arrangements, informal local governance has been omnipresent in MEN A where it encompasses the processes that occur outside of, yet supplement, the formal governance of government institutions (Hamid 2001; Stren 2001, 172). Clarence Stone (1989, 146) defines informal governance as “the informal arrangements by which public bodies and private interests function together in order to be able to  make and carry out governing decisions.” Whether neoliberal (rescaled) or informal, tensions and conflicts are inevitable between these governance forms and the traditional hierarchical ones (Coaffee and Healey 2003; Stone 1989). In particular, downward and sideways rescaled arrangements have been criticized for their “democratic deficit,” which is attributed to several factors (Swyngedouw 2005, 2000). First, there is the centricity of an influential star player among the state, the market, or civil society (Minnery 2007). Second, these neoliberal governance forms involve unauthorized actors, who primarily represent the market, and who innovatively evade accepted norms, rules, and regulations of participation – rendering their accountability and legitimacy contentious (Beck 1999). Third, the

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configuration of these new governance forms limits the ability of civil society’s organizations and individuals to dispute decisions or to alter actions, hence further exacerbating their already contentious accountability and marring their transparency (Swyngedouw 2005). Last, and more important to ME NA ’s context, neoliberal governance forms are dictated by power dynamics that sway the processes of permission and inclination. Permission refers to the presence of formal and informal representation mechanisms that help or hinder civil society’s ability to engage in the urban governance scheme. The previously discussed menu of governance by the authoritarian state (placation, duplicity, manipulation, exclusion, and repression) combined with neoliberal crony capitalism and its authoritarian bargain between the state and the market effectively limit, if not downright exclude, civil society actors in ME NA from participating in urban governance. The neoliberal restructuring of governance combined with the already informal governance in M E N A cemented the prominence of civil society actors as they interceded to support margin­ alized groups by filling the gaps in social services left after the withdrawal of the traditional welfare state and the failure of the market. Moreover, their increased participation under the neoliberal project has further enhanced civil society actors’ generative power and negotiating capacity. Inclination refers to whether or not civil society’s actors are willing, under the political, economic, and sociocultural milieu, to actively engage in urban governance. In this regard, most Middle East urban planning scholars claim that civil society suffers from political apathy when it comes to participating in urban politics (Daher 2008, 64), while some scholars believe that civil society actors have no political awareness of urban affairs at all (Elsheshtawy 2008, 15). Yet, from social non-movements to revolutions and whatever lies in between, recent events in Cairo (e.g., Kifaya), Amman (e.g., B R T and amalgamation demonstrations), and Beirut (e.g., You Stink!) reveal the inclination of individual and ­organized civil society actors to contest urban affairs, hence challenging these long-standing views on political apathy toward and lack of awareness of urban politics. Particularly relevant to this discussion on tensions between the market and civil society is the fact that, historically, economic exclusion has triggered civil unrest in MEN A , such as in Jordan’s 1989 riots (Brynen et al. 2012) and more recently in the Arab Spring’s 2011 uprisings. The latter’s mobilization has been partly attributed to economic stress, particularly to the

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neoliberal experience (see, for example, Diwan 2014 and Hanieh 2013). The socio-economic disparities continue to exacerbate under neoliberal restructuring as ME NA entrepreneurs advance their economic and political gains, while the majority of civil society bears the brunt of neoliberalism’s economic and political policies and unemployment remains controversially rampant, in particular among youth and the educated. urban governance interactions in mena

This edited volume investigates the complex interactions that ensue between the state, the market, and civil society in urban governance in MEN A . Specifically, it presents urban governance in M E N A cities as the conundrum between a triad of interconnected dynamics among these three constituents, as mapped in figure 0.2, which builds on figure 0.1. Figure 0.2 reveals how the political rationality of the authoritarian state, starting with the state, trickles down to the urban governance realm through its technologies of power toward its subjects and its pull strategies toward the market under the neoliberal economic agenda. Civil society ripostes by exercising its technologies of citizenship and by its inclination to participate in urban politics. In turn, market actors deploy their push tactics to establish a footing in the burgeoning economic opportunities under neoliberalism, including real estate, urban services, and urban development. Prompted by self-interest, market actors seek to exclude civil society not only from these economic opportunities, but also from decision-making processes by striking an authoritarian bargain with the state – yet again excluding civil society. The chapters in this volume highlight the dissonance between the authoritarian state’s technologies of power and civil society’s technologies of citizenship under the umbrella of crony capitalism that ensues from colloguing between the state and corrupt market elites. The contradictions underlying these dynamics stem primarily from the authoritarian state’s speciousness – where the state appears to be advancing urban governance, it is in fact generating dissonance between the included disparate select and the excluded majority. Throughout ME NA , under neoliberal economic agendas, urban political dynamics bear witness to the associations between authoritarian regimes and market actors. By deploying their technologies of power to support major urban entrepreneurs, authoritarian regimes

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n tio n sio

Pull

clu Ex

URBAN GOVERNANCE

!

Te ch o f no lo g Po we ies r

a lin

STATE

Inc

Te o f ch no l Cit ize o gies n sh ip

CIVIL SOCIETY

Push

MARKET

Figure 0.2  The urban governance conundrum in M E N A cities

guarantee not only their own financial gain, but also lend credence to their image as economically progressive and urbanistically avantgarde. Whether in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, or elsewhere in M E N A where resources are scarce and production is virtually nonexistent, urban development (especially in the last two decades) has become not only an indicator of modernization and development, but the de facto catalyst for economic development, thus asserting the influence of major urban entrepreneurs. By excluding civil society from the urban governance scheme, and by striking their own bargains with the authoritarian state, market actors further exacerbate the state’s authoritarianism while simultaneously advancing their own selfinterest. Examples from ME NA abound through initiatives like the Jordan Gate Towers in Amman, the Solidere in Beirut, and, more recently, the Capital Cairo Project. While the authoritarian regimes have been deploying their pre-emptive power and technologies of power to collude with market forces, civil society actors have been deploying their generative power and technologies of citizenship to effect change. Indeed, contrary to assumptions that civil society is apathetic to and lacks awareness of urban politics, public demonstrations in Amman, Beirut, and Cairo against the large-scale development initiatives, inequitable distribution of resources, corruption, and inept urban services, indicate otherwise. Furthermore, these dynamics shown in figure 0.2 highlight, first, the extent of the autonomy of civil society actors and the nature of

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their social contract; and, second, the mistrust that civil society actors harbour toward the establishment and the consequences of this mistrust. To begin with, political regimes face the threat of public reactions against urban affairs (whether policies, development, or services). If any lesson has been learned from recent events (e.g., the Arab Spring uprisings) it is that while individual actors might trigger moments of shock, the more politically organized movements are adept at co-opting these moments to their advantage. Tensions over urban political dynamics become particularly precarious in light of the current regional political instability, especially the upsurge of radical extremist factions, who, as their rise and brutality in Iraq and Syria4 has proven, possess the means to exploit instability effectively. Events in Jordan and Egypt have already demonstrated the increasing influence and reach of Salafi Islam – ultra-conservative puritanical Islamist movements that uphold the implementation of  Shari‘a law. Egypt’s al-Nour Party, although only created after Egypt’s 2011 revolution, nonetheless gained nearly a quarter of the parliamentary seats in the 2011–12 elections. Meanwhile, Jordan’s Salafi movement has been rapidly gaining momentum, as evidenced in the violence constantly racking the city of Ma‘an in southern Jordan, which is considered its stronghold, and also in the ascendancy of Jordanian Salafis in the upper echelons of extremist movements like al-Qa‘ida and Da‘esh, also known as the Islamic State (IS). After all, al-Qa‘ida’s founder in Iraq was Jordanian5 while Da‘esh (I S) was supposedly founded in a jail cell in Jordan. Not only are these ultra-conservative factions capable of co-opting urban political tensions in ME NA , their social networks are also proving effective at recruiting to their ranks urban youth who are distrustful of, and disenfranchised by, the establishment due to the high unemployment rates, especially among the educated. Accounts of hundreds of Jordanian youth, often highly educated and from the upper-middle class, who have been recruited to fight with extremist groups in Syria and Iraq, provide cautionary tales.6 Furthermore, when individual civil society actors, mistrusting the establishment, channel their generative power to self-organize and contest large-scale urban development projects, they do not always necessarily act in the best interests of the public. At best, they are misled by the dearth of information that is a direct consequence of their exclusion in the first place, while at worst they are motivated by short-term self-interest. For example, as an indication of their

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lack of knowledge of the B R T project, civil society activists and popular media outlets contesting it wrongly interpreted the term “Rapid” in Bus Rapid Transit as referring to the speed of the bus instead of the frequency of its service. While Amman has – literally – reached a state of gridlock due to the absence of an adequate transit system combined with the proliferation of the private automobile as a status symbol, the B R T project was eventually halted under public pressure. Therein lies the dilemma: the victims of civil society’s mistrust are often the truly public projects like Amman’s BRT that would have provided equitable access to a crucial resource and provided the regime and its corrupt elites with fewer benefits than the glitzy, yet truly controversial, Abdali and Jordan Gate Towers projects. Thus, while citizen action can surely serve to effect change, it is also essential to question the nature of the ensuing change and its consequences. To delve into these dynamics, the chapters in this book offer a thick description of their respective case studies in Cairo and Amman. The specificity of each context’s nuances has prompted this volume to adopt a cross-national comparative analytical framework that is capable of capturing these multi-layered complexities. Thus far, most research on the manifestations of neoliberal governance forms on an urban scale focuses on western contexts, leaving crossnational comparative research largely uncharted territory (Harding, Wilks-Heeg, and Hutchins 2000). Indeed, with the exception of Beirut,7 there is a dearth of urban governance studies on M E N A cities. Moreover, the coexistence of various actors and their interactions within the same urban political space lends further complexity to the study of urban governance. Hence, the case studies presented in this volume adopt Jon Coaffee and Patsy Healey’s (2003) redefi­ nition of urban governance through a sociological institutionalist perspective. That is, instead of perceiving governance institutions through the lens of structure and policy formation and implementation, this perspective perceives them through the lens of “values, norms and ways of acting which shape the realm of collective action – the relations between citizens, the regulation of individual behaviour in relation to wider social norms and the organisation of projects of collective endeavour” (Healey 2004, 92). This redefinition parallels this volume’s focus on the locality so as to underscore interactions as opposed to decisions. Hence, it emphasizes the assemblages that form, and the norms that dictate, how various factions of

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society interact. The methods deployed in the various chapters also parallel this focus on interactions within the locality. They are therefore in line with Seteney Shami’s (2003, 61) “ethnography of governance,” which deploys bottom-up research approaches that do not balk at exploring the struggles and conflicts in urban governance or preclude players who are external to the locality (60). The sociological institutionalist perspective also warrants investigations that emphasize the “actors, interactive practices, arenas and networks” through an analysis of “the formation and dissemination of discourses and practices, the relation between deeper cultural values and specific episodes of governance, and the interaction of the activities of specific actors and wider structuring forces” (Healey 2004, 92). As a result, the thick description adopted in presenting these case studies delves into the local planning cultures in reference to “the collective ethos and dominant attitude of professional planners in different nations toward the appropriate roles of the state, market forces, and civil society in urban, regional, and national development” (Sanyal 2005, 3). Accordingly, and in reference to figure 0.2, part 1 of this volume delves into the state–civil society interactions that highlight the dynamics between the technologies of power and the technologies of citizenship. Part 1 includes the chapters by Christopher Harker (chapter 1), Elena Piffero (chapter 2), and Luna Khirfan and Bessma Momani (chapter 3). Christopher Harker’s “Governing Majorities in the Arab World: Urban Life beyond Neoliberalism” (chapter 1) begins the discussion with civil society. In defining our understanding of “the urban” in MEN A , Harker highlights the need for a profound understanding of civil society by advocating “historically and geographically specific” notions that address “majorities” such as religious and tribal networks. Harker therefore advocates for a paradigm shift away from the neoliberal discourse to depart from a myopic view of “a political imaginary” that limits “the actors and processes (i.e., neoliberalism)” and that leads to “a very limited set of countervailing responses, labelled ‘resistance’” where “[t]he only response possible to the power of ‘neoliberal elites’ is a rejection of such power – to a greater or less extent, or co-option by it” (46). Instead, Harker introduces “three possibilities” that he dubs “majorities,” which serve as “conceptual avenues through which we might begin to engage the practices” (49). Harker highlights three urban majorities, namely families,

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housing, and religion. These allow us to “gain new insights into the complexity of ‘the urban’ that will complement, extend or even undermine existing accounts that focus on neoliberalism” (49). Elena Piffero delves further into the state–civil society interactions in chapter 2, “Cairo Unplanned: Informal Areas and the Politics of  Urban Development,” focusing on urban informality in Cairo’s Manshiet Nasser as an example of one of Harker’s majorities. Piffero challenges the “oppositional narrative” that establishes the “formalinformal, ordered-disordered” binaries in Cairo’s urban landscape, hence contextualizing urban informality both in the urban and in the political landscapes (59). Piffero questions the unresponsiveness of Egypt’s authoritarian regime to the mushrooming of urban informality and reveals how the regime “seems to believe that urban informality is but a transitory annoyance” (66). She contrasts the proliferation of “delirious visions” of “ideal” urban models to the realities of urban informality – the consequence of which is that “what the central government plans is often not what gets done at the lower scale of the administration” (67). Piffero reveals how the negotiating capacity that occurs between the “low-scale” administration and the inhabitants of informal districts actually “milden[s] the effects of the governmental punitive approach” toward informality. More important, such negotiations integrate the inhabitants of informal districts into the political system and in the policy-­ making process. Such nuanced integration takes place through nongovernmental organizations (NGO s) who use I KE A-style participation manuals, and the local leaders who deploy their wasta – i.e., clout. In both instances, Piffero reveals how powerful groups monopolize the processes of integration in urban governance, whether it is the notables who distinguish various classes among the residents of Manshiet Nasser or the powerful groups who monopolize the socalled participatory committees of NG O s. Piffero’s analysis scrutinizes the uncritical adoption of stereotyped models of informal areas and instead draws valuable insights into the nuances of Cairo’s urban governance, especially with regard to the particularities of informality and its role within Cairo’s political order. Continuing this focus on state–civil society interactions, Luna Khirfan and Bessma Momani’s “Tracing Participatory Planning in Amman” (chapter 3) addresses the dynamics of participation visà-vis the various layers of nuanced authoritarianism in Jordan’s monarchical regime. Khirfan and Momani contrast the official claims

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of a participatory planning process in the formation of Amman’s new Master Plan with the public narratives. They highlight the trickling down of state authoritarianism into the urban arena by exploring the local planning culture’s pre-emptive power as manifested through the tyrannies of participation in various initiatives by the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM). Praised for instigating a participatory approach in a region where public participation has yet to be institutionalized in urban governance, GAM officials claimed that they “sought to ‘build trust’ with the public” as they developed the Amman Master Plan (88). Khirfan and Momani’s investigation of how the micro processes of governance formed the various participatory components of this plan, such as the Mayor’s Round Table and the Amman Institute, reveals “how a combination of [participation] tyrannies permeated Amman’s recent planning initiatives” (85). For example, Khirfan and Momani explore how civil society representatives were selected, whether for the mayor of Amman’s Round Table or for the Amman Institute’s decision-making processes for the amalgamation and the high-rise policies (developers in the former, and influential land owners and tribal leaders in the latter). Yet, in the face of these tyrannies, Khirfan and Momani underscore the inclination of civil society actors (mostly individuals) to take part in  Amman’s urban politics, harnessing their generative power to invert the participation tyrannies by “deploy[ing] some of these same tyrannies to counter GAM’s tokenism and successfully hinder and even completely reverse some of the ensuing policies” (85). Khirfan and Momani’s empirical research also corroborates some of Harker’s possibilities, especially clan-based and religious-based majorities. For example, the respondents to Khirfan and Momani’s online questionnaire emphasized the “traditional role of the ‘mukhtar’ (an elder chosen to manage a neighbourhood’s affairs)” as a representative of local neighbourhoods in the urban governance scheme (197). Others recommended capitalizing on the “existing positive relationships with locally respected bodies like religious and non-governmental organizations that are active within the communities” (98). Part 2 shifts to the second set of dynamics in figure 0.2 that, under the umbrella of neoliberalism, combines the state’s economic pull strategies and the market’s push tactics. It includes two chapters by Khaled Adham and Eliana Abu-Hamdi. In chapter 4, “Exporting Dubai to Cairo or Capitalism by Proxy?,” Adham delves into the economic push and pull factors within M E N A and their effect on

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Cairo’s urban landscape. Like other capital cities in M E N A, Cairo has been described as importing the Dubai model – perceived as “a successful model of a Muslim modernity.” Instead of acceding to the transfer of a Dubai model and the supposed implications for urban governance at face value, Adham questions whether there actually is “a Dubai model.” Adham therefore scrutinizes this model’s four parameters of capital, market, culture, and labour across five observations: the regional economic push and pull factors and the ensuing recycled petrodollars in real estate investments; the role of influential market actors such as large-scale real estate entrepreneurs; the creation of market demand through marketing that targets high-end markets; the flexibility and transferability of the labour market both regionally from Dubai to Cairo and globally; and last, the global import and export of urban images. Adham then contends that rather than a Dubai model that is being transferred to Cairo, there is  actually “a fragmentary, heterogeneous, global entrepreneurial urban logic operating with different degrees of intensity in certain geographic parts of metropolitan Cairo, creating uneven distribution of investments and urban lifestyles” (127). In other words, akin to Harker’s findings, Adham’s reveal that the ensuing urban logic in  Cairo caters to a minority while discounting the majorities, thus exposing the dominance of the private sector in Cairo’s urban development as a star player, and the exclusion of civil society, especially of the marginalized. Thus, instead of “one single urban model” affecting Cairo’s – and other M E N A cities’ – urban development, Adham asserts that there is “a plethora of worldwide urban innovations, imageries, and packaging of entrepreneurial ideas” (127). Adham therefore questions, “[I]s a Dubai Model that is being exported to Cairo or is it capitalism by proxy?” (128). While Adham explores state-market dynamics in Cairo, Eliana Abu-Hamdi investigates the role of the market apropos the state’s neoliberal agenda in Amman in chapter 5, “The Processes of Neo­ liberal Governance and Urban Transformations in Amman, Jordan.” Abu-Hamdi examines two points in time a decade apart that similarly witnessed the introduction of neoliberal agendas, namely 1989 during King Hussein’s rule and 1999 at the outset of his son King Abdullah II’s rule. Abu-Hamdi argues “that both iterations share a common theme: the implementation of regulations directed by private-public partnerships that produce moderated forms of governance” (132). Linking attempts at democratization and economic

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reform to urban governance, Abu-Hamdi draws distinctions between neoliberalism during King Hussein’s and King Abdullah II’s reigns. In the former, Abu-Hamdi states that we can deploy “[a] working definition for an economic framework based on the individual and political and economic benefits for the individual within the free market” (137). In the latter, the discussion must shift to neoliberalism as a process, where the critique underscores the urban transformations they produce and encourage rather than the principles of neo­liberalism as an economic function. To convey these points, AbuHamdi dissects two projects, the Abdali and Jordan Gate Towers, both started during King Abdullah II’s reign, to reveal how the combination of neoliberal logic, transnational capital, and private-public partnerships is yielding coercive governance in Amman. Specifically, as forms of reactive development, the Abdali and Jordan Gate Towers exemplify informalization, in which policy becomes “a mechanism to facilitate decisions that best fit the interests of developers in the city, and in turn, the new capitalist class” (138). Abu-Hamdi thus exposes how the regime’s power and resource advantage were deployed to advance its own agenda and serve the interests of ­corrupt elites. Abu-Hamdi situates the discussion within the local and regional economic push and pull factors through King Abdullah II’s “one-sided developmental discourse” that underscores “image-building and economic improvement through the aid of private development and investment” (139). Abu-Hamdi concludes that both father and son maintained a “pattern of coercive governance” that is producing a “damaging effect on society and the urban built environment in a number of ways” through its “reliance upon scripted neoliberal regulations to moderate public voice and opinion” (150). Part 3 of this volume underscores the dynamics between the ­market and civil society actors which focus on the latter’s exclusion from urban governance versus its inclination to be actively engaged (figure 0.2). In this regard, the two chapters in part 3 present two ­governance obverses: Tamam Mango’s real estate and construction holding companies (R E C H C O s) in chapter 6 highlight citizens’ exclusion, and Sarah Tobin’s Islamized Postal Savings in chapter 7 underscores civil society’s inclination by prioritizing its needs. In chapter 6, “The New Centre and the City Citizen,” Tamam Mango exposes the power manipulations in the formation of RE CH CO s, such as Beirut’s Solidere and Amman’s Abdali. Although they are private companies, they have received preferential treatment from

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the state “in the form of direct financial contributions, public subsidies and logistical facilitation, alongside being given in-effect expropriation rights over private property” (157). Mango investigates the dichotomies of the new neoliberal actors in the governance scheme (i.e., R EC H C O s) which act as agencies of citizenship alienation by excluding civil society. Using Abdali’s Mawared as an example, Mango scrutinizes the appearance of such projects on contested space through which R E C HC O s affect “the experience of citizenship in the city.” In particular, Mango contends that RE CH CO s undermine the heritage urban landscape as they develop “new’ centres, and exacerbate social divisions, hence excluding the city’s citizens from urban governance. Thus, while Mango shares Abu-Hamdi’s (chapter 5) focus on Amman’s Abdali project, her perspective differs; Abu-Hamdi’s analysis emphasizes the process of neoliberalism from above (i.e., leadership) and its impact on the urban landscape, whereas Mango’s analysis highlights the public’s reactions and perceptions of the impact of these forms of governance arrangements. According to Mango, R E C HC O s were indeed John Minnery’s (2007) star players in Amman and Beirut and came at the expense of civil society: “R E C H C O plans focused on market forces alone thus inevitably sacrificed heritage, identity, and inclusion, hence, alienated and segregated the city citizens while developing real estate at the expense of memory, sense of place, and ultimately, citizenship.” Shifting from an exclusionary governance mode that overlooks civil society’s views, chapter 7 by Sarah Tobin, “Islamized Postal Savings: A Model for Risk Sharing,” presents a contrasting example that prioritizes the needs of civil society, particularly one of Harker’s possibilities – the religious majority. Drawing on David Harvey (2005), Tobin argues that, as a form of public-private partnerships (PPPs), Islamized postal savings represent “[o]ne way by which new formations of neoliberal urban governance, particularly in its emphasis on entrepreneurial solutions to traditional problems, can become inclusive to practices of majorities is by examining economic innovations” (189). According to Tobin, Islamized postal savings prioritize marginalized groups in three ways: by extending social services to them, by involving them in financial services, and by ­circumventing their mistrust of the government; hence, they hold the potential to “sway potential participants into practices of inclusion.” Other positive repercussions of such an initiative also trickle down to new housing opportunities for these – often – marginalized groups; Tobin

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asserts that “PPPs provide a very localized and Islamic ‘alternative’ to other, mainly Western-imported ideas and terms for inclusion. As a result, PPPs hold out tremendous hope for enhancing urban governance in areas that pertain to urban development in physical and social infrastructure in Jordan and the Middle East” (191). Seteney Shami ends this volume with “Concluding Remarks: Order and Disorder in the Making of Middle Eastern Cities.” Shami reflects on the development of urban studies on MENA since the mid1980s not only in terms of the increasing number of such studies, but also in terms of expanding the geographic scope and the research inquiries. More important, Shami highlights how these new studies, including this collection, refrain from “approaching Middle Eastern cities as a tabula rasa or simply as cases illustrating theories emerging from a generalized (and hence ideological) global Western city” (212). Instead, these emergent studies bestow agency on MENA cities, rendering them actors in the current processes of change as well as governance contexts. Shami draws on the case studies presented in this edited volume to advocate for refocusing “our attention to the importance of dissecting, if not deconstructing, concepts such as neo-liberalism, participation, citizenship and resistance” (214). Shami asserts that the potential contribution of these case studies to the broader literature on urban processes and dynamics lies in re-­examining the term neoliberalism and in exploring the different modes of “inter-referencing,” both of which emerge as the key linkage to regional and global processes and to comparative literatures. Shami concludes her essay with a reflection that compares this collection with Capital Cities: Ethnographies of Urban Governance in the Middle East (Shami 2001), and highlights that the changes are driving new theoretical trajectories in our understanding of urban governance. While such changes pose “great challenges in the practical mediation of the order and disorder that characterizes our cities,” Shami nevertheless perceives that these challenges provide immense opportunities for future research (218).

notes

  1 The amalgamation of several small municipalities with the Greater Amman Municipality and the BRT will be discussed in chapter 3 by Luna Khirfan and Bessma Momani.

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  2 For more on these demands in Cairo see Ibrahim and Singerman 2014.   3 The organizers of this campaign founded a website, http://www.youstink. org, and a Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/tol3etre7etkom/info/ ?tab=page_info.   4 Here I am particularly referring to the so-called Da‘esh or Islamic State (IS) and Jabhat al-Nusra.   5 Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi grew up and was radicalized in the impoverished city of Zarqa in Jordan.   6 The case of Mohamed Dalaeen, whose father Mazen Dalaeen is a member of Parliament, assumed centre stage in 2015. The younger Dalaeen was recruited by I S in Iraq while studying medicine in Ukraine. More information on his recruitment and eventual suicide bombing in Iraq is available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/jordanian-mps-son-joinsislamic-state-dies-in-suicide-attack/article26643231/.   7 See, for example, the work of Mona Fawaz, Ananya Roy, Hiba Bou Akar, and Najib Hourani, just to name a few. references

Abed, George T., and Hamid R. Davoodi. 2003. Challenges of Growth and Globalization in the Middle East and North Africa. Washington, D C : International Monetary Fund. Alissa, Sufyan. 2007. “The Challenge of Economic Reform in the Arab World: Toward More Productive Economies.” In Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Washington, DC: Carnegie Middle East Center. Bayat, Asef. 2013. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. 2nd ed. Stanford, ca: Stanford University Press. Beck, Ulrich. 1999. World Risk Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Brenner, Neil, Bob Jessop, Martin Jones, and Gordon MaCleod. 2003. “Introduction: State Space in Question.” In State / Space: A Reader, edited by Neil Brenner, Bob Jessop, Martin Jones, and Gordon MacLeod, 1–26. Oxford: Blackwell. Brumberg, Daniel. 2002. “The Trap of Liberalized Autocracy.” Journal of Democracy 13 (4): 56–68. Brynen, Rex, Pete W. Moore, Bassel F. Salloukh, and Marie-Joëlle Zahar. 2012. Beyond the Arab Spring: Authoritarianism & Democratization in the Arab World. Boulder: Lynn Reiner Publishers. Clark, Janine. 2012. “Municipalities Go to Market Economic Reform and Political Contestation in Jordan.” Mediterranean Politics 17 (3): 358–75.

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Harding, Alan, Stuart Wilks-Heeg, and Mary Hutchins. 2000. “Business, Government and the Business of Urban Governance.” Urban Studies 37 (5–6): 975–94 Harpham, Trudy, and Kwasi A. Boateng. 1997. “Urban Governance in Relation to the Operation of Urban Services in Developing Countries.” Habitat International 21 (1): 65–77. Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Healey, Patsy. 2004. “Creativity and Urban Governance.” Policy Studies 25 (2): 87–102. Heydemann, Steven. 2007. “Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World,” Analysis Paper, No. 13. Washington, DC : The Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. Ibrahim, Kareem, and Diane Singerman. 2014. “Urban Egypt: On the Road from Revolution to the State? Governance, the Built Environment, and Social Justice.” Égypte / Monde arabe 11. Jebnoun, Nouredddine. 2014. “Introduction: Rethinking the Paradigm of ‘Durable’ and ‘Stable’ Authoritarianism in the Middle East.” In Modern Middle East Authoritarianism: Roots, Ramifications, and Crisis, edited by Nouredddine Jebnoun, Mehrdad Kia, and Mimi Kirk, 1–24. London: Routledge. Jessop, Bob. 2002. “Liberalism, Neo-liberalism, and Urban Governance: A State-Theoretical Perspective.” Antipode 34 (3): 452–72. –  2010. “The Return of the ‘National’ State in the Current Crisis of the World Market.” Capital and Class 34 (1): 38–43. Khirfan, Luna, and Zahra Jaffer. 2012. “Canadian Planning Knowledge in the Middle East: Transferring Toronto to Amman and Vancouver to Abu Dhabi.” Canadian Journal of Urban Research 21 (1): 1–28. Lemke, Thomas. 2001. “‘The Birth of Bio-politics’: Michel Foucault’s Lecture at the Collège de France on Neo-Liberal Governmentality.” Economy & Society 30 (2): 190–207. Lust, Ellen. 2009. “Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East.” Journal of Democracy 20 (3): 122–35. Majdalani, Roula. 2001. “The Governance Paradigm and Urban Development: Breaking New Ground?” In Capital Cities: Ethnographies of Urban Governance in the Middle East, edited by Seteney Shami, 13–31. Toronto: Center for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto. Mathur, Om Prakash. 2003. “Fiscal Innovations and Urban Governance.” In Governance on the Ground: Innovations and Discontinuities in Cities

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pa rt o n e

The State and Civil Society

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1 Governing Majorities in the Arab World: Urban Life beyond Neoliberalism Christopher Harker

All studies of urban governance draw on particular understandings of both “urban” and “governance.” In this chapter, I will focus on the first of these terms, and ask how contemporary studies of cities in the Arab world understand the urban. Although a modest ambition, this is an important question to pose because such definitions prepare the ground, conceptually, for particular understandings and practices of governance. While disciplines such as geography, architecture, and urban studies provide many understandings of the urban, much recent scholarship of Arab-world cities has sought to understand, examine, and critique urban space using just one concept: neoliberalism. Therefore, in this chapter, I will provide a detailed examination of this use. I will argue that approaches to Arab-world cities that focus on neoliberalism enable particular understandings of urban space that allow for criticisms of particular forms of “top down” governance, which are undoubtedly widespread. However, these understandings often lack conceptual clarity and rarely allow for detailed examination of other types of “popular” practice (see Ismail 2013). Consequently, they offer few clues for better forms of governance that work in historically and geographically specific urban contexts. In the face of such a limitation, I will suggest that scholars need to rely less on neoliberalism (Parnell and Robinson 2012). I argue that diversifying conceptual understandings of the urban in the Arab world will in turn proliferate approaches to urban governance. By way of example, I will draw

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attention to an approach that foregrounds, theoretically and empirically, the ways in which the majority of city-dwellers use urban space on a daily basis (Simone 2010). knowing arab-world cities

To begin assessing current understandings of Arab-world cities, it is useful to contextualize contemporary approaches within historical approaches. Arab-world or Islamic cities have been the object of Orientalist knowledge claims for at least a century (Abu-Lughod 1987). However, such scholarship has been heavily criticized. In an important essay, Lughod (1987) argues that Orientalist scholarship produces generalizations about various Islamic urban settings. A series of axioms are drawn from specific cases and then transformed into an abstract set of rules and criteria about Islam and urban life that have become a measuring stick for all purportedly Islamic cities. These inappropriate generalizations have subsequently been referenced, propagated, and made forceful over time by the citationary structure of Orientalist scholarship. “The idea of the Islamic city was constructed by a series of Western authorities who drew upon a small and eccentric sample of pre-modern Arab cities on the eve of Westernization (domination), but more than that, drew upon one another in an isnad [citational chain] of authority” (155). AbuLughod also attacks the ways in which morphological criteria are used to define Islamic cities as static products. She proposes instead that cities must be theorized as dynamic processes emerging from specific historical inheritances and geographical affordances. Many, but certainly not all, contemporary studies of Arab-world cities have responded to Abu-Lughod’s critique by distancing themselves from the methods and assumptions of Orientalist scholarship. Most contemporary studies now focus on processes rather than morphology, alive to the multiple transnational entanglements that encompass cities in the region, and the specific contexts of the cities themselves. However, while what is now written about cities in the Arab world may eschew generalizations about cities themselves, I argue that many contemporary studies of cities in the Arab world nevertheless argue or assume that cities are affected by particular processes that have a general / global form. In particular, I will focus on neoliberalism, which has become the sine qua non of contem­ porary critical analyses of Arab-world urbanism in general, and

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governance in particular. Marxist-inspired scholarship takes neo­ liberalism to be a program of class-led economic restructuring that is for privatization and markets and against social welfare (Brenner and Theodore 2002). In this understanding, neoliberal urban governance denotes a transformation from managerialism to entrepreneurialism (see Harvey 1989). Foucauldian-inspired work understands neolib­ eralism as a governmental logic that shapes and is embodied in a whole range of practices, discourses, and subjectivities (Collier 2011). Studies of neoliberal urban governance in this vein seek to trace the insertion of particular diagrams of power into the workings of urban assemblages (Rose 2000). While neoliberalism certainly isn’t the only conceptual lens that has been deployed to interpret and critique urban change in the Arab world, it has become the most popular. It is the frame against which changes in Cairo are understood in Singerman and Amar’s edited volumes (Singerman and Amar 2006; Singerman 2009a), and specific contributors cite neoliberalism as the key engine for the city’s post-1970s growth (Denis 2006; El Shakry 2006; Abaza 2006; Singerman 2009b). Davis (2006) suggests Dubai is “the apotheosis of the neo-liberal values of contemporary capitalism” and subsequent work has used neoliberalism as a frame of analysis for studies of subjectivity (Kanna 2010; 2011) and the mobilities of urban ­redevelopment (Haines 2011; Lowry and McCann 2011) in relation to the Gulf city-state. Despite Makdisi’s (1997) argument about the differences between neoliberalism and post-civil-war urban change in Lebanon, which he terms Harirism, the reconstruction of Beirut has also been cited as neoliberal (Summer 2006; Roy 2009; Fawaz 2009; Krijnen and Fawaz 2010). Neoliberalism has proved a popular analytical tool for conceptualizing urban change in Amman (Daher 2008, 2011; Parker 2009; Parker and Debruyne 2012; Ababsa 2011), and appears as a key word in recent writing on Ramallah (Abourahme 2009; 2011; Anani 2011). This list is not exhaustive, and in these studies neoliberalism is used in different ways to the point where it can mean different things depending on the context and the set of events it is said to be describing. I am not suggesting that these studies constitute a coherent or single theory of neoliberal cities in the Arab world. However there are enough family resemblances (or, put more precisely, genealogical inheritances) in how they deploy neoliberalism that these studies do constitute a reasonably similar approach to the analysis and critique

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of urban governance in the Arab world. Therefore, it is important to  examine the (intertwined) theoretical, empirical, and political assumptions on which this approach rest. theoretical uses of neoliberalism

As has been noted by other authors, theories of neoliberalism are far from coherent (Barnett 2009; Ferguson 2010; Collier 2012). Broadly speaking, there are two conceptual genealogies that have been inherited by those working in Arab-world cities. The first draws from a political economy tradition, the second from poststructuralism. I will discuss each in turn. The first genealogy can be traced to the political economic approach of Harvey (2005). For Harvey, neoliberalism is a class project, which seeks to restore the power of the capitalist class by reducing state-based social securities and advancing free markets and individual enterprise. In this reading, neoliberalism is an ideology, or perhaps more precisely (following Barnett 2009) an ideational project that is translated into a project of socio-economic transformation. This “project,” “agenda,” or “tendency” touches down in various contexts and with the help of local elites transforms landscapes by reducing democracy and social support, and creating poverty and inequality. Neoliberalism is thus posited as a more or less coherent force that plays a dominant role in shaping cities and urban governance, an emphasis maintained even in more nuanced accounts of variegation (Peck, Theodore, and Brenner 2009; Brenner, Peck, and Theodore 2010). In the context of the Arab world, Singerman (2009a, 4) argues that the neoliberal agenda in 1990s Cairo dismantled, diminished, and privatized the formerly large public sector; reduced public service and subsidies; and facilitated changes to law, designed to attract foreign investment, franchises, and tourists (see also Haines 2011 in relation to Dubai and its interconnections). Daher (2008, 47) working in Amman, argues: “Neoliberalism led to excessive privatization, the withdrawal of the State from welfare programs, the dominance of multi-national corporation politics, and as far as the Third world is concerned, the restructuring of international aid to the third world in the form of structural adjustments and policy instead of projectoriented aid.”

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Another volume on Amman claims that a neoliberal context “tends to turn citizens into consumers and creates major divides within Jordanian cities” (Ababsa 2011, 40; see also Daher 2011 in the same volume). Summer (2006, 8), in a discussion of the redevelopment of Beirut City Centre and the Abdali district of Amman, suggests: “The creation of such new representational landscapes, in which the underpinning neoliberal ideology becomes locally constituted, enables the state as well as local and transnational elites to establish legitimacy for their neoliberal project. What we have seen in the case studies of Beirut and Amman, is a political formation or social group that is able to marshal the resources to rebuild space according to its worldview. This group comprises local political elites and transnational investment networks and their allied planners.” Such accounts of neoliberal governance are, as Barnett (2009) notes, political economy, in the last instance. Social processes are reduced to, or made conceptually subordinate to, economic logics, and class relations always trump other forms of social relations. Theories of neoliberalism render “the social” a residual aspect of more fundamental processes, in three ways. First, social practices are reduced to residual, more-or-less resistant effects of restructuring processes shaped by the transparent class interests of capital. This means that social relations of gender, ethnicity, or race, for example, are considered as contextual factors shaping the geographically variable manifestations of general neoliberalizing tendencies. Second, “the social” is also reduced to a residual effect by being considered only in so far as it is the object of state administration in the interests of economic efficiency, or to strategies of “governmental rationality.” Third, and related to this, “the social” is construed as the more-orless manipulable surface for ideological normalization or discursive subjectification (Barnett 2009, 23). Ironically, in reducing the social to the economic in this manner, Arab-world scholars repeat the intellectual trick of “neoliberals” who they otherwise seek to criticize (Collier 2011). Both explain the complexity of real-world change through an economic lens. Thinking about neoliberalism as an ideological project also propagates a very thin understanding of both culture (as obfuscation) and the state, which is theorized as “as a territorialised power-container exercising sovereignty through its monopoly of violence and definitions of legality” (Harvey 2005, 159) and “an arena in and through which

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conflicts defined by reference to class interests are fought out” (Barnett 2009, 10–11). What such approaches don’t account for are more complex renditions of the state that take into account changing forms of subjectivity, complex bureaucratic transformations, social movements, and practices of the everyday state (Painter 2006; Ismail 2006). The second genealogy of neoliberalism moves away from such conceptions of the state by drawing on Foucault’s work on the art of government: the reflection in, and on, the practice of governing as it relates to political sovereignty (Foucault 2008, 1–2), or what is often termed “governmentality.” Ong (2006, 3–4) suggests that neoliberal governmentality is characterized by inserting series of market-driven axioms and calculations (e.g., efficiency, competitiveness, labour discipline) into the domain of politics. Neoliberalism in this account is a set of discourses and practices that shape subjects, spaces, and forms of knowledge (Collier 2012). Parker’s (2009, 110) essay on Amman provides a good example of this approach: Amman is being remade and presented to investors as a new city that conforms to globalised benchmarks of speed, efficiency, and connectivity. Places and populations are being distinguished according to market calculations … and repositioned in proximity to regulatory ensembles that reformat calculative space in ways that enable certain styles of socioeconomic and political performance at the expense of others ... In short, the changing cityscape reflects efforts to bring private agencies and market-­ oriented solutions to bear on traditional problems of government (e.g., economic and social development, distribution of public goods and services, maintenance of the commons, security, etc). However, as Barnett (2009) argues, often accounts of neoliberalism as governmentality theorize governmentality in a functionalist way, reducing it to a mechanism through which subjects are created. This approach assumes that political rationalities are able to unproblematically create subjects, without being able to conceptualize actual processes of subject transformation (13–14). Neoliberalism as governmentality is narrated as a force that replaces existing forms of associational life, and transforms subjects into rational, entrepreneurial individuals. For instance, Parker (2009, 113) asserts in the account cited above, that the plans to fully privatize public

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transportation (not the actual transformation) “will likely undermine grassroots appropriation of the new spatial network.” Actual subjects are thought to live out their lives as proscribed by neoliberal discourse, except in circumstances where class solidarity and consciousness raising enable heroic forms of resistance. A tug of war emerges between a neoliberalism that is theoretically still attributed to a global form (as a discourse or set of discourses), and local populations who resist, subvert, or embody neoliberalism in various ways. Consider the following example: The ways that Dubai’s flexible citizens appropriate neoliberal discourses shows both how neoliberalism, rather than being monolithic, is inflected by local meanings, discourses, and histories, and how appropriations of neoliberalism mediate local ambiguities pertaining to social and gender identity … The ways neoliberal ideologies resonate with and are made persuasive within local formations of identity, conceptions of selfhood, and idioms of citizenship are essential to their appropriation by the subjects targeted by neoliberal modes of governance. (Kanna 2010, 101–2) In Kanna’s nuanced account, even though we are told neoliberalism is not monolithic, some pre-existing form (i.e. “ideology”) is nevertheless “inflected.” This inflected ideology is then able to “mediate” other discourses.1 However, as Roy and Ong (2011) argue, actual urban transformations involve complex recombinations of elements, technologies, and techniques that exceed the simplistic imagination of what Ong (2007, 3) elsewhere refers to as the “military model of neoliberal take over.” The military model, a largely unidirectional empirical narrative about the power of neoliberalism to transform subjects, also lacks a theoretical explanation for how neoliberalism is able to graft itself on to other social and economic forms and always and everywhere come out dominant. As Collier (2011) demonstrates in his account of the post-Soviet transfor­ mation toward a free market, the theoretical presumption of neo­ liberalism’s hegemonic power ignores the spatial and temporal specificity of actual processes of change (see also Robinson 2011; Parnell and Robinson 2012). In short, what is theoretically missing from accounts of neoliberalism in Arab-world cities is a more convincing account of change. Collier (2009, 99) puts the problem, and

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the solution, well when he suggests that “the identification of advanced liberalism as a diagram of power or a form of governmentality was invaluable in making visible what is general about a new class of governmental forms across a range of cases. A ­topological analysis is now required to show how styles of analysis, techniques, or forms of reasoning associated with “advanced ­liberal” government are being recombined with other forms, and to diagnose the governmental ensembles that emerge from these recombinations.” Put slightly differently, studies of neoliberal urban governance in Arab-world cities need to make neoliberalism an object of theoretical analysis, rather than the assumed basis for analysis. More work is needed to examine how purportedly neoliberal techniques and logics have entered and reassembled particular contexts (see, for example, Parker and Debruyne 2012). Existing explanations that prioritize external or elite-driven forces diminish a whole series of other actors in these contexts and the actual governmental ensembles that have emerged. This manoeuvre risks repeating the gesture of “neoliberals,” and ignoring other geographies, particularly the ways in which many contemporary urban visions in the global South have diversified their sources of inspiration (Simone 2010; Roy and Ong 2011). At this juncture it would be useful to move from theoretical to empirical uses of neoliberalism. empirical uses of neoliberalism

Using neoliberalism to comprehend empirical changes in Arab-world cities has enabled a move away from an analysis of morphology and the Islamic urban stereotype so forcefully criticized by Abu-Lughod (1987). Compelling empirical analyses have critically attended to a whole range of urban practices, including various forms of urban governance, large-scale (and sometimes smaller-scale) residential and commercial developments, infrastructure, and forms of lived experience. However, it is not clear if neoliberalism is always the most appropriate framework for empirical analysis. While inherited accounts of urban neoliberalism (Brenner and Theodore 2002) may offer a convincing account of urban governance and change in the global North (where they have been crafted), they often have less explanatory value in many global South contexts where a different set of inheritances (most notably post / colonialism), connections and

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practices prevail (Ferguson 2010; Collier 2011; Parnell and Robinson 2012). One example of this problem can be found in accounts that see neoliberalism in privatization, and read privatization in turn as a retrenchment of the state, ignoring the fact that in many postcolonial contexts the state has long been quite minimal (Robinson 2011, 1101). For instance, in the context of Amman, Daher (2011) notes that merchants were responsible for the city’s growth. In Cairo, where a large state-based social support system was developed during the 1950s and 60s, Ben Nefissa (2009) notes that contemporary privatization nevertheless simultaneously takes place alongside further state centralization and top-down planning in some areas. In the same context, Singerman (2009a, 25) also points to the “paradoxical” growth of labour unions in Egypt, which doesn’t fit conventional stories about neoliberalism (see also Paczynska 2009). Studies of neoliberalism in the Arab world also rely on quite a narrow range of evidence. Claims are empirically buttressed by referring to particular kinds of spaces and analysis of particular policy and development discourses. To illustrate his claim that “Amman represents a clear example of neoliberal urban restructuring,” Daher (2011, 83) cites high-end, isolated developments (Abdali), gated communities (Green Land, Andalusia), business towers for refuge / consumption, and lower-income cities / heterotopias on margins (Jizza, al-Zarqa). The figures and tables (re)produced in this analysis are also telling: pictures of a developer billboard and a real estate sales centre, and a table of real estate developers and the slogans that appear on their marketing (see also Anani 2011). AlSayyad (2006), writing about Egypt, focuses on shopping malls as a cipher for the larger Arab world. Denis (2006, 68) introduces “Cairo as neoliberal capital” through a fictional account of a family living inside one of Cairo’s new residential communities, before discussing more broadly the gated communities that “spectacularize Egypt’s neoliberalization.” What each of these accounts focus on are precisely the parts of the city that large, often transnational developers create both materially and imaginatively. Each provides a compelling (discourse) analysis of neoliberal practices and discourses; however, these practices and visions of the city are partial, situated achievements. In ana­ lyzing them, there is little sense of the ways in which city managers and developers’ processes of envisioning actually play out in practice, including their interaction with other neighbourhoods, urban processes, and forms of contestation. The theoretical problem of

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assuming that practices and discourses have more or less unequivocal subject-effects is played out empirically by overlooking large numbers of subjects (what I later term “majorities”), and then, when discussing a much smaller number of subjects (politicians, developers), by offering little analysis of how much of what these subjects say will happen actually happens in practice. As one reviewer of this chapter noted, in Egypt real-estate developments often actually remain vacant for years or decades, contrary to their marketing (and assumption that a certain sort of family lives in them). This use of evidence is also susceptible to Jacobs’s (2012, 419) critique that too many studies of cities focus on presences, with pronounced effects. As she suggests, “if one follows presence, say policy presence, then it may guarantee that all we ever see in our urban geographies is neoliberal extension. Sites of failure, absence and mutation are significant empirical instances of differentiation.” A focus on presences, by continually citing similar empirical sites and materials, not only misses some of the complexity of contemporary urbanism, but also risks leading to an inflationary critique (Foucault 2008, 186) where different studies of neoliberalism in the Arab world not only reinforce each other, but through inter-referencing lose their specificity. Consequently, a set of heterogeneous urban landscapes become homogenized through reiteratively invoking particular empirical phenomena. As McGuirk and Dowling (2009) note in their analysis of planned residential housing (or “gated communities”) in Australia, a single ideology or discourse, no matter how hybrid, cannot capture the complexities of these developments and their emergence in this context. They argue that invocations of neoliberalism in relation to gated communities often prevent a more complex empirical analysis. This not only leads to unsatisfactory analysis as a whole range of processes are scooped up in the large conceptual container of neoliberalism, but also shuts down, a priori, a number of other areas of enquiry.2 Simone (2010, 47–8) notes that while large urban projects are important transformers of urban space, fixating on flagship developments makes much of what goes on in cities invisible. This is particularly problematic in global South contexts, Simone argues, because it is in these other areas of urban life that the majority of urban residents (must) articulate and maintain a viable urban existence. In other words, while, for example, existing analyses of real estate developments are often motivated by

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the exclusionary nature of such developments, they rarely work with those who have been excluded in their research. political uses of neoliberalism

Critiques of neoliberalism in the Arab world are animated by a desire for better, more just, and / or more equitable cities, often grounded in practices of work or activism that don’t show up in published scholarly work.3 If a desire for the good city is one that is  shared by many approaches to urban governance, then what is distinctive about the politics of critiquing neoliberalism? Barnett (2009, 7) argues that understandings of neoliberalism that draw on a political economic genealogy limit political practice to “a means of acting (through the state) governed by a particular set of motivations (the self-interest of class actors)” rather than conceptualizing it as a field of contestation in which many different actors seek to ­reconcile differences. As a result, a whole range of contemporary political transformations, such as environmentalism and politics of difference, are marginalized in favour of what Barnett terms a “moralistic register” (3). This register constantly suspects and usually denounces particular groups of actors, such as politicians, developers, and international organizations, and particular technologies, such as markets (see Ferguson 2010). For example, Summer (2006, 8) cites “local political elites and transnational investment networks and their allied planners” for treating the city as “their personal playground.” Elsheshtawy (2006, 297) suggests that the privatization of urban space in Cairo through “quartering” is not just an elite vision of what constitutes public space, but represents an internal “threat” that is greater than external forces such as colonialism. This approach to politics arguably derives from explaining the complexities of contemporary life as the result of a singular ideological force that inspires a particular form of economic restructuring. However, such work could take greater account of theoretical insights about the breadth of political practices in the Arab world (Bayat 2010), and the urban global South more generally (Macleod and Jones 2011). One result of a political imaginary that is opposed a priori to particular actors and processes is that it logically leads to a very limited set of countervailing responses, labelled “resistance.” The only response possible to the power of “neoliberal elites” is a rejection of

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such power – to a greater or less extent, or co-option by it. For example, Singerman (2009a, 5) suggests that despite a neoliberal framework, Cairenes are not aligned with, but instead have “resisted or transformed globalization.” Politics becomes a fight between “seemingly agentless forces originating externally” and residents who “twist,” pervert, and exploit these forces, both internalizing globalization’s logics and resisting them (30). In the context of Amman: [T]he contours of political life are no longer negotiated at points where society meets the state, but at points where the highway meets the street: communities and populations (not citizens as such) find themselves negotiating the implementation of ­neoliberal policy initiatives with consultants, donor agencies, N G Os, private firms, and the technocratic administrators of public–­private partnerships – people who ride in from out of town – and not with state authorities. And as neoliberal development discourse celebrates the involvement of private agencies in the “governance” of places and populations, it remains silent on the potentially authoritarian implications of this shift. (Parker 2009, 117) The accounts cited above are seductive because they offer an explanation for the vast inequalities of power present in so much of the Arab world. However, this conceptualization of politics fails to account for the plurality of practices that exceed or work alongside more antagonistic processes. Work such as Singerman’s (1996; 2006) study of the “familial ethos” in Cairo and Bayat’s (2010) concept of social non-movements provides compelling evidence of politics as a much richer and more pluralistic field of encounters and contes­ tations. Haines’s (2011, 165–7) discussion of place branding, as something that goes beyond the work of government ministries, municipalities, and corporations to include diverse publics (through aggregate opinions such as TripAdvisor), N G O s, and journalism, offers another much more subtle conception of contestation in an area that is often thought to be neoliberal par excellence. A broader problem, which goes beyond theories of neoliberalism (Blomley 2007), is that much urban scholarship that self-identifies as “critical” is very clear about what it is critical of, but offers little sense of what it is being critical for (Barnett 2009). Put another way, critiques of neoliberalism in the Arab world, while exposing the

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claims of purported “neoliberals” and the damage done by neoliberal policies, offer few practical governmental alternatives that move beyond slogans such as more democracy and more social equality (see for counter-example Ferguson 2010; Daher 2011). What we are left with is “an ineffective controversy” (Collier 2011) – since critiques of neoliberalism don’t propose concrete alternatives – rather than a mode of critical inquiry “in which the terrain of politics is itself the stake and in question” (250). It may well be possible to address many of the criticisms outlined thus far in order to refigure, refine, and retool critiques of neoliberalism, particularly as a means of articulating positive conceptions of governance. Collier’s (2011, 2) understanding of neoliberalism as a form of problematizing thought, or critical reflection – “a tool for the criticism of reality” (Foucault 2008, 320) – that seeks to reanimate the principles of classical liberalism in novel conditions is very useful. However, approaching cities through the lens of neoliberalism, however conceptualized, is still a geography attuned to particular forms of presence (Jacobs 2012). Such an approach will only ever see more neoliberalism. As Parnell and Robinson (2012) have recently noted, this concept may be of little relevance in many parts of many cities. Broadening understandings of cities, both in the Middle East and elsewhere, is a collective task that cannot be accomplished in one chapter. In what follows I will propose different or additional understandings of the urban in the Arab world that might function as potential starting points for such collective work. These are certainly neither exhaustive nor obligatory, but simply seek to respond to broader calls for an expanded array of approaches to “grasp the complex multiplicity and virtuality of contemporary urbanism” (Jacobs 2012, 419). urban life beyond neoliberalism: working with majorities

I have suggested that in both the theoretical and empirical uses of neoliberalism the majority of urban residents are largely absent as fully fleshed out social actors. Their practices are assumed rather than explicated. Hence, within the Arab world, we have little sense of the ways in which the majority of city-dwellers use urban space to advance claims, and in so doing enact forms of governance beyond the sphere of states (Bayat 2010). To further elaborate on this

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discussion, I will begin by developing the concept of majority in relation to cities. In an illuminating recent discussion, Abdoumaliq Simone (2011) suggests that majorities are primarily statistical artefacts, and thus abstractions, created through the procedures of democracy. However, he also draws attention to the ways in which residents have found ways of acting together without being subsumed by “a stable form of collective address” (267) such as kinship, neighbourhood, co-ethnicity, or political party. Simone uses the term majority to signify the fluid, difficult to follow, and hard to define forms of association through which city-dwellers function in concert with one another beyond “recognized” forms of collective life. Even analytical approaches that are interested in “ordinary” city-dwellers often occlude majorities by simplifying and homogenizing their practices of engagement. “As ‘matters of concern,’ to use Bruno Latour’s language, the ‘urban poor’ and the ‘multitude’ have mobilized attention and publicity, assembled audiences and opened up the willingness to engage with the postcolony on a global scale. Yet these nominations have perhaps obscured something else that goes beyond a neat convergence of class, deprivation, and knowledge production” (268). As Simone notes, it is precisely for the sake of “good governance” that the provisional and improvisational work through which majorities secure urban viability are contained, categorized, and operationalized, all of which cause harm. However, there always remains what Simone terms “something else” – a supplement or excess to governance through which majorities continue to articulate, maintain, and adapt viable forms of urban existence. What does this mean for those interested in good governance? What alternatives are there to the inevitable failure of existing forms of urban governance driven by a will to incorporate and include what is always slipping beyond its grasp? Simone’s suggestion is to find ways of making common cause with residents that acknowledge this impossibility. The term majority marks the place of this impossibility, rather than standing as yet another proper name for incorporating particular practices of association within existing theoretical and governmental practices. Making common cause in practice means developing forms of governance that engage the practices and relations of majorities, without calcifying these forms of engagement or assuming that successful modes of engagement can simply be copied and transported elsewhere.

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This suggestion invites a tricky and uncertain process in which “success” depends upon a close engagement with the particular city or cities in question, as Simone and Rao’s (2012) discussion of Jakarta demonstrates. It opposes academic analyses that propose a priori modes of urban governance across (or even within) the wide variety of cities that might be categorized as Arab. However, I think it may nevertheless be possible to identify particular areas of interest or concern that span cities of the Arab world and may allow interesting trans-urban conversations about the sort of work advocated by Simone and Rao. Drawing on existing work, I foreground three possibilities. As noted earlier, my intention is certainly not to ascribe privileged status to these possibilities or to deny that many other possible starting points exist. Rather, I introduce them as possible conceptual avenues through which we might begin to engage the practices whereby urban majorities (re)create and (re)iterate urban life in particular contexts, both in the Arab world and elsewhere. My broader contention is that by following such practices, we might gain new insights into the complexity of “the urban” that will complement, extend, or even undermine existing accounts that focus on neoliberalism. Such an approach allows for substantial inequalities of power and capacity while attending to practices that frequently escape scrutiny (by academics and practitioners alike), because they are often intended to be “invisible” (Bayat 2010; Simone 2011). The first theoretical object through which urban governance of majorities might be crafted is families. Singerman’s (1996; 2006) work demonstrates the importance of what she terms a family ethos for governing contemporary urban life in Cairo (in other contexts, see Taraki 2006; Bontemps 2012). This familial geography incorporates means of economic provisioning, the creation of political resources in contexts where formal political representation is minimal, and the circulation of discourses about the centrality of family to life in general. Existing work on the circulations of families (Ghannem 2002; Joseph 2009; Harker 2010, 2012) both within and beyond the Arab world suggest that this might be a productive line of enquiry for intra-regional comparison and conversation. The second lens is housing. As Ababsa, Dupret, and Dennis’s (2012, 1) collection on what they term popular housing suggests, “irregular or illegal housing constitutes the ordinary condition of popular urban housing in the Middle East.” Popular housing is both a means through which many residents inhabit cities of the Arab

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world and a space for daily social and economic life. Similarly focused studies conducted in Cairo (Ghannem 2002; Singerman 2009b) and Beirut (Fawaz 2009) suggest a range of resemblances and resonances, as well as differences that might be used to forge new ways of thinking about governance. The third alternative for addressing majorities in the Arab world is religion. As Deeb’s (2006) ethnography of gender and public piety in Al-Dahiyya, Beirut so effectively demonstrates, circulations of Islam govern practices and patterns of behaviour, and produce specific beliefs and ways of arranging associational life that exceed the boundaries of particular cities (see also Ababsa 2009). In the same context, Harb (2009, 1073) argues that the Muslim public sphere is manifesting new urban (and rural) geographies of pious leisure in the Arab world. These approaches to studying urban life complement, and take up the mantle of, Abu-Lughod’s (1987) work on Islamic urbanism in a contemporary context. However, studies of religion in relation to Arab-world urbanisms would of course exceed Islam. conclusion

These alternative theoretical objects are important because, as Simone (2010) notes, the majority of urban residents in the global South craft viable urban lives in spaces and through practices that might reasonably be subsumed within forms of neoliberal reflection and practice. As a result, exploring alternative analytics can contribute to a diversification of the “geographies of theory” (Roy 2009), and create forms of governance that are more in tune with the multiple forms of city life.

notes

  1 The slippage between ideology and discourse in Kanna’s quotation also provides an example of the ways in which understandings of neoliberalism in studies of Arab-world cities can move between different genealogical inheritances, despite the theoretical differences and incompatible aspects of these ways of thinking (see Barnett 2005; Ferguson 2010).   2 Collier (2011) also shows how critical analyses can underestimate the role neoliberalism plays. This happens when it is assumed that neoliberalism takes place in an undifferentiated fashion, and thus contexts in which

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atypical outcomes emerge (such as the maintenance of social provisioning in post-Soviet Russia) are ignored.   3 Examples include Rami Daher’s architectural practice in Amman (http:// www.turath.jo/), and the activist art interventions of Yazid Anani and ­collaborators in Ramallah (http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/nafas/ articles/2010/ramallah). references

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Painter, Joe. 2006. “Prosaic Geographies of Stateness.” Political Geography 25: 752–74. Parker, Christopher. 2009. “Tunnel-Bypasses and Minarets of Capitalism: Amman as Neoliberal Assemblage.” Political Geography 28: 110–20. Parker, Christopher, and Pascal Debruyne. 2012. “Reassembling the Political Life of Community. Naturalizing Neoliberalism in Amman.” In Neoliberal Urbanism and Its Contestations, edited by Jenny Künkel and Margit Mayer, 155–72. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Parnell, Sue, and Jennifer Robinson. 2012. “(Re)theorizing Cities from the Global South: Looking beyond Neoliberalism.” Urban Geography 33: 593–617. Peck, Jamie, Nik Theodore, and Neil Brenner. 2009. “Postneoliberalism and Its Malcontents.” Antipode 41 (S1): 94–116. Robinson, Jennifer. 2011. “The Travels of Urban Neoliberalism: Taking Stock of the Internationalization of Urban Theory.” Urban Geography 32: 1087–109. Rose, Nikolas. 2000. “Governing Cities, Governing Citizens.” In Democracy, Citizenship and the Global City, edited by Engin Isin, 95–109. London: Routledge. Roy, Ananya. 2009. “The 21st Century Metropolis: New Geographies of Theory.” Regional Studies 43: 819–30. Roy, Ananya, and Aihwa Ong, eds. 2011. Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Simone, AbdouMaliq. 2010. City Life from Jakarta to Dakar: Movements at the Crossroads. London: Routledge. –  2011. “The Ineligible Majority: Urbanizing the Postcolony in Africa and Southeast Asia.” Geoforum 42: 266–70. Simone, Abdoumaliq, and Vyjayanthi Rao. 2012. “Securing the Majority: Living through Uncertainty in Jakarta.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 36: 315–35. Singerman, Diane. 1996. Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press. –  2006. “Restoring the Family to Civil Society: Lessons from Egypt.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 2: 1–32. –  ed. 2009a. Cairo Contested: Governance, Urban Space, and Global Modernity. Cairo: AU C Press. –  2009b. “The Siege of Imbaba, Egypt’s Internal ‘Other’ and the Criminalization of Politics.” In Cairo Contested: Governance, Urban

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2 Cairo Unplanned: Informal Areas and the Politics of Urban Development Elena Piffero Just mentioning Cairo to anyone who has been, lived, or worked there gets you a profusion of unflattering adjectives: noisy, overcrowded, trafficked, dirty, suffocating, polluted, and, above all, chaotic. This portrait of the Egyptian capital as the quintessence of urban dysfunction is common not only among tourists, but also among policymakers, development practitioners, and most Egyptian academics. Cairo is described as an “essay in entropy [where] everything runs downhill” (Golia 2004, 7), and portrayed as a “city out of control” (Sims 2010): for those in search of reasons to deplore the monstrous development of Third World megacities, Cairo seems to be an easy place to start. In official discourses (unfortunately not without the complicity of some in the academic world), the main concentration of problems is almost universally identified in the urbanistic symbols of Cairo’s disorder: settlements that have been built extra-legally and without (or simply against) public planning and which, “for lack of better words” (4), are generally referred to as “informal areas” in English and ‘ashwa’iyyat in Egyptian Arabic – a word whose root means random, haphazard, disordered. It goes without saying that the much-deplored lack of order in these areas does not refer uniquely to the “few if any organized street patterns” (Sims 2010, 95), but broadly involves their juridical, economic, and socio-political dimension as well. Their extralegal status supposedly results in illegal behaviours, crime, violence, and political extremism (Social Research Centre, American University in Cairo 2006); in these “cities of peasants,” living conditions are said to be so poor that they are defined as “abnormal” (Bayat and Denis 2000,

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197), with a “widespread prevalence of epidemics, ignorance, illiteracy” (Shoura Council 1996). The use and abuse of pathologizing discourses is not a prerogative of the Egyptian intelligentsia; it is also abundant in international organizations’ mainstream narratives about slums – a word often (mis)used as a synonym of informal areas. These are referred to as “neglected parts of cities where housing and living conditions are appallingly poor. Slums range from high-density, squalid central city tenements to spontaneous squatter settlements without legal recognition or rights, sprawling at the edge of cities. Slums have various names [...] yet share the same miserable living conditions” (World Bank and UN -H ABI T AT 2000). Far from being coincidental, stigmatizing informal areas as domains of disorder fulfills a series of functions. First of all, it creates a neat dichotomy between the “formal” and the “informal” city, the “legal” and the “illegal,” the “planned” and the “unplanned,” the “standard” and the “deviation,” the “ordered” and the “disordered.” This is much more than a taxonomy; it is a way to construct a disparity: the resulting derogative image of “otherness” (Singerman 2009) supposes the existence of a “non-other,” a modernized, urbanized, cosmopolitan urban class that is then allowed to keep its distance and to see its socio-economic superior status confirmed (Sims 2010). The dichotomy, in other words, serves to artificially “spatialize a series of social and political problems,” so that they are somehow transferred “into these areas, symbolically absolving the rest of the city” (Kuppinger 2001, 197, 199). Second, pathologizing informal areas as a fertile ground for all sorts of antisocial behaviours allows the government to put the blame for their problems on the residents themselves and thus to keep on acting “in a punitive manner” (Deboulet 2009, 214). Public investments in informal areas are disconcertingly low (even though clear statistics are lacking), in line with the belief that, as political sociologist Ammar Ali Hassan candidly told Al Ahram Weekly, “[their inhabitants] are not city-dwellers in the proper sense of the word […], not even citizens [but] second-rate or even third-rate citydwellers” (Nkrumah 2008). Third, stark descriptions of informal areas as miserable places are functional to the discourses (and marketing) of international development agencies, consultancy firms working with urban planning, N G Os, donors, and charities. The supposed misery and deprivation of their dwellers resonates as a moral imperative to intervene and

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“improve life conditions”; the alleged exclusion of its inhabitants from the state’s political “formal” sphere, as if “the state [was] in one place, informality in another” (Elyachar 2003, 579) represents an ideal ground to experiment and implement so-called participatory development initiatives, the latest sine qua non of international development packages. According to their supporters, these initiatives, aimed at building bridges between the community and local authorities, could fill a presumed vacuum and integrate otherwise marginalized communities into the broader political order. The oppositional narrative – formal–informal, ordered–disordered – is all too often accepted as a given and rarely questioned, at least for what concerns Cairo. In this chapter, I am going to challenge this narrative by contextualizing urban informality both in the urban landscape and in the political landscape. By focusing on Manshiet Nasser, the informal settlement that has probably had the most media exposure and is the best known and most talked about, discussed, and misrepresented in the Egyptian capital, I will analyze the dynamics underlying the establishment, growth, and management of informal areas in Cairo. I will then examine the contradictions and perverse consequences of adopting stereotyped models of informal areas and draw general conclusions about Cairo’s urban governance and the role of informality in the political order. manshiet nasser

As the largest squatter community in the Egyptian capital, Manshiet Nasser is virtually inescapable in any discussion about Cairo’s urban problems and their solutions. Its fame is also due to its physical visibility; the settlement enjoys a very central location within Cairo, in the Moqattam Hills east of Fatimid Cairo and the historic cemeteries of Qait Bey and Sultan Barquq, and it is almost impossible not to notice it while driving on the Autostrad or enjoying the surrounding view from the Citadel, Al-Azhar Park, or the top of the minarets of Bab Zuweila. In Cairo’s urban scene, Manshiet Nasser represents both an exception and the rule. The rule, because Cairo’s urbanization was, and is, proscribed by law. This mode of city-making, which contravenes urbanistic rules and regulations and which in international literature is usually referred to as informal, predominates in Cairo. Estimates of the population living in informal areas vary, since

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consistent reliable data for the Greater Cairo Region are unfortunately lacking:1 currently, percentages oscillate between a conservative 63 per cent (Sims 2010) and a slightly higher 65.5 per cent of Cairo Region’s population (Sims and Séjourné 2008) – between 7.15 and 10.7 million people. This illegal urbanization process originated in the 1960s and peaked between 1975 and 1985;2 it has slowed down in the last few decades, but this is only because the urbanization process itself has slowed down. In fact, a trend toward the informalization of residential patterns is also evident in recent years: whereas in 2006, “formal” Cairo was witnessing a population increase of about 0.4 per cent per year (with old core areas actually losing population at the rate of –2 per cent), the growth rate of informal areas was around 2.57 per cent per year: meaning that informal areas absorbed 79 per cent of the total population increase in Greater Cairo between 1996 and 2006 (Sims 2007). The dominance of informal residential patterns in Cairo’s landscape is so overwhelming that the “residual, marginal” character so often ascribed to informality could in this case be righteously ascribed to “formal” Cairo – reversing the dialectic between the rule and the exception (Bayat et al. 2003; Roy 2005, 2009; Sims 2010). However, Manshiet Nasser is an exceptional case in this informal urbanization process. Whereas in Cairo, most informal areas are built on previous agricultural land (it is illegal to convert private property for residential purposes),3 Manshiet Nasser (together with Ezbet El-Haggana) is a squatter settlement on desert land belonging to the state. This typology accounted for only 12 per cent of informal Cairo by area and 9 per cent by population in 2000 (Sims 2000); it presents generally lower residential and living standards if compared to “formal” Cairo or to the informal areas built on previous agricultural land. As a matter of fact, Manshiet Nasser is often defined as a “mega-slum,” but those who imagine it to be some sort of shantytown or bidonville would be disappointed. Nearly all the buildings in the district have a frame of concrete columns and ceilings and brick filling, and the building quality (apart from the most recently urbanized fringes) is fairly good, with structures reaching the impressive height of fifteen storeys in the oldest and more consolidated areas, close to the Autostrad. Illiteracy rates are higher than the average for Greater Cairo, water and sewage connections are still lacking in some areas (although they have recently been extended to 90 per cent of households), and residential density is

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very high, but Manshiet Nasser is definitely not a shantytown. Residents do not hold property titles, and a recent effort of land titling – for a series of reasons that are not the aim of this paper to examine in detail – ended up being a complete failure (Runkel 2009). However, this doesn’t prevent a vibrant, informal estate market from operating along various forms of extra-legal but quite clear regulations (Deboulet 1994, 2009; El-Kadi 1987; Sims, 2010).4 Security of tenure is fairly high, especially when compared with other national contexts (Latin America, for instance), even though residents’ perceptions of how secure their tenure is swing back and forth along with the government’s public declarations. And even though squatter settlements and informal areas in general are officially proscribed and castigated by public authorities, the governmental stance toward Manshiet Nasser has been ambiguous and contradictory from the very beginning. Interestingly, it was the government itself that established the nucleus of the settlement at the beginning of the 1960s, when a group of residents was expelled from the Fatimid neighbourhood of Darasa and relocated on desert land at the base of the cliffs of the Moqattam. The relocation didn’t mean that the property of the land was transferred to the new dwellers: it was an unusual form of squatting by governmental decree, which offered aspirant newcomers an implicit authorization to settle in the area. By the end of the 1960s, thanks mainly to immigration from Upper Egypt, the population had reached several thousand; President Gamal Abdel Nasser established a nucleus of public houses in the area and ordered the authorities to provide the entire settlement with water and electricity, a move that can reasonably be interpreted as an act of public recognition, if not of actual legitimization.5 This ambiguous approach continued under the presidency of Anwar Sadat. Despite the illegal nature of the settlement, in 1972 a group of mainly Coptic garbage collectors (the zabbaleen), who had been expelled from Imbaba (Giza Governorate), was allowed to settle in Manshiet Nasser by Cairo Governorate.6 A further step toward the settlement’s legitimization came in 1991, when Manshiet Nasser was granted the status of a proper district, with a local popular council, a local executive council, and (since 1992) a police station and a branch of the National Democratic Party. Along with this bureaucratic recognition and official integration into the local administrative structure of the city came the settlement’s inclusion in

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the formal political system, which granted residents the right to elect their own representative in the Egyptian Parliament. However, no concession was made to create any infrastructure, and no investment was granted for servicing the area. This role was delegated to international donors, often explicitly invited by the government to intervene in the area. In fact, Manshiet Nasser boasts the highest concentration of development initiatives in the last thirty years (and not only because of the zabbaleen) (Séjourné 2006, 368– 9). The eagerness to have the settlement upgraded was probably due to the perceived threat to political stability that this populated and severely underserved area represented in the eyes of policymakers; in the last decade, this eagerness even led the government to accept a co-sharing arrangement of the financial costs of the upgrading with G TZ (now GI Z ), the German cooperation agency (for details, see Piffero 2009). Nevertheless, according to the governmental General Organization for Physical Planning (G O P P ), by 2050 the whole neighbourhood will have been cleared and converted into a tourist housing resort, with gardens and green areas and luxury hotels facing historic Cairo.7 This vision is not likely to ever be implemented: its feasibility is declaredly dependent on economic expectations that sound quite chimerical,8 not to mention the strong opposition that such an intervention would meet (we are talking about nearly half a million people, and growing) and the practical problems it would present, insofar as Egyptian policies of resettlement grant to the relocated dwellers (whether they are legal or illegal) an alternative public accommodation (Sims 2002).9 However, the fact that such plans exist, and have been approved by a governmental body, casts more than a few doubts on the rationality of governmental urban policies. unplanned settlement, unplanned policies, and the politics of informality

As the case of Manshiet Nasser shows, the “illegality” of informal settlement is a concept that should be clarified. Generally speaking, most informal settlements in Cairo, squatter or not, have been integrated administratively in the city frame and at least partially serviced: post facto, slowly, reluctantly, more through single local and national sectoral agencies of government than through official policies (which remain strictly condemnatory), sometimes thanks to the welcome intervention of donors, but nevertheless serviced. The

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servicing process contradicts blatant efforts by the government to stop the phenomenon, for at least two main practical reasons: first, infrastructure connections (electricity, water pipes, sewage systems, etc.) are perceived by the residents as a form of legitimation10 and encourage the expansion of the informal settlement; second, infrastructure connections also favour a settlement’s consolidation, especially in terms of investments that residents are willing to make to extend and improve their dwellings. Public services are not being extended to informal areas because their residents are “expressions of class power” (Roy 2009, 826), or by virtue of some form of collective mobilization, since political invisibility seems to be the strategy that works best to prevent ­sanctioning measures from the government (AlSayyad 1993). The Egyptian regime has traditionally opted for a policy of risk avoidance toward potential sources of political opposition, thus one element that contributes to decreasing the risks of eviction and easing the connection to services is the pressure of numbers (when a settlement has already expanded). Connecting to nearby electricity and water networks (as well as to telephone lines) is relatively easy: informal areas tend to develop starting from existing settlements and connections are provided by state companies on commercial terms (Deboulet 1994; Sims 2000; Séjourné 2006). Establishing a mosque in the area might facilitate the process (since mosques enjoy a priority right over water and electricity connections) and might even persuade public agencies to  install public stand-pipes (Deboulet 1994). Sewage connections are more difficult to obtain. So are educational and health facilities: their (legal) construction is possible only on state-owned land, a practice that often results in the building of groupings of services (especially schools and health centres) together in isolated plots, sometimes far from the area they are supposed to serve, and not easily accessible, especially for girls and women. The central government budget doesn’t allocate any resources for land purchase for servicing purposes: this is definitely a field where more sensible policies could make a big difference – despite the advice of agencies such as the U N D P still claiming, despite evidence to the contrary, that “by virtue of physical proximity, no significant differences in most indicators of education and health service utilization exist between slum dwellers and the rest of the urban residents” (U N D P , Egypt Human Development Report 2004, 35).

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Generally, if an “important person” lives in the area, the political connections might be easily translated into infrastructure connections: the presence of more or less consolidated networks of personal acquaintances (wasta) along patron-client avenues seems to be a crucial factor determining the survival and the degree of inclusion of a settlement into the socio-political and infrastructure of the urban system (Dorman 2007; Haenni 2005; Néfissa and ʻArafāt 2005). This has been defined as the “politics of notables” (Hourani 1968): in their contemporary urban form, notables are local leaders who emerge in the newly-built settlements and start articulating the  demands of the community in political negotiations (El-Kadi 1987, 35; Singerman 1997, 12). They are “individual[s] to whom the administration or an administration recognizes the legitimate access to a higher level in order to deal with a particular case in transgression with the universality of the norm” (Baduel 1994, 45). Through their connections with members of the bureaucracy, they can ease the access of the population to those goods and services that would otherwise be out of reach via “formal” procedures; their mediation role is facilitated by the arbitrariness of the interpretation and enforcement of law in Egypt. Their clienteles can then be converted into political influence and local notables / natural leaders coopted into political parties or approached by politicians in search of electoral bases (Deboulet 1994, 454; Haenni 2005, 146; Harders 1993, 206). This might not be the most desirable form of interaction between these populations and the government; as Harders has observed, “this is strengthening people’s dependency because informal institutions such as networks do not guarantee justice or transparency. Whereas constitutional rights can be claimed by citizens, the ‘rights’ of informality are highly particularistic.” (Harders 2003, 208). Nevertheless, even though it is clearly unbalanced, this interaction is mutually beneficial: notables need good “connections” and politicians need support and votes. Thus this informal social contract has undeniable integrating effects. In Dorman’s words, “Given the scarcity of resources vis-à-vis the needs, the real state-society politics of informal Cairo is the process of bargaining or clientelism through which communities seek the top-down distribution of infrastructure. State officials may rebuff such claims or exploit them. [...] Officials and agencies seek to resist bottom-up demands for servicing – likely framed in social-contract terms – without appearing to defy such expectations completely” (Dorman 2007, 124).

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g o v e r n m e n ta l u r b a n p l a n n i n g : d e v e l o p i n g t h e d e s e rt , r e i n v e n t i n g c a i r o

With informality so dominant in the capital’s residential landscape, one cannot but wonder what the government was doing while informal areas were mushrooming in blatant contravention of urban regulations. The answer is quite straightforward: while Cairo was “silently” growing thanks to the private initiative of a myriad of illegal city-makers, the government was busy developing the desert. Since the 1970s, major public investments for housing production, industrial development, and infrastructure have concentrated in the so-called New Towns, satellite settlements in the desert intended to divert urban growth away from the crowded city core and the scarce agricultural land of the Nile valley. The scale of this urbanization plan is impressive: the area designed for this purpose represents 2.2 times the surface of all existing built-up areas in Cairo (Sims 2010, 201) – which gives an idea of the amount of infrastructure investment such an area would require, especially considering its distance from the city core. Industrial development plans have been relatively successful in redirecting large-scale productive facilities in the desert: recent data talk about 1,500 factories and up to 200,000 workers (engineer Mustafa Madbouli, quoted in Sims 2010, 173), which means that potentially polluting activities have been prevented from affecting high-density residential areas. As for desert residential developments, what has been diverted from the city core is mainly public money, not population. Factory workers still prefer to live in Cairo proper and commute to work by relying on a fleet of informal, often unlicensed minibuses; meanwhile, public housing estates in the desert (modern accommodations planned to high western-style standards and heavily subsidized, intended for workers and their families), show depressingly high vacancy rates. The only categories that have benefited, so far, from this desert-land development seem to be speculators (both companies – especially from the Gulf – and wealthy private families) and the urban upper class escaping from the “chaos” of mainland Cairo and seeking refuge in dreamlike gated com­ munities. But if the rationale for their conception was to accommodate Cairo’s population growth, the New Towns are de facto a colossal failure: the high-modernist approach they embody does not allow for the type of small-scale enterprises and activities that most

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Egyptian families rely on, so they are not only inaccessible for the average Egyptian, they are also unattractive.11 Subsequent governments after the toppling of Mubarak’s regime have shown a remarkable continuity in their approach, persisting in considering the New Towns the solution to the capital’s urbanization problems. The urban agenda of the Freedom and Justice Party (the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood) focused on “getting out of the Nile Delta valley to new regional growth areas”: whereas there was no explicit mention of the New Towns, this promise seemed to be perfectly ­consistent with previous policies. In March 2015, the government of Abel Fattah El Sisi announced a futuristic US$45 billion megaproject to build a brand new city in the desert east of Cairo that would become the new Egyptian capital, an idea that has attracted the keen interest of Chinese developers. Meanwhile, with the crisis in the tourism sector, living conditions in the existing Cairo have been progressively deteriorating and the existing New Towns are still hopelessly uninhabited: occupancy rates are persistently low and there is no reason for this to change in the foreseeable future. Even if the government’s eyes have been turned elsewhere for decades, the scale of informal urbanization has been too massive to be ignored. Why is it, then, that an authoritarian regime such as Egypt’s, whose top priority is its concern of control over the population, has so blatantly abdicated its monopoly on the creation of urban space? One explanation that has been put forward is that there is a conscious strategy of informality to create a safety valve to let people satisfy their basic needs while keeping them marginalized and powerless (Sims 2010). This, however, sounds quite odd. Sanctioning policies formulated at a central (governmental) level reflect a genuine (if misplaced) effort to stop the phenomenon of informality by legislating it away, to the point that even military courts were involved in the fight against irregular building processes.12 The government seems to believe that urban informality is but a transitory annoyance, that Cairo can, and actually will, be a Paris on the Nile one day and that successful planning models can be imported from the most modern and shining world capitals and reproduced in Cairo. From this point of view, the Cairo Vision 2050 is an enlightening document: without mentioning the authors’ insistence on comparing the future of Cairo to the development plans elaborated for cities such as Abu Dhabi, Tokyo, London, Sydney, or Shanghai, one just needs to look at the mega-boulevard intended to

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connect Midan Sphinx with the Pyramids plateau to understand to what extent the dream of haussmannizing the Egyptian capital has deformed the government’s perceptions of reality. Instead of focusing on reasonable, cost-effective policies (such as, for example, redirecting investments to where people are, in Cairo proper, and not in the desert) and develop the city starting from what already exists, the fascination for international urban models has led the government to deliberately neglect things as they are, as if everything that doesn’t conform to these international models (such as informal areas) was just a mass of accidental, disturbing details that will one day be fixed. The visionary plans of the Capital Cairo (as the new city due to become the new Egyptian capital has been called for lack of better names) launched in 2015 once again reflect this deeply rooted attitude. What has so far saved Cairo from these delirious visions is, first, their economic unfeasibility; second, the scale of the forced resettlement needed (and related problems of popular contestation); and, last, but not least, the fact that between the design of urban policies (and any other policies) and their implementation stands the fragmented and pachydermic administrative system: what the central government plans is often not what gets done at the lower scale of the administration. This is particularly true when it comes to proscribed acts: the ridiculous wages and very scarce motivation of the legions of low-tier government employees make them particularly vulnerable to bribery and self-interested bargains. These low-scale negotiations, as we have seen, soften the effects of the government’s punitive approach and somehow integrate the population, not only in the political system but also in the policy-making process, albeit partially: they offer some (very limited) form of leverage to informal dwellers on the process of resource allocation, especially close to elections. The transactional nature of the vote favours the candidates with more chances of draining some governmental resources toward their constituencies: votes are one of the best ways to “extract some resources out of the elected officials” (Blaydes 2006, 18), in terms of much-needed goods and services. From this point of view, local notables indeed seem to represent “the continuation of the state by other means,”13 whereas it would be unrealistic to identify a conscious strategy in this, since it is clear that the stability of the Mubarak regime benefited to a considerable degree from these close clientelistic connections with informal areas.

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Ultimately, it seems that informality is not only a prerogative of the urban development but also of political life tout court. Beyond party life, a big share of political competition and political negotiations take part in the informal realm, bypass institutionalized channels, and are shaped along personal relations, but are still perfectly integrated into the “formal” procedures of democratic governance, i.e., votes and elections. pa rt i c i pat o r y d e v e l o p m e n t i n i t i at i v e s : f r o m s ta k e h o l d e r s t o c i t i z e n s ?

The last three decades have witnessed the mushrooming in all developing countries of what is considered to be the more direct local equivalent to the omnipresent, nation-wide programs of “good democratic governance” promotion, i.e., grassroots participatory development programs. In authoritarian (or semi-authoritarian) contexts such as Egypt, where national politics are dominated by a ruling party and / or a small elite, the active participation of the population in small-scale development initiatives was portrayed as the best ­vehicle to promote some form of bottom-up pressure for change. Informal areas were considered a particularly interesting ground to test these approaches, because of the alleged marginalization of their residents from the political and socio-economic system. Manshiet Nasser was also affected by a prize-winning14 partici­ patory initiative: an ambitious twelve-year-long Participatory Development Programme supported by the Egyptian government and led by what was then called the German Technical Cooperation (G T Z) Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, now G I Z (Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit). G T Z built its “success story” on the creation of a so-called replicable, sustainable development-oriented partnership between the residents and the local administration, but something must have gone wrong. In fact, the District Building, where the same administration was located, was one of the first targets of popular anger after the 25 January revolution, and was burned down. That G T Z ’s story was much less of a success than portrayed had already been described in detail before Manshiet Nasser’s public participation turned into “burning” public frustration (Piffero 2009). The simple fact that GT Z was and is (even with the change of name) an agency for technical cooperation, yet nevertheless felt justified in

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embarking on a participatory development initiative is revealing of a very specific (not to say narrow-minded) understanding of a delicate issue like the promotion of people’s participation in development processes. Participation is intrinsically political, but there seems to be a tendency among big international organizations to think that it can be put to work by using I KE A-style manuals overflowing with participatory “tools.” Denying the political nature of participation in development is itself one of the best ways to fail in promoting it: in the fuzzy and imprecise conceptualization of the participatory approach GT Z elaborated, the blatant, deliberate neglect of its political implications was one of the main problems. A second problem came from a lack of awareness of the local dynamics of political negotiation, likely stemming from the widespread acceptance among development practitioners of the classic representation of informal areas as disconnected from the political, governmental, and administrative apparatus. A corollary of this widespread acceptance was the assumption that targeting any group within the informal settlement with the participatory initiative would mean targeting a marginalized group. Both suppositions are questionable: not only informal areas are integrated in the political system through the politics of notables; some individuals and / or groups within any informal area are actually less “informal” and much better politically connected than others. Moreover, the involvement of outstanding individuals / groups as participants / stakeholders doesn’t mean that the rights of the informal dwellers will be advanced: it depends on how representative and genuinely dedicated these individuals / groups are to the collective interests. N G Os are a case in point. Far from being potential agents of community transformation, Egyptian NG O s are typically very limited in scope and in the activities they promote (namely, charity work). They operate with paternalistic attitudes and no internal mechanisms of accountability; they are usually led by prominent person­ alities (wealthy, well connected to the local administration, well integrated in the wasta network) and far from being truly rooted in the community they are supposed to serve: to put it briefly, they are “self-righteous at best, elitist at worst” (Halliday 2001, 23). It was not only that GT Z relied heavily on these N G O s without trying to  involve less obvious partners, but that it also made a point of integrating into the project the so-called “natural leaders” – i.e., the notables. These two categories (NG O s and notables) are the first

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beneficiaries (together with local politicians) of the patron-client networks permeating Egyptian socio-political life: why should they be interested (as the program assumed) in promoting top-down responsiveness and accountability to the detriment of their own mediating role in the bargain of political support? As in similar IK EA -style participatory processes elsewhere, the result is that, to use Cleaver’s words, “we see existing élites (chiefs, headmen, landowners, higher castes, the urban educated) playing prominent roles in new spaces, in representing and articulating the needs of the poor and marginalized. Such processes do not obviate all progressive change, but they do cast doubt on the potential for dramatic transformation, at least over shorter and more immediate timescales” (Cleaver 2004, 274). The IK E A -style participatory “tools” included, then, the involvement of these NGOs and natural leaders, together with the local administration and elected councils, in an institutionalized committee where the “needs” of the population, especially in terms of services and infrastructures could be articulated and the response of the governmental agencies negotiated. It is not clear, however, how the institutionalization of already existing dynamics could radically change their patron-client nature, especially in the absence of any mechanism to guarantee that these “participatory” committees wouldn’t be monopolized by already powerful groups. Furthermore, the consultative role of the committees themselves suggests that the delivery of governmental services is still perceived as a concession to the population, not a right. G TZ ’s participation has therefore unintentionally become a disguised, well-marketed form of co-optation: it is not surprising then that the outcome has been a generalized sense of frustration. The fire at the District Building in Manshiet Nasser is a clear sign that the transformation of the population into “stakeholders” promoted by G TZ raised expectations that couldn’t be met: the route from stakeholders to citizens with full citizenship rights does not pass through IK EA -style manuals whose basic assumptions are that participation is just a matter of putting pieces together in the right order. conclusion

We can see from this analysis of Cairo’s urban landscape that not only are the boundaries between legal and illegal, formal and

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informal extremely fuzzy, and “categories blurred” (Elyachar 2005, 94), but that formal and informal spheres are deeply interconnected and mutually functional. In this sense, the formal-informal dichotomy appears to be not only artificial but also heuristically coun­ terproductive, since it obscures “how new territorial forms are constructed politically and reproduced through everyday acts and struggles” (Jonas and Ward 2007, 170). Informal areas are not, as they are sometimes portrayed, an autonomous domain, independent of the state and representing some form of subaltern resistance to the government. The quick overview of Manshiet Nasser’s development suggested that informal areas are not at all “outside the scope of the state” (Roy 2009, 826). Defining them as “illegal” doesn’t add anything to the understanding in a context in which a discretionary application of the law (and a very confused legal system) make everything potentially “legal.” Their “marginalization” is also questionable: as a matter of fact, as we have seen, at least since the 1990s, the Egyptian state has been quite active in informal areas, albeit reluctantly. Governmental interventions might be motivated mainly by security concerns (see Bayat and Denis 2000; El-Batran and Arandel 1998; El-Kadi 1993; Singerman 1997), but nevertheless the state’s presence has gone well beyond the existence of a police station and a National Democratic Party local committee: over time, it has involved a remarkable degree of service provision. Providing infrastructure is much more than a technical issue: it is a political action, insofar as it implies negotiations for allocating scarce public resources, and it has the effect of politically integrating the local population. This inclusion has happened through negotiations taking place at the lower scale of the administrative / political system, whereas the higher governmental apparatus kept on focusing on its desert chimera. The fragmentation of different levels of political action, while schizophrenic in its contradictions, has led to what has been called “Cairo’s serendipity” (Sims 2010, 269). As Sims argues, it is probably the government’s insistence on pursuing its dreams of colonizing the desert, coupled with its weak control over policy implementation, that has saved the peri-urban belt around Cairo from speculative investments and made it available to be informally urbanized, representing the autonomous “D I Y” solution to the housing needs of an increasing number of Cairenes. So, while the planning effort has been focused on the desert, Cairo’s growth has by and large been unplanned. Actually, unplanned

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is not the correct description: albeit “informal,” a considerable degree of planning also exists in informal areas. Research has shown, in fact, that “informality is not an unregulated domain but rather is structured through various forms of extra-legal, social, and discursive regulation” (Roy 2009, 826); in Cairo, the informal planning process and its underlying regulations have been described in detail by Agnès Deboulet (2009) as the fruit of the “intense social interactions” through which the new residents slowly acquire and practise rational urbanistic competencies (for example on street layout, on the planning of shared spaces, on the most functional spatial orga­ nization of small-scales enterprises, and so on) thanks to their “situational experience” (Deboulet 2009, 220–1). One could say that informal areas are in fact the fruit of a cumulative process of piecemeal informal planning by the people for the people; whether this could be considered an unorthodox form of inclusive planning could be the subject of further sociological analysis. Because of these informal settlements’ density, compactness, and closeness to the city core, their full integration into urban infrastructures would be extremely cost-effective, definitely much more than extending services to the New Cities (Sims 2010). However, shallow analyses and rooted misconceptions about informal areas cause international mainstream urban upgrading interventions to stick stubbornly to the “marginality” issue and to focus on participatory strategies of community development aimed at integrating these supposedly marginalized groups into the political system. In Cairo, these strategies, elaborated using technical language that virtually deprives them of any political implications, have led to burdensome, endless processes of “stakeholder” involvement with no appreciable outcome other than reconfirming existing power balances. They have also been a considerable waste of time and resources that could be invested much more fruitfully if illusions about the miraculous, resolutive effects of this type of “technical” participation were abandoned. Standardized, large-scale15 participatory procedures seem to be particularly inadequate in contexts like the Egyptian one, where informality is the norm, not only in residential patterns but also in political bargaining and negotiation. For what concerns Cairo – the limited availability of reliable empirical, updated research and data; the lack of acknowledgement of urbanistic as well as socio-political local dynamics; and a blind acceptance of stereotypes about informal areas – are heavy burdens

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on urban development practices. This uncritical endorsement of preconceived representations leads to (and is perversely reinforced by) an appalling scarcity of detailed, factual, comprehensive analysis of the capital’s informal areas.16 The consequent international endorsement and praise for initiatives such as G T Z’s “participatory development program” and the almost total absence of in-depth analysis highlighting the pitfalls and the ambiguity of such approaches contribute to perpetrating development models that prove totally inadequate for the contexts in which they are implemented. Underlying this chapter is the belief that urban scholars and political scientists should talk more to each other so they can advance significantly in understanding complex dynamics such as the ones regulating Cairo’s urban life, to dispel rooted preconceptions, and to elaborate development strategies that could make a significant difference in the life of urban dwellers. Disciplines such as urbanism, urban geography, and economy provide essential tools and a data-based approach that could help analysts eschew the risk of indulging in anecdotal, accidental accounts; the combined framework of sociology, anthropology, and political science can be crucial for disentangling the politics of informal regulation and highlighting the system of local action behind the creation and negotiation of urban space. Such an approach requires a multifaceted outlook, combining the clarifying lens of modern urbanism with the depth of socio-political analysis.

notes

  1 Reliable statistical information is difficult to obtain: the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, which is still the body responsible for the Census and population data analysis, is a source of consistent data, but their reliability is hindered by an arbitrary geographic delimitation of urban districts and questionable sampling methods, which often result in underestimations. International organizations provide their own data, but they are usually limited to the confined areas of their interventions and sometimes overestimated (so that the population targeted by their development efforts results larger than what it is); similarly, estimates by internationally recognized scholars easily gain legitimacy, even when they are based on unspecified field survey and even when they contradict themselves. As David Sims observed (2010, 289), the case of Ahmed Soliman is

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  2

  3   4

  5   6

  7   8

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emblematic: in A Possible Way Out, he offers two different estimates for the same district, i.e., one million inhabitants on page 131 and about 400,000 on pages 181–3 (Soliman 2003). A rooted cliché individuates the source of Cairo’s “slum-ization” and pauperization in the “constant flow of rural migration” targeting the capital, as Farida al-Wakeel, Integrated Care Society secretary general, candidly said in an interview with Amira Howeidi (GTZ 2009, 161) – just to give a recent example. This is another misconception about informal areas that persists, despite evidence to the contrary: as a matter of fact, urban growth has been fuelled since the 1980s mainly by intra-urban migration and ­natural growth (Bayat and Denis 2000; Deboulet 1995). For a detailed analysis of these two typologies, see Sims 2010, 2003; Séjourné 2006. As has been observed, the existence of this informal estate market contradicts one of the examples brought forward by Hernando de Soto in support of the necessity of land titling: the illegal nature of the buildings, in fact, does not prevent their marketability (Roy 2009). Hence the name of the settlement. This episode, because of the stigma it brought to the area, represented a sort of double curse for the settlement. First, the zabbaleen and their ­garbage-sorting facilities have been used to reinforce stereotypes of “slumness.” Nowadays, the zabbaleen seem to be so omnipresent that the whole settlement (more than 400,000 inhabitants) is often confused with its largely outnumbered Coptic community (about 30,000 people) and unceremoniously called “Garbage City.” If this reveals a clear intent by the government to stereotype the zabbaleen, it also lends a hand to the pietistic discourses of international donors. Here comes the second curse: the ­community of the zabbaleen has in fact become one of the most targeted by international N G Os, at the expense of the rest of the population of the settlement which, whereas equally if not more worthy of support, was (until the recent G TZ initiative described in this chapter) largely neglected. Under the present circumstances of political transition, it is not clear whether these plans are still of any relevance (if they ever actually were). For instance, the Cairo Vision 2050 is based on the premise of a steady yearly increase of 7 per cent of G DP, which, unsurprisingly, has proven to be wrong in the climate of political uncertainty following the toppling of Mubarak’s regime. These policies also offer strong protection against arbitrary evictions, which are in fact rare and limited in scale.

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Informal Areas and the Politics of Urban Development 75

10 As David Sims wonders, “If this is not state recognition, then what is?” (Sims 2010, 132). 11 For a detailed, in-depth analysis of New Towns, the speculative mechanisms they fostered, and the problems they pose, see Sims 2010, 169–210. 12 In 1996, two presidential decrees stipulated that individuals responsible for all construction without a building permit and all new construction on agricultural land would be punished by military courts (Sims 2010; Séjourné 2006). 13 Patrick Haenni, researcher, Centre d’Etudes et de Documentation Economique, Juridique et Sociale (CEDEJ ), comments made in an informal symposium held at the CEDEJ, 22 March 1998 (quoted in Dorman 2006, 102). 14 UN- H A B I TAT Best Practices Database: http://www.unhabitat.org/ bestpractices/2008/mainview.asp?BPID=2061. 15 In GT Z ’s projects, the participatory process in one case “involved” half a million inhabitants – a rather ambitious target. 16 The only remarkable exception being Sims, Understanding Cairo (2010). references

AlSayyad, Nezar. 1993. “Informal Housing in a Comparative Perspective: On Squatting, Culture, and Development in a Latin American and a Middle Eastern Context.” Review of Urban & Regional Development Studies 5 (1): 3–18. Baduel, Pierre Robert. 1994. “Approches sociopolitiques du local. Espaces et Pouvoirs Locaux.” Proceedings of the Doctoral Cycle “­Contacts et Echanges Culturels en Méditerranée,” Syros, Greece, 10–17 July 1994. Bayat, Asef, and Eric Denis. 2000. “Who Is Afraid of Ashwaiyyat? Urban Change and Politics in Egypt.” Environment and Urbanization 12(2): 185–99. Ben Néfissa, Sarah, and ʻArafāt, ʻAlā’ al-D. 2005. Vote et démocratie dans l’Égypte contemporaine. Paris: KARTH A LA Editions. Blaydes, Lisa. 2006. “Who Votes in Authoritarian Elections and Why? Determinants of Voter Turnout in Contemporary Egypt.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Sciences Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 31 August–3 September. Cleaver, Frances. 2004. “The Social Embeddedness of Agency and Decision-Making.” In Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development, edited

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by Samuel Hickey and Giles Mohan, 271–7. London and New York: Zed Books. Deboulet, Agnès.1994. “Vers un urbanisme d’émanation populaire: compétences et réalisations des citoyens. L’Exemple du Caire.” PhD diss., Université de Paris XII – Créteil. –  2009. “The Dictatorship of the Straight Line and the Myth of Social Disorder: Revisiting Informality in Cairo.” In Cairo Contested. Governance, Urban Space and Global Modernity, edited by Diane Singerman, 199–234. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Dorman, J. William. 2007. “The Politics of Neglect. The Egyptian State in Cairo, 1974–98.” PhD diss., School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. El-Batran, Manal, and Christian Arandel. 1998. “A Shelter of Their Own: Informal Settlement Expansion in Greater Cairo and Government Responses.” Environment and Urbanization 10 (1): 217–32. El-Kadi, Galila. 1987. “L’urbanisation spontanée au Caire.” Villes du monde arabe 18: 1–376. –  1993. “Le tremblement de terre en Égypte.” Égypte / Monde arabe 14: 163–96. Elyachar, Julia. 2003. “Mappings of Power: The State, NGOs, and International Organizations in the Informal Economy of Cairo.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45 (03): 571–605. – 2005. Markets of Dispossession: n g o s, Economic Development, and the State in Cairo. Durham: Duke University Press. GT Z . 2009. Cairo’s Informal Areas Between Urban Challenges and Hidden Potentials: Facts Voices Visions. Cairo: GTZ . Golia, Maria. 2004. Cairo: City of Sand. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Haenni, Paul. 2005. L’ordre des caïds, conjurer la dissidence urbaine au Caire. Paris: KARTHALA Editions. Halliday, Fred. 2001. “The Romance of Non-State Actors.” In Non-state Actors in World Politics, edited by Daphne Jossélin and William Wallace, 21–40. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Harders, Cilja. 1993. “The Informal Social Pact: The State and the Urban Poors in Cairo.” In Politics from Above, Politics from Below: The Middle East in the Age of Economic Reform, edited by Eberhard Kienle, 191–210. London and Cairo: Saqi, C EDEJ . Hourani, Albert. 1968. “Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables.” In Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East: The Nineteenth Century, edited by William R. Polk and Richard L. Chambers, 41–68. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Jonas, E.G. Andrew, and Kevin Ward. 2007. “Introduction to a Debate on City-Regions: New Geographies of Governance, Democracy and Social Reproduction.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31(1): 169–78. Kuppinger, Petra. 2001. “Cracks in the Cityscape: Traditional Spatial Practices and the Official Discourse on ‘Informality’ and irhab (Islamic Terrorism).” In Muslim Traditions and Modern Techniques of Power, Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam, edited by Armando Salvatore, 185–207. Munster: LI T Verlag. Nkrumah, Gamal. 2008. “Living on the Edge.” Al Ahram Weekly. 11–17 September 2008. Piffero, Elena. 2009. What Happened to Participation? Urban Development and Authoritarian Upgrading in Cairo’s Informal Neighbourhoods. Bologna: I Libri di Emil. Roy, Ananya. 2005. “Urban Informality: Toward an Epistemology of Planning.” Journal of the American Planning Association 71 (2): 147–58. – 2009. “The 21st-Century Metropolis: New Geographies of Theory.” Regional Studies 43 (6): 819–30. Roy, Ananya, and Nezar Al-Sayyad. 2003. Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia (Transnational Perspectives on Space and Place). Lexington Books. Runkel, Carolin. 2009. “The Role of Urban Land Titling in Slum Improvement – the Case of Cairo: A Critical Examination of the GTZ Land Titling Programme in Manshiet Nasser.” Master’s diss., Technischen Universität Berlin. Shoura Council. 1996. Report on the Nature and Dimensions of Unplanned Housing of Informal Settlements for 1996. Cairo. Sims, David. 2000. Residential Informality in Greater Cairo: Typologies, Representative Areas, Quantification, Valuation and Causal Factors. Report for ECES and I LD, Cairo. –  2002. “What Is Secure Tenure in Urban Egypt?” In Land, Rights and Innovation: Improving Tenure Security for the Urban Poor, edited by Geoffrey Payne, 79–99. London: I TDG Publishing. – 2007. Greater Cairo Housing and Urban Development Issues. Presen­ tation held for the G TZ – PDP Bi-weekly Expert Meeting, 3 December 2007, Cairo. – 2010. Understanding Cairo: The Logic of a City Out of Control. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press. Sims, David, and Marion Séjourné. 2008. The Dynamics of Peri-Urban Areas around Greater Cairo: Concept Note. Egypt Urban Sector Update. World Bank, March 2008.

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Singerman, Diane. 1997. Politics of Informality in Egypt: Networks, Family, the Economy and Islamists. Working Paper for the McArthur Program, Minnesota. – 2009. Cairo Contested: Governance, Urban Space, and Global Modernity. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press. Social Research Centre, American University in Cairo. 2006. Slums in Cairo: Upgrading and Research Efforts. PowerPoint Presentation, July. Soliman, Ahmed. 2003. A Possible Way Out: Formalizing Housing Informality in Egyptian Cities. Lanham: University Press of America. Séjourné, Marion. 2006. “Les politiques récentes de ‘traitement’ des quartiers illégaux au Caire: nouveaux enjeux et configuration du système d’acteurs?” PhD diss., Université de Tours. UND P. 2004. Egypt Human Development Report. World Bank, and U N -HABI TAT. 2000. Cities Alliance for Cities without Slums: Action Plan for Moving Slum Upgrading to Scale, Special summary edition.

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3 Tracing Participatory Planning in Amman Luna Khirfan and Bessma Momani

introduction

Since the second half of the twentieth century, Amman, the capital of Jordan, has undergone rapid urban growth due to internal rural-tourban migration and to external immigration triggered by regional political unrest, particularly the Arab-Israeli conflict. These population inflows led to Amman’s domination as a “city-state” (Samha 1996; Al-Asad 2004). From accommodating 9 per cent of Jordan’s population in 1952, Amman expanded to accommodate 40 per cent in 2007 (Greater Amman Municipality 2008; Potter et al. 2009). Naturally, urban expansions paralleled this population growth (Samha 1996; also see Tewfik 1989; Abu-Dayyeh 2004; Madbouly 2009; Potter et al. 2009) and warranted physical plans for Amman, four of which were developed in 1955, 1968, 1978, and in 1988 (Abu-Dayyeh 2004). Completely absent from these plans were any notions of inclusive or participatory planning. While dramatic changes are not foreign to Amman’s urban landscape, the years 2006–07 marked a turning point when the Greater Amman Municipality was assailed by sixteen requisitions for highrise developments – an unprecedented, hence unregulated building typology in Amman’s landscape. Triggered by the influx of investments in real estate development from the Arab Gulf States, and perceived as a form of “modernization,” these development pressures prompted King Abdullah II to appoint Omar Maani as mayor in 2006. The king instructed the new mayor “to invite experts from all over the world,” perceiving that their “sharing of successes and failures that they have witnessed in other cities can be of tremendous

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value to us” (King Abdullah bin Al-Hussein, 3 May 2006, documented in Greater Amman Municipality 2008, 10–11). Eventually, more than fifteen Canadian planning experts from Toronto became involved with Jordanian planners in developing the 2007 Amman Master Plan (Khirfan 2011), which was followed by a series of planning documents, including the 2008 Amman Plan: Metropolitan Growth Report (Greater Amman Municipality 2007d, 2008). In contrast with previous plans, and probably under the influence of the Canadian planners, the Amman Master Plan specifically mentions “governance,” maintains that it “be citizen centred,” and claims it is adopting an “implementation framework that is par­ ticipatory, [and] inclusive”; it also mentions “a public review” for all  the proposed high-density mixed-use development projects (Greater Amman Municipality 2007a, 7). Similarly, the subsequent Metropolitan Growth Report claims in its Amman 2025: Visions and Aspirations section that by 2025 Amman will be “a city with a  citizen-centered governance” that is “based on principles of ­transparency, accountability, inclusive citizen participation” (Greater Amman Municipality 2008, 36). The Jordanian urban planners who were at the helm of these new plans also reiterated this inclusive and participatory rhetoric and made claims of engaging the public and of fostering participatory planning processes. Apart from sporadic criticism of these claims (Parker 2009; Beauregard and MarpilleroColomina 2011), there is a dearth of systematic studies to assess these participatory claims and investigate how Amman’s citizens perceive them and the new plans for their city. We are therefore combining political science and urban planning perspectives in an attempt to understand the extent and the nature of public engagement and participation in Amman’s urban development. We build on Cooke and Kothari’s notion of participation as tyranny, or “how participatory development facilitates […] the illegitimate and / or unjust exercise of power” (Cooke and Kothari 2001, 4). Accordingly, we reveal the tyrannies in the Greater Amman Municipality’s (G AM ) approach to public participation and how, in a counter-reaction, some of those directly affected by GA M ’s policies used tyranny to resist, and even reverse, these policies. The next section situates public participation in the urban landscape of the Middle East in general and Amman in particular. It is followed by the research design and methodology that facilitated a comparison between the official narrative and the public’s perception

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of Amman’s new plans to assess the extent and nature of public engagement in the formation of these plans. The next two sections then present our analysis, which juxtaposes the official narratives against public perceptions. By investigating the limitations of c­ urrent approaches to expanding public participation in the transformations taking place in Amman, this study in the final section provides insights drawn from our study participants on how to best integrate public participation in future urban planning projects. u r b a n p l a n n i n g a n d p u b l i c pa rt i c i pat i o n in the middle east

The rapid transformations that have occurred in the urban landscapes of the Middle East have been discussed by many scholars (for example, see the edited volumes by Elsheshtawy 2008 and Al-Harithy 2010; see also Abu-Dayyeh 2004; Abu-Ghazalah 2007, 2008, 2010; Alnsour and Meaton 2009; Parker 2009; Potter et al. 2009; Beauregard and Marpillero-Colomina 2011). Simultaneously, poor public participation in the planning process of the region has come under greater academic scrutiny (see, for example, Mubarak 2004; Shechter and Yacobi 2005a; Abu-Ghazalah 2010; Al-Naim 2008; Madbouly 2009; Fenster and Yacobi 2005), including studies that have examined the absence of long-term plans for sustained and inclusive urban development projects (i.e., Al-Hathloul 2004; Shechter and Yacobi 2005b; Stanley 2005). These rapid urban expansions paralleled significant changes in city-state relationships throughout the Middle East during the 1980s and 1990s – in which government services in many countries were curtailed to citizenries that had become accustomed to these services, and indeed viewed them as a difficult though necessary exchange for life under autocratic regimes. The social contract between citizens and government was one that exchanged political acquiescence for social services. As the provision of social services to urban communities decreased with the rise of neoliberal discourse surrounding the necessity for fiscal conservatism, state bureaucracies nonetheless retained significant powers in the development of urban spaces, including informal and formal control over city planning projects (Mubarak 2004; Fenster and Yacobi 2005; Shechter and Yacobi 2005a, 2005b; Stanley 2005; Madbouly 2009). The social contract was altered on one side, i.e., the provision of social services, but not on the other, i.e., decreasing

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governmental control over policy planning. Furthermore, Shami (2003, 79) argues for a transition in the rhetoric from urban services to urban resources that include “Space, information, environment, kinship networks, [and] good neighbours.” Such a transition prioritizes assets, including “patronage, threat of collective action, bargaining, negotiation, and formal processes such as elections and lobbying that are more commonly recognized as political. Governance research should be particularly cognizant of the importance of issues of identity to community formation and collective action” (79). The challenges currently facing cities in the Middle East – including rapid population growth, inequality, weak economic reform, crumbling infrastructure, and high unemployment (e.g., Al-Hathloul 2004; Madbouly 2009; Shechter and Yacobi 2005a, 2005b) – are of particular concern given that the wealth, culture, and politics of the Arab world are urban-based (Stanley 2005), and that urban centres like Amman remain the areas with the largest population densities and the fastest population growth (see Shechter and Yacobi 2005b on cities in the Middle East). Yet state-induced planning policies at the national and municipal levels have been inconsistent (Shechter and Yacobi 2005b; Stanley 2005; Madbouly 2009) – ranging, in Amman’s case, from constructing mega-projects (Abu-Ghazalah 2007) to ad hoc interventions in times of crisis, such as during water shortages (Potter, Darmame, and Nortcliff 2010). Such inconsistency rendered GA M unable to keep pace with the needs of its constituency, thus lagging in developing necessary infrastructure such as public transportation (Sugar, Kennedy, and Hoornweg 2013). Mubarak (2004) attributes the absence of institutionalized public participation in the urban landscapes of the Middle East and North Africa (M E NA ) partly to this region’s colonial legacy and partly to the inability of ME NA nation-states to establish clear avenues for public participation after they implemented decentralization policies. Stanley (2005) discussed the limits of such decentralization and the states’ continuous overshadowing of cities and of municipal authorities. He argues that the state has continually disempowered municipal authorities in planning decisions, so that “[r]eciprocity is  low within, among and through cities for communities, or for ­cities with the state, and political space is tightly controlled” (2005, 197). Indeed, Jordan’s king holds absolute power in Jordan’s con­ stitutional monarchy (Al Oudat and Alshboul 2010). Notwithstanding King Hussein’s (1952–99) political liberalization during the

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1980s–90s, which revitalized parliamentary elections and expanded civic society, Mednicoff (2002, 97) argues that the king actually “use[d] these developments to concentrate, rather than decentralise, [his] political control.” His son and successor, King Abdullah II, has deployed “soft mechanisms of manipulation,” Yom (2009) argues, to further solidify his rule, including “the adoption of selective economic reforms, the use of legal regulations to constrain civil society, and the co-optation from above of all democratic initiatives” (151). Monarchical rule in Jordan therefore centralizes real authority in its executive, i.e., the monarch, while rendering institutions, such as legislatures, governorates, and municipal bodies symbolic, even if they are democratically elected, since they possess few real instruments of authority. GA M’s governance system actually reflects how electoral power has been curbed. Although all the municipal councils and mayors throughout Jordan are elected, Amman is the exception: the king appoints not only its mayor, but also 50 per cent of its city council – leaving the other 50 per cent to be elected as representatives by the citizens of Amman’s various districts (Greater Amman Municipality 2015). Furthermore, while all the municipalities in Jordan fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Municipal ­ Affairs, G A M falls under the direct responsibility of the Prime Ministry (Clark 2012). Indeed, Madbouly (2009) finds that weak administrations in Middle Eastern cities, combined with limited resources, have contributed to low public participation at the local level. This is further exacerbated in Jordanian municipalities in general, and in G A M in particular, through the uncritical application of western urban planning models that disregard the cities’ local, social, cultural, and environmental contexts (see Alnsour and Meaton 2009; Abu-Dayyeh 2004). The inability or unwillingness of states to integrate public participation into the planning process in the Middle East has meant that citizens have largely been confined to rather passive roles in the urban planning of their cities, such as being respondents in general discussions run by experts (Madbouly 2009). Indeed, scholars from various interdisciplinary backgrounds have noted that there is an appetite for public participation in the planning process in Middle Eastern cities, but that it is hindered by several factors (see, for example, Mubarak 2004; Shechter and Yacobi 2005b; Al-Naim 2008; Abu-Ghazalah 2008; Alnsour and Meaton 2009; Madbouly 2009; Fenster and Yacobi 2005). For instance, Fenster and Yacobi

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(2005) find a disconnect in Tel Aviv between the municipality’s rhetoric of citizen involvement in the city’s Central Bus Station (CBS ) plans and its practice of providing poor services to residents who, in turn, have become suspicious of urban planning projects. Similarly, Al-Naim (2008) writes about the minimal role of public participation and the “largely consultative” role of municipal councils in ­government planning projects in Saudi Arabia, while in Lebanon, Madbouly (2009) notes that the lack of structured institutional mechanisms (e.g., laws, policies, administrative structures, partici­ patory processes, etc.) has meant that interaction between municipalities and residents remains difficult. Finally, in the city of Zarqa, Jordan, Abu-Ghazalah (2008) discusses the failure of municipal officials to make public participation in city projects a reality. Despite the ability of civil society actors to mobilize public participation (Al-Hathloul 2004; Madbouly 2009) and despite their expertise in matters related to city planning, such as in the areas of health, education, housing, and the environment (Madbouly 2009; Shechter and Yacobi 2005b), these actors, which include non-­ governmental organizations (NGO s), civil society organizations, and, in some instances, charity associations (e.g., Abu-Ghazalah 2008; Wiktorowicz 2002) have been marginalized in the urban planning arena. Such actors too often find themselves brought into discussions for symbolic purposes to demonstrate a form of outreach and consultation, though they are not seen as valuable partners in the planning process or in the implementation and quickly become ignored. As a result, very little has been achieved in what can be considered true participation in urban planning initiatives (Mubarak 2004; Fenster and Yacobi 2005; Al-Naim 2008; Madbouly 2009). This is particularly disconcerting in Amman’s case given the challenges that it currently faces as it attempts to move forward with development initiatives, including: traffic congestion, affordable housing needs, water shortage, and severe polarization as expressed by Amman’s East-West divide (i.e., Potter et al. 2009; Madbouly 2009; Beauregard and Marpillero-Colomina 2011). According to Arnstein’s “ladder” of citizen participation (see figure 3.1), citizen participation in urban development projects across the Middle East is tokenism at best. While tokenism is better than no participation, it falls short of empowerment and includes attempts to placate, consult, and inform (Arnstein 1969). For Cooke and Kothari (2001), tokenistic attempts at participation fall under one of

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Tracing Participatory Planning in Amman 85

8. Citizen control 7. Delegated power

Citizen power

6. Partnership 5. Placation 4. Consultation

Tokenism

3. Informing 2. Therapy 1. Manipulation

Nonparticipation

Figure 3.1  Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation

three participation tyrannies. The first is the tyranny of decisionmaking and control that ensues from those in charge of the participatory process; the second is the tyranny of the group which favours power dynamics; and the third is the tyranny of method which constrains including and / or excluding interest groups. By investigating the extent and nature of public engagement in Amman’s recent planning initiatives, the following sections elucidate how a combination of these tyrannies permeated Amman’s recent planning initiatives. Also, by investigating the public perceptions of, and response to, these tokenistic initiatives, the analysis reveals how the local communities deployed some of these same tyrannies to counter G AM ’s tokenism and successfully hinder and even completely reverse some of the ensuing policies. The analysis concludes with insights on Ammanis’ preferences for their future engagement in the planning of their city. To obtain a clear picture of the formation of Amman’s Master Growth Plan (A MP ), to assess the official claims of public engagement, to investigate the rationale behind these claims, and to examine the extent to which Ammanis were engaged in the urban planning processes that have occurred since 2007, we deployed an exploratory research design of interdisciplinary and multi-layered research methods. Our methods facilitated a comparison between the official narratives and public perceptions, particularly the extent and nature

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of participation that the officials believed they were providing, the public’s perceptions of the extent and nature of their engagement, and the extent and nature of participation that the citizens of Amman are demanding for future initiatives. To begin with, the official narrative was acquired through interviews with planners and policymakers, and through analyzing the content of municipal planning documents. We conducted a series of eighteen in-depth interviews with public officials at the municipal level that elucidated their perceptions about public engagement during the planning process. Among those interviewed were senior and mid-level policymakers and planners at G AM and at the Amman Institute for Urban Development1 (Ai), who were directly involved in the formation of the new plans; appointed advisors to the mayor who were members of the Mayor’s Roundtable (the formation and role of which are discussed in the following section); appointed and elected city councillors; and members of Parliament (M P s), who represented various districts in Amman at the time of our fieldwork.2 Simultaneously, we undertook content analysis of all official municipal planning documents associated with the recent plans for Amman, and complemented this approach with an investigation of an array of local media and archived web postings, which promulgated the official narrative. This allowed us to assess the official rhetoric on public participation during the urban planning process, and allowed us to determine the degree of transparency during the public consultation process. The research also involved gauging the public’s perception of their inclusion in the planning process and their attitudes toward the changes taking place in Amman’s urban landscape. In addition, the research investigated the specific ways in which the public perceived that citizens’ engagement could ideally occur in future planning and development initiatives in Amman. Therefore, we deployed an online survey whose findings were then verified through a series of focus groups with representative communities of Amman’s various districts.3 In total, 2,118 Ammanis responded to the online survey, of whom 533 completed all twenty questions in the survey. Among the respondents, more males (75 per cent) completed the survey than females (25 per cent), but there were no visible voting preferences among males or females on any issue. Moreover, while every age group was represented among the 533 respondents who completed the survey, the majority (71 per cent) were between 18 and 29 years

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Tracing Participatory Planning in Amman 87

of age.4 A majority of the respondents (56 per cent) had an undergraduate (a bachelor’s) degree and 12 per cent had some form of postgraduate degree. A majority of the respondents were either employed (54 per cent) or students (37 per cent), while the remaining 9 per cent were unemployed, which suggests that the respondents represented a wide distribution of income levels. Respondents were distributed widely from the various districts within Amman, although respondents from Tla‘ al-‘Ali area were slightly overrepresented (18 per cent). To obtain further in-depth insights from the various interest groups representing the citizens of Amman, we followed the online survey by conducting thirteen focus group meetings, each con­ sisting of ten to fifteen participants. These participants represented a diverse array of socio-economic, age, gender, and professional backgrounds.5 In organizing these focus group meetings, we also took the geographic distribution of the various districts within Amman into account. Our research benefited tremendously from the effect that focus groups had on group synergy, stimulation, spontaneity, and reflection, as well as from the ability to document the participants’ non-verbal responses in such contexts (Bloor et al. 2002; Stewart, Shamdasani, and Rook 2007). The staff of the Ai provided valuable assistance in the recruitment for the focus groups and later in the transcriptions, but we managed the sessions independently from the Ai. t h e o f f i c i a l n a r r at i v e

During the eighteen interviews conducted with Amman’s planning officials, it became apparent that officials’ claims of an inclusive and  engaging planning process were inconsistent. Further, there was a serious disconnect between government statements regarding engagement and the public’s own understanding of that engagement. To begin with, most municipal officials claimed that they had made unprecedented efforts at GA M to ensure public engagement in various projects, whether toward the new policies to regulate high-rise towers, the amalgamation of several municipalities in Amman’s urban hinterland under GA M’s jurisdictions,6 the proposed bus rapid transit (B R T ), the development of King Faisal Street downtown, or the Citadel area development, to name but a few. In discussing public engagement, the mayor of Amman at that time, Omar Maani,

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said that he was “very bullish on this” and that as a result of his persistence, “[participation] is beginning to happen,” asserting that institutionalizing public participation is a “commitment, you can’t waiver” (interview on 2 January 2011). Other G AM officials who were interviewed corroborated these claims by asserting that they sought to “build trust” with the public, as exemplified in initiatives such as forming a public consultative body dubbed “the Mayor’s Round Table,” holding consultations with interest groups, and also  convening public meetings. Probing these initiatives however, reveals a different scenario – one that depicted the tyrannies of the decision-making process, the method, and even the group (Cooke and Kothari 2001). In particular, the tyranny of the decision-making process can be seen through the fact that the A MP was produced in a very short time span, which would have precluded any genuine consultative or engagement processes. In describing the production of the AM P , a senior G AM planner proudly shared how “the scale of this work was rather substantial, having worked approximately 19,000 hours within five months between 12 or 14 of us. We worked consecutively as late as 11 at night daily, so it was quite the challenge.” Moreover, the tyranny of the method can be seen through the many shortcomings and internal biases of what G AM officials claimed were participatory activities, and what Beauregard and Marpillero-Colomina (2011, 66) uncritically describe as “maxi­ mizing input from stakeholders.” In fact, what had happened is that the mayor and GA M’s officials converted the existing Amman Commission, a voluntary advisory body on architectural affairs, into what came to be known as the Mayor’s Round Table. The latter’s forty-odd attendees included, in addition to representatives of  relevant governmental agencies (such as the Ministry of Public Works and Housing) and GA M’s heads of departments, members of the public who were supposedly chosen based on their suitability and skills. Yet the latter were directly appointed by the mayor instead of through a transparent process, such as advertising their positions. We argue that the participation of these individuals represented the tyranny of the group (Cooke and Kothari 2001). At best, their selection reflected inequity given that they typified a privileged class that did not represent Amman’s various sub-communities, especially those residing in impoverished and marginalized East Amman. At worst, their selection represented a conspicuous conflict of interest

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given that some of these individuals were architects and urban planners whose private firms, during their tenure at the Mayor’s Round Table, were directly involved in projects tendered by G AM . In a similar fashion, the tyranny of the method (Cooke and Kothari 2001) is shown in both the type of engagement methods deployed – i.e., public meetings dubbed “consultations”– and in their timing. These consultations were held with specific interest groups that were supposedly directly affected by the proposed policies, such as the developers of the high-rise towers and the merchants of Faisal Street downtown. Answering a question about the criteria behind the selection of the participants in these consultations, a planner justified that it “depend[ed] on the extent of [the participants] being affected” by the planning decisions, and went on to elaborate that “I won’t tell you what all the other [planners] have, that we’ve reached all the parties of the community. No. I would tell you that if we are talking about the high-rise, or the Industrial Land Policy … [these policies] affect a certain group of landowners, so we were focusing on them so that they fully understand what we are doing; we’ve met them.” Not only did the selection of the participants in this method exclude others who might have directly or indirectly been affected by the policies, but it also seems obvious from this narrative that this ­planner, like other GA M officials, used “informing” and “participating” interchangeably, misconceiving the distinctions between the two processes. This misconception continues in this same planner’s explanation of how such “participation” continued after the policy was enacted: “Our role as a GA M team continues, whereas we keep receiving every landowner, regardless of his land’s location in order to explain to him his exact situation, show him whether he will be affected or not, and illustrate more about this new coming policy.” This planner complained how “these individual meetings were a little tiring for us until people could comprehend what’s going on” and lamented the lack of public appreciation of G AM ’s “participatory approach” by concluding, “I feel that this was the real role assumed by G A M [and it] was downplayed in newspapers and media” (interview on 11 January 2011). Last, while what the mayor and G AM officials dubbed “public meetings” were indeed held at one point, our investigation reveals that these meetings only addressed tangential issues such as the new design for Amman’s logo rather than the fundamental policy-related ones, such as the B R T or the amalgamation of several smaller

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municipalities in Amman’s urban hinterland under G AM ’s jurisdictions. The former was a particularly contentious decision that we discuss further in the next section. Altogether, the interviews with the planners revealed how entrenched the tyranny of the decision-making and control was at G A M. The assumption that planners are experts who know better than citizens, who are ignorant about planning-related matters, and hence are mere recipients of services that these planners “deliver” to them, was omnipresent. These views were further compounded by the fact that GA M planners themselves perceive planning merely as the delivery of services in the form of physical mega-infrastructure projects such as roads, tunnels, and bypasses rather than, as Shami’s (2003) study of Middle Eastern capital cities revealed, a wider concept of urban resources. One example of this attitude emerged during a meeting between one of the co-authors of this chapter and senior G A M planners in 2011 to discuss a public viewing of a movie on Curitiba’s B R T experience. One of the senior G AM planners insisted at the time on an “invitation only” event, and justified the choice by stating that “we do not want people to ask stupid questions” in reference to the proposed BRT in Amman. During our interactions with GA M planners, we found that they continually imparted unsubstantiated assumptions about their constituencies’ needs and preferences to make important planning decisions. This way of thinking and acting is so entrenched among them that they do not think it is necessary to use objective methods to assess these needs and preferences. One of these assumptions was citizens’ apathy toward urban planning issues. GA M planners believed that the turnout in public consultations for Amman’s logo was low because Jordanians are private and family-oriented people who are not keen on expressing their opinions on non-family matters – a claim that our findings contest, as we discuss in the following section. the public’s perceptions

Our findings show that the citizens of Amman are passionate about their city and have a keen interest in being involved in its future. Unlike a once dominant argument that Arab citizens tend to be apathetic and apolitical, captured by Aarts’s (1999) notion of “Arab exceptionalism,” we found a great deal of interest in participating in

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urban planning. This was evident in the high response rate to the online survey, in the strong response to our recruitment calls for the focus groups, and in the lively discussions of these focus groups, each of which lasted well over ninety minutes. Indeed, our findings coincided with the birth of the Arab Spring demonstrations and ­protests, which debunked the Arab exceptionalist argument of an apathetic Arab political culture. Again, our findings confirm that the political apathy among the respondents was very low. This was ­consistent among different age group, education, and income levels, suggesting that municipal government perceptions were very much unfounded. Of the 1,264 respondents who answered a question whether, if the opportunity arose, they would share their opinion about current developments in Amman’s urban landscape, only 10 per cent (131 respondents) selected “no,” 21 per cent (270 respondents) indicated that they were “not sure,” while a 68 per cent majority (863 respondents) chose “yes.” Of those who selected “no,” only 9.5 per cent (11 respondents) indicated that they were not interested in getting involved in the urban planning process, but a 47 per cent majority (55 respondents) largely attributed their negative choice to skepticism that their opinions would not be heard. Indeed, the key groups affected by Amman’s new A M P , such as the downtown merchants, where the downtown corridor was implemented, and the residents of the then newly amalgamated Muwaggar area, were the most critical of the so-called participatory planning process during the focus groups. They claimed it was “manipulative” since it imparted selective information about the new policies and plans, made false promises about future planning initiatives, and thus lacked transparency. As a result, these individuals felt alienated from the decision-making process – particularly in cases when political decisions directly influenced their livelihoods. For example, in the case of Amman’s downtown corridor, G AM ’s officials noted that the investors, members of the Chamber of Commerce, and members of the Chamber of Industry had been consulted. During focus group meetings with these same groups however, they consistently insisted that they had not been consulted. One participant, who was involved with the Downtown Committee that met regularly with the Ai and GA M planners shared that “I am a member of this committee and we went for a few meetings and honestly they showed us [the plans] but they did not call us or consult

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[us] or hear what we [have to] say. [They] descended on us like a parachute [and said] this is the plan, and deal with it. And I asked them many times: ‘Are you here to consult us or to tell7 us?’” In fact, the downtown merchants claimed that they were the ones who had invited the mayor to a meeting to share with him their own vision for the downtown area. In a similar vein, the residents of the newly amalgamated Muwaggar claimed that while the so-called consultation did indeed take place, the approach was biased. For example, one of the focus group participants emphasized how GA M planners “did not seek people’s opinions. And even when they did, they went to people who had personal goals for supporting merging with Amman.” This confirms that G AM ’s planners exercised the ­tyranny of the method and the group whereby the consultations excluded certain groups, while the ensuing decisions “reinforced the interests of the already powerful” (Cooke and Kothari 2001). While the “informing” strategy is corroborated by the officials themselves, as discussed earlier, still it is important to delve into these declarations beyond their face value, for several reasons. First, the initial indifference of these interest groups toward the proposed A MP was in fact triggered by their expectations of positive outcomes, which, for various reasons, including the global economic downturn in 2008, did not materialize. This is betrayed through statements such as the one by a participant in the Muwaggar focus group who complained about GA M planners in reference to the amalgamation policy: “We saw nothing. They made nothing for us. Have they opened new roads? No, they haven’t. Have they brought electricity? No, they haven’t. Have they brought water? No, they haven’t. Schools? No. Nothing other than fees and collecting taxes.” The latter reference to increased taxes also played a crucial role in the outcry against the amalgamation. Once the policy sank in, the residents of these formerly rural areas realized that the prestige of affiliation with the capital came with a price tag in the form of taxes and additional fees for various municipal services as well as for private property. In a Foucauldian twist that demonstrates both the circulation of power – as opposed to its division (Kothari 2001) – and the technologies of citizenship (Cruikshank 1993), the inhabitants of the six amalgamated districts took to the streets in protest against these policies. The participants in our focus group insisted that their “main and basic demand” was to reverse the

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amalga­mation decision, which indeed they achieved in 2011, when the then Minister of Municipal and Rural Affairs rescinded the decision (Al-Habashneh 2011). Second, the majority of the participants in our focus groups lacked an awareness of the rationale behind the policies instigated by the A MP. Three examples stand out. The first is the amalgamation decision in which none of the participants in our focus groups were aware of the rationale for the decision provided in the AM P ’s documents, including the necessity to conserve agricultural land, to ­manage the scarce water resources, or to protect the environment (Greater Amman Municipality 2007d). Similarly, even though it was already underway, the B R T project was unfathomable to the overwhelming majority of the various societal representations we had interacted with in Amman, whether in the focus groups or in social circles. In fact, almost everyone we spoke to misunderstood the word “rapid” to refer to the speed of the vehicle itself rather than to the frequency of the bus service. Even renowned online newspapers continue to refer to the B R T as the “fast bus” (Khaberni 2015). Like the amalgamation decision, the B R T project has been halted since July 2011 (The Jordan Times 2011). In another Foucauldian twist, Abdul Rahim al-Boucai, the MP for Amman’s Third District (2007–16), who spearheaded the campaign against the BRT and who influenced then Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit’s decision to halt the project, had in fact served as the Deputy Mayor of Amman to Mayor Maani’s predecessor. Armed with budgetary information, one of his parliamentary speeches highlighted the increase in G AM ’s fiscal deficit, from JoD 7 million in 2006 to nearly JoD 250 million at the time of his speech in December 2010. Al-Boucai presented these figures visà-vis G A M’s new initiatives such as the BRT , its recruitment of the Canadian planners, and particularly, the foundation of the Ai under Canadian leadership (interview on 30 December 2010). The third example reflects how, despite Amman’s rapid urban development, an overwhelming number of our study’s respondents identified with, and expressed a strong preference for, characterizing Amman by its homogeneous hills and its older neighbourhoods, such as Jabal ­el-Weibdeh, Jabal Amman, and Jabal el-Taj (figure 3.2).The participants in our focus groups consistently described the proposed high rise towers as “out of place,” expressed their preference for the “older” relationship between medium-density or medium-rise built structures and Amman’s natural hills, and voiced their wishes to

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place newer high-rise developments on the eastern fringes of the city away from Amman’s established neighbourhoods. Yet, when asked about their views on intensification, clearly the concept remained vague for these focus group participants. For them, the linkage between intensification and sustainability – be it environmental, social, or economic – was not obvious. Nor was it obvious to them that the preferred “older” urban form of Amman, with its mediumdensity and medium-rise structures represents intensification. Most important, the respondents could not establish connections between intensification and the management of scarce water resources by decreasing runoff and protecting underground water, regardless of the fact that water shortages represent a daily challenge for all the residents of Amman (Potter, Darmame, and Nortcliff 2010, and personal experience). Our respondents also rightfully expressed concerns about the ability of Amman’s physical and social infrastructure to bear the additional demands of intensification in general, and high-rise towers in particular. It is important to mention that while most respondents did not particularly object to intensification in principle, their concerns stemmed from a lack of comprehension of the rationale behind the decisions for intensification. These three examples highlight the lost opportunities that would have stemmed from genuine public participation which, if it had occurred, would have raised awareness of urban planning issues as Fagence (1977) asserts. Last, and most important, our findings reveal that, similar to GAM’s officials and planners, Amman’s residents continue to misconceive G A M’s responsibilities as limited to the delivery of supply-side physical services, particularly those pertaining to road construction and infrastructure, rather than perceiving G AM as a public institution whose responsibilities encompass various aspects of civic life – or urban resources, as Shami (2003) puts it. Among the 560 respondents who ranked a list of the initiatives prioritized by G AM , providing road infrastructure was ranked the highest (by 231 respondents who ranked it first). When asked in a later question to rank their  preferences for new initiatives that G AM should tackle, pro­ viding road infrastructure and public parks were equally ranked by 120 respondents each as their first choice. Other services trailed in their first choice ranking. Public transit was ranked as a first choice by 84 respondents and cultural services was ranked as a first choice by only 54 respondents.

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Figure 3.2  The homogeneous hills of Amman’s older neighbourhoods

t h e f u t u r e o f pa rt i c i pat o r y p l a n n i n g i n a m m a n

When interpreting the results of our study, Arnstein’s (1969) l­ adder serves solely as a benchmark – one that indicates that the attempts at some form of a participatory approach during the formation of the AMP did not exceed the level of informing. In fact, informing, as the lowest level of tokenism, lies only one level above non-­ participation. In other words, while G AM ’s planners perceived their efforts to be participatory, these efforts did not adequately represent citizen participation in its fullest sense, or even in its most minimal sense. More fundamentally, these claims of participation on behalf of G A M’s officials and planners embody Cooke and Kothari’s (2001) participation as tyranny. The findings reveal that the tyranny of decision-making and control occurred through informing rather than consulting or even placating, let alone empowering citizens through

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actual partnership (Arnstein 1969). Furthermore, the tyranny of the method transpired by constraining the inclusion of – and even purposefully excluding – interest groups, and, combined with the tyranny of the group that favoured power dynamics, they hindered public input, especially when this public input threatened to undermine the interests of elite stakeholders, as was the case with the land owners in Muwaggar. Our findings reveal, however, that these power dynamics are far from constant. On the contrary, power circulated away from GA M’s officials, whether toward the formerly marginalized groups, such as with the onset of the Arab Spring in 2011, or toward Amman’s former deputy mayor-turned M P for what Robinson (1997) considers Amman’s most affluent, hence influential, electoral district. Simultaneously, our study reveals that the onus is on G AM , as the principal local planning institution, to effectively identify, tailor, and institutionalize public engagement and participatory planning methods to suit the unique conditions of Amman’s varying districts. Two issues that stand out in this regard warrant the attention of G AM planners, namely, first, the need to initiate public engagement at the outset of any planning initiative. Certainly, local engagement in Amman seemed to occur at random in the planning process – often toward the end of the planning process and the beginning of implementation and rarely, if ever, at the onset of any planning initiative. Simultaneously, while GA M planners declared their willingness to engage Amman’s citizens in the planning process, G AM ’s planning culture needs a paradigm shift. According to Sanyal (2005, 3), planning culture refers to “the collective ethos and dominant attitude of professional planners,” which in GA M ’s case maintained that planners are providers of physical infrastructure services to passive and apathetic recipients. Our findings reveal otherwise – that Ammanis are extremely passionate about their city, and are keen to take part in the decision-making process. Therefore, a paradigm shift in the planning culture at GA M would entail a genuine appreciation of the benefits of engagement, inclusiveness, and transparency in the decision-making processes. Ironically, it is the BRT project that provides a profound argument in favour of this paradigm shift. The public’s confusion about the nature of a B R T system, combined with numerous rumours, has resulted in a public outcry against this desperately needed project and has led to extensive delays, mushrooming expenses, and outright antagonism toward G AM (figure 3.3) (The Jordan Times 2011).

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Figure 3.3  The lanes dedicated to the BRT along the University Street (Shari‘ ­ al-Jami‘a) have been standing unused since the halting of the project in July 2011

Finally, we sought to obtain insights from the participants in our study about their preferences for participating in future urban ­planning processes. Our findings from the online survey reveal that of the 553 respondents who answered a question about their preferred form of engagement, 44 per cent preferred to vote on key proposals in their city, 32 per cent preferred to take part in small focus groups, while the remaining 19 per cent wanted to attend ­public town hall meetings. It is imperative to emphasize that these responses were consistent regardless of the respondents’ age group, education, employment, or income levels. Probing further, the participants of the focus groups recommended stakeholder-specific strategies tailored to each group’s particular characteristics, such as capitalizing on the traditional role of the “mukhtar” (an elder chosen to manage a neighbourhood’s affairs) which still functions effectively in some areas, especially in East Amman. Some participants

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recommended a more effective role for elected city councillors, while others recommended capitalizing on existing positive relationships with locally respected bodies such as religious and non-governmental organizations active within the communities.

notes

  1 The Amman Institute (Ai) was founded in 2008 with an NGO status to serve as a think tank on urban planning and development. Its staff combined Jordanian and international – mostly Canadian – experts. Until its closing in 2012, Gerry Post, a Canadian planning expert, presided over it. GA M commissioned the Ai to conduct several tasks, including studies and plans for several projects that spun off the Amman Master Plan (A MP).  2 Because GA M falls directly under the prime minister’s jurisdiction, these MP s do not have a direct influence on G AM’s policy formation, yet we chose to interview them since some were among the most influential in ­parliament and they affected policies through their direct and personal interactions with the prime minister.   3 Advertising of the survey via Google ads and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter targeted affluent English-speaking Jordanians with high Internet connectivity, as well as middle / workingclass, Arabic-speaking Jordanians. In addition, advertising the survey through Arabic media websites, such as Jordan-based Khaberni and Ammon, reached a mass public with lower educational levels and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups.   4 According to official census data, this particular age range accounts for 20 per cent of the national Jordanian population. As a result, their ­relatively higher response rate to the survey questionnaire significantly (3.5 times) overrepresents this age range in the survey.   5 Between December 2010 and January 2011, we organized and facilitated thirteen focus groups where each group comprised women in poor districts; women in affluent districts; children in impoverished areas; children in affluent areas; two separate professional groups of middle-class Ammanis; one group of university students in low-class districts; one group of university students in affluent districts; one group of downtown merchants; and one group of media representatives and journalists. These focus groups were organized with the assistance of civil society organizations or professional organizations who sent a call for participants to their members. Each focus group lasted anywhere between an hour or two, was

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candid, and often took place in either Arabic or English depending o ­ n the comfort level of the participants in either language.   6 One of the AM P’s major outcomes was to amalgamate 982 km2 (98,200 hectares) of territory in Amman’s hinterland into GA M’s ­jurisdictions (Greater Amman Municipality 2008, 47).   7 This focus group participant used the word “ykhabber” in Arabic, which means “to tell” or “to inform” or even “to notify.” By leaving the sentence open-ended, the act of telling, informing, or notifying could refer to anything, such as the finished plans or the enactment of polices. references

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Seteney Shami and Jean Hannoyer, 191–208. Beirut, Lebanon: Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur el Moyen-Orient Contemporain. Sanyal, Bishwapriya. 2005. “Hybrid Planning Cultures: The Search for the Global Cultural Commons.” In Comparative Planning Cultures, edited by Bishwapriya Sanyal, 3–25. New York: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group. Shami, Seteney. 2003. “Ethnographies of Governance: Urban Spaces and Actors in the Middle East.” In Governance on the Ground: Innovations and Discontinuities in Cities of the Developing World, edited by Patricia L. McCarney and Richard E. Stren, 56–82. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Shechter, Relli, and Haim Yacobi. 2005a. “Cities in the Middle East: Politics, Representation and History.” Cities 22 (3): 183–8 doi:10.1016/ j.cities.2005.03.006. –  2005b. “Rethinking Cities in the Middle East: Political Economy, Planning, and the Lived Space.” The Journal of Architecture 10 (5): 499–515. doi:10.1080/13602360500285500. Stanley, Bruce. 2005. “Middle East City Networks and the ‘New Urbanism.’” Cities 22 (3):189–99. doi:10.1016 / j.cities.2005.03.007. Stewart, David W., Prem N. Shamdasani, and Dennis W. Rook. 2007. Focus Groups: Theory and Practice. Edited by Leonard Bickman and Debra J. Rog. 2nd ed. 49 vols, Applied Social Research Methods Series. Thousand Oaks: S AG E Publications. Sugar, Lorraine, Chris Kennedy, and Dan Hoornweg. 2013. “Synergies between Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation in Development Case Studies of Amman, Jakarta, and Dar es Salaam.” International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management 5 (1): 95–111. Tewfik, Magdy. 1989. “Urban Land in Jordan: Issues and Policies.” Cities 6 (2): 119–35. Wiktorowicz, Q. (2002). “The Political Limits to Non-Governmental Organizations in Jordan.” World Development 30 (1): 77–93. Yom, Sean L. 2009. “Jordan Ten More Years of Autocracy.” Journal of Democracy 20 (4): 151–66.

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pa rt t w o

The State and the Market

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4 Exporting Dubai to Cairo or Capitalism by Proxy? Khaled Adham Dubai is precisely the sort of decent, modernizing model we should be ­trying to nurture in the Arab-Muslim world … We need Dubai to ­succeed. Dubai is where we should want the Arab world to go. Thomas Friedman, 2006

When Thomas Friedman raised the issue during the squabble surrounding the Dubai Ports’ bid to manage six major US seaports in 2006, his words of appraisal for Dubai as “a model of development” suitable for the Arab World were by no means the last to proffer the idea of a Dubai model. In Dubai’s heyday, when it had a rapidly growing economy and urbanity, particularly in the five years preceding the global economic crisis of 2008, the term “Dubai model” surfaced repeatedly in popular and academic commentaries. “Dubai a Global Model for Success,” was a frequently-used headline in local and international newspapers, emphasizing the city’s entrepreneurial spirit in various global investment areas. Moreover, it featured in several academic publications, with questions focusing on whether Dubai was a model that could be adopted by other Arab cities (Abdullah 2007). These numerous popular and academic commentaries about the  Dubai model echo a general assumption among scholars and observers of urbanism, which contends that a Dubai urban model of development is already in place and is being exported to other parts of the Arab world, Middle Eastern region, and even beyond. “The Dubai Effect,” “Dubaification,” “Dubaization,” “The Dubai

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Factor,” and “Exporting Dubai” are some of the terms and titles used to reflect an urban process that is presumably spreading this successful urban model to other cities: from Djibouti and Khartoum to Istanbul and the Russian resort of Sochi on the shores of the Black Sea and from Panama City and Casablanca to Cairo and Beirut (Elsheshtawy 2006; Sherwood 2006; Chorin 2010). The assumption is mainly based on observations depicting similarities between new urban projects taking place in these cities and urban developments in Arab Gulf cities, particularly Dubai. In recent times, Dubai has become an urban centre invoked, envied, and emulated as a site exemplifying a new urban normativity (Ong 2011, 14). For many, the city has not only come to stand as a replicable model of urban futurity, but also as one that is promoted as suitable, particularly for other Muslim cities, as a successful model of Muslim modernity. Like Friedman, Chad Haines notes that Dubai provides its “Muslim émigré a place in the Muslim ‘East,’ but still allows them to be Western-oriented” (Haines 2011, 170). Dubai, like any other city, comprises a network of urban factors and parameters, each interacting with and contributing in complex ways to its historical and present urban development trajectory. As a successful city, it is seen as a developmental model with sets of desirable urban innovations and practices, actual urban projects, which can be detached and exported to other cities. Within the global context of city development, urban modelling refers to the practice of planners seeking to capture, emulate, or reproduce certain aspects, styles, parameters, or governing norms of one city in a bid to rebrand another. Aiwa Ong argues that in our global context what is being modelled and emulated can also go beyond concrete, glass, and steel. According to Ong, this involves “the mimicry of the neoliberal packaging of international glamour, talent, and entrepreneurialism that promises to animate a moribund metropolis” (Ong 2011, 16). In this essay, I ask the following question: Is there a Dubai developmental urban model that is being exported to or imported by Cairo? If so, what exactly are the urban parameters that are being transferred to Cairo and how? If not, then how do we account for the numerous observations describing an impact that is presumably being exerted on Cairo by this representative Gulf city? Have only certain parameters from this Dubai model found their way to Cairo? Is Cairo importing just some selected images and urban solutions, or  is it importing a specific system of urban governance from the

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representative Gulf model? Or is it more plausible to consider that both cities are emulating another generic developmental urban model or ideal? To address these questions, I contend that we must first discuss the developmental model itself, to search for the urban factors and parameters that distinguish it as a model, and which may have been exported to or emulated by Cairo. The existing literature on Gulf cities, particularly on Dubai’s developmental trajectory, is replete with urban parameters, tropes, or discourses that characterize the presumed Dubai model: from the city’s specific system of urban management and governance to its internal competitive business model of development, from the city’s reliance on branding itself using iconic buildings to the way it has created urban legal conditions for expanding market demand through the creation of the urban islands of Free Zones, where foreign nationals can purchase properties or fully own businesses, to mention a few (Hvidt 2009; Al-Shahabi 2012). An ideal way to proceed with the questions raised above would have been to begin by reviewing all the various urban parameters that distinguish the Dubai model, followed by an analysis showing to what degree each is implicated in Cairo’s recent history of real estate booms and busts. I have struggled with the best way to present this complicated urban history and condense it in a limited space. Obviously this endeavour was unviable, as a detailed discussion of each one of these discourses would undoubtedly go far beyond the space and the scope of a single essay. Instead, I have grouped only some of these developmental parameters around four thematic discourses that I argue are intrinsic to the process of producing architectural and urban spaces in both cities, namely, capital, market, culture, and labour. By capital, I mean the types, sources, and amount of real estate investments and the relationship between these investments and the global need to continuously reinvest capital surpluses. By market, I mean different things: for example, the real estate market structure and orientation, the key market players (whether they are the government, local developers, international developers, or individuals); the market demand (fictitious or real); and the specific laws and regulations governing the urban development trajectory. It is important to highlight that in both Dubai and Cairo the government plays a major role in shaping the urban environment. This means that urban governance and the specific political economy adopted by the two cities are important factors in any discussion

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about the urban model transfer. From this perspective, there are many differences between the two cities. Dubai is a small city-state. Like Singapore and Hong Kong, it follows a special atypical development path characteristic of what Martin Hivdt has described as entrepôt growth (Hvidt 2009, 399). According to Hvidt, the state structure is neo-patrimonial, which means that it is organized around the ruler as a person, a structure that is typical of the political culture of tribal societies (Hvidt 2009, 400). Unlike other oil-rich gulf states, however, Dubai is not classified as a rentier economy, where the economy is dependent on sales of oil. Its oil production has always been small and insignificant. From the 1960s, the oil revenue was invested in improving the city’s infrastructure of ports, roads, and airport to improve its commercial advantages. With the improved infrastructure, Dubai has always been striving to lure foreign direct investment (F DI ) by continuously creating investment opportunities in light industries, international service provision, and real estate. With no history of agriculture or heavy industries, Dubai’s developmental goal is to establish itself as a global commercial node with a service-knowledge economy. The peculiarities of the Dubai developmental model led Hvidt to conclude that Dubai does not present itself as a model that can be fully copied, replicated, or generalized to most other cities (Hvidt 2009, 412). Culture is the third urban parameter I would like to briefly examine as an urban parameter in the model transfer. By culture, I mean the flow of images, ideas, and information through visits, print media, television, Internet, and films between the two neighbouring Arab cultural regions. Finally, by labour, I do not mean it as a class in a Marxist sense, but as an influential human agency facilitated by foreign experts and workers involved in the realization, or reproduction, of the model or its emulated version. It is important to emphasize that I am well aware that my selections are not exhaustive nor are they inclusive of the various discourses and parameters involved in the making of the model. They cover what, arguably, I consider the most important urban factors characterizing the urban model. This does not mean that these urban parameters are part of one single unified global process interacting with all cities in similar ways. I am fully aware that every city represents a different complex urban situation that is always in flux and, therefore, that no minimalist set of explanatory parameters can suffice for a close examination of its empirical heterogeneity. But before

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I begin this discussion of Dubai’s presumable effect on Cairo in ­earnest, I would like to give a very brief background on the recent history of real estate development in Cairo. I will summarize five distinct periods since the early 1970s, focusing only on issues of significance to the direct or indirect effect that the Gulf may have had on the city. a b r i e f h i s t o r y o f c a i r o ’ s r e c e n t r e a l e s tat e

The first period of the real estate boom in Cairo spanned 1974 to 1979 and saw the beginning of Gulf investments in Cairo’s property market. This was a result of Anwar Sadat’s 1974 Infitah, open door economic policies, which, among other things, reoriented the economy toward western capitalism. To ease Egypt’s economic ills, Sadat believed that the country would have to combine its manpower with Gulf Arab wealth and western technology. This was Sadat’s concept of an Egyptian renaissance. Despite the rhetoric in Egypt during these days of a fledgling, laissez-faire capitalism, of allowing the market to fully allocate resources and set prices, the state was never expected to fully withdraw from regulating the economy in general, and the housing market in particular. This early period was fuelled by the Gulf’s first round of circulating some of its vast petrodollar surpluses. And while most of the Gulf’s accumulated wealth went to investment banks in Wall Street, some were channelled to real estate ventures in Egypt, mostly in the industrial, low- and medium-income residential, and hospitality sectors (Feiler 2003, 80–1). It is important to highlight that because of the influx of Egyptian labour to the Gulf during this decade, remittances allowed middle-income and lower-income families to invest in housing. According to David Sims, in this period, because the government shifted its housing policy to allow the private sector to be more involved, the informal settlements spread, comprising 80 per cent of the increase in housing stock alone (Sims 2010). The second period of real estate development in Cairo stretched between 1979 and 1991: from the Camp David Accords to roughly the first Gulf War. This period is characterized by a lack of capital and the near absence of direct Gulf investments in the Egyptian property market. This was the time of the Arab boycott of Egypt and the global decline of oil prices. The Gulf impact on Cairo’s real estate, however, continued indirectly through the decade via the

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remittances of temporary Egyptian migrants living in, or returning from, the Gulf. Since the 1970s, remittances from Egyptian temporary migrants have always been the highest source of foreign currency. Between 1973 and 1983 they remitted over US$15 billion via official channels. In fiscal year 2007–08 alone, workers sent home over US$8 billion. Some estimates put the total official remittances in the previous three decades at over US$70 billion (Kapiszewski 2006). According to a UN- H A B I T AT report, the remittances of Egyptian workers in the Gulf provided investments for the population groups attracted by Cairo’s urban informal areas and caused massive informal housing activity at the urban fringes (U N -H ABI T AT 2003, 206). Although there are no accurate figures of the percentage of remittances funnelled to formal or informal real estate activities in Egypt from the total amounts remitted, it is likely that it adds up to a very large figure. According to Barry McCormick and Jackline Wahba, 42 per cent of investments by returnees from the Gulf are channelled into housing (McCormick and Wahba 2000). This was the big time for many Egyptian banks, Islamic investment companies, and small-scale Egyptian developers and entrepreneurs, who began to discover the quick money they could make from selling residential units and vacation houses to Egyptian expatriates returning from the Gulf. In the mid-1980s there were nearly 200 such Islamic investment firms of various sizes with some 1 million Egyptians investing in them, allowing the capital assets of these firms, in one estimate, to reach a total of 24 billion Egyptian pounds (Moore 1990, 236) (Shuhayb 1989, 29–98). Once again, there is very little evidence of what percentage of this money was channelled into housing and construction, but the prediction is that it was a high percentage. Concurrently, the public sector investment, which constituted two-thirds of the total gross domestic investment, declined, affecting all economic sectors, including housing, particularly for the low-income groups (Hamza 2004, 83). The third period stretches from about 1991 to 1998. Beginning in 1991, interrelated national and global events led to significant developments in the country’s political and economic spheres and, as a result, the urban condition of its capital city: massive debt relief and the IMF economic reform plan for Egypt are two prime developments that mark the beginning of the boom. This period witnessed the methods of urban governance and the country’s political economy shifting more toward a hybrid system of state capitalism and

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private developer mode of development (Sims 2015, 128). Large private Egyptian real estate developers increasingly became the main agents of urban progress, involved in massive land developments, particularly in the deserts surrounding Cairo. The period also witnessed the return of the direct Gulf investments in real estate. Tony Mallow of the Boston-based Sasaki International, who was working in Egypt during these days, compared this period to “what California must have been like in 1850 A D . Rather than a gold rush there is a land rush” (Ibrahim, Ziada, and Adham 1999, 52). A prime example of buildings constructed during this time with Gulf money was “First Residence,” a joint venture between Egyptian and Saudi developers (figure 4.1). Paul Henry, the managing director of Bechtel-Egypt, described it as an atypical project, which did not belong to the local market, but was, rather, oriented toward the global market with its broad imageries and signs (54). The 1990s boom ended, however, around 1998, mainly because of two global and local developments: globally, the ripple effects of the Asian financial crisis ­reaching Cairo’s shores via the Gulf and locally, the decline in demand for the already over-supplied high-end residential market. Interestingly, the informal settlements still absorbed 39 per cent of Greater Cairo’s investment in residential real estate, totalling an estimated US$36 billion (Sims 2010). The fourth period began roughly in 2003 and continued until the January 2011 revolution, with earlier signs of a market slowdown as a result of the 2008 world economic crisis. One defining characteristic from this period was an increase in Gulf investments in Egypt’s real estate market. It was indeed in this period that Dubai and other Gulf cities began to have their own land rush. It was also when several Gulf private developers began, for the first time, to directly operate in the Egyptian real estate market. With the January 2011 uprising, foreign investment contracted from US$13 billion in 2007– 08 to just slightly over US$2 billion, and annual economic growth fell from 7 per cent to about 2 per cent (BBC 2015). After a short interruption in the three years following the 2011 political upheaval, the current fifth period has been a continuation and acceleration of the previous period. If the previous period was characterized by an increase in Gulf investments in Egyptian real estate, the current one is witnessing an unprecedented hike. Consider, for example, the newly announced administrative capital of Egypt. When completed, it will host ministries, official institutions and

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Figure 4.1  First Residence, a prime example of high-end residential projects constructed in the 1990s

embassies, headquarters for companies and private sector firms, resorts, modern shopping centres, and residential neighbourhoods, all built and financed in part by Gulf money. Or take the recently announced low-income housing project by the Emirati developer Arabtec to build 1 million housing units in Egypt at a total cost of US$40 billion (Khaleej Times 2015). It is important to emphasize that both projects are still in their infancy and the media are full of contradictory statements about their outcome. It is most likely, however, that the former project will be partially developed by an Emirati developer and the cost of the latter will be reduced significantly. It is during the last two periods that we find the idea of a Dubai developmental model exported to Cairo, as well as other parts of the world, becoming prevalent in academic circles, Internet blogs, and media outfits. I will argue that the last two periods of

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Gulf investments in Egypt represent, simultaneously, continuities and discontinuities with earlier periods. With this very brief background in mind, I will now discuss five selected observations concerning the urban parameters and practices defining the Dubai model that may have exerted influence on Cairo during the past decade. The central question in all the ensuing ­discussions will be: Is there a Dubai model that is being exported to Cairo? 1   r e a l e s tat e i n v e s t m e n t s and recycled petrodollars

The recycling of petrodollars into real estate investments in Dubai is the most commonly used explanation for the city’s recent urban and construction boom (Kanna 2011). The conventional story is that with the looming fear of their financial assets abroad being frozen in the wake of the tragic events of 11 September 2001, Gulf states became more wary of investment in the West, traditionally the venue where they diverted the vast bulk of their petrodollars that could not be absorbed into assets at home (Davis 2007). At this particular historical juncture, Dubai has emerged as a city replete with alternative investment opportunities that could absorb some of this wandering capital. Brimming with petrodollars, reaching over US$900 billion in the period between 2003 and 2008, Gulf states needed more terrain for recycling the surpluses, which can also offer secure economic profitability, particularly when their home markets reached saturation (Pfeifer 2011; Reisz 2010, 444). I will contend that during the past decade, Cairo, not unlike Dubai, strove to position itself as one possible interstice in an expanding grid of regional cities competing to absorb the Gulf’s petrodollar surpluses. It is important to highlight that during this same period the Gulf money available for direct investment in the region was estimated at 13 per cent of the total wealth accumulated, around US$120 billion (Pfeifer 2011, 37). To give a sense of the financial magnitude of Gulf-planned investments in Egypt, between 2005 and 2008, the Gulf’s large-scale urban developers had projects opened, in the planning stages, or already in the pipeline, worth more than US$45 billion in total when, or if, completed – some projects were cancelled or postponed as a result of the 2008 economic crisis (see table 4.1).

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Table 4.1  Announced real estate development projects by large-scale Gulf developers between 2005 and 2008

Developer

Project

Area msm

Cost US$B

DAMA C

Gamsha Bay Hyde Park Park Avenue Centre Ville

30 4.5 6.3 0.64

16.3 7 0.3 NA

Emaar

Uptown Cairo Marassi Mividia Cairo Gate Shaikh Khalifa City

4 6.25 3.8 0.67 2.2

2.1 1.74 1 0.7 0.1

Al Futtaim

Cairo Festival City Maadi City Center Alex. City Center Golf City Center

3 0.1 0.11 0.1

3.6 NA NA NA

Qatari Diar

Barwa Nile Corniche Towers Sharm el-Sheikh Dvelop. Sharm el-Arab Free Zone North Coast

Kharafi Group

Porto Ghalib

8

Golden Pyramid

City Stars

0.75

Total (2010)

8.4 0.1 0.5 35 9.5

123.92

9 1 0.4 NA NA 2 1 46.24

Source: Adham and Hossam 2010, 468–75.

After a few years of economic stagnation due to the political turmoil engulfing the country in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution, Egypt is witnessing a return of massive Gulf private capital investments in real estate. Once again, the Emirati developer Arabtec announced in early April of 2014 that it had reached a deal with the Egyptian government to begin the first phase of a US$40 billion project to build one million homes for the low-income segment of the housing market. This announcement came just a few weeks after the spectacle during the economic conference when the government revealed that a Gulf developer would spearhead the development of a new administrative capital city for Egypt, at a cost of over US$60 billion, a project that, as I mentioned earlier, may reduce Gulf Emirati involvement. At this point, I would like to raise two questions: first, does the phenomenon of the Gulf recycling its petrodollars into real estate represent a break with the past, a novelty? Since the 1960s, Gulf

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investments in real estate boom times have followed the global economic need for the Gulf states to recycle the petrodollar surpluses it accumulates. In his seminal book on the housing question in Egypt, the notable Egyptian housing expert Milad Hanna quotes a study conducted by Nabil Shaath in 1982 in which Shaath estimated the Arab world’s total investment in the construction sector, particularly the Gulf states, to have reached US$100 billion in that year alone, a surge from the 1963 total of a mere US$3 billion. Moreover, the total amount of investment in the period between 1963 and 1980 was nearly US$600 billion, of which 75 per cent was recycled outside the region, in acquiring building materials, technology, equipment, and wages and fees for over 1,600 foreign consultant offices and construction companies (Hanna 1988, 26). Today, the value of the projects planned or under development in the Gulf exceeds US$1 trillion (Gulf News 2006). It is also possible to assume that many of the petrodollars are pumped back into the global economy in a similar way to the oil importing countries. The second question is about the Arab Gulf states’ investments in Cairo’s property market: How different are the last two cycles from earlier ones? Since the hike of oil prices in 1974, Cairo’s real estate boom and bust periods have always mirrored the global fluctuations of oil’s market value. There is no doubt, however, that the latest two cycles of the Gulf recycling of petrodollars represent an unprecedented rise in its direct investments in Egypt’s property market in absolute terms, when compared with earlier periods. In relative terms, in the first three periods, Gulf investments have always remained around 30 per cent of the total amount of investments in Cairo’s real estate in each boom period (Mohieldin 2009). What distinguishes the last decade of gulf investments in Egyptian real estate, when compared with the previous three decades, is the higher amount of capital channelled, or pledged, in both relative and absolute terms. I will argue that since the advent of the global oil-based economy, and independent of the recent urban developments in Dubai, Gulf money has always been fuelling the real estate market in Egypt and the paradigm of a sudden impact from a Dubai model repeating this long-established pattern represents an act of forgetting recent history. 2   l a r g e - s c a l e r e a l e s tat e m a r k e t p l ay e r s

One of the distinctive parameters of the Dubai urban developmental model is that a few competing large-scale developers have dominated

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the real estate market in the city. We learn from researchers who examine the internal dynamics of late capitalism that Microsoft has introduced a new competitive business model in the new economy of the Internet age (Sennett 1999). To speed up the process of developing a particular software product and ensure high quality, Microsoft created parallel competing work units. Competition in this economic paradigm is, therefore, not only with other rival companies, but is pilot-programmed originally within the same workplace, with the corporation reaping the benefits, regardless of which team produces the winning product. Similarly, the Dubai model developed with an internal competition fuelled by Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid, the ruler of Dubai I NC ., as it is sometimes labelled (Kanna 2011). Ian Parker tells us that when he asked Mohamed Alabbar, chairman of Emaar, the largest real estate developer in Dubai, about the kind of competition he faces in Dubai, he said “Sheikh Mohamed created the others to compete. He said, ‘I’ll put three horses in the race, they’ll all run, they are all my horses.’ I like that. Did Alabbar truly think of himself as a horse owned by Sheikh Mohamed? ‘I am his horse, but a horse is very valuable to Sheikh Mohamed’” (Parker 2005). To use Alabbar’s metaphor, much of the urban and housing development in Dubai is driven by a few major horses, such as Nakheel, Emaar, Dubai Properties, Sama Dubai, and Damac. Looking at Cairo’s key real estate developers during the past decade, one is tempted, at first, to conclude that they may have pursued this urban parameter from the Dubai model. Take the construction of luxury residential units in Greater Cairo Region. During the past decade, nine large-scale developers have dominated a vast portion of the up-scale, high-end real estate market in Egypt, with more than twenty-five large-scale residential and mixed-use projects in total (see table 4.2). Looking back at the last four decades of key Gulf players in the Egyptian real estate market, we find Gulf governments, large- to medium-scale developers, and individuals investing at different times in the property market. Whereas Gulf individuals have always invested throughout the years, Gulf governments and medium-scale developers only emerged during the booms of the 1970s and the 1990s, and were always operating with Egyptian business partners. It is only since 2005 that we have seen fewer large-scale Gulf developers operating in Cairo independently, such as Emaar, D AM AC, Al-Futtaim, and Qatari Diar. To provide a scale reference for the

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Table 4.2  Residential projects in Greater Cairo Region by large-scale Egyptian and Gulf developers as of 2010 Developer

Project

Location

Area msm

ORA SCOM

Haram City

6th of October City

8.4

Talaat Moustafa Group

Madinaty Al Rehab Al Rabwa

New Cairo New Cairo Sheikh Zayed City

33 10 2.1

Palm Hills

Palm Hills Golf Views Golf Ext. CAS A Palm Hills Kat. The Village Village Gardens Village Gate Village Ave.

6th of October City 6th of October City 6th of October City Sheikh Zayed City New Cairo New Cairo New Cairo New Cairo New Cairo

5.5 3.5 0.17 0.3 1.7 0.1 0.3 0.13 0.035

SODIC

Westown Eastown Katameya Plaza Beverly Hills

Cairo / Alex Road New Cairo New Cairo Sheikh Zayed City

0.15 0.9 0.1 1.75

Emaar Misr (UAE)

Uptown Cairo Mivida Cairo Gate

Moqattam Hills New Cairo Cairo / Alex Road

4 3.8 0.67

DAMA C (UAE)

Park Ave. Hyde Park Centre Ville

Cairo / Alex Road New Cairo New Cairo

0.12 5 6.1

Qatari Diar (Qatar)

Nile Towers Barwa

Cairo New Cairo

0.1 8.4

Golden Pyramid (Saudi)

City Stars

Cairo

0.75

Al Futtaim (UAE)

Cairo Festival City

New Cairo

3

Total

100.075

total size of Gulf large-scale developments in Cairo, during the fourth period, between 2005 and 2010, the Emirati real estate developer Emaar’s projects alone in the Greater Cairo Region, when completed, will cover an area equal to nearly nine square kilometres, which is roughly four times the size of Zamalek Island in the present-day city. If we consider all Gulf developments in Greater Cairo Region (GC R ) up to 2010, they reach over 12,000 hectares, constituting around 44 per cent of total residential developments by all large-scale developers. These figures would change if we added the

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area of the recently announced administrative capital of Cairo in the post-2011 cycle of high-end developments, which is estimated at 28,000 hectares, raising the total Gulf large-scale real estate ventures alone to over 40,000 hectares, nearly one-third of the total upscale residential developments in Cairo. Is it the few large-scale market players parameter, which characterizes the developmental model of Dubai, that has been emulated in Cairo? To address this question, I want to, first, highlight the role of large-scale urban development projects in relation to the production of urban spaces and to the form of urban governance prevalent in many cities across the globe. According to David Harvey, urbanization and real estate development have become the most relevant driving forces behind the expansion, circulation, and absorption of the surplus capital (Harvey 1989). This logic of building and transforming cities has given rise to what is known as neoliberal urbanism (Harvey 2010; Allmendinger 2009). Within this framework, the production of urban spaces has been linked to a new form of urban governance in which the state acquires a higher intervention role to facilitate policies that promote a good entrepreneurial climate for improving the city’s image perception. This is the lesson we have learned from Harvey, among others, who described this emerging phenomenon back in the 1980s as the rise of the entrepreneurial city – the city that adopts an entrepreneurial strategy to attract investors and businesses to succeed in an increasingly competitive global market as well as to revalue the city’s land prices (Harvey 1989). Within this entrepreneurial spirit and neoliberal urban governance paradigm, fewer and fewer large-scale key players have increasingly dominated urban transformation and development in many cities across the globe (Swyngedouw, Moulaert, and Rodriguez 2002). In the early 1990s, concurrent with the Egyptian government’s shift in economic orientation toward the neoliberal economic paradigm, large-scale urban residential development projects began to appear in Cairo, long before their counterparts were established in Dubai (Adham 2006). In the 1990s, before the Dubai real estate boom, the Egyptian government sold large portions of public land, a total of 100 square kilometres, to real estate developers (HarreRogers 2006). In the early 2000s, 320 real estate companies planned the construction of 600,000 villas and luxury apartments in private gated communities. By 2003, one-tenth of that had already been put

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Figure 4.2  Large-scale urban residential development projects began to appear during the 1990s

on the market (Harre-Rogers 2006). I will argue that while the phenomenon is not new, it has accelerated since 2005, with large-scale private Gulf developers increasingly playing an active role in the transformation of the city. It is important to highlight that most of these high-end mega projects are concentrated in two geographic areas: the eastern and western fringes of the Greater Cairo Region. This unequal geographic distribution of high-end real estate investment has given the impression that another city, a version of Dubai, is rising in Cairo’s surrounding deserts (figure 4.2). 3   m a r k e t i n g a n d t h e c r e at i o n of a market demand

One of the most frequently reported and analyzed characteristics of the Dubai model of development is how the city has established itself at the international stage over the past couple of decades. This global

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positioning of the city as a place of quality, innovation, and leisure has been achieved through the vigorous adoption of several marketing and branding methods that are geared toward promoting the city and creating and expanding its housing market demand. These methods include, but are not limited to, attracting global companies and legally facilitating the increase of the city’s foreign population through the creation of unique lifestyles of urban enclaves in “Free Zones” where no Emirati nationals can fully own businesses or housing properties and earn long-term residencies – a condition that is not permitted outside of these designated Free Zone areas. One defining character of Dubai’s real estate market is that supply is not driven or generated by a real demand. In reverse order, in most of the mega-projects undertaken in Dubai, developers have pursued the riskier strategy of supplying the housing market with unique residential units and then letting them generate their own demand through advertising, branding, and other sophisticated marketing techniques (Hvidt 2009). No doubt, in Dubai’s recent developmental trajectory, the vigorous marketing of lifestyles took shape in many of the new residential developments to create the demand. In a drive around the city, a visitor is bemused by the numerous street billboards full of housing advertisements with slogans such as “the ultimate address for a pulsating lifestyle,” or “Come home to the destination where cultural refinement is indeed a way of life.” In all these cases, the selection of a particular lifestyle seems to be not only a subjective choice made by people, but also an objectified commodity that can be owned. In addition, the government of Dubai made concerted efforts to market the city through branding, using iconic buildings and superlatives to ascertain its uniqueness and to promise unique lifestyles: tallest building, largest human-made island, biggest mall, etc. Similarly, during the past decade, urban development for lifestyles has come to play a very prominent role in expanding the high-end residential market demand in Cairo, with the Gulf companies contributing significantly to its expansion. Compare, for the sake of example, two Gulf investments from the 1970s and today. When a joint governmental Egyptian-Kuwaiti company purchased large tracts of land in the Moqattam Hills and Giza in 1975, a total of 20 square kilometres, its mandate stemmed from real market demand, the need for thousands of housing units for intermediate-level income groups (Feiler 2003, 51). In contrast, when Emaar purchased its 4 square kilometres of land, also in the Moqattam Hills, it was competing with other

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Figure 4.3  Uptown Cairo, site of Emaar’s flagship development in Moqattam Hills

players on the already saturated market of high-end residential units (see figures 4.3 and 4.4). Using its brand name and experience in innovative lifestyle design methods, Emaar was primarily trying to distinguish its project from other local and international competitors. Thus, one may argue that the market demand of the high-end segment of the housing market was induced through enticing elite consumers with their desires. Consider how the company advertises itself: “a global provider of premier lifestyles,” “shaping landscapes and lives,” “meeting the homebuyers’ full spectrum of lifestyle needs,” and “a pioneer of innovative community-living concepts.” The focus on delivering lifestyles is attested by a visit I made in 2009 to Emaar’s Uptown Cairo showroom. The setting was undeniably upscale and posh. One of the most striking things was how the large Uptown project model was exhibited side by side with glass display cases filled with luxury brand-name items in the main hall of the building. In the

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Figure 4.4  Billboard advertisement for Emaar’s Uptown Cairo

mind of the visitor, Emaar’s museum-like display of luxury lifestyle items unmistakably associates these items with the new development it is selling (Adham and Hossam 2010, 472). Once again, this marketing approach to residential developments, or to cities, is not totally new to Cairo, nor is it really about something intrinsically related to a Dubai model. It is true, however, that the introduction of Gulf developers to the housing market in Egypt significantly improved local developers’ marketing methods and techniques. For example, the Egyptian Talaat Moustafa Group created sales offices for its “Madinaty” project to remind the visitor of the Emaar showroom in its uptown Cairo project (see figure 4.5). One might even say that the Gulf as a whole has turned into a brand name to be emulated, not by copying certain urban parameters, but by mimicking certain marketing techniques. Similarly, I have argued elsewhere that the former Mubarak regime in Egypt was trying to

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Figure 4.5  Showroom of Madinaty

rebrand the whole city following the Dubai marketing model in its 2008 visionary master plan, Cairo Vision 2050, which was described by many commentators as “Dubai along the Nile” (Adham 2014). The urban and architectural images of the future urban plan vision appeared more like a mix of visual dreams that the former Egyptian government was trying to sell in exactly the same way Dubai-based developers have been trying to sell their luxurious residential units: a collection of eye-catching perspectives of architectural and urban design solutions promising a retrofitted Cairo and an entry into the league of global cities. This marketing and branding of cities has recently become very popular in Egypt. In March 2015, on the sidelines of the Sharm elSheikh economic conference, the government revealed its new efforts in urban rebranding and its creation of a high-end housing demand. Rather than dealing with the enormous urban problems facing the existing city, it unveiled a project for a new administrative capital east of Cairo. The image circulated of the Egyptian president and the ruler of Dubai listening to a briefing by the chairman of Emaar about

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the future administrative capital, with the hefty model of the proposal on the foreground, unmistakably attests to the idea of a direct Dubai impact. As in marketing Dubai and its mega-projects, the unveiling of the new capital came in an extravagant spectacle reminiscent of Dubai’s famous annual real estate exhibition, “Dubai Cityscape,” where all mega-projects are customarily revealed. Furthermore, the way the new city is being advertised mimics Dubai’s method of using superlatives: the new capital city will be bigger than Singapore, it houses a park double the size of New York’s Central Park, and a theme park four times bigger than Disneyland. Similar to the fast-track development trajectory, which has become a trademark of Dubai’s urban developmental path, the new administrative city is supposed to be completed within five to seven years. 4  the labour market: flexibility and transferability

The labour market in this analysis is not meant as a category of the human agency involved in the realization, or production, of the Dubai model. From this perspective, labour has two main characteristics: its flexibility within the global labour market and its capacity to transfer knowledge and skills from one region to another. One of the main characteristics of the Dubai model of urban development, and most of the Gulf cities for that matter, is the disproportionate ratio between Emirati nationals and expatriates in the city’s labour force, a condition that is unique and favourable to the city. The flexibility of labour available to Dubai, of that it is easy to hire and fire workers, gives a distinctive advantage to its developmental strategies (Hvidt 2009, 403). Dubai hires its foreign workforce, which con­ stitutes 78 per cent of the total labour force, on the international market to suit its current needs without having to go through a ­process of training or re-educating them. This crucial factor of the model is not available to other Arab cities outside the Gulf region, such as Cairo. Are temporary Egyptian migrant workers returning from the Gulf participating in funnelling the Dubai urban model, or certain aspects of it, to Cairo? Working in top-quality projects in Dubai enabled many Egyptian architects, engineers, and urban planners to acquire new skills and enhance their human capital. This is evidenced by the fact that most of the top engineers in many of the large-scale Gulf

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real estate projects taking place in Egypt have worked at one point in Dubai or other Gulf cities. In my interview on 11 February 2010 with Abdulelah Al-Mohanna, a Saudi managing director of an engineering consultant office in Dubai with branches in Beirut and Cairo, Al-Mohanna responded to my question concerning how the recent Gulf developments may have influenced the architectural profession in Egypt by saying: I think the Gulf has a strong, positive impact on Egypt. I always felt that the young architects in my Cairo office had a knowledgegap until they were exposed to our work in the Gulf. Their actual presence and work in the Gulf gave them a knowledge-leap, ­particularly in learning about new materials, construction techniques, and project management. For many of them, working on some of our Gulf projects was an eye opener. I will argue, however, that this transfer of modern construction and planning knowledge to Cairo is something that began during the 1990s, not primarily through recent exposure to the Gulf. During the 1990s, there was a change in design and construction culture in Egypt due to the growing number of North American and European engineering and architectural firms operating in the country, such as Bechtel, Sasaki, Michel Graves, SO M , among others, who began to collaborate with local offices to produce most of the large-scale projects. It was as if the last decade of the twentieth century was a marriage season for foreign and Egyptian design firms. Thus, while it is true the Gulf has, directly, or indirectly, contributed to accelerating the re-education of a segment of the Egyptian labour force that is involved in planning and construction, it would be an exaggeration to amplify the effect. 5   i m p o rt i n g o r e x p o rt i n g i m a g e s

Is it possible that the Dubai urban model is reaching Egypt through direct copying, or exporting, of certain architectural or urban imageries? This is definitely happening in different ways. One way it is happening is through exact replication of specific projects. Consider, for example, the similarities among Al-Futtaim’s “City Center” chain in both cities. Or take individual expatriates returning to Egypt, who often bring with them plans and images of their dream houses that

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they are familiar with from the Gulf, and that they want to copy for their retirement homes. Or take the case of Egyptian developers, such as Mansour Amer, the principal owner of Porto-Marina, the most popular upper-class resort destination on the North Coast, who, according to one of the architects who worked on the design of the project, went to Dubai Marina for inspiration. His visionary sketches, however, took on more of the appearance of what AlFuttaim built later as Dubai Festival City, which was cloned back to Egypt as Cairo Festival City. Copying architectural images and solutions from other cities and places is not a new phenomenon, nor is it limited to copying from Dubai and the Gulf. Dreamland in Cairo, for example, was mimicking a gated residential community in California. Moreover, do not many buildings we see in the Gulf remind us of other similar developments in New York, Kuala Lumpur, or Singapore? I suggest that the supermarket is today the perfect metaphorical space for our current architectural and urban imaginations. Like the museum, the supermarket fulfills an important function within the capitalist system: that of display. Could it be that the invisible hand of the market, to use Adam Smith’s most celebrated phrase, has placed Dubai on the same shelf where certain images and dreams of other cities and places are displayed in the global hypermarket of city symbols, brand names, and lifestyles? pa rt i n g t h o u g h t s

From the perspective of the purportedly exporting city, Dubai, the prevailing urban developmental ethos of the past two decades, the hegemonic ideology and urban logic, if you will, has, in part, been revolving around the idea that rapid economic growth and prosperity can be achieved through massive urbanization and real estate development. This logic of building and transforming the city mirrors an entrepreneurial developmental paradigm that has given rise to a form of urban ideal where cities around the world are continuously striving to attract foreign direct investment by positioning themselves in the higher ranks of a hierarchical global urban network in which competitiveness is the key (Sassen 2001; Harvey 2010). The powerful cities that attract most of the financial flow are positioned at the top of the hierarchy of the league of global cities. To attract financial capital and rank higher in the global hierarchy,

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cities must also continuously revamp to become attractive magnets for tourists and global companies and their employees. Thus we find the architecture and urban spaces of aspiring Dubai rapidly transforming to fulfill a loosely defined checklist of sleek environments and images that cater to the lifestyles of a particular class of global society: towering glass and chrome offices and conference buildings, iconic buildings, exclusive shopping streets and malls, luxury hotels, waterfronts, fancy villas in exclusive compounds and gated residential communities, golf courses, gentrified downtowns, revamped historical areas, and various cultural venues and organized international events. Looking at the selected urban parameters of Dubai’s developmental model and examining their history in Cairo’s recent urban developmental trajectory, I contend that it is not so much a new Dubai model that is being fully copied, replicated, or generalized in the purportedly importing Cairo. Rather, there is a fragmentary, heterogeneous, global entrepreneurial urban logic operating with different degrees of intensity in certain geographic parts of metropolitan Cairo, creating an uneven distribution of investments and urban lifestyles. While historically the arrival of this urban developmental logic to Cairo preceded its emergence in Dubai, the latter, especially since around 2003, has played a major role in directly or indirectly pushing this logic to higher levels. Thus we recently find gestures of  a Dubai impact on the production of urban spaces in certain ­geographic locations around Cairo, particularly where the logic of urban development is directly unfolding in high-end, large-scale mega-projects, either by private Dubai and Gulf developers or by their Egyptian counterparts, who are operating with similar logic. From the perspective of Dubai as the purportedly importing city, I am arguing that there is no one single urban model for borrowing or exporting, but rather a plethora of worldwide urban innovations, imageries, and packaging of entrepreneurial ideas. In this analysis, Dubai has stirred up urban development in the entire Arab region and beyond, not by acting as a model with certain urban parameters to be replicated, but by becoming a model of a new developmental motto: “If Dubai can do it, your city can do it too.” What was particularly impressive to many observers in the region was the speed with which Dubai has leaped up the global urban network hierarchy and begun to realize its future urban vision of an entrepreneurial city. This is amplified by a regional cultural perception of a waning

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Egyptian and a waxing Gulf role in the Arab world. I will echo Aihwa Ong and suggest that referencing Dubai as a successful model for Cairo might have been stirring urban aspirations and sentiments of an intercity rivalry as well as being a legitimizing process for particular enterprises in Cairo, hence persuading people to accept potentially controversial projects (Ong 2011, 17). I began this essay with a quote from Thomas Friedman, widely acknowledged as a writer who champions globalization. I would like to end with a rewriting of his words to emphasize what, in light of my discussion, I think was omitted: “Dubai is precisely the sort of decent, [revamp of our global] modernizing model that we should be trying to nurture in the Arab-Muslim world … We need Dubai to succeed. Dubai is where we should want the Arab world to go.” In this essay, I am questioning, therefore, is it a Dubai Model that is being exported to Cairo or is it capitalism by proxy?

references

Abdullah, Abd elKhaleq. 2007. “Dubai Model Is Subject for Study.” Gulf News, 15 March. Adham, Khaled. 2004. “Cairo’s Urban Déjà Vu: Globalization and Urban Fantasy.” In Planning Middle Eastern Cities, edited by Yasser Elsheshtawy, 134–68. London: Routledge. –  2005. “Globalization, Neoliberalism, and New Spaces of Capital in Cairo.” t d s r XVII: 19–32. –  2014. “Modes of Urban Diffusion: Culture, Politics, and the Impact of Recent Urban Development in the Arabian Gulf Cities on Cairo’s Vision 2050.” In Under Construction: Logics of Urbanism in the Gulf Region, edited by Steffen Wippel, Katrin Bromber, Christian Steiner, and Birgit Krawietz, 233–64. London: Ashgate. Adham, Khaled, and Mostapha Hossam. 2010. “The Gulfanization of Egypt.” In Al Manakh 2, edited by Todd Reisz and Rem Koolhaas, 468–75. Amsterdam: Archis. Allmendinger, Philip. 2009. Planning Theory. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Al-Shahabi, Omar H. 2012. Eqtelaa Al-Gozoor. Beirut: Markaz Derasat Al-Wehda Al-Arabiya. B B C News. 2015. “Egypt Unveils Plans to Build New Capital East of Cairo.” Accessed 15 March 2015. http://www.bbc.com/news/business31874886.

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Bernard, Lucy. 2015. “Go-Ahead for Arabtec on Project in Egypt.” The National, Business Section, 3 April. Chorin, Ethan. 2010. “What Lessons Does Dubai Have for Djibouti?” The National. 27 October. Accessed 12 November 2010. http://www. thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/what-lessons-doesdubai-have-for-djibouti. Davis, Mike. 2007. “Sand, Money, and Fear in Dubai.” In Evil Paradises, edited by Mike Davis and Daniel B. Monk. New York: The New Press. Elsheshtawy, Yasser. 2006. “From Dubai to Cairo: Competing Global ­Cities, Models, and Shifting Centers of Influence?” In Cairo Cosmopolitan, edited by Diane Singerman and Paul Amar. Cairo: A UC Press. Feiler, Gil. 2003. Economic Relations between Egypt and the Gulf Oil States, 1967–2000. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. Friedman, Thomas. 2006. “Dubai and Dunces.” New York Times, 15 March. Accessed 10 February 2014. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/ fullpage.html?res=9400EEDE1131F936A25750C0A9609C8B63. Gulf News Report. 2006. “Gulf Projects Exceed $1 Trillion in Value.” Gulf News, 23 April. Haines, Chad. 2011. “Landscapes of Hope and Desire in Dubai.” In Worlding Cities, edited by Ananya Roy and Aihwa Ong. Oxford: Blackwell. Hamza, Mohamed. 2004. “The State, Foreign Aid and the Political Economy of Shelter in Egypt.” In Market Economy and Urban Change, edited by Roger Zetter and Mohamed Hamza. London: Earthscan. Hanna, Milad. 1988. Al-Iskan wa Al-Massyadah. Cairo: Dar Al-Mostaqbal Al-‘Arabi. Harre-Rogers, Dominique. 2006. “Urban Studies in Cairo: From Cairo to Greater Cairo Region.” Comparative Urban Studies Project, u s a i d . Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Accessed 18 January 2015. https://www.ciaonet.org/attachments/12363/ uploads. Harvey, David. 1989. “From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism: The Transformation of Urban Governance in Late Capitalism.” Geografiska Annaler, 71b: 3–17. – 2010. The Enigma of Capital. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hvidt, Martin. 2009. “The Dubai Model: An Outline of Key Development-Process Elements in Dubai.” International Journal of Middle ­Eastern Studies 41: 397–418. Ibrahim, Abdel-Halim, Hazem Ziada, and Khaled Adham. 1999. “Country Focus: Egypt.” World Architecture 75: 50–7.

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Kanna, Ahmed. 2011. Dubai: The City as Corporation. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press. Kapiszewski, Andrzej. 2006. “Arab versus Asian Migrant Workers in the GC C Countries. U N Expert Group Meeting on International Migration and Development in the Arab Region, Beirut, 15–17 May.” United Nations, 17 May. Accessed 5 October 2009. http://www.un.org/esa/ population/meetings/EGM_Ittmig_Arab/P02_Kapiszewski.pdf. Khaleej Times. 2015. “Shaikh Mohammed, Sisi Witness Signing of Pact to Build Egypt’s New Capital.” 15 March. Accessed 16 March 2015. http:// www.khaleejtimes.com/mobile/inside.asp?xfile=/data/middleeast/2015/ March/middleeast_March137.xml§ion=middleeast. McCormick, Barry and Jackline Wahba. 2000. “Return International Migration and Geographic Inequality: The Case of Egypt.” Journal of African Economics 12 (4): 500–32. Mohieldin, Mahmoud. 2009. “Egyptian Ministry of Investment Press Release on the First Egyptian-Arab Gulf Investments Conference.” Ministry of Investment, 8 April. Accessed 15 May 2009. Moore, Clement H. 1990. “Islamic Banks and Competitive Politics in the Arab World and Turkey.” Middle East Journal 44 (2): 230–48. Ong, Aihwa. 2011. “Introduction: The Art of Being Global.” In Worlding Cities, edited by Ananya Roy and Aihwa Ong. Oxford: Blackwell. Parker, Ian. 2005. “The Mirage: The Architectural Insanity of Dubai.” The New Yorker, 17 October. Pfeifer, Karen. 2011. “Petrodollars at Work and in Play in the PostSeptember 11 Decade.” m e r i p 41: 37–42. Reisz, Todd. 2010. “Export Gulf.” In Al Manakh 2, edited by Todd Reisz and Rem Koolhaas. Amsterdam: Archis. Sassen, Saskia. 2001. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Sennett, Richard. 1999. “Public Talk with Richard Sennett and Saskia Sassen.” Public lecture at the House of Culture, Berlin, Germany, 17 April. Sherwood, Seth. 2006. “Is Qatar the Next Dubai?” New York Times, 4 June. Accessed 5 June 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/ travel/04qatar.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. Shuhayb, Abd el-Qadir. 1989. Al-Ikhteraq: Qissat Sharikat Tawzif alAmwal fi Misr. Cairo: Sinaa, 1989. Sims, David. 2010. Understanding Cairo. Cairo: A UC Press. – 2015. Egypt’s Desert Dreams. Cairo: AUC Press.

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Swyngedouw, Erik, Frank Moulaert, and Arantxa Rodriguez. 2002. “Neoliberal Urbanization in Europe: Large-Scale Urban Development Projects and the New Public Policy.” Antipode 34 (3): 542–77. UN- H A B I TAT. 2006. The Challenge of Slums: The Global Report on Human Settlements. London: Earthscan.

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5 The Processes of Neoliberal Governance and Urban Transformations in Amman, Jordan Eliana Abu-Hamdi

Neoliberalism in Jordan has had two specific evolutions, the social effects of which have influenced the urban environment in cities throughout the state and in Amman in particular. King Hussein first adopted aspects of neoliberalism in 1989, introducing democratization with a focus on the role and freedoms of the individual in civil society. The second iteration came at the hands of King Abdullah II, soon after his accession in 1999. This evolution of neoliberalism is much more urban-centric and focused on development in Amman, the capital city of Jordan. This chapter will critique neoliberal policy during King Hussein’s reign, and later, King Abdullah’s, focusing specifically on its effect at the scale of the state, as well as the urban processes in Amman. This chapter will argue that both iterations, regardless of scale, share a common theme: the implementation of regulations directed by private–public partnerships that produce forms of governance heavily inflected by the monarchy’s authoritarian regime. First, each iteration of neoliberalism will be identified by the nuances of its neoliberal logic; second, the partnerships within which the state has engaged will be critiqued; and third, the argument will be substantiated by examples of the resultant inequitable social and urban transformations. The chapter’s analysis will demonstrate how tenuous the collaboration of private and public agencies can be, and  further, how private interests repeatedly compromise public welfare. Finally, the chapter will conclude with an exploration of

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two contemporary case studies as examples of inequitable urban practices. These case studies, coupled with a discussion of a long history of inequitable planning policy practices by the Greater Amman Municipality (GA M), will shed light on the legacy of authoritative governance in Amman and the way it was imposed to moderate and control public interest, voice, and participation. Neoliberalism is defined as “a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade” (Harvey 2007, 2). In the 1980s, neoliberalism as economic policy also required a shift in political policy, through liberalization and the introduction of democratization. Both systems were meant to provide greater political freedoms. Instead, it became a mechanism of moderated governance used by the state to mediate the opinions and demands of the public. The façade of democratization allowed space for the state to carefully script the role of its citizens. This occurred despite the fact that the state often infringed on the very social and political freedoms democratization was meant to ensure. Under King Hussein, G AM scripted the regulations of a voting and electoral system that would generate a favourable result for the state. Under King Abdullah, the adoption of neoliberal logic provided the opportunity for urban modern­ ization schemes. Neoliberal projects were pursued for their capital incentive, and in the process public participation, opinion, and welfare were compromised. Two additional aspects and their impact on the process of neoliberalism during King Abdullah’s reign must also be considered. The first is the introduction of, and subsequent des­ perate need for, abundant transnational capital. The second is the privatization of the public realm, and a municipality that must tackle the tenuous collaboration of private-public interests in urban development. Under discussion, particularly in regard to the deregulated planning processes in Amman and the limited public participation in planning decisions, are two projects, Jordan Gate Towers (Jordan Gate) and the Abdali Downtown Redevelopment Project (Abdali). Each project will demonstrate the imposition of neoliberal regulations and the manner in which they mediate public voice and participation. The introduction of the Jordan First Initiative in particular, coupled with an interest in capital gain, has enabled G AM to invert

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the process of eminent domain, where public property and the properties of private citizens are expropriated for private development. The public was not allowed to participate in planning these projects. Nor was it allowed an opinion after their conception. As will be demonstrated in this chapter, neoliberal regulations in Amman, particularly in regard to these projects, have promoted capital interest at the cost of public welfare. d e m o c r at i z at i o n i n j o r d a n a n d fa l s e p r o m i s e s of political freedoms

In the spring of 1989, riots broke out in Ma’an, a city in southern Jordan, nearly 190 kilometres from Amman. On 20 April 1989, five people were reported killed and an additional fourteen were injured (Cowell 1989). The riots were a result of the public announcement of the stipulations of an International Monetary Fund (I M F )1 lending agreement recently accepted by the state that provided $275 million in standby credit and help in sorting a new debt repayment schedule (Kassay 2002, 50). This agreement ensured a significant increase in the prices of several food staples and commodities and also required a severe reduction in state subsidies for many of these commodities. Citizens were thus faced with significant price increases, ranging between 15 per cent and 50 per cent on goods such as fuel, as well as foodstuffs and beverages (Cowell 1989). Neoliberalism and its related austerity measures had reached Amman.2 A system of democratization was introduced soon after that awarded individuals more democratic rights (Robinson 1998, 390). Democratization “refers to a change in rules and procedures, which institute responsibility on the part of rulers [toward the ruled], and at the societal level, it is a transformation of the individual from subject to citizen” (Kassay 2002, 46). Democratization in Jordan entailed legalizing political parties, banning newspaper censorship, and decreasing surveillance by the Mukhabarat, the central intelligence agency of the government (Yom 2009, 154). Democratization however, was used primarily to placate economic discontent with the promise of democratic freedoms to restore state legitimacy (Kassay 2002, 50). Each effort of democratization was promoted as yet another cog, set right, in the machine of democracy and the promotion of civil liberties. Democratization in terms of

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more civil liberties, however, was not at the forefront of demands for those who rioted against the I MF regulations. Instead, the rioters were critical of and suspicious of government efficiency in its welfare regulations. It was only later that those in Ma’an who rioted against these new I MF regulations made demands for greater democracy. Democracy as a corrective agent to state legitimacy was actually proposed and promoted by professional associations in Amman, which did not see any rioting after the I M F regulations were proclaimed. Democratization during this time was a scripted response to a manufactured dilemma. The state used democratization as a manoeuvre to quell political concerns, hoping that the system would neutralize the effect of, and promote the acceptance of, economic austerity (Kassay 2002, 51–2). Democratization was, however, undermined at its core by the enactment of policies such as the onevote system and the drawing of electoral boundaries that would ensure favourable election results for state interests. This demonstrates the state’s lack of an earnest desire to support the democratic voice of its citizens. As such, King Hussein’s era of democratization suffered from an inherent contradiction. While in some ways his administration fostered a progressive democratization, the role the state played was significant and displayed the king’s tendency toward autocratic rule (Yom 2009, 154). The allowance for electoral parties and the unprecedented leniency with the press contributed to merely an appearance of progressiveness. For each measure of progressive democratization, however, the king reinforced pro-monarchy limitations. For example, the new electoral boundaries and voting system negotiated the best electoral return possible for the monarchy to ensure the election of desirable candidates (Robinson 1998, 397). The desirable candidates for parliamentary elections were considered pro-nationalists, members of prominent tribes, and east bankers in general. The 1993 elections went further in finessing and ensuring the ­elections of desirable candidates. The state used a “one-person, onevote” system to control the election, in turn stifling voters. For example, in the 1989 elections voters were able to vote for as many seats as were available in their voting district. In the 1993 elections they were limited to one vote. Significantly, voters were obligated to vote exclusively along tribal allegiances, whereas before they had had the

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freedom to cast a vote of allegiance while also casting a more ideological vote (Robinson 1998, 397). Tribal affiliations in Amman inform both identity and allegiances. Individuals within a tribe “think the same way; believe in the same principles; assimilate the same values and ethos; act according to the same unique rules and laws … In short, it is the consciousness of belonging to that tribe and behaving accordingly” (Muhammad 1999, 13). Tribal affiliations create a boundary within which individuals relate to one another within a tribe, as well as to others in varying tribes. The tribe with which an individual identifies carries both social and political significance. Knowing this, the municipal government very cleverly instituted the “one-person, one-vote” system. The municipality could present the pretence of a free electoral vote, while also directing and manipulating the most favourable results. Municipal elections were enabled through the adoption of a system of democratization that, while appearing to give more political freedoms, was clearly only a mechanism used to placate the public and deter its concerns about the state’s neoliberal transition. Political liberalization was simply a mechanism to defuse public dissatisfaction while maintaining the original power structure (Yom 2009, 154). Public policy in Amman in the late 1980s provided an opening for democratic practice. The fact that the democratization processes were directed and managed by the monarchy simply created “a means of strengthening the regime’s position in society, not as an example of the regime yielding to domestic forces” (Robinson 1998, 391). While Hussein’s democratization was progressive in its attempt, its implementation was regressive. Enforcing a one-person, one-vote system worked to challenge social boundaries and allegiances. The state knew the exact line to tread to gain and maintain its power. A voting system is all but obsolete when the voter is so overtly coerced. This is an example of coercive governance within which citizens are manipulated into actions that almost exclusively benefit the state. The tenets of neoliberalism decree that individuals are free and celebrate the collapse of social networks that stifle and limit these freedoms. King Hussein’s monarchy claimed to be progressive in its rewarding of individual rights. Instead, Hussein had regulations written that stymied public liberty and capitalized on the social and political obligations of these individuals.

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k i n g a b d u l l a h ’ s i t e r at i o n o f n e o l i b e r a l i s m and its haphazard planning

While the adoption of neoliberal polices during King Hussein’s reign enabled the introduction of democratization and a new, though manipulative, focus on individual economic and political liberties, neoliberalism during King Abdullah’s reign took on a more urban format. A working definition for an economic framework based on individual and political and economic benefits for the individual within the free market can be used when discussing neoliberalism during King Hussein’s reign. However, the discussion must shift to neoliberalism as a process, one in which neoliberalism as economic policy is not under critique, but rather the market-driven urbanism they produce and encourage are under consideration. This form of critique better informs a discussion that is urbancentric and is focused instead on the process of neoliberalism in Amman than economic principles on a global scale. Peck and Tickell argue that neoliberalism ought to be evaluated not as an end result, but as a continual process. They contend that the study of this process should “focus especially sharply on change – on shifts in systems and logics, dominant patterns of restructuring and so ­ forth – rather than on binary and / or static comparisons between a past state and its erstwhile successor” (emphasis in original) (Peck and Tickell 2002, 383). Neoliberal regulations in Amman are constantly shifting and being rewritten with key business interests in mind, where “public decision-making becomes even more opaque” (Harvey 2001, 27). Further, the policies being rewritten for development in Amman are based on blurred criteria where the public voice becomes mired in private incentives and eventually compromised for capital interest. In the interest of capital gain, King Abdullah engaged with the global economic system,3 pursued an active participation in the market, and promoted Amman as a site for international investment. To streamline investment ventures, policy regulations were continuously rewritten to accommodate growth and development. These harried policy decisions resulted in a haphazard process of pursuing and constructing various projects throughout the city that primarily benefited private interests. The Abdali and Jordan Gate projects serve as examples of this process.

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The planning of these projects is haphazard because they compromise basic guiding principles such as zoning, land-use, and transportation policies. During an interview on 14 June 2014,4 a top planner at G A M lamented the lack of zoning regulation in city planning. The planner continued to give examples of various projects that, due to the lack of strict regulation, were built without having to provide basic and very necessary components, such as parking. Investors, the planner explained, would simply pay a fee that exempted them from the parking provision, creating not only a transportation problem but a congestion problem as well. The planner explained further that interdepartmental cooperation is needed before new zoning areas are approved in Amman. To avoid such haphazard planning decisions, the planner insisted, the Transportation Planning Division must advise the Community Planning Division, who must advise the Zoning Division, and so on. The planner maintained that the lack of accountability in planning regulations among various administrations must be addressed and a new protocol adopted to correct the embedded structures that enable haphazard planning. In a related discussion during a different interview, a transportation planner at GA M dubbed planning in Amman a reactive process. Development happens, the planner said, and the city reacts to this development, rather than planning for anticipated development (28 May 2013). This form of reactive development is an example of informalization, a concept borrowed from Ananya Roy (Roy 2009, 84). Informalization critiques the use of policy as a mechanism to facilitate decisions that best fit the interests of developers in the city, and, in turn, the new capitalist class. Inherent within the mechanism of informalization in Amman is a system of deregulation that lacks inter-agency cooperation or communication. Omitting project amenities, such as the provision of parking, can be approved for a cost. The lack of accountability within G AM contributes directly to the epidemic of reactive planning and the marketdriven logic of development in Amman. This is further problematic because GA M is the central agency responsible for development decisions for the whole of greater Amman. Armed with a team of experts, GA M continues to approve haphazard modes of development. Each project is undertaken with the ultimate goal of adding to Amman’s façade of modernity and representing the city as one viable for further capital investment. GAM wields its authority to enable development, abusing regulations and the limits set therein,

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such as Article 42, which allows for high-rise construction without a height limit. The example of Jordan Gate in this chapter will demonstrate the public cost of such an abuse. The experts of G AM are motivated by neoliberal logic, and thus exert their authority in the interest of capital investment and development. t h e d e s p e r at i o n f o r t r a n s n at i o n a l c a p i ta l to fund king abdullah’s modern vision

King Abdullah’s developmental discourse focused primarily on two factors: image-building and economic improvement with the help of private development and investment (Robins 2004, 203). Undertaking the Abdali Downtown Redevelopment Project, initiated in 2006, was an integral component of the king’s “one-sided discourse” on development, which focused on the economy and technological development (Bank and Schlumberger 2004, 50). First, this discourse worked to promote Jordan’s international reputation, especially in ways that might appeal to international donors. Second, the state intended to pursue a modernization plan to be funded by private transnational capital. In addition to the US$80 billion of available funds for investment announced by the United States in 2002 (Daher 2008, 46), transnational capital from a migrant refugee class was introduced into the city soon after. In 2005, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Amman reported the receipt of 15,000 Iraqis, claiming that only a scarce 5,000 were admitted under refugee status. Popular reports, however, contradict that claim, estimating the number of refugees (as of 2005) in Amman at 500,000 (Elmer 2005). Many of those displaced from Iraq during the war arrived in Amman with significant capital and interest in investing it, which had a considerable effect on development and real estate investment. A university report cited that from “2000 to 2010, revenue from the annual real estate market increased from $93 million to nearly $381 million, a spike of more than 400 percent.” This dramatic increase is attributed to investments and purchases made by the estimated 450,000 Iraqis in Jordan who had, during this time, become Jordan’s primary foreign investors (Laine 2012). Of the Iraqis in Jordan, 34.5 per cent are reported to be in the highest wealth bracket, an additional 11 per cent in a high-wealth bracket, and 13.3 per cent in a middle-wealth bracket. Within the

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households of the highest income group, 40 per cent have investments in Jordan. Most significantly, Iraqis have chosen to invest in property markets, marking a notable increase in property transactions. The value of transactions from 2002 to 2005 doubled each year, rising from approximately $7 million to $141 million (Sassoon 2008, 46). Transnational capital as such is an integral factor for development and finance in Jordan, particularly in Amman. This abundance of capital encouraged King Abdullah to pursue his developmental discourse and to create a milieu of economic vitality and modernity in Amman. The construction of several key mega-projects, such as Abdali and Jordan Gate presented the desired modern façade and economic viability and vitality. Amman, like many developing cities, attempted to mimic first world cities and appropriate their symbols of verticality to produce an architecture that symbolizes, and emulates, modern global cities (Robinson 2006, 80). This results in a developmental duality, the modern façade often developed – as is the case with the Abdali and Jordan Gate projects – at the expense of the existing urban fabric and associated public need (66). Ultimately, developing cities, Amman in particular, felt “obliged to create the right milieu, a competitive business climate, and first class tourism facilities in order to attract people to come and live, invest, and be entertained” (Daher 2008, 47). In the interest of creating this milieu, G AM and its team of experts were responsible for facilitating development that could promote this popular image. During our interview on 18 April 2013, a top planner at the Amman Institute claimed that planning practice and policy-making had “gone into the back rooms,” that there was no transparency, and that zoning decisions were made without any announcements or public consultation. Fuad Malkawi conducted a series of interviews with G AM planners in the 1990s in which they proclaimed that “people of the street do not know what is good for them” (Malkawi 1994, 68). This is the legacy of planning policy at G AM . The public was deemed irrelevant and unaware of their needs, and authority reverted to the in-house experts to assert and designate what was “best” and most effective for the city. King Abdullah carried on the legacy of public exclusion and moderation of public opinion through the creation of the “Jordan First” initiative, which promoted a national motto of cohesion and cooperation for all state ventures.

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t h e j o r d a n f i r s t i n i t i at i v e : t h e c o e r c i v e v o i c e o f t h e s tat e

Established in November 2002, the Jordan First Initiative appealed to citizens’ sense of civic duty, pride in government, and ambition for a city of relevance. The core of the initiative referenced notions of nationalism and unity to encourage public opinion of developmental progress to coincide with the state’s vision of development. King Abdullah launched the Jordan First Initiative as a mechanism for moulding a particular type of citizen and to create “a unified social fibre that promotes their sense of loyalty to their homeland, and pride in their Jordanian, Arab and Islamic identity” (Jordan Politics 2013). This vision of unity, of course, tugs on the civic and cultural heartstrings of Jordan’s residents, encouraging them to support the king’s discourse on planning in the city. Further, seeking to transcend the boundaries of identity that have fractured the nation for so long, the Jordan First initiative strove to “reformulate the state-individual relationship … in summary, Jordan First is a philosophy of governance. It is based on the premise of placing Jordan’s national interest at the forefront of all considerations of civil society” (Jordan First 2014). The core concept of this  unified vision was to straddle the boundaries that had long divided the kingdom, as well as unite the community under the ­over-arching framework of a state rather than the disparate components of ethnicity, tribal allegiances, and political allegiances (Robins 2004, 203). King Abdullah cleverly created “a document containing principles and methods for modernizing Jordan domestically with a clear shift in focus to ‘national priorities’ while accommodating American interests and foreign investment to keep the country’s economy afloat” (Shihab-Eldin 2009). The Jordan First initiative sought to promote state-led projects, such as Jordan Gate and Abdali, by implying that they serve the best interests of not only the state, but also the urban citizen. Jordan First created the concept of a unified community around the ideal of civic pride and patriotism. This unity articulated a connection between state and citizen and ingrained within citizens a vested interest in advancing state interests. Further, this unity generated a sense of inclusion and gave worth and meaning to the notion of urban citizenship. Jordan First

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manufactured this urban citizenship to mould a citizen who would adapt to the state’s developmental goals rather than voice opposition against them. j o r d a n g at e t o w e r s a n d t h e i n v e r s i o n of the process of eminent domain

On 29 May 2005, King Abdullah helped lay the foundation stone for the Jordan Gate project. The US$1 billion metropolis plan was a  combined investment effort of the Bahrain-based Gulf Finance House, in partnership with the Kuwait Investment and Finance Company and GA M (Media and Communications Directorate 2005). This private-public venture exemplifies the often-tenuous collaboration between public institutions, such as G AM , and the private interests of the state in partnership with transnational investment firms. King Abdullah’s development agenda centred on the acquisition of capital and the construction of a city of regional appeal. As such, the state enacted neoliberal regulations that enabled Amman to pursue Abdali and Jordan Gate as pilot projects. As evidenced by these projects, the scripted regulations have created an insurmountable tension between citizens and their ability to participate in planning, as the very implementation of these regulations relies upon the omission of public participation. The social detriment of neoliberal regulations is the omission of public voice and participation. Further exacerbating social inequities, the state’s regulations also enabled the process of eminent domain to be inverted and public land to be  expropriated for private use, demonstrating further inequitable practices within urban development in Amman. The 1988 Greater Amman Comprehensive Master Plan outlined eminent domain as allowable for land acquired “for projects in the public interest” (Greater Amman Municipality 1988). As such, in 1959, the 28,500 square metres of land that Jordan Gate now occupies was expropriated by GA M to build a public park. In 2004, the land was claimed once again via eminent domain. In this instance, however, GA M inverted the process of eminent domain. In 1959, eminent domain was imposed to expropriate private land for public use. An interview with a special projects planner at G AM , conducted in 2014, revealed that in 2004, a public park – a rare commodity in Amman – was claimed for private use (Personal communication, 4 June 2014). The lot was sold to transnational investment firms to

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construct two high-rise towers and an office park, as well as a luxury five-star hotel. The project would also provide a commercial component, primarily for retail (Media and Communication Directorate 2005). The hotel, operated by Hilton International, would neatly bookend the project’s highly exclusive cachet as a privatized enclave within the otherwise mixed-use neighbourhood. In his 2006 evaluation of development in Amman, Mayor Omar Maani labelled Jordan Gate a mechanism of alienation. “Through its mere presence, Jordan Gate symbolized insensitivity to Amman’s cultural heritage” (Beauregard and Marpillero-Colomina 2011, 64). In 2010, Robert Beauregard, a visiting scholar at the Columbia University Middle East Research Center in Amman, noted in his report the negative public opinion of the project and its insensitivity to the public interest and community needs. Beauregard noted a citizen’s opinion, proclaiming that not only was the project incommensurate with its surroundings, but it also “exposed the problems inherent to how the municipality regulated and engaged with commercial development projects” (2010, 9). Another scholar quoted in the report noted that Jordan Gate “can be seen as one of the worst decisions taken by the Municipality of Amman” (10). Beauregard argued further that the placement and pursuit of the project was a clear illustration of the self-serving interest of Amman’s previous mayor, Nidhal Al-Hadid (10). Maani, Nidhal Al-Hadid’s successor, agreed with Beauregard’s report. Development of Jordan Gate was under particular criticism because Mayor Maani believed that the project had started without proper licensing (Hazaimeh 2005). As this sort of administrative mishap was typical if not emblematic of that era of development, Maani’s administration went further and evaluated Jordan Gate in terms of its location, viability, and general appropriateness of design and program goals. Figure 5.1 shows how out of scale the towers are  within their context. The location of the project, its intrusion on  the mixed-use, mid-rise neighbourhood surrounding it, and, finally, the sense of alienation it would produce once it was functioning as an enclave, excluding all those who lived around the business park, all contributed toward the measure of inappropriateness assessed by Maani’s administration (Jordan Gate 2007). In the Metropolitan Growth Summary Report issued in May 2008, Mayor Maani introduced what was to become the Amman Master Plan, a document produced in collaboration with several

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Figure 5.1  The Jordan Gate Towers in context with their surrounding areas

Canadian planners from Toronto. Their expertise and input was primarily put to use on regulating growth in Amman. In his introduction to the growth summary report, Mayor Maani proclaimed, “We are committed to preparing this Amman Plan based on community input so that it reflects the aspirations of our citizens. Such aspirations begin with a vision of what we want our city to be, rather than reacting to our current problems” (Greater Amman Municipality 2008). This “Vision Document” was an attempt to address deregulated growth in the city, incorporate citizen input into design decisions, and intermix cultural heritage with modern development. The document was produced with the citizen in mind, placing great importance on public participation in the planning process. The Amman Master Plan, or rather the pursuit of such an endeavour, evolved out of a need to regulate the many requests for project approvals submitted to GA M, such as that of Jordan Gate. The regulatory body of the Amman Institute5 was a set of planners whose main objective was to manage the rapid influx of finance flowing in from the neighbouring Gulf states (Khirfan 2011, 533). In a 9 June 2013 interview, an Amman Institute planner explained that the vision document detailed a new developmental hope for Amman. The planner recalled that the document had hardly been completed before the Amman Institute planners were diverted by having to accommodate various high-rise projects set for construction. The planner explained that construction orders and project

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approvals did not come from the municipality, but from the court system, and GA M simply had to accommodate them. Here again, GA M was pushed into a reactive process in which the best interests of the public were sidelined by the need to accommodate various private developments being proposed. Foreign capital was abundant and the courts had ruled. High-rise development was seen as key to the city’s economic success, and as a result, land that had once been acquired by GA M for a public park was reallocated to Jordan Gate. During the interview, the Amman Institute planner spoke of their knowledge of this decision and explained that people were upset, not only for the loss of the park, but also for the seemingly illogical decision of the project’s placement. There was no infrastructure for the towers in this location, but accommodating their placement was a must, so haphazard decisions were made. These decisions seemed inevitable and the planner seemed resigned to his / her limited ability to genuinely inform planning practice in Amman. The politicized limitations that are imposed on qualified planners lack logic and regulation; as such they continuously disempower G AM as a regulating body for Amman. Deregulation in Amman, like other Middle Eastern cities, is a result of the commodification of land and the interest in exchange-value rather than use-value. In Cairo, much like Amman, the commodification of land facilitates the production of “exclusive urban spaces of consumption,” the developmental norm in this globalized, neoliberal age (Adham 2004, 134). Neoliberal logic in Amman thus rationalized the loss of public land as a necessary concession in the pursuit of greater economic stability. Although investors in the project claimed in 2011 that the project would be completed imminently, currently the Jordan Gate Towers stand incomplete, fixed in time, a constant reminder of the result of haphazard and inappropriate planning in Amman. Stuck in a liminal space of conception and incompletion, the towers are a monument to the entrenched system of incentivized development, haphazard administrative decisions, and, above all, the government’s disregard of public opinion and social welfare. the abdali project and the restriction of public protest

The Abdali Downtown Redevelopment Project occupies the former military base in the downtown area and is marketed as Amman’s

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new downtown. Located 1.5 kilometres away from the original downtown, it sits on a 350,000 square metre plot with phased plans to develop over 1,000,000 square metres of built-up space. Abdali Investment and Development, a private shareholder company as well as a public-private partnership between Mawared and Saudi Oger, and the Kuwaiti investment group K I P C O are the main funding sources for the development (Daher 2008, 57). Mawared is a state-formed and supported cooperative whose primary goal was to facilitate the development of former military bases in Amman. By 2007, Mawared had become Amman’s largest real-estate developer and entity for urban regeneration projects (Daher 2008, 51). While the local, or public arm of this development collective is the G A M , Mawared’s authority and decisionmaking power surpassed that of G A M . In other words, G A M was at the service of Mawared’s dictates. Much like Jordan Gate, Abdali, initiated in 2006, was undertaken as part of King Abdullah’s discourse of development to help create a modern façade for Amman. Abdali was initially publicized as a new downtown and central business district, where, according to the project’s website, industry, commerce, and residential components would come together as a “unique endeavour in smart urban planning” (Abdali Project, 2 August 2014). Yasser Rajjal, in his study of the project, noted the plan for the tenancy of The American University of Jordan, surrounded by a series of open spaces for the use by the general public. The site model of the original design is shown in ­figure 5.2. The model shows that a major civic plaza was included to help contextualize the project by connecting it to the nearby House of Parliament, King Abdullah Mosque, and the Palace of Justice. Each of these components, however, was systematically omitted from the project. Fundamental aspects that were to “serve the city in general and the project in particular” have since been removed from the project parameters, leaving an obvious void in public interest and a more obvious concentration on private initiatives (Rajjal 2007, 9). Thus, Abdali project is argued to be one based on “purely ­economic-growth criteria” and neoliberal regulations that do not represent citizens in the decision-making phase, or the implementation phase of the planning process (Summer 2005, 5). Like Jordan Gate, Abdali had the opportunity to consider the public interest. In much the same way, however, private incentive took precedence as,

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Figure 5.2  The site model of the Abdali project, on display at the head office

once again, land was expropriated for project use. In this instance, however, it was the land of private citizens that was up for acquisition. In addition to the problematic and arguably habitual inversion of the process of eminent domain, Mawared and G AM went a  step further and obstructed the expression of public opinion against the project. King Abdullah developed Mawared following the framework of neighbouring institutions such as Solidere in Beirut (Daher 2008, 50). Mawared was a developmental institution of the state, able to make developmental decisions as the new governmental body with a neoliberal conscience. Further, it had precedence over G AM and the ability to dictate the now more administrative and technical role of G A M, such as the acquisition of necessary land for development. As a stakeholder in the project, Mawared could make incentivized decisions without the obligation to consider the public interest.

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G A M, under obligation to its public, but usurped by Mawared, was left to encourage private landowners surrounding the project to  sell their land to Abdali. When asked about land acquisitions related to the Abdali project and specifics about the actual number of lots acquired, a planning director at G AM simply replied that “according to the agreement between G AM and Abdali Company, G A M is responsible to expropriate the necessary land for the streets and gardens in the project and Abdali is responsible to pay for it” (email correspondence, 27 September 2014). This statement oversimplifies and even legitimizes a complicated and inequitable practice. Mawared’s neoliberal regulations have normalized such a compromise of public interest and rescripted the acquisition of land as more an obligation of the citizen and less a trespass by G AM . Under pressure by Mawared to streamline land acquisitions, G AM resorted to implementing the planning practice of eminent domain. Once again the process was inverted, expropriating public land and the land of private citizens for corporate development. One of the most troubling land acquisitions occurred against the Abu Ghazaleh Investment Group (Abu Ghazaleh) that housed its headquarters on property near the Abdali site. GA M encouraged the group to sell its land to Mawared, but the investment group refused because it had already begun construction on the expansion for its headquarters on the site. G A M claimed that the land was a necessary concession in order to build a street to accommodate the growing traffic flows in the area. Abu Ghazaleh refused to give in to the appropriations committee and took its case to court (Neimat 2012). The investment group, unhappy with the court proceedings, placed a sign on their property stating, “These buildings under construction have had all the permits for construction required since 2005 … but G AM has put a halt to this project to study it. When will G AM finish this study, and to whose benefit??” (Naseem 2007). By posting this sign and two others on their property, Abu Ghazaleh publicly voiced its opposition to the unjust land acquisitions conducted by G AM . G AM however, unaccustomed to such public scrutiny, removed the signs in an attempt to circumvent the bad publicity it was receiving for its practices and regulations (Rajjal 2007, 11). After four years of being held up in the court system, the courts ruled in favour of G AM , and Abu Ghazaleh lost its land to expropriation (Neimat 2012). The limitation of the public expression of civic discontent in ­addition to the inversion of the process of eminent domain best

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exemplifies the contradictory nature of G AM policy. It highlights an issue that was further exacerbated with the development of the Jordan Gate project – the damaging effect of the privatization of the public realm in the pursuit of capital interest. The ease with which the civic plaza component of Abdali was omitted implies that the compromise of public space has become acceptable practice, one that G A M is either unwilling or unable to address. G AM has been reduced to a more technical role, such as service and infrastructure provision, and can only execute Mawared’s directives (Daher 2012, 110). Rather than being viewed as an advocate for public interests, G A M’s participation in the expropriation of land for Abdali designated it as a pro-private entity, one operating principally in the best interest of Mawared’s developmental needs. Mawared’s usurping of GA M’s role is a good demonstration of how well the triad of development in Amman – neoliberal logic, transnational capital, and private-public partnerships – creates an  inherent difficulty of reconciling public interest with a capital interest-driven mode of development. Mawared’s stake in the project muddled the collaboration required between the state and the private investors. As such, “the boundary between regulator and investor and even public and private are becoming very blurred … the boundary between ‘State’ and ‘civil society’ is very blurred and transparency is non-existent, and public information about the Abdali project is very limited” (Daher 2008, 53). Early in its inception, Abdali was heralded as the emblem of modernity for the city and a sure source of vitality. Akram Abu Hamdan, the first director general of Mawared, claimed that the Abdali project sees itself as a bringer of culture and regeneration to an area in need of improvement (Abdali Project, 2 August 2014). The investment director for Mawared candidly admitted in an interview conducted on 21 June 2010 that although it was suffering through the economic downturn, Amman would continue on with the Abdali regeneration because it could not politically afford to halt the project. Abdali, which invites residents and investors to live the vision, is thus as large a political statement as an urban one. Abdali, once slated for completion in 2010, is struggling with high construction costs as well as the global economic crisis. The project carries on, stumbling through its development as pieces of the project continue to be sold and resold to private development companies.

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conclusion

Democratization in Amman has been heavily critiqued as a thinly veiled attempt to give the semblance of democracy while actually retaining the original form of the government power structure ­(Robinson 1998, 391). It is further argued that democratization policy was enacted in a state of desperation to quell a citizen uprising, such as the 1989 riots in Ma’an, and is based on a “political-­ economic calculus for regime survival” (Ryan 2002, 16). Quinton Wiktorowicz (2001) argues that in Amman, the new organizations that arose in the democratization movement found themselves “imbedded in a web of bureaucratic practices and legal codes which allows those in power to monitor and regulate collective activities.” He concludes that “civil society institutions are more an instrument of state social control than a mechanism of collective empowerment” (19). While adopting democratization was meant to introduce new privileges, instead it created an opportunity for the state to establish a trend of moderated and coercive governance. Democratization was simply a mechanism within which new policies of control could be introduced, further asserting the coercive presence of the state in public matters. The pattern of coercive governance began during King Hussein’s reign but also traversed into King Abdullah’s. Both kings heralded neoliberal logic as a democratic and economic opportunity, however the history of urban governance in Amman demonstrates its damaging effect on society and the urban built environment in a number of ways. King Hussein used democracy to placate citizens and veil the coercive manoeuvres of the state. King Abdullah’s neoliberal logic pivoted on his desperation for international capital. To attract this international capital, GA M adopted socially inequitable practices to accommodate and facilitate projects that symbolized a city of prosperity, viability, and stability. Third, the Jordan First initiative was used to manufacture a sense of unity and inclusion among citizens to promote allegiance to the state and its endeavours. The final and most problematic factor is GA M’s habitual inversion of the process of eminent domain and the resulting compromise of exchanging public interest for private development. Each of these events outlines a pattern of coercive governance in Amman’s history and, further, the reliance on scripted neoliberal regulations to moderate public voice and opinion.

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 1 The I MF promotes international monetary cooperation and exchange rate stability, facilitates the balanced growth of international trade, and provides resources to help members in balance of payments difficulties or to assist with poverty reduction.   2 The Oil Crisis of 1979 and the ensuing economic crisis delivered a major blow to Jordan’s economy. It no longer received the amount of external assistance from neighbouring oil-rich states and the US that it once did. The state was then no longer able to spend on civil society as it had been previously. This was highly problematic because this was the main method through which the state maintained its legitimacy.   3 Soon after his succession, King Abdullah directed his administration toward reforming the Jordanian economy. This shift was marked by Jordan’s accession to the World Trade Organization and the finalization of a Free Trade Agreement with the US, as well as the acceptance of widespread privatization in services and development (see Daher 2008, 49).   4 All interviews were conducted in confidentiality, and the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement.   5 The Greater Amman Municipality (G AM) established the Amman Institute for Urban Development in July 2008. The genesis of the Institute came from the success of the Amman Plan, an initiative undertaken by GA M for planning the growth of the city through 2025. references

Abdali Project. 2014. “Abdali.” Last modified 2 August 2014. http://abdali.jo/. –  2014. “Abdali Brochure.” Last modified 2 August 2014. http://www. abdali.jo/index.php?r=site/page&id=26. Adham, Khaled. 2004. “Cairo’s Urban Déjà Vu: Globalization and Urban Fantasies.” In Planning Middle Eastern Cities: An Urban Kaleidoscope, edited by Yasser Elsheshtawy, 134–68. London: Routledge. Bank, Andre, and Oliver Schlumberger. 2004. “Jordan: Between Regime Survival and Economic Reform.” In Arab Elites: Negotiating the Politics of Change, edited by Volker Perthes, 35–60. Boulder, C O: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Beauregard, Robert, and Andrea Marpillero-Colomina. 2010. “Amman 2025: From Master Plan to Strategic Initiative.” Amman Institute, February. http://www.slideshare.net/AmmanInstitute/amman-2025from-master-plan-to-strategic-initiative-amman-institute.

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–  2011. “More than a Master Plan: Amman 2025.” Cities 28: 62–9. Bin Muhammad, Ghazi. 1999. The Tribes of Jordan. Amman, Jordan: Rutab. Cowell, Alan. 1989. “5 Are Killed in South Jordan as Rioting over Food Prices Spreads.” New York Times, 20 April. Accessed 28 October 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/20/world/5-are-killed-in-southjordan-as-rioting-over-food-prices-spreads.html. Daher, Rami F. 2008. “Amman: Disguised Genealogy and Recent Urban Restructuring and Neoliberal Threats.” In The Evolving Arab City: Tradition, Modernity and Urban Development, edited by Yasser Elsheshtawy, 37–68. London: Routledge. –  2010. “Neoliberal Urban Transformations in the Arab City: Metanarratives, Urban Disparities and the Emergence of Consumerist Utopias and Geographies of Inequalities in Amman.” Environment Urban / Urban Environment 7: 99–115. Elmer, Jon. 2005. “Violence, Poverty Underscore Story of Iraqi Refugees in Jordan.” The New Standard, 22 July. Accessed 28 February 2013. http:// newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2135. Friedman, Milton. 1982. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Greater Amman Municipality. 1988. Greater Amman Comprehensive Development Plan. Report 5: Final Report, Volume 1: Main Report. – 2008. Metropolitan Growth Summary Report, The Amman Plan. – 2014. The Jordan Gate Towers Special Projects Report. Harvey, David. 2007. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Hazaimeh, Hani. 2005. “Jordan Gate Breaks Ground: King Inaugurates 1st Phase of $1 billion Royal Metropolis Plan.” The Jordan Times, 30 May. Jordan Politics. 2013. “Jordan First.” Accessed 18 October 2013. http:// www.jordanpolitics.org/en/documents-view/62/jordan-first/41. Kassay, Ali. 2002. “The Effects of External Forces on Jordan’s Process of Democratisation.” In Jordan in Transition, edited by George Joffé, 45–65. New York: Palgrave. Khirfan, Luna. 2011. “From Toronto to Amman: The Cross-National Transfer of Planning Knowledge.” Planning Theory & Practice 12: 525–47. Krijnen, Marieke, and Mona Fawaz. 2010. “Exception as the Rule: High-End Developments in Neoliberal Beirut.” Built Environment 36: 245–59.

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Laine, Samantha. 2012. “Amman’s Real Estate Market Booms with Iraqis Who Have Fled Their Homeland for Good.” Northeastern University Journalism Abroad 2012, 2 August. Accessed 18 February 2013. http:// northeasternuniversityjournalism2012.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/ ammans-real-estate-market-booms-with-iraqi-investors-who-have-fledtheir-homeland-for-good/. Malkawi, Fuad K. 1996. “Hidden Structures: An Ethnographic Account of the Planning of Greater Amman.” Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Media and Communication Directorate Royal Hashemite Court. 2005. “King Lays Cornerstone for Jordan Gate.” News Release, 29 May. Neimat, Khaled. 2007. “G AM to Pay Abu-Ghazaleh J D6m in Compensation for Property.” The Jordan Times, 20 November. Accessed 17 November 2014. http://jordantimes.com/gam-to-pay-abu-ghazalehjd6m-in-compensation-for-property. Peck, Jamie, and Adam Tickell. 2002. “Neoliberalizing Space.” Antipode 34: 380–404. Rajjal, Yasser. 2007. “Nation-States and Sites of Discursive Practices: A Study in Amman, Jordan.” Paper presented at Rethinking our Design Conference, University of Khartoum Sudan, November. Robins, Philip. 2004. A History of Jordan. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press. Robinson, Glenn E. 1998. “Defensive Democratization in Jordan.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 30: 387–410. Robinson, Jennifer. 2006. Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development. London and New York: Routledge. Roy, Ananya. 2009. “Why India Cannot Plan Its Cities: Informality, Insurgence and the Idiom of Urbanization.” Planning Theory 8: 76–87. Ryan, Curtis R. 2002. Jordan in Transition: From Hussein to Abdullah. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Salameh, Emad. 2013. “Jordan Gate.” Amman Voice: Amman City Urban Development, the Environment, and the Neighbourhood We Inhabit, 28 August. Accessed 17 October 2013. http://ammanvoice.blogspot. com/2007/08/jordan-gate.html. Sassoon, Joseph. 2008. The Iraqi Refugees: The New Crisis in the MiddleEast. London: I.B. Tauris. Shihab-Eldin, Ahmed. 2009. “Jordan First: A King’s Modernization Motto Obscures a Palestinian Past and Iraqi Present.” The World Post, 5 January. Accessed 12 November 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ahmedshihabeldin/jordan-first-a-kings-mode_b_148589.html.

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Summer, Doris. 2005. “Neoliberalizing the City: The Circulation of City Builders and Urban Images in Beirut and Amman.” Master’s thesis, American University of Beirut. Tarawnah, Naseem. 2007. “They Paved a Paradise to Put Up the Abdali Project (and Maybe a Parking Lot).” (Translated by author.) The Black Iris, 25 June. http://black-iris.com/2007/06/25/they-paved-paradiseto-put-up-the-abdali-project-and-maybe-a-parking-lot/. Wiktorowicz, Quinton. 2001. The Management of Islamic Activism: Salafis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and State Power in Jordan. Albany: State University of New York. Yom, Sean L. 2009. “Jordan: Ten More Years of Autocracy.” Journal of Democracy 20 (4): 151–66. Accessed 12 September 2013. doi:10.1353/ jod.0.0125.

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pa rt t h r e e

The Market and Civil Society

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6 The New Centre and the City Citizen Tamam Mango What is the city but the people? William Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Act III Scene 1

background

This chapter examines the Abdali project in Amman and the Solidere project in Beirut as case studies that represent a specific type of mega real estate project selected within the urban governance framework as a tool for development. The projects in question aim to create modern “downtowns”1 within the capital cities – Abdali in a new location in Amman, and Solidere’s reconstructed centre in Beirut. This chapter’s objective is to focus on two specific impacts that these projects have on the experience of citizenship in the city, although there are many others: the loss of city heritage as “new” centres are developed and the increase in social divisions as a manifestation of the projects’ physical presence on contested space. The Abdali and Solidere projects are examples of what I will call real estate and construction holding companies (RE CH CO s).2 The R EC HC O s are private sector companies3 that undertake the development of substantive real estate initiatives with public sector support in the form of direct financial contributions, public subsidies, and logistical facilitation. These companies are also effectively given expropriation rights over other private property4 which is then included in the project. Projects similar to the RE CH CO s around the world often exceed the billion dollar mark and gain the highest levels of attention from the government based on their expected positive impacts (Altshuler and Luberoff 2003). Governments turn to

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the projects for many reasons: their job creation potential, their ability to generate investments, increase tourism to the city, regenerate urban fabric for the purposes of rehabilitation, reduce crime, and expand public spaces and modern infrastructure. There is a well-defined narrative that states that Solidere and Abdali are the result of neoliberal tendencies coupled with excess global capital, which encourages privatization (Al Sayyad 2001). The cases are easily placed within a global-city “discourse” whereby select cities are extolled as a model that other cities must work to emulate. It is within this framework that we find global investors seeking unique opportunities, and national support for capital cities yet to put themselves “on-the-map,” such as Amman and a war-torn Beirut. As part of this trend, the Abdali project is a huge endeavour to develop 1.7 million square metres of built-up space to replace Amman’s historic city centre in a contemporary new location toward the west of the city, marketing itself as “Amman’s New Downtown” (Abdali 2012).5 With the same anchor investors, Abdali is modelled after the 1994 Solidere project, the keystone of the post-Civil War Lebanese reconstruction effort, spread out over 5 million square kilometres in Beirut’s original city centre to create a new and modern downtown ready for “the 21st century” (Sodic and Solidere 2012, 3).6 The two case studies have interesting similarities in the effects of R E C H C O s across two very different socio-political and economic contexts. Amman is representative of a modern capital working to attract transnational investors. Beirut is a capital that was emerging from a tense post-war environment, and is also a key R EC HC O case, being the most famous, and a model upon which others were built. To examine these two contexts, various tools, including interviews, a thorough literature review, and archival research were key components of the methodology. A survey tool was also used in Amman to try to attain a comprehensive understanding of citizens’ views about the project. The survey was designed to estimate preferences and therefore provide values for the kinds of changes that had not yet been experienced – this was especially important in the case of Amman, a R E C HC O still under construction.7 To this end, a 1,500+ person paper-based survey within Amman was used to try to quantify the “non-market” benefits or costs of the projects8 and to gather a base of public opinion regarding the Abdali project within the city of Amman. The survey gave a confidence

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interval of 97 per cent. It helped to assess how people of different incomes and geographies across Amman perceive the real estate project within their city, and to what extent they view it as a public good. It also looked at issues of process, pride, and how the respondents saw and interacted with Abdali within their city. These types of data can only be gathered through an extensive survey. The survey was distributed by the researcher across the different districts of Amman (during and after working hours) with one resident per household over the age of eighteen allowed to fill out the survey. Participants filled out the survey in Arabic, and also answered a series of background questions. A researcher was available to explain the survey questions.The sample was stratified across four categories of gender, age, districts, and monthly income, and helped increase understanding of the R E C HC O within the context of the city. t h e p l a c e wa r s

Donald Haider terms the struggle cities face to attract business “the place wars” (Haider 1992). The R E CH CO s work hard to market their cities as attractive investment locations, and themselves as vehicles for attracting investment. For this reason, one of Solidere’s main targets is to reinstate Beirut as a regional and international business centre (Douaidy 2003). Abdali showcases Amman as an “ideal” destination for business, and itself provides “smart” and “world-class” infrastructure for an integrated business environment in a central location (Mawared 2004). This symbolic economy, which Amman and Beirut are attempting to reproduce, creates high-rises and towers and recruits world-class international architects for landmark buildings, sometimes, it seems, at the expense of the city’s heritage. To many of the R E C HC O critics, the narrative pushed by the public sector has underestimated the effect of the negative externalities of R EC HC O s on the city. Direct costs include those related to expropriation and taxation, as well as costs for upgraded infrastructure. Less tangible costs are the implications for property rights, as landowners and investors lose confidence in a system where the sacred rights of eminent domain are used precariously for a private ­company framed as working for the “public benefit.”9 Under the R EC HC O s, city citizens and long-time residents of the centre had their family homes taken and their land expropriated. The expropriations meant the eviction of the existing population. In addition,

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with the new constructions, R E C H CO s were accused of “elimin­ ate[ing] the social fabric,” whereby the dissolution of the “medieval patterns” of property within the city would “decimate the physical fabric” (Salaam 1998a, 131–3). This becomes especially important because the literature reflects on spaces turned places having a strong influence on social life and organization within cities (see works by Castells 2000; Harvey 1989, 2008; and Lefebvre 1974, among others). The centre as a place of common economy, politics, healing, and worship is replaced with “sterile” upper-end property for a select audience (Survey 2012) and is ultimately considered “contested” space (Brown 2006), an issue that is very important when one goes back to the roots of cities and their centres. i m p o rta n c e o f c i t y c e n t r e s t o c i t i z e n s

Ancient Greek literature was filled with praise of the polis from philosophers and poets. The city was convinced of its own glory through the rights of its citizens and indoctrinated its residents with this ideal, so much so that in Phaedrus, Socrates announces that the country places and the trees could not teach him anything, believing that he could learn all that mattered only from Plato’s “men in the city center” (Plato 2005). Athenian life was not meant to be lived in privacy – this would have undermined the polis. Instead, life was supposed to be lived in the agora, the large square where citizens gathered to gossip and discuss politics: “a polis within the polis” (Hansen 2006). To maintain this delicate balance of socialization and size, the polis had to be scaled to this human dimension. Aristotle describes this phenomenon as one in which the ideal city should be taken in at a “single view” (Boochkin 1986). The earliest thinkers on cities date back to 300 BC (when the parent cities of Greece were built). From Aristotle we learn about the ideal state, designed by Phaleas, who believed in complete equality of property; and we hear about one of the first city planners – Hippodamus. As an architect, sociologist, and city planner, Hippodamus realized that a city was more than a collection of houses, streets, markets, and temples and he propagated a social order to match his city plans (Mumford 1962). From the earliest cities, the centres historically represented both the focus of politics and participation (Mumford 1961), with philosophers, contemplating the “ideal” city and finding it to be a

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reflection of both the individuals within it and their attitudes toward each other, forming its governance system. Socrates’s “Kalliopolis” from Plato’s Republic (Plato 1993) was testament to justice in the city being achieved only through justice in the soul. In these writings the city was indistinguishable from the individual, and the individual’s character inextricably tied up with the city’s political institutions. It was from the city that the notion of citizenship stemmed, and from within the city walls that the concept of the social contract began between resident and ruler – a contract either strong enough to build the greatest of cities, or sufficiently unstable to cause the uprisings seen across the region in the Arab Spring.10 City centres are interesting to look at because they represent what is objectively the most meaningful space in the city to its residents. It is considered the meeting ground for different groups, and conducive to self-expression, participation, and politics. The old city centre in Amman included a mixed-use pattern of religious institutions, residential neighbourhoods, government offices, and commercial establishments, sites for political gathering, as well as being a brief meeting point linking the East and West as common ground for the city’s socio-economic groups and ethnicities. The existing city centre in Amman had been a place of “gathering,” “worship,” “shopping,” and “debate” (Survey 2012). With wide pavements and a vibrant street life, it was one of Amman’s key commercial districts, to be physically descended to by way of stairways in the era before cars. While still advertised in tourist guides as the original “heart of Amman” (see Dakkak Tours 2012 as an example), with limited municipal funding, Amman’s centre slowly became dilapidated.11 Similarly, as one editorial in the business monthly Al-Iqtisad ­wal-Amal put it, the centre of Beirut was “the heart of the capital, and as the heart of all Lebanon” (Real Estate Agency 1992, 42), neighbouring the Green Line which separated Muslim West Beirut from its Christian East.12 Around the beginning of the twentieth ­century, neighbourhoods in Beirut began to take on specific ethnic or religious identities, with Christians settling to the east of the city centre and Muslims to the west. With a “thriving urban merchant class” from across religions, the centre still remained a mixed community reflecting Lebanon’s multifaceted society (Khalaf 1993a, 21). Thomas Friedman in From Beirut to Jerusalem describes Beirut’s city centre as one huge urban Mixmaster that took the various Lebanese communities from their mountains and villages and

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attempted to homogenize them into one cosmopolitan nation ­during the Golden Age of Beirut in the 1950s and 1960s (Friedman 1990); a sentiment of nostalgia that became commonplace to seize upon during reconstruction (Misk 1999). However. centres as economic and political hubs are not simply an Arab phenomenon. Richard Sennett of the London School of Economics and Political Science notes “as a secular space, the public space of the modern city has always been a hybrid of politics and commerce” (Sennett 1992, 21–2). abdali and beirut in context: c r e at i n g t h e n e w d o w n t o w n s

During the fifteen-year Lebanese civil war, no area was damaged as badly as the very centre of the capital, Beirut. The city centre was no longer vibrant, economic activity was at a standstill, and it was little more than a “wasteland” bordered by sand and stone walls blocking off the major roads, with military barricades (Salaam 1995). At the conclusion of the war, with a government overwhelmed by debt, ­obligations, and administrative decay, the private sector – especially supported by foreign alliances – emerged as a strong alternative for reconstruction. It was in this light that Solidere was incorporated as a Lebanese joint-stock company on 5 May 1994 on land expropriated from private owners by the company, who were compensated through shares in the company. Then Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri controlled 19 per cent of the shares (Walden 1994). “Construction capability” was labelled as one of Lebanon’s most valuable export commodities. Solidere was denounced by critics for its widespread demolition of the existing centre prior to the rebuilding. However, to proponents, Solidere’s impact was visually clear. Looking at the “before” and “after” images, Beirut’s central district was transformed from a pile of rubble, devastation, and refugees into what many classify as a global city centre, once again. It was nothing short of remarkable especially when compared to the reconstruction efforts in the rest of Lebanon. Some described it as the city “getting back all the signs of modern culture and civilization” (Trawi 2003, 3). While there is much criticism of Solidere’s siphoning of funding at the expense of other post-war priorities in Lebanon, and a wide range of literature dealing with its urban design issues, these issues are worthy of a dedicated chapter and will not be dealt with here.

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Almost ten years later, Solidere’s investors participated in Amman’s Abdali Investment Company as a 50–50 partnership between Mawared13 – an investment company owned by the Jordanian Armed Forces – and Oger Jordan (owned by the Hariri family). The Abdali project intended to recreate Amman’s historic city centre in a contemporary new location to the west of the city.14 The public sector (in the form of the Royal Court and the Greater Amman Municipality in Amman and the prime minister in Beirut) worked hard to promote the R E C HC O . Within this framework, politics and investment intertwined. The fact that Solidere’s destiny was tied to Rafiq Hariri’s political career is only one example of how limited objectivity was (Nizameddin 2006).15 Later, the Abdali project would show similar ties to the political system, being publically accused by some property owners as being “in bed with the munic­ ipality” (Talal Abu Ghazaleh International 2007, 1). Not unlike Beirut’s R E C H C O experience, Amman saw a municipality that was both “coordinator and adjudicator” (Beyhum 1992a, 7), with the mayor sitting on Abdali’s board of directors.16 Space is transformed as a direct product of ideological struggles (Lefebvre 1991),17 and as Ayn Rand’s philosophy seems to describe, for the RE C HC O s within these two cities, the “making of markets” has become a total way of life, reflected completely in the “making of places” (Rand 2007). For the two centres in question, the geographic space used historically as a place for representation ­ was  usurped by private companies with a profit-making agenda. As  John Short, in his chapter on Urban Imagineers, points out, “space is turned into place through acts of discursive representation. The g­ enerality of space is turned into the particularities of place through acts of description and evaluation” (Short 1999, 38). For the R EC H C O s, this means that if the “space” that represented inclusiveness and tradition is physically destroyed, what will be left is nothing more than a place of exclusive geography that cannot possibly fill the gap left by the city’s heritage, creating spatial exclusion and a new citizen identity. destruction of the old

Beirut’s centre represented its throbbing heart for a generation of Beirutis who had experienced the civil war. It also represented the far past, with discoveries made by archaeologists and United Nations

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Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (U N E S CO ) marking one of the world’s largest excavation sites (Sandes 2010).18 In  1992, under the auspices of a public reconstruction initiative, demolition began in the downtown. At that time only a third of the buildings had been destroyed beyond the point of repair by the war (Salaam 1998, 674). Buildings that might have been rehabilitated were brought down by high-explosive demolition charges, even damaging neighbouring properties (Beyhum 1992a). By the time the new Dar al-Hanadasah’s Master Plan was formally released in 1993, 80 per cent of the city centre had been irreparably damaged (Salaam 1996).19 Destruction of the centre in Amman was indirect. In late 2002, a real estate boom began in Jordan.20 The Abdali project was launched as part of this boom. There was no doubt in people’s minds – as became apparent through a series of street interviews – that the Abdali project would “change the face of Amman forever”21 in reference to the fact that the development would include Amman’s tallest tower. It would also include a 350-metre-long pedestrian shopping boulevard, “Amman’s answer to the Champs-Elysees in Paris or London’s Oxford Street” (Abdali 2009a, 8). Abdali’s critics noted that the project had “turned its back” on Amman’s old downtown (Daher 2008). Funding from the municipality, in the form of millions of Jordanian dinars, was rerouted to the “new centre” for upgrading infrastructure, and for marketing. However, it seemed that the entire design concept of Abdali was physically disengaging to Amman’s residents, who are used to the tradition of medium-density development and like its medium-rise homogeneous nature. A survey found that 76 per cent indicated that they did not wish to see towers in their city.22 Of these, 65 per cent said it would “ruin the way the city looks” (Survey 2012). The aesthetic disapproval of critics came across in Beirut too, with many arguing that a blow had been dealt to the “memory” of this 2,000-year-old city, only to be replaced by a “mirage” of a new city (Makdisi 1997b). Heritage was such a large component of the project that significant effort went into its branding. Aldo Rossi – as part of the wider literature – observes, “the history of the city is always inseparable from its geography; without both we cannot understand … the physical sign of this ‘human thing’” (Rossi 1966, 97). Sharon Zukin, in Space and Symbols in an Age of Decline, describes how the effects of “visual artifacts of material

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culture and political economy reinforce – or comment on – social structure” (Zukin 1996, 44). In simpler terms, what we build becomes who we are, and defines our society. By undermining the city’s physical heritage the R E C HC O s shook citizens’ memories and in turn their identity, such that the city became one they “didn’t know anymore” (Survey 2012). branding solidere and abdali

In Lebanon, Solidere had taken an aggressive approach to its branding, presenting itself “as the protector of the city’s past and the guarantor of its heritage” (Sawalha 2010, 36) for an “Ancient City of the Future.”23 The image and descriptions of the city’s destruction were constantly called upon by Solidere in its publications. Beirut Reborn, produced by Solidere’s design team, was filled with images of a devastated centre (Gavin and Maluf 1996), with little other reference to pre-Solidere history. Solidere’s mission was framed as how to bring Beirut “back to life” (Gavin and Maluf 1996), with Solidere positioned as a healing agency. Solidere’s massive advertising campaign included not only posters all over Beirut and Lebanon, but also foreign newspapers and magazines. An ad in the New York Times in 1993 proclaimed, “We’ve invested in the future of an ancient city” (Makdisi 1997a). Other headlines featured titles such as “Lebanon up from the Ashes” (Meadows 1994) and “The Latest Explosion in Beirut is a Con­ struction Boom” (Boustany 1993). Solidere was marketed in the Washington Post and The Economist regularly, featuring “the clear statement of faith by the Lebanese in the future of their country and its capital” (Kenaan 1994, 2). Solidere continues to actively engage in reforming Beirut’s history for its own purposes, attempting to create what Yael Zerubavel explains is a new “master commemorative narrative of the city and nation” (Hayek 2011, 127), a storyline that group members can subscribe to. It is not necessarily required to be historically truthful, but to have a popular appeal – a concept mirrored in Abdali. Early on in its creation, Mawared ventured to the ancient past as a means of engaging itself with Jordan’s present. It began a search for an “appropriate symbol” (Mawared 2007) to represent the company as its logo. This ended with the identification of the Terebinth tree,24 along with a story that the Prophet Mohammad and his

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grandfather Abd al-Muttaleb sat beneath its shade on their trade routes. According to its own company history, a team was launched to search for this tree in Jordan. Mawared first celebrated its identification in Dibeen “till it became clear that it was an oak tree rather than a Terebinth” (Mawared 2007, 1, my translation). The search continued for a long time until the Mawared team found one such tree near the Safawi district in Azraq, in the east of Jordan. Though not a tree common to Jordan, and far more likely to be found in Syria and Palestine, Mawared’s leadership insisted that its vision and objectives were embodied in the tree, and conveyed to their team that it was essential that such a tree be located within Jordan’s geographic boundaries. Mawared also created folklore ­surrounding the tree, revealing and publicizing in its newsletter a Bedouin tradition of tying coloured strings on the branches of Terebinth trees before disappearing into the desert for months, later returning to the tree to tie the strings onto their wrists and ankles for good luck (Mawared 2007). Mawared could not claim to protect Amman’s heritage or past, so it created the perception of deep historical links and a mission that was sponsored by the very thing (in the form of a historical tree) that made Jordan its modern self. Like Solidere, a theme of trying to tie the past to the present was brought about, drawing on people’s nostalgia of the past to  market a new and aggressive future. This narrative echoes the analysis of Joseph Massad in Colonial Effects, which describes “the architects of Jordan’s ‘Bedouin’ identity” (Massad 2001, 158)  creating folklore and traditions thought to be suited to a modern Jordan. In its advertising, Mawared constantly tried to link backwards while simultaneously introducing new components of a bright future.25 One advertisement depicts old traditional bricks used for homes featured alongside “new” Lego blocks, with the slogan, “construction development in your country is for you and your children’s children.” In the advertisement, the “new” is reflected by the modern, colourful, and artificial, a “Lego-ing” of society and its architecture (Jenson and Saint-Martin 2003). Abdali, in the press and in its own branding, has been called many names: a “modern city,” a new “heart for Amman,” and “Amman’s new downtown,” and is supported at the governmental level through the accolades handed to it by leading ministers and royal visits. However, this new heart does not seem to be popular among Jordanians.

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Percentage affirmative responses

On a scale of 1–10, with 1 being the worst and 10 the best, what are your overall impressions of the Abdali project? 25 20 15 10 5 0

1 = worst

2

3

4

5 6 Categories

7

8

9

10 = best

Figure 6.1  Abdali project impressions Source: Survey 2012.

When asked about their impressions of Abdali, very few, if any, Ammanis were neutral about their answers. Most citizens had strong opinions and mostly appeared to be unimpressed with the project, and cautious about it (see figure 6.1). Citizens who do not embrace a centre will not frequent it as a place for healing, community, and reform. Rather, it will become an antagonistic space forced upon them from above, undermining that thing that forms communities in cities, as was seen with Abdali’s and with Solidere’s “downtown.” Interviews in Amman reflected this sentiment through comments such as “the new downtown is not for me,” and likewise in street interviews held in Beirut: “Solidere is only for the rich Lebanese.” reimagining the old as the new

The evolving skylines of Amman, and the sophisticated tourist structures of Beirut represent attempts at creating a new heritage. The French journalist Françoise Sueret, who addressed this in Le Monde, says that Beirut has a “tradition of destructive construction” coupled with an economic will to join the world economy and to a personal will of rulers to “access history” (Saliba 2000, 2). Though they may be fascinated with the modern and clean, citizens do not view this fascination as being at the expense of their history. Heritage within

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the city is meaningful to its citizens. Nowhere is this better seen than in the survey responses by Amman citizens, whereby the vast majority – at 94 per cent – would, given the choice, opt to fund upgrading the current downtown, rather than providing that same funding to Abdali. For this reason, planners attempt to plan the new with the old in  mind. Within the frame of popular appeal, the design team led by  Oussama Kabbani tried to make sure that Solidere would not look and feel like a foreign body within Beirut, though within the financial framework of the project itself this seemed impossible. For example, although Jad Tabet’s initial design of the Beirut Souqs was close to an original souq, the end result was not as imagined. Solidere’s publications and language are nostalgic in what they promise in terms of a souq, however the built end product does not reflect the spirit of a traditional souq. Souqs, being a place of haggling, crowds, local produce, noise, and sensation, and the product of a long historical process, do not coincide with the plan for the Beirut Souqs, which include international brand names and are quite formal (Hourani 2011). Solidere’s marketing of the souqs makes use of the language and memory of the character of a traditional market with its customers, while creating what is, at best, a postmodern outdoor mall (Makdisi 1997a). The Souqs would house international brands to “consecrate [the] Beirut city center as a global retail district” (Solidere 2009, 4). Solidere’s economists argued that this gap was the result of an economic reality that could not be compromised, including the interruptions that might be caused by the “traditional Lebanese shopkeeper.” One of Solidere’s analysts explained this viewpoint quite clearly: “you don’t want those guys coming out and putting their stuff on hangers ... around the doors of their shops ... it is chaos ... we cannot go back to that” (Hourani 2011, 155). The idea being one not of returning to a disruptive and messy past, but rather to a “professional” and tidy future, albeit a future that does not necessarily correspond to the vision of the masses for their city centre. For this reason, Gratz laments the encroachment of malls into street culture in cities, stating: “malls have no streets” (Gratz 1994, 296). Despite claiming to be part “ancient,” Solidere was in fact isolated from the memories of Beirut’s past. Beirutis no longer call the centre “the city” or “al-Balad.” Now it is simply “al-Solidere.”

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Cities are “repositories of memories” (Elsheshtawy 2008, 10), with spaces inscribed with significance by their users, that when demolished diminish the meaning that used to tie citizens to their cities. Solidere’s project was framed to play a “therapeutic role by founding the city on a sort of salvation-like amnesia” (Tabet 2002, 68). This selective memory was set to wipe the slate clean and transform the past to provide an unburdened future. The danger of erasing the past and celebrating only niche nostalgia, free of messy political and social problems, is that the lessons of forgiveness and tolerance are also erased. Lessons that brought the centre together into a cohesive society are undermined and “unlearned” (Makdisi 1997b). Maha Yahya has looked at the “emptying” of the Centre (Yahya 2005 cited in Daher 2007b) and the exodus of 4,000 previous residents changing the ownership patterns in Beirut and with it the city’s “social memory” (Daher 2007b, 278). Similarly, residents and a local community college in Amman were bought out by the Abdali project, in some instances under strong pressure from the municipality.26 The eviction of populations and the elimination of the social fabric lead to “a dead city, an empty field open to the speculative ambitions of developers” (Philippou 2010, 1). The community takes with it family ties, daily routines, and memories of place, creating life crises for these “urban villagers” (Gans 1962). The muting of memory was a conscious strategy on the part of Solidere, and because of the centre’s former importance in the life of Beirutis, the reconstruction process itself was accused of undermining what it meant to be from Beirut – as well as Lebanese – for, “when the landscape goes, it destroys the past for those who are left: people have no sense of belonging anywhere” (Erikson 1978, 33). n o t h e a l i n g b u t d i v i d i n g : a s e g r e g at e d c i t y

The R EC H C O s, though profit-making companies, are promoted as corporations working for the public benefit to elevate the status of city centres for the national economic good by creating “world-class downtowns.” However, as the above discussion reflects, they are often responsible for the destruction of heritage. As tools for urban governance, R E C HC O s may not live up to the narrative they claim, because the future urban space they offer in place of the “old” centres is one where cohesive citizenship is replaced by contestation of

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space. The R E C HC O s, in their profit orientation, give rise to several unique forms of segregation. The first type of segregation experienced by Solidere and Abdali was their physical isolation from the remainder of the city. It is therefore only natural that one of the main criticisms cited in relation to both Beirut and Amman’s projects includes the fact that they do not properly address the relationship between the centre and the rest of the city. Solidere’s Master Plan, for instance, did not frame the development as a neighbourhood within a city, nor did it promote Solidere’s relationship with its surroundings. Instead (as with Amman’s Abdali) it emphasized internal associations, at the expense of seamless connections to the rest of the city. In Amman, the highdensity Abdali stands tall in contrast to the surrounding buildings and lower-end retail along its edge. In the case of Beirut, the Master Plan’s layout emphasizes the relationship between the downtown and the airport, rather than the historic ties between the centre and the surrounding middle-class neighbourhoods. Bordering Solidere, thousands of buildings remained war-torn and damaged. The second type of segregation is a socio-economic division. Abdali has been accused by critics of intensifying the polarization, not simply between the east and west of the capital, but also between the new “elitist urban island” (Daher 2007a) and the rest of the city. Abdali exacerbates the distinctions between those “with” and those “without” in the city, asserting that such holistic planning projects are “most onerous and least advantageous to those who are relatively powerless or relatively poor” (Gower Davies 1972, 2). In the survey conducted in Amman, looking specifically at which services Abdali is seen to provide to different societal categories, the majority of respondents viewed it as providing for a mere subset of Jordanians (the richest). The survey findings showed that the majority of Ammanis perceive that “higher-income Jordanians” within the city and “tourists” are the main targets of Abdali (tables 6.1 and 6.2). While both Abdali and Solidere claim to present a downtown that is for “everybody,” the reality is a little different. A recent advertisement for Abdali reads that for the select few, “Abdali will give them the prestigious address they deserve,” and D A M A C ’s The Heights and The Lofts projects were marketed with no Arabic-name equivalents for either (Mawared 2006a; 2006b), reflecting the fact that the local market and culture were not their primary targets.

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Table 6.1  Which of the following features does Abdali provide? (%) Provides to all Provides to a certain Jordanians subset of Jordanians

Does not provide

Shopping spaces

17

75

8

Pedestrian plazas

19

70

11

High-quality residences

9

83

8

High-quality office space and business hub

6

88

6

Public green space and parks

13

72

15

Public community and youth play areas and facilities

11

72

17

Improved infrastructure for Amman

3

78

19

Sports facilities

5

75

20

Playgrounds for children

7

73

20

Cultural centres

3

77

20

Source: Survey 2012.

Table 6.2  Who will Abdali’s customers be on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 as most prevalent? (%) 1 = None

2

3

4

5 = Majority

Lower-income Jordanians

79

17

3

0

1

Medium-income Jordanians

29

52

19

1

1

Higher-income Jordanians

6

17

49

20

8

Non-Jordanian tourists

3

12

24

46

15

Gulf tourists

4

7

16

15

58

Source: Survey 2012.

The third type of segregation between the RE CH CO s and the rest of the city is based on the mostly commercial functions that are to be found within the R E C H C O . Urban theorists have long questioned the neoliberal model where the “city space becomes an arena for market-oriented economic growth and elite consumption practices, thus stripping the public sphere of its social and political dimension” (Larkin 2009, 7). Beirut’s new downtown has been called an “amalgam of such de-contextualized history-as-culture-cum-kitsch overridden with international luxury consumer goods” (Haugbolle 2011, 86). Pure commerce-over-culture appears to undermine the tra­ ditional functions of the polis, and though marketed as public

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Tamam Mango Out of the list of features below, which needs upgrading in Amman? Please prioritize 1–7, 1 being of highest priority, and 7 of lowest

5 4.5

Score

4 3.5 3

Parking

Improved infrastructure

Playgrounds for children

Public community and youth play areas and facilities

Pedestrian plazas

Public green space and parks

Cultural centres

Sports facilities

High-quality residences

Shopping space

High-quality office space and business hub

2.5

Category

Figure 6.2  Priorities as defined by Amman’s residents (lowest is of higher priority) Source: Survey 2012.

projects, high-end retail, residences, and offices seem not to satisfy the public’s needs. Figure 6.2 reveals that high-end offices and ­residences as well as shopping space assume the lowest priority for Ammanis. c i t i z e n s h i p d e r a i l e d b y s e g r e g at i o n

The literature reflects that divisions in space reflect divisions in the public sphere. Mitchell (2003) in The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space argues that public space plays a more essential role to politics than can be conveyed by despatialized concepts such as the public sphere. Yet others such as Low and Smith (2006) discuss how physical space has been the key to the development of the public sphere. The positive interaction between citizens, civil society, and the state communicating through the public sphere is essential to a healthy society (Low and Smith 2006). More recently, starting around the early 2000s, research on urban politics has been

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marked by serious efforts at framing urban spaces as sites for democratic use. This is very evident in the literature on The Right to the City (Dike and Gilbert 2002) and The Just City (Fainstein 2010) – linking this work to urban democracy (Amin and Thrift 2002), the “good city” (Amin 2006), the “emancipator city” (Lees 2000), and the equitable city (Soja 2010). James Holston has described what makes the public sphere a public space as “spaces of insurgent citizenship” (Holston 1999, 155). These sites where “citizenship” takes place accompany the processes of change that transform societies. Rights to the public sphere have been won through constant struggle, whereby the ideal public space is designed for a representative public to meet and claim representation (Hartley 1992, cited in Mitchell 2003). In struggles for inclusion (especially ideological ones), authors note that the interactions and distinctions between the public sphere and public space can assume considerable importance (Mitchell 2003). While the public sphere is conceptual, public space is material – an actual site and ground from where political activity can flow. In the “context of real public spaces” alternative movements may arise (Howell 1993, 318). Accordingly, public spaces in capital cities around the world are becoming “small hidden islands of freedom,” islands of oppo­ sition surrounded by “Foucault’s carceral archipelago” (313). In these islands the fight for space is often physical, as was seen in the R EC HC O cases. With this apparent segregation, citizens view RE CH CO s as private rather than public undertakings. Eighty-seven per cent of Ammanis believe that Abdali should not have received the public benefits and exemptions it was given. Of the remaining 13 per cent, 72 per cent believe that Abdali should only receive them if “everyone else does too.” Similarly, 90 per cent of respondents believe that Abdali investors (not the public) should pay for the infrastructure surrounding the project, including major road expansion upgrades and overpasses, to cope with the increase in traffic. “Public” spaces created by R E C H CO s do not really represent what theorists such as Habermaas or Arendt term the “public sphere”27 compared with the extent to which they are actually private spaces for specific transnational and local investors. Most critical urbanists see these consumer islands as “commodified” spaces – spaces that are privately guarded and reserved for a certain elite, which serve more as resources for attracting tourists and economic investments than

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for the residents of the city. So the question remains: “How public is public space, when it has been embedded in a context that raises such formidable social barriers that the masses of ordinary working people … would feel uncomfortable entering?” (Lopate 1989, 24, cited in Summer 2005, 112). Around 72 per cent of those surveyed in Amman indicated that they would not go to Abdali to drink a cup of coffee on their own account (Survey 2012). The opposition to these projects argues that public interest can only be decided through a transparent process that is led by public debate – a process that is lacking in the current RE CH CO s. This process calls for more dialogue and regulation; the oversight of democratic institutions such as parliament; public hearings; an increased flexibility in changing plans; and providing more opportunities for original property owners to develop their properties. The public interest will be achieved through constantly “reshaping” (Kabbani 1992, 12) reconstruction to achieve consensus. This appears to be the preference in Amman where only 11 per cent of respondents believed the Abdali licensing process was “transparent.” An overwhelming 77 per cent of respondents would have participated in a public meeting about Abdali had they been given the chance. Surely, it is clear that citizens want a voice to help shape their cities. A dead city, an empty field open to the speculative ambitions of developers. Salaam 1998a, 132

w h at d o e s t h i s s p e c ta c l e m e a n f o r t h e av e r a g e c i t i z e n ?

The Lebanese activist group Abrand has produced a series of posters mocking what they see as having happened to Beirut’s heritage. One includes the traditional “stuffed zucchini,” koussa mehchi, transformed into Japanese sushi with chopsticks, implying that the typical Lebanese identity is being lost and its cultural uniqueness obliterated. However, the presence of R E C H C O s causes rifts in the daily life of city citizens, whereby citizenship becomes a hegemonic process – with the government working to assemble identities, fix power relations, and discipline space, contested through the “spatial practices of everyday life .... viewing dominant discourses and practices of citizenship as techniques of spatial organization”

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(Secor 2004, 352). The answers as to “why” and “how” these projects were developed have certain implications for the stability of citizens within their respective cities, and for these cities’ perceptions of themselves as constituents of a larger political order. Beirut’s “sense of place,” which emanated from the heritage within which Solidere was spatially located, was usurped by a different agenda – that of global, transnational investment, which ultimately turned the centre into an “island for the rich” (Borsdof and Hidalgo 2008). Similarly, Abdali’s process of abandoning the existing city and the original centre is bound to lead inevitably to both geographic inequalities and to the spatial displacement of those perceived as “second-class” citizens in favour of “first-class” tourism and investors (Daher 2007b). In Hoda Barakat’s novel Harith al-Miyah, the novel’s protagonist, Nikola, comes out of the city’s destroyed centre and goes through a new and unfamiliar downtown toward the sea. As he walks toward a concert for Fairouz, the renowned Lebanese singer, instead of seeing the horizon he knows, he actually sees a “sea of empty chairs, arranged in lines that made up large squares” (Barakat 1998, 175), and although the singer looks like Fairouz, it is not her. Thus, the singer, who is considered a symbol of Lebanon and national identity, is a mere look-alike, and even the sea ends up being plastic. Once the spatial organization changes rapidly, as is the case in R EC HC O s, citizenship adjusts as well, in ways that provoke divisions to surface, thereby causing discord. In this sense, the memories associated with spaces have been compromised in Amman’s Abdali and Beirut’s Solidere. Such space-related memories trigger the collective nostalgia that builds an identity toward citizenship by bridging divisions and strife, and by creating a time of togetherness and peace that has a physical manifestation, for instance in the form of a coffee shop in the downtown or a place of worship that brings together rich and poor alike. The privatization of the most sacred of public spaces, the city centre, when it undergoes redevelopment in the form of a R E C H C O , is certainly not a negligible phenomenon. One Al-Nahar editorial fretted that the “fate of Lebanon may now be in the hands of a private real estate company” (Op-ed in Al-Nahar, 21 December 1991). The concept of the centre or heart of the city has always been central to the literature on normative city form. But the emergence of new commercial and managerial uses disintegrated the traditional function of the downtown as a “polis.” The romance

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associated with the image of city centres as melting pots is one that has been exploited by large urban projects and their proponents. Beirut’s city centre is no exception. It was known as a mediating space (Larkin 2010), and after the civil war the image of the Lebanese rising from the ashes as a united people in the heart of the city was the framework under which Solidere marketed its plans (Kousis et al. 2011). Indeed, R E C HC O ’s campaigns to the public focused on the city’s healing effects for the future. By highlighting a celebrated past and shared history, R E C HC O s have been framed as devices to improve city living, yet their subsequent physical forms significantly undermine this. Reflecting on city planning, Davidoff writes, “city planning is a means for determining policy” (1965, 331). In this regard, Beirut and Amman’s downtown projects are not the value-free neutral zones that they present themselves as: spaces turned places to nourish a public sphere where political debate and discourse occur – thus problematizing conceptions of what it means to live in a city and participate in a “good life” (Paden 2001, 24). The urban governance policies at the time, and the lack of local public participation, meant that citizens were not involved in their city. The public goods given to what was perceived as a private gain by the RE CH CO s meant that the space they constructed sabotaged the social contract by undermining the physical identity and the memory of the place. By focusing on market forces alone, R E C HC O plans thus inevitably sacrificed heritage, identity, inclusion, and social cohesion, alienating and segregating the city citizens while developing real estate at the expense of memory, sense of place, and, ultimately, citizenship.

notes

  1 Historically, the Middle East and Europe have used the term “city c­ entre,” in Arabic wast al-balad (‫ )دلبلا طسو‬or wast al-madinah (‫)ةنيدملا طسو‬. The “centre” often refers to historic, or first inhabited, districts of cultural and political significance. In both these contexts, while the “city centre” may include the central business district, or CBD, it does not necessarily refer to the same concept or geographic location, with the C B D referring to an area of economic or financial significance. C B D focuses primarily on aspects of economic and financial significance. In the context of the United States, the term “downtown” has been used since the early 1900s

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to indicate the commercial heart of the city, and is synonymous with C B D. The projects mentioned in this chapter refer to themselves as downtowns.   2 Gakenheimer et al. (1995) referred to Solidere as a “real estate holding company.”   3 In Amman, the private company was owned in part by the Mawared Corporation of the Jordanian Army.   4 I have termed these projects “RECHCOs,” using a unified name to ascribe a framework to describe the massive public undertakings with long-lasting effects. Solidere and Abdali represent mega-projects in the sense that they were widely staged, given importance at the public sector level, with large and lasting impacts on the urban fabric (the term “mega-project” is defined by Barthel 2010, 134). These projects are unique instances of private initiatives supported by the public sector, not typical of other large projects or national initiatives. In addition, with expropriation at their core, alongside other public subsidies, REC HC Os are not typical of other mega-project experiences.   5 In 2010, Abdali contributed an average of 51 per cent of the total new built-up area in Amman.   6 Solidere represented what was called the largest public share offering in the Middle East at the time and contributed a significant percentage of Lebanon’s gross national product (G N P).   7 The use of surveys has long been established to examine “willingness to pay” (Alberini et al. 2004; Bateman et al. 2002; Dolan and Metcalfe 2008; Ghermandi et al 2007). In 2009, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG ) began a series of studies on valuing the benefits of regeneration looking at potential costs and benefits (Cambridge 2010).   8 These include any project features that cannot be “bought” or “sold.” This includes development gains such as improved standards of living in the city, or the expansion of public space and facilities in the city that are not traded directly in markets, so no direct market value can be assigned. While job creation and investment can be measured with direct statistics, other softer gains cannot be quantified directly.   9 Generally, in both Lebanon and Jordan, real estate is expropriated from ownership in the private sector to the public sector. 10 In Eastern tradition, descriptions of social cohesion – or lack of it – can be traced to the Arabic historiographer Ibn Khaldoun (2005) who described the concept of ‘asabiyya, referring to social solidarity and a sense of shared purpose to achieve social cohesion. ‘Asabiyya is not specifically a

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nomadic concept, or one based purely on blood relations; it simply refers to solidarity, and loyalty to one’s group (whether family, ethnicity, religion, city, or empire). More modern terminology might place ‘asabiyya in a frame of social capital found in social networks. The concept of ‘asabiyya rooted in the sense of belonging is an alternate description to the western social contract and is a concept still thought to be valid in the Arab world today (Ahmed 2006). 11 Rental laws preventing rent increases made capital adjustments on buildings unattractive to building owners, and certainly Amman’s traditional city centre does not reflect the hype, sophistication, and technology of a modern central business district (Survey 2012). 12 Beirut was dominant in financial, cultural, and commercial life in the Levant, “undisputed” in importance (Sennett 1993,11). Its Banking Street served as the headquarters to financial institutions across the Arab world. Frequented as a focal point for employment, just over a third of the workforce in Beirut lived within its limits. The growth of the city followed a radial pattern around its centre, which became a geographic, in addition to commercial, hub. However, with Beirut’s rapid growth, the Central District soon became overcrowded with a subpar infrastructure and other popular commercial areas began to emerge in Hamra, Raouche, Mar Elias, and elsewhere. 13 National Resources Investment and Development Corporation. Mawared is an administratively and financially independent government-owned body that heads the army’s investments and advertises itself as “Jordan’s largest real estate developer” (Mawared 2014). This strong investment in land was controversial. In the drive against corruption starting around 2010 in Jordan, the “Mawared file” came up strongly in the Anti-Corruption Commission’s investigations. 14 In 2010, Abdali contributed an average of 51 per cent of the total new built-up area in Amman. Solidere represented what was called the largest public share offering in the Middle East at the time and contributed a ­significant percentage of Lebanon’s gross national product. Abdali indicated the will to imitate Solidere, and the term Soliderification has even been invented to describe the phenomenon (Daher 2004, cited in Summer 2005, 105). 15 In another instance, the 1996 Lebanese parliamentary elections saw many members from opposition parties lose their seats. They were replaced with a much more passive parliament (some described as being there purely for the pursuit of wealth). The Lebanese parliament at the time included thirty-five millionaires and three billionaires.

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16 The political intricacies of the two cases are worthy of their own chapter and will not be tackled here beyond this discussion. 17 Lefebvre (1991) has looked at three types of space: the perceived (perçu); the conceived (conçu); and the lived (vécu). 18 However, as part of its heritage plan, Solidere participated in financing the dig and the preservation, and its Master Plan designated space for an open archaeological area (Rowe and Sarkis 1998). 19 In April 1992, demolishing within the BC D zone began again directed by the C D R , in an “alleged” (Haddad 1998) attempt at stabilizing the area from the danger of condemned buildings and to preserve public security. 20 The 2003 United States-led invasion of Iraq forced many affluent Iraqis to flee to Jordan. They bought homes in Amman’s affluent western section. Price increases of up to 400 per cent were recorded and real estate trading increased by upward of 74 per cent in 2004 alone. The attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States also had an impact as “not only did the attacks reshape Gulf investors vacationing patterns but they have also forced investors to look closer to home to invest their excess liquidity” (Global Investment House 2008). The government’s efforts at privatization and economic liberalization further boosted the role of the private sector and prompted a further boom in the real estate market (Oxford Business Group 2007, 150). Emerging credit facilities by banks also helped fuel the growing demand for real estate and construction (C B J  2012). The Amman market was awash with cash and seemingly everyone wanted to invest in land, including many foreign investors. One prominent report from the banking sector remarks that well over 1,200 new construction companies were established in the three years after 2004 (A B C Investments, 2007). 21 Street interviews, held Summer 2012. 22 Over the summer of 2012, 1,527 surveys were distributed across Amman. Historically in Amman, high-density buildings were almost never allowed, with the law insisting on a maximum height of four storeys. In 2005, Law No. 21 was adjusted to put conditions in place for constructing high-rise buildings. The law also approved heights of a maximum of 90 metres (though with some further conditions). The Abdali project was to receive an exemption from this law – receiving a building regulation allowing for the construction of a skyscraper of any height. The Abdali district is one of the highest in Amman, at about 900 metres above sea level. 23 One of Solidere’s early marketing slogans. 24 The Terebinth tree, the Pistacia palaestina, is a tree or shrub common in the Levant region.

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25 Mawared spared no expense for this branding. Leo Burnett – among the top ten worldwide advertising companies – led its marketing campaign. 26 The Greater Amman Municipality placed certain plots of land not sold to Abdali “under study” which effectively prevented the owners from constructing, selling, mortgaging, or developing the land until the designation was erased (Talal Abu Ghazaleh 2007). 27 See Young (1990), Madanipour (1999), Shonfield (1998), Mitchell (2003), Fraser (1990), Hartley (1992), Howell (1993), and Todd (2013) for definitions of public space. See Habermas (1962, 1996), Hauser (1998) and Castells (2008) for definitions of the public sphere, among many others. references

A B C Investments. 2007. “Real Estate Sector Report: July 2007.” Accessed 25 September 2012. http://www.jordanecb.org/ library/634448685518091250.pdf. Abdali. 2009a. “The Word of Abdali: Issue 8.” Accessed 5 August 2012. http://www.abdali.jo/index.php?r=media/newsletter. –  2009b. “The Word of Abdali: Issue 9.” Accessed 10 October 2012. http://www.abdali.jo/index.php?r=media/newsletter. –  2012. “Abdali.” Accessed 5 August 2012. http://www.abdali.jo. Ahmed, Akbar. 2006. “Ibn Khaldun’s Understanding of Civilizations and the Dilemmas of Islam and the West Today.” Middle East Journal 20–45. Accessed 10 January 2013. http://www.mafhoum.com/ press4/114S23.pdf. Alberini, Anna, Patrizia Riganti, and Alberto Longo. 2004. “Can People Value the Aesthetic and Use Services of Urban Sites? Evidence from a Survey of Belfast Residents.” Journal of Cultural Economics 27 (3–4): 193–213. Al-Sayyad, Nezar. 2001. Consuming Tradition, Manufacturing Heritage: Global Norms and Urban Forms in the Age of Tourism. London: Routledge. Altshuler, Alan, and David Luberoff. 2003. Mega-Projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment. Washington: Brookings Institution Press. Amin, Ash. 2006. “The Good City.” Urban Studies 43 (5/6): 1009–23. Amin, Ash, and Nigel Thrift. 2002. Cities: Reimagining the Urban. Cambridge: Polity Press. Barakat, Hoda. 1998. The Tiller of Waters. Translated by Marilyn Booth. Cairo: American University of Cairo Press.

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7 Islamized Postal Savings: A Model for Risk Sharing Sarah A. Tobin

i n t r o d u c t i o n a n d l i t e r at u r e r e v i e w

Amman, Jordan, is often characterized in the literature in neoliberal terms. Such accounts, as explored in depth by Christopher Harker in  chapter 1, often point to the concentration and contraction of the Hashemite monarchy in its service and welfare provisions, the altered cityscapes built by market-friendly and privatized models, and in the class-based hierarchies that have become entrenched through these processes. Amman is often portrayed in the literature in terms of a series of economic needs created by the traditional problems of government, which are met through the private marketplace (see chapter 1). As Khirfan articulates in the introduction to this volume, one challenge is that such portrayals can overlook the particularly Middle Eastern and localized contours of neoliberalism in which the structuring dynamics of both private and public players interact with micropolitics. These dynamics must be inclusive of the majority of urban residents, who are active social agents in their own environs. One way by which new formations of neoliberal urban governance, particularly in its emphasis on entrepreneurial solutions to traditional problems (Harvey 2005), can become inclusive of the practices of majorities is by examining economic innovations. Economic innovations provide a means of homing in on questions of urban governance in actor subjectivities and in social relations, which carry important implications for the physical environment and urban space. Furthermore, the case of Amman is particularly

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fruitful because one of the most pressing questions in contemporary urban Jordan is how to extend financial inclusion to marginalized populations, to the poor, and to those who find conventional financial services either untrustworthy or forbidden by religion. These personalized reasons are often understood in terms of mistrust of or skepticism toward governments or banks, or in terms of moral conviction deriving from an aversion to interest (riba) as found in Islamic law (Shari‘a). Rather than the abstraction that much literature on “majorities” evokes (see Christopher Harker, chapter 1), the majority populations in Amman are still very much working out, concretizing, and  integrating their interest in living an authentically Islamic life and lifestyle in Amman. Muslims in Amman, who constitute 92 per cent of the population, combine their interests in exerting a public and visible Islam with the opportunities and challenges of advanced capitalism in an urban setting, which ultimately results in the cultivation of a “neoliberal Islamic piety” (Tobin 2016). Islam also serves as a means of urban governance in Amman, as Muslim-majority urban residents expand their religious life to align with marketfriendly opportunities. Piety in the economy of Amman has become a pronounced new realm for the urban majorities. For Jordan, a non-oil-producing and resource-poor country, it is vital to financially integrate these majorities in order to mobilize domestic financial resources, finance public debt, and engage urban development and governance particularly through investments in housing. One mechanism, the postal savings system, has been used in the Middle East and North Africa (M E N A) for social justice, economic development, financial inclusion, domestic financial benefit, and urban governance. The basic premise of a postal savings system is to make use of national postal service centres, which are advantageous for their ubiquitous “brick and mortar” presence and public service orientation, and to provide infrastructure for obtaining and mobilizing local financial resources in the form of deposits and savings. These deposits and savings can then be applied and repurposed for domestic development, thereby enhancing urban governance. The presence of established postal service centres around the world provides a point of financial inclusion in postal savings for otherwise economically marginalized and excluded populations – especially women,

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the poor, and people in marginal urban and rural areas – at an affordable cost. Furthermore, postal savings and financial inclusion may also be channelled toward inclusion in urban development projects, particularly efforts to make housing affordable and formalized in a context of swiftly rising costs. State-society collaborations through public-private partnerships (PPPs) are one avenue by which social services can be extended to these groups through postal savings systems. Cooperation in postalsavings PP P s can be especially powerful in providing financial services for the poor, where the risks are higher and the incentives for for-profit businesses (the private sector) are low or absent (Lemos and Looye 2005; Lemos and de Oliveira 2005). By emphasizing the private-sector elements, such collaboration can improve non-participation based on distrust of the government. Furthermore, P P P s can sway potential participants into practices of inclusion, as they underscore the need for community participation (Lemos and de Oliveira 2005, 134). Finally, Islamized postal-savings P P P s address a desire for financial inclusion that is felt by (at least some of) the Muslim population, who might otherwise hesitate to participate in conventional interest-bearing endeavours. P P P s provide a very localized and Islamic “alternative” to other, mainly western-imported ideas and terms of inclusion. As a result, P P P s hold out tremendous hope for enhancing urban governance in areas that pertain to urban development in physical and social infrastructure in Jordan and the Middle East. In this chapter I argue that, as the case of Jordan’s Postal Savings Program demonstrates, the risks associated with mistrust of the government and financial inclusion for the so-called “high-risk” ­ poor and the risks associated with riba are more diffuse and manageable through state-society collaborations in P P P s, which ­ ultimately enhance financial inclusion and provide potential for enhanced urban development and governance, particularly through new housing opportunities. The administration of the Jordan Postal Savings Program comes from the Jordan Post Corporation, which is a state-owned company whose oversight comes from the Ministry of Telecommunications. The state-society collaboration in these linkages is an innovative arrangement spanning government ownership; civil and private management; and Islamic personnel, organizational arrangements, and discursive legitimation, all of which diffuse the

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risks across several sectors of society and may serve as a model for innovative arrangements in urban development and governance across the Muslim world. PPPs and Islamized postal savings in Jordan constitute an empirical realm to examine the very nexus that is the subject of Khirfan’s introduction and the remainder of this volume. First, while it is true that the Hashemite monarchy is an authoritarian regime, its rule has not been completely inflexible (Tobin 2012). Small innovations and strategic expansions of space for private-sector endeavours have worked fairly well. To dismiss the Hashemite regime as authoritarian would be to overlook the very contours that have made it successful in the midst of some of the most tumultuous times in the region during the Arab Spring. Second, the P P P in this case provides a very exciting window into better understanding the residual and enduring means by which the Jordanian state exerts some new forms of governance, in this case to the Islamic majority (and one understood as potentially threatening; see Schwedler 2006), the poor and marginalized, as well as women and their families. Finally, a P P P raises interesting questions for the potentially influential role of civil society actors in the power networks with both formal and informal elements. s tat e - s o c i e t y c o l l a b o r at i o n : ppps for service provision

Public-private partnerships are one mechanism by which the state and society can collaborate. These partnerships attempt to combine the public-service orientation of governmental endeavours with the efficiencies of the private sector. As such, they have been hailed as “an innovative policy tool to promote positive values, including decentralization, accountability, transparency and public participation” (Lemos and de Oliveira 2005, 133), as well as urban development and governance (Hohn and Neuer 2006; Nijkamp, van der Burch, and Vindigni 2002). PPPs are also controversial. In an era characterized by the pri­ oritization and ascendancy of market logic and profit-bearing endeavours, the authors of P P P s may eschew such an orientation, focusing instead on using the relationships they create to achieve a policy objective of improved public services. As a result, opinion on this strategy is diverse, and not everyone agrees that P P P s are an

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effective mechanism for saving public services. In fact, many critics see this as a “first step” toward privatizing public services (Ghobadian et al. 2004). Nonetheless, many countries are experimenting with various P P P arrangements as a way of providing public services while incorporating the efficiency of the private sector. Public-private partnerships are not characterized solely or even primarily by bilateral contractual agreements between public agencies and for-profit corporations. Other forms have emerged, including partnerships with nongovernmental organizations, private voluntary organizations, and community-wide resources (Lemos and de Oliveira 2005, 133). P P P s now constitute a variety of relationships that are formed for the “co-operative provision of infrastructure services” (Bennett, Grohmann, and Gentry 1999) or for policy arrangements (Rosenau 2000). Regardless of their specific arrangements and contents, P P P s are both common and commonly lauded as infrastructural and developmental innovations for providing public services and urban development. The case of water in the Muslim world is an important one for exploring P P P s that include, and even capitalize on, Islamically imbued goods and services. Islamic law does not recognize corporations in the same way that western legal structures do; partnerships are a primary means by which participatory innovation has occurred throughout the Islamic world (Kuran 2004, 2005). In Islam, water is of profound importance (Faruqui 2001). Given that the revelation of Islam occurred in one of the driest and hottest parts of the world (Saudi Arabia), repeated references to water’s ability to give and take life come as no surprise, from the stories of the spring of Zamzam (Leaman 2006, 235) to the stories of drowning in sweat on the Day of Judgment (198). Historically, Islamic governance has provided for the legal protection of private water rights, even protecting prices determined by the market, which can be quite high (Faruqui 2001, 14). At the same time, the Islamic injunctions to protect the poor often make it undesirable to fully privatize water markets. Hence, PPPs are one avenue by which Islamic governments may maintain “ownership” of the water for the community, while allowing the private sector to determine delivery methods, transparency, and accountability (15). In terms of urban development and governance, the case of housing in the Muslim world is an important one. In the contemporary world, the belief is widespread that financing housing should be

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done according to the tenets of Shari‘a (Kuran 2004). This bolsters Islamic mortgages through Islamic banks, and makes home ownership a highly private, individualized, and familial affair. Building and establishing a home, however, is also a distinctly Islamized idea that ties the public to each other and to the municipality in sacred bonds. Not only is the Ka‘aba in Mecca, or the geographic centre of Islamic worship, called “the House of God” (Bait Allah), but it is believed to  be an earthly replica of the “Oft-Frequented House” (Al-Bait Al-Ma‘mur), around which the angels circumambulate in pilgrimage (Qur’an 52:4). Geographic neighbours have rights over each other (4:36), and bad neighbours are regulated and can be forcibly removed from residing in a physical area (33:60). The Qur’an also regulates acceptable building materials (7:74; see Ghabin 2013). Despite the divine injunctions, the success of housing P P P s in Malaysia relied on the reputation of the developers (Abdul-Aziz and Kassim 2011), and in Nigeria reflected an overemphasis on access to land (Ibem 2010) and underemphasis on adequate provision of infrastructure (2011). Nonetheless, in Muslim countries across the globe, P P P s are one important way to join both divine and mundane housing concerns across the private, neighbourly, and municipal divide. t h r e e t y p e s o f r i s k i n p o s ta l s av i n g s

Due to financial precarity, perceptions of risk play a vital role in the financial behaviours of individuals in low-income countries, more so than in middle- or high-income countries (Besley 1995). In Jordan, the postal savings system responds to these perceptions by integrating three types of risk: 1) lack of trust in the government and ­governmental services, which include the postal services; 2) lack of financial inclusion due to the perceived high risks of lending to the poor and marginalized; and 3) risk related to interest rates, including Islamic injunctions against riba. Lack of trust in government poses a risk because it is believed that trust “engenders efficient management through the production of social capital,” and management is not possible without trust (Löfstedt 2005, xi–xii). Beyond management, lack of trust in the government and the perceived risks in dealing with the government are often obstacles, even prohibitively so, to governmental expansion and innovation into new fields and methods for the

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delivery of public services (Bélanger and Carter 2008). Educating the public does not always mitigate these risks (Macoubrie 2006). In fact, trust in the government can best be understood as twodimensional. The first dimension is a generalized trust on ethical issues of “competence, care, fairness, and openness”; the second is specific to the methods by which policies are brought about and enacted (Poortinga and Pidgeon 2003, 961). This two-pronged model reminds us that trust in the government is a multivariate experience; there is not necessarily a one-to-one or causal relationship between a general trust in the government and the methods by which a government extends new public policies, services, or provisions. Historically, the Jordanian government has struggled with the populace’s mistrust. Jordan’s history of authoritarian practices, such as clientelism, corruption, co-optation, and paternalism in policymaking has rendered trust difficult to earn. However, framing the lack of trust in government as a generalized or abstract feeling may overlook the more nuanced understanding of trust that the populace actually holds. In contemporary environments like Jordan, populations have reported that a generalized trust in the government in regulatory bodies or industry has been reallocated to individuals and special interest groups, thus shifting the possible spheres of trust to include affiliate NGOs, academics, or religious bodies, when partnered with the government (Löfstedt 2005, xv). The second risk in attempting to extend financial services to the poor is encountered in a context of high rates of exclusion. It is considered a truism – accepted since the post-1970s financial era – that lending to the poor is a high-risk endeavour. Loans to the poor come with higher interest rates to compensate lenders for taking on the higher credit risk, and serial refinancing and debt recycling are not uncommon outcomes among these higher-risk borrowers. As a result, many providers of financial services have sought to alter lending methodologies to improve inclusivity. Microfinance alternative approaches to addressing the financial needs of the so-called high-risk poor have been popularized by Mohammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank (Bornstein 2005), organizations such as Kiva (Bruett 2007; Flannery 2007, 2009), and the work of scholars such as Clifford Geertz (1966) on rotating savings and credit associations. While it is commonly believed that the poor make risky borrowers who should be “cared for” financially, the idea that the poor are

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risky savers is not true. Compared with today’s borrowing and credit institutions, savings and deposit institutions for the poor have a longer and more substantive history. People’s banks, credit unions, and savings and credit cooperatives emerged in Europe in the 1800s, with the earliest models of shared or “pooled” savings and deposit institutions appearing in Germany in 1870, Indonesia in 1895, and Latin America (C GA P 2006) and the United States in the early 1900s (Walter 2006). While the financial inclusion of the poor through non-microfinance savings options has proven possible across a wide social and geographic portion of the world, similar opportunities for financial inclusion through insurance or credit unions are more difficult to find today, primarily due to infrastructural underdevelopment (Besley 1995). The third risk, due to interest rates in postal savings programs, represents both a moral and a fiscal risk. The problem of reconciling religious prohibitions and interest accrual and payments in postal savings accounts is not new. In early twentieth-century Egypt, Muslim owners of savings accounts at the newly established Postal Savings Fund refused to receive interest from their accounts (Nomani 2003, 40). However, in the 1970s the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Muhammed ‘Abduh, at the request of the Postal Authority of Cairo, issued a fatwa that Muslims who deposited their money in the Postal Authority had the legal right to take their profits accrued on accounts and to treat them as increases gained from mudaraba investments (Nomani 2003, 40–1; Ahmad 1978, 184; SkovgaardPetersen 1997, 304, 307). ‘Abduh noted that, while the payments were interest-based, the Postal Authority was not borrowing money from the public and depositors out of necessity, and “the prohibition of the payment of interest could not be lifted” (Nomani 2003, 40). p o s ta l s av i n g s i n t h e m i d d l e e a s t a n d n o rt h a f r i c a

Postal savings now provide more access points for savers than “all the world’s bank branches combined” (Scher and Yoshino 2004, xv). It is a proven and effective method for providing basic financial services and savings, and is, for many people – particularly those who are otherwise financially excluded – a way to accumulate savings and experience some measure of financial inclusion. Begun in Scotland in the nineteenth century, postal savings’ infrastructures

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were established in colonialist eras, only to fall into decline in postindependence eras, re-emerging in the 1990s as part of efforts to provide social and financial services during neoliberal reforms (Scher and Yoshino 2004, xv; Scher 2001, 3). Participation and deposit levels consistently show improvement and strengthening during times of economic insecurity, political anxiety, or rising mistrust of banks, which can be attributed to the appearances and assurances of governmental guarantees on deposits (Scher and Yoshino 2004; Scher 2001, 4; O’Hara and Easley 1979, 746). Of particular concern in the ME NA region is the interest payment that accumulates on Muslims’ postal savings accounts. Several contemporary Shari‘a scholars have ruled that interest-bearing accounts through postal savings schemes are not necessarily subject to injunctions against interest, or riba. Similar to the case of Egypt, the case of contradictory Malaysian fatawa brings this to bear. In the Selangor region in the 1970s, one scholar indicated that interest from a fixedinterest rate bearing account was permissible because “it is a savings.” The scholar also indicated that interest arising from a postal saving account is considered permissible because it is part of a ­government policy designed to encourage thrift, rather than a business endeavour. Another case – from Perak, Negri Sembilan, and Trengganu in the early 1970s – is quite restrictive, forbidding all interest. As the Malaysian case demonstrates, even Muslim scholars in the same country disagree on interest-bearing accounts, including those in postal savings schemes (Hooker 1993, 100). Nonetheless, Malaysia’s postal savings system, the Pos Malaysia Berhad, has granted tax-exempt status to the interest income generated in their savings schemes, adding further complexity to Muslims’ relationships to interest-bearing savings options (Mansur, Mamalakis, and Idris 2011, 4). It is easy to see that although there is a pronounced need for financial inclusion for Muslims throughout the Islamic world, that inclusion is difficult to accomplish. The Arab world in particular has a history of very high levels of financial exclusion (Akhtar and Pearce 2010, 1). A 2009 study found that two-thirds of the total adult population in the Arab world is financially unserved: only around 10 per cent of adults have loan accounts with a bank (ElZoghbi and ­Martinez 2012, 1). MEN A has fewer than half of the A TMs per ­capita that Eastern Europe and Central Asia do (Akhtar and Pearce 2010, 3). Financial inclusion here translates to better

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urban governance because the capital resources can be mobilized. Incorporating capital into the formalized banking and governmental ­sectors means that generalized costs to the “banked” sectors of society are reduced, those included have a role in demanding transparency and providing accountability for the use of their funds, and the government has more capital available to engage in urban development projects that enhance the scope and depth of their governance capabilities. Postal savings in the ME NA region has emerged as one possible alternative for expanded financial inclusion. In 1999, a United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs survey of eighty countries found that forty-nine had postal savings facilities and twenty-seven had postal savings systems; thirty-two of these countries had postal checking operations (Scher 2001, 8). M E N A has more than 44.5 million accounts in 10,417 branches, with more accounts (55.4 million), though fewer branches (9,487) in com­ mercial banks (El-Zoghbi and Martinez 2012, 1). Egypt reported 7.5 million accounts, the region’s largest number; Tunisia reported 1,871,500; Morocco 1,029,905; Syria 565,550; Jordan 54,000; and Yemen 53,721 (Scher 2001, 9). Notably, the Moroccan government created a new Postal Bank to expand savings and chequing accounts to more than 4 million people in 17,000 branches, targeting lowincome populations with services such as money transfers, extended payment options, debit cards, overdrafts, and mortgage loans (Akhtar and Pearce 2010, 4). Arab postal savings and payment accounts already reach nearly 17 per cent of adults in the M E N A region and account for a large share of the domestic transfer market, including 70 per cent in Morocco and 90 per cent in Algeria, and in postal branches that equal or outnumber commercial bank branches in Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt (El-Zoghbi and Martinez 2012, 2). There is considerable evidence that access to financial inclusion through postal savings correlates positively with better institutions of governance, and financial sector development contributes positively to economic growth and welfare (Honohan 2008). Especially in societies with limited trust in the government and in private institutions, postal savings accounts in P P P s become backchannel ways to achieve financial inclusion and development goals such as empowering women to become in financially independent from their husbands (Scher 2001, 175), improving infrastructure which enhances

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urban governance that in turn benefits a wide range of civil and social services (42) including crime reduction (Baradaran 2014), and  increased knowledge capacity to achieve local social and cultural goals (Scher 2001, 16). As Christopher Harker points out (chapter 1), the urban governance of majorities may well be crafted through families, which women’s financial independence through postal savings helps to achieve. p o s ta l s av i n g s i n j o r d a n

Jordan’s Postal Savings System (Sanduq Al-Tawfir Al-Bareed) was established on 1 September 1974. From those origins, the Postal Savings Fund in Jordan was designed for and dedicated to the financial inclusion of women, who might otherwise have had few financial resources or might have had difficulty obtaining financial independence from their husbands. The Postal Savings System has undergone significant changes in the forty years since its inception. Namely, the methodologies employed by the Postal Savings System have become “Islamized” in accordance with Islamic banking methodologies and simultaneously institutionalized, amplifying ­ home ownership opportunities as part of urban development and governance. The Jordan Post Office was established in 1920 under the terms of the British Mandate and in coherence with the Universal Postal Convention (Campbell 2006, 63). The push to privatize Jordan’s postal services began in 1996. Between 1996 and 1999, a number of major public services were privatized, including the public bus service, the state-run cement factory, and the public water utility. In 2000, 40 per cent of the public telecommunications company was sold to France Telecom (64). Jordanian customers did not trust the government for mail delivery service, bill paying, or savings operations through the post office. In 2002, the Jordan Postal Administration employed about 2,300 people at 400 post offices along the country’s eight major delivery routes from the main sorting centre in Amman. With such a low volume of mail and a system of postal box delivery rather than home delivery, residents rarely checked their boxes, making the postal system illequipped to deal with more sophisticated forms of communication, including shipments of valuables or mailing bill payments. The

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accounts were so dismal that 44 per cent of the Postal Administration’s 2002 budget was a government subsidy (Campbell 2006, 61). Postal savings in the Jordan Postal Savings Fund experienced a similar decline. In 1995 customer deposits accounted for 9,100,434 JOD ($12,831,611.94), but by 2000 the amount had dropped by 42 per cent, to 3,826,100 J O D. At the same time, because interest rates were fixed, the fund received 385,726 J O D – a 16.5 per cent return on interest from borrowers, compared with 180,333 J O D and 7.8 per cent in 1995 (Jordan Postal Savings Fund 2014), thereby making it highly unpopular (see table 8.1). From 1999 to 2000, the  fund was experiencing (negatively) all three types of risk described above. To remedy this situation, the Jordan Postal Administration was reformed in the early 2000s under a P P P to increase efficiency and reliability, limit dependence on government subsidies, and serve the national economy. In 2003, the Postal Administration became the Jordan Post Corporation (Campbell 2006, 60), an administrative shift that created a state-owned corporation, which was then accountable for the profits and losses of postal operations (Scher and Yoshino 2004). As a result, the Jordan Post Corporation is now regulated by the Ministry of Telecommunication. As an i­ndependent institution, the Postal Savings Fund manages postal savings accounts and is responsible for Islamizing the financial services. Despite the P P P that had established the Jordan Post Corporation and the independence of the Jordan Postal Fund, trust in the government to provide services remained low in the early 2000s. As Scher (2001, 15) notes, the need to move toward a P P P is “particularly critical for those countries in which government institutional bureaucracies have been cited for inefficiency and as outlets for political patronage.” Jordan has experienced such criticisms (Scher and Yoshino 2004). Interest risk played a strong role in the P P P development, in postal savings service offerings, and in developing trust. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, between 20 and 40 per cent of Jordanians preferred Islamic products (El-Zoghbi 2012). Quietly and without much ­fanfare, the Postal Savings Fund Islamized its methodologies in late 1999. Table 7.1, compiled from statistics reported on the Postal Saving Fund’s website (www.psf.gov.jo), illustrates the way these changes brought the fund to higher levels of functioning (Jordan Postal Savings Fund 2014).

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2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

0 0

Dividends/ Interest

Rate of return on loans (%)

447,443

12.30

Profits/ Murabaha

Rate of return on Murabaha (%)

22

472,020 33.60

588,077 34.50

595,270 25.30

580,356 3.10

171,899

Loans/ 3,636,451 2,145,579 1,751,057 1,722,963 2,289,824 5,454,117 Murabaha

0

0

0

0

16.50

385,726 11.40

422,955

7.80

202,239

7.80

190,312

7.80

180,333

2,333,600 3,713,000 2,592,814 2,439,910 2,311,973

9,804,800 9,732,600 7,385,000 4,759,700 3,718,500 3,722,600 3,826,100 5,186,600 7,841,600 8,457,104 8,702,869 9,100,434

2006

Loans/ Interest

Customer deposits

 

Table 7.1  Certified comparative study, 1995–2006 (all amounts in Jordanian dinars; 1 J O D =US$1.41)

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In table 7.1 we see a precipitous decline in customer deposits from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s (from 9.1 million J O D in 1995 to a low of 3.7 million J O D in 2002). After murabaha options were implemented, however, customer deposits as an index of confidence reached levels higher than they had been in 1995. Furthermore, the amount in murabaha loans in 2006 (3.6 million J O D ) is higher than the amount in conventional loans in 1995 (2.3 million J O D ) by 63.6 per cent. In only half a decade, the Postal Savings Fund recovered from its worst year and exceeded its best-performing year of the previous ten years. As a result of the P P P , which included Islamized personnel and infrastructural and methodological elements, the Postal Savings Fund emerged as an example of a highly formalized institution that uses Islamic banking methodologies, but is not a wholly governmental, private, or Islamic institution. Neither is it a bank – or an Islamic bank; the Postal Savings Fund is therefore not subject to the laws put forth by the Central Bank of Jordan. Similar to other systems around the world, the minimum savings account balance is 10 J O D (about $14), whereas formal Islamic banks in Amman typically require at least 200 J O D , or $280 – the equivalent of one month’s salary for most Ammanis. The deposits are held for a minimum period, during which time they are invested in halal investments. Accounts are entitled to share in the annual profits from murabaha investments, provided that the account balances are more than 25  J O D . The Postal Savings Fund also offers the equivalent of ­cer­tificates of deposit, in which 1,000 J O D are invested for one year, without an option for early withdrawl. When the investment matures, the 1,000 J O D is returned, along with any murabaha profits. The Postal Savings Fund uses Islamized methods of murabaha, musharaka, mudaraba, and ijara. There is financing available for the purchase of consumer goods, income-generating projects, and investments (Jordan Postal Savings Fund 2011, 18). The fund appears to be one of the first in the M E N A region to operate according to Islamic models, and in its conventional and Shari‘a-compliant products less than 1,000 J O D can be held without a guarantee (El-Zoghbi and Martinez 2012, 3). The Postal Savings Fund’s stated mission is to assist small depositors as they save and to boost the national economy (Jordan Postal Savings Fund 2011). The fund promotes the uniqueness of its P P P in printed materials, such as the annual report, which highlights the

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extensive network of post offices in Jordan; the guarantees on deposits provided by the government; the tax-exempt status of profits earned in accounts; the impermissibility of private or governmental entities to seize deposited amounts in life or after death; and the Islamic methodologies in use (7–8). One area in which the simultaneous benefit of building small deposits combines with boosting the national economy and enhancing urban governance is that of housing. Everyday social and economic life in the Middle East is forged through one’s housing (see Abu-Ghazzeh 1999, Ghannem 2002; Singerman 2009). “Popular housing” is often informal, unofficial, irregular, and illegal, and its enforcement can be seen as both contradictory and disenfranchising (see van Gelder 2013). As a result of these tensions, combined with local economic fluctuations and additional waves of refugees (Palestinian, Iraqi, and now Syrian), Jordan’s King ‘Abdullah called 2008 the year for “Decent Housing for Decent Living.” The government initiative, implemented by the Housing and Urban Development Corporation, established fifty-two P PP s (including the Postal Savings Fund) to enable 100,000 Jordanians to own a home (H U D C 2015). In 2011, to further expand the P PP , the fund signed a memorandum of understanding (MO U) with several civil, private, and public associations and institutions, including the Jordanian Press Association, Orange Jordan, the Consolidated Consultants, and the Irbid Electric Company. The MOU lays out a preferential loan arrangement in which members and employees of these associations and institutions may participate, allowing for “financing services according to Shari‘a compliant [sic] reaching six thousand Jordanian Dinars with a payback period extended to five years with a fixed Murabaha rate (interest rate) of 2%” (Jordan Postal Savings Fund 2011, 12). The “Housing Loan Fund” proved to be a very popular program. From 2007–09, the Housing Loan Fund received revenues of 7,000 J OD (2010). In the boon of the late 2000s, the Housing Loan Fund took off, and received revenues of 95,488 in 2012 and 71,705 JOD in 2013. Part of the rise in popularity of housing loans after 2009 is attributable to the establishment and growth of “Housing Certificates,” which is a government program that buys housing in the open market, facilitates the completion of unfinished units, and then sells the apartments to actors through the Postal Savings Fund and “Housing Loan Fund.” Considered an interest-free financial instrument that

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functions like a bond issuance, each individual certificate represents one square metre of ownership, which can be traded on a secondary market; value is based on construction sector supply and demand, not the housing sector (Ahmad 1997). Investments of deposits are most frequently put into “financing production and development projects.” The “Housing Loan Fund” and Housing Certificate programs are effective and important ways of engaging infrastructural development, which achieves national development and urban governance (Jordan Postal Savings Fund 2014). The MOU also provides for a qard hassan (interest-free loan) of 2,000 JOD for educational purposes for participants’ children. The Postal Savings Fund is trying to implement other services and technologies, including a savings program for life expenses such as health insurance, marriage, and the pilgrimages of ‘omrah and hajj. The fund is also contemplating the introduction of a debit card and mobile and online banking, the development of employment partnerships with recent university graduates, and M O U s with other funding sources (Jordan Postal Savings Fund 2011, 23). As a result of this expanded financial inclusion, the venture has effectively spread risk across a wide section of society: the Jordan Post Corporation’s shares are held exclusively by the government, but the corporation is run by citizens and non-bureaucrats, methodologies are Islamized, and primary funding comes from a broad cross-section of society in the form of payments for services, savings payments, and financial services. This dispersion of risk has given all sectors of Jordanian society the ability to be flexible, each to their own interests: the Jordanian government is able to better incorporate, monitor, and govern an otherwise informal financial and housing sector; the private sector benefits from increased profits; and the Jordanian populace is able to both formalize and Islamize their savings and housing investments. Urban governance here is represented by the “pursuit of collective goals through an inclusive strategy of resource mobilization” which is also highly flexible and localized in both procedures and outcomes (Pierre 2005, 449). discussion

The Jordan Postal Savings Fund has experienced a notable rebirth due to state-society collaboration resulting from a P P P . The partnership between the government and the private sector as a state-owned

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corporation, combined with independent oversight and endorsements and the implementation of Islamic methodologies in the fund, create an innovative set of relationships that have reinvigorated savings mechanisms by diffusing risk and reallocating trust. Despite the profound transformations of the Jordan Postal Administration and the Postal Savings Fund, the services offered in this country are still substantively different than the postal service offerings in more economically advanced countries, a fact that may limit the transferability of the system. The US Postal Service delivers 700 postal items per capita and European post offices deliver 200 items per capita, whereas the Jordanian post delivers only 7 (Campbell 2006, 62). At the same time, private delivery services have thrived, and companies such as Aramex, DandC, D H L (Deutsche Post), FedEx, T P G (the Dutch Post Office), and U P S account for more doorstep delivery in Jordan than the Jordan Postal Service (62–3). Furthermore, Islamized postal savings programs are relatively uncommon. Egyptian religious leaders have struggled for decades with the Islamic implications of postal savings and is only now providing Islamic savings accounts through a partnership between Egypt Post and Islamic Faysal Bank (El-Zoghbi and Martinez 2012, 3). Given that ME NA governments have embraced Islamic banking – albeit at varying levels – the reluctance to Islamize postal savings methods, or at least to offer the option as a tool to promote financial inclusion and social and economic development, is surprising. c o n c l u s i o n s , i m p l i c at i o n s , a n d r e c o m m e n d at i o n s

As the Jordan Postal Savings Fund looks to continue growing and diffusing the risks associated with 1) engaging in government sectors a majority may mistrust, 2) another majority of poor borrowers at the margins, and 3) interest rates (riba), as understood by an Islamic majority, expanding the connections and services of the “Housing Loan Fund” beyond associated employees and the capacity of the Housing Certificates program may prove vital. Not everyone in Jordan is connected to a “brick and mortar” postal branch, and certainly not everyone has access to a commercial bank. However, enhanced urban development through housing is one potential expansion of governance through the Postal Savings Fund in the

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Middle East and in Jordan (Du and Zhou 2006, 101), particularly in its potential to reduce costs and enhance efficiencies. As an economic innovation for today’s Amman, postal savings also works to create a new physical space in the urban environs that expands governance with otherwise marginal majorities. Because there are ways to make housing loans available through Islamic financing methods, postal savings in Jordan is poised to become a major contributor to infrastructural development, economic growth, and urban governance. This was the case in Singapore (Phang 2010). The postal savings bank was established with the purpose of extending “housing loans to depositors at an interest rate lower than prevailing interest rates” (450). Economic redistribution through the housing sector, combined with rapid economic growth and a tight labour market, mean that absolute poverty in Singapore has nearly been eliminated (451–2). While enhancing opportunities for home ownership through Islamized postal savings is certainly not a panacea for economic development and urban governance, it provides a promising, localized possibility for strong contributions. Given the recent history of the Jordan Post Corporation to adapt and adjust in state-society collaborations, the expansion of the postal savings program and national development through housing looks all the more promising. Continuing to expand the Postal Savings Fund through new partnerships and technologies holds promise for emulating the kinds of innovative state-society collaborations from which other countries have long benefited, and provides an in-depth empirical case that further elucidates the distinctive contours of neoliberalism in Jordan at the nexus of a complicated authoritarian regime, neoliberal economic factors, and the structuring work of majority actors at the intersections of formal and informal networks.

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Hohn, Uta, and Birgit Neuer. 2006. “New Urban Governance: Institutional Change and Consequences for Urban Development.” European Planning Studies 14 (3): 291–8. Honohan, Patrick. 2008. “Cross-Country Variation in Household Access to Financial Services.” Journal of Banking & Finance 32 (11): 2493–500. Hooker, Barry. 1993. “Fatawa in Malaysia 1960–1985: Third Coulson Memorial Lecture.” Arab l q 8:99–100. H UD C . 2015. “Royal Initiative for Housing Dignified Housing for Decent Living.” (Al-Mubaadara Al-Malikiyya Lil-Iskaan Sakan Kareem L-‘Ayeesh Kareem) http://www.hudc.gov.jo/Pages/viewpage.aspx?pageID=178. Ibem, Eziyi Offia. 2010. “An Assessment of the Role of Government Agencies in Public-Private Partnerships in Housing Delivery in Nigeria.” Journal of Construction in Developing Countries 15 (2): 23–48. –  2011. “Public-Private Partnership (PPP ) in Housing Provision in Lagos Megacity Region, Nigeria.” International Journal of Housing Policy 11 (2): 133–54. Jordan Postal Savings Fund. 2014. Certified Comparative Study 95-06. Accessed 24 November 2014. http://www.psf.gov.jo/index.php?option= com_contentandview=articleandid=30%3A-95-06andcatid=13%3 A2010-09-22-07-31-17andItemid=18andlang=ar. – 2011. Annual Report 2011. Amman, Jordan: Jordan Postal Savings Fund. http://www.psf.gov.jo/images/stories/englishreport2011.pdf. – 2010. Charts 2006–2009 with Comparisons. http://www.psf.gov.jo/ index.php?option=com_contentandview=articleandid=61 %3A-2006-2009-andcatid=18%3A2010-12-23-07-28-56andlang=ar. Kuran, Timur. 2004. “Why the Middle East Is Economically Underdeveloped: Historical Mechanisms of Institutional Stagnation.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 18 (3): 71–90. –  2005. “The Absence of the Corporation in Islamic Law: Origins and Persistence.” The American Journal of Comparative Law 53: 785–834. Leaman, Oliver, ed. 2006. The Qur’an: An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge. Lemos, Maria Carmen, and João Lúcio Farias de Oliveira. 2005. “Water Reform across the State/Society Divide: The Case of Ceará, Brazil.” International Journal of Water Resources Development 21 (1): 133–47. Lemos, Maria Carmen, and Johanna W. Looye. 2003. “Looking for Sustainability: Environmental Coalitions across the State-Society Divide.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 22 (3): 350–70. Löfstedt, Ragnar E. 2005. Risk Management in Post-Trust Society. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Macoubrie, Jane. 2006. “Nanotechnology: Public Concerns, Reasoning and Trust in Government.” Public Understanding of Science 15 (2). Mansur, Kasim, Markos Mamalakis, and Sidah Idris. 2011. “Savings, Investment and FDI Contribution to Malaysian Economic Growth in the Globalization Era.” International Business and Economics Research Journal 2 (8). Nijkamp, Peter, Marc van der Burch, and Gabriella Vindigni. 2002. “A Comparative Institutional Evaluation of Public-Private Partnerships in Dutch Urban Land-Use and Revitalisation Projects.” Urban Studies 39 (10): 1, 865–80. Nomani, Farhad. 2003. “The Problem of Interest and Islamic Banking in a Comparative Perspective: The Case of Egypt, Iran and Pakistan.” Review of Middle East Economics and Finance 1 (1): 36–69. O’Hara, Maureen, and Easley, David. 1979. “The Postal Savings System in the Depression.” The Journal of Economic History 39 (03): 741–53. Phang, Sock-Yong. 2010. “Housing Policy, Wealth Formation and the Singapore Economy.” Housing Studies 16 (4): 443–59. http://www. tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02673030120066545?journalCode= chos20. Pierre, Jon. 2005. “Comparative Urban Governance: Uncovering Complex Causalities.” Urban Affairs Review 40 (4): 446–62. Poortinga, Wouter, and Nick F. Pidgeon. 2003. “Exploring the Dimensionality of Trust in Risk Regulation.” Risk Analysis 23 (5): 961–72. Rosenau, Pauline Vaillancourt, ed. 2000. Public-Private Policy Partnerships. Cambridge, M A: The M I T Press. Scher, Mark J. 2001. “Postal Savings and the Provision of Financial Services: Policy Issues and Asian Experiences in the Use of the Postal Infrastructure for Savings Mobilization.” desa Discussion Paper No. 22. New York: United Nations. http://www.un.org/esa/esa01dp22.pdf. Scher, Mark J., and Naoyuki Yoshino, eds. 2004. Small Savings Mobilization and Asian Economic Development: The Role of Postal Financial Services. New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc. Schwedler, Jillian. 2006. Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Singerman, Diane. 2009. “The Siege of Imbaba, Egypt’s Internal ‘Other,’ and the Criminalization of Politics.” In Cairo Contested: Governance, Urban Space, and Global Modernity, edited by Diane Singerman. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 111–44. Skovgaard-Petersen, Jakob. 1997. Defining Islam for the Egyptian State: Muftis and Fatwas of the Dār Al-Iftā. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

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Tobin, Sarah A. 2012. “Jordan’s Arab Spring: The Middle Class and AntiRevolution.” Middle East Policy 19 (1): 96–109. – 2016. Everyday Piety: Islam and Economy in Jordan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Van Gelder, Jean-Louis. 2013. “Paradoxes of Urban Housing Informality in the Developing World.” Law and Society Review 47: 493–22. doi:10.1111/lasr.12030. Walter, John R. 2006. “Not Your Father’s Credit Union.” Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Economic Quarterly 92 (4): 353–77.

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concluding remarks

Order and Disorder in the Making of Middle Eastern Cities Seteney Shami infrastructures and superstructures

It is heartening to see the growing literature on cities in the Middle East region, approaching the complexities of this most complex of human spatial habitats from different aspects and perspectives. With its focus on urban governance and practice, this volume aims at moving the debates on governance from a management to a political perspective, taking into account the various actors and forces that create the cities in the region. The chapters deal with different aspects of three cities: Amman, Cairo, and, to a certain extent, Beirut, from a focus on the infrastructural and socio-economic to the more superstructural and discursive. As a researcher involved in urban studies since the mid-1980s, a particularly welcome development is the growing scope of the literature, encompassing new cities (especially those of the Gulf states) and new urban terrains (elite areas as well as slums, leisure spaces as well as markets), as well as the accumulation of research on the same sites. A new generation of researchers is thus building upon, nuancing, and critiquing the literatures about their research sites, as opposed to approaching Middle Eastern cities as a tabula rasa or simply as cases illustrating theories emerging from a generalized (and hence ideological) global western city. These scholarly developments give our cities an agency that has long been occluded in the literature. In this way, this research also connects with the role of the city in the unfolding story, which refuses to be captured within the inadequate frame of “The Arab Spring.”

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In the uprisings and unrest that have marked the region since late 2010, the city has clearly been an actor,1 offering a diversity of spaces that become marked with either different phases of the political tumultuous developments or with different and opposing factions and positions. Thus Tahrir Square in Cairo moves from being the heart of the democratic revolution to the stage upon which the “revolutionary” regime attempts to impose its hegemony. In the third commemoration of the 25 January revolution, the state organized the celebration of the revolution in Tahrir with its own vision of the type of speeches, music, and dance that should be put on “national” display. However, the revolution had early moved on from its focus on Tahrir in Cairo to Maspero and Mohammed Mahmoud Street, each of which marked and became spaces of commemoration for particular events and turning points in the process of the unfolding revolution. A major rupture, the aftermath of the 30 June revolution, is represented by the Rabi’a Al-Adawiya Square where the Muslim Brotherhood made its desperate stand before being overrun by the forces of the military. Finally, those who critique both the Morsi government and its supporters and the post-military coup government search for “a third square” and find it in the virtual space of activist media which searches for its own physical space in the map of the revolution.2 In similar ways, public spaces in a number of cities across the region are more than simply staging grounds or only symbolic reminders of something “bigger” or more “real” in the political arena. A quick survey of examples makes the point: the destruction of the Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain, with all its contradictory meanings; the spatial politics of bombings and assassinations in Beirut; the key shift of the Tunisian revolution from the provincial city of Sidi Bouzid to the capital Tunis; the different inflections of street protests in Alexandria versus Port Said versus Cairo; the emergence of the second capital of Benghazi in Libya – all these interconnected but disparate spaces tell the many stories of the change that is being heralded and the way the past imbricates itself into the politics of the present. The various agencies, authorities, and interests that govern, or attempt to govern, these tumultuous spaces operate within such contexts, not to mention the effect of external wars beyond internal unrest and clashes as well as refugee movements and the types of reconstruction necessitated by widespread urban destruction, for

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example the city of Aleppo in Syria. The spread of new forms of capital and land use as well as the reshaping of urban space within the logics of neoliberalism are forms of change and violence that intersect with those mentioned above. Relegating one to the realm of “politics” and the latter to the realm of “economics” artificially separates processes that are firmly intertwined and blurs the fact that it is the same city publics, and state citizens, who are reacting to and interacting with, both the political and economic forces that reshape their urban contexts. In addition, historical processes should be linked to urban governance issues, so that contemporary changes in city spaces are put in a longer-term perspective. These are ambitious aims for urban studies; however, the accumulation of evidence, research, and analysis on particular cities and particular city-spaces does bode well for the possibility of works that will thoughtfully synthesize several generations of research, especially in the case of cities such as Beirut and Cairo. concepts and cases

The juxtaposition of the cities of Amman, Beirut, and Cairo in one volume could be disconcerting. These cities are dissimilar in almost every way, with different histories and genealogies, governed by differing state and municipal structures, and facing different challenges in the development of their urban fabric. And yet, the urban governance perspective does provide a framework that can enable the comparison of these three cities that seem so different to the casual observer. Urban governance does raise some problematic issues for research and analysis. However, as noted by Luna Khirfan in her introduction to the volume, it succeeds in shifting the gaze to a more holistic approach that links up to globalization and down to practices and understandings of how individuals and uniquely urban entities such as associations and neighborhoods use the city every day. These are definitional shifts as well as theoretical ones and thus the various chapters of the volume properly focus attention on the importance of dissecting, if not deconstructing, concepts such as neoliberalism, participation, citizenship, and resistance. Each of these perspectives illustrates contradictory or at least counter-intuitive processes. As Elena Piffero shows in her exami­ nation of the dynamics of participation in the “informal” area of Manshiet Nasser in Cairo, what is celebrated as “participation” may

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include processes leading to the hegemony of the logics of political power over space. Piffero questions whether “I KE A-style manuals” and “the politics of notables” are really what is meant by, or desired as, participation. This raises the broader issue of what participation might mean in a non-participatory and / or authoritarian setting. In their examination of several initiatives celebrated as participatory in Amman – like the Mayor’s Round Table, and the “consultation” over the policies for the high rise towers – Luna Khirfan and Bessma Momani reveal that what is celebrated as “participation” may include a tyranny of participation that manipulates who is included in the planning process, primarily based on clientelistic politics that benefits those who are already more powerful. Their chapter also shows how planners consider city-dwellers to be largely passive and apathetic, whereas in fact they desire more participation and more of a voice in the changes taking place in their cities. These examples show that participation (especially as part of participatory planning initiatives) may seem like a success when the norm is top-down decision making, but that this should not be exaggerated or elevated to a desired standard. These questions bring us to the issue of citizenship and the social contract that binds citizens to their cities. This is where historical perspectives could really elucidate the continuities as well as changes in urban governance strategies and approaches, as Eliana Abu Hamdi outlines for the case of Jordan. In reference to the earlier discussion on the Arab Spring, it is important to emphasize that ­ruptures at the national level may not mean changes in practices of governance at the local urban level at all. Thus, Elena Piffero argues that the Morsi government in Egypt adopted the same plans for the “solution” of the urban challenges facing Cairo as the previous regime, namely the investment in “desert cities,” which Al-Sisi’s government is currently pursuing. However, national-level disruptions may provide an opportunity for people to voice or perform their local discontents, as in the burning down of the urban project building in Manshiet Nasser. Khirfan and Momani also provide examples, such as publicly needed projects like Amman’s Bus Rapid Transit which were halted as part of the municipal power struggles within Amman and the national power struggles within the parliament, within which the Greater Amman Municipality necessarily becomes a player. All this would support the conclusion offered by Luna Khirfan that “the dilemma where the victims of civil society’s mistrust often are the truly ‘public’ projects” (Khirfan, 18).

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However, these examples of confrontation and power struggles also lead us to another point, which is the need to take into account the diversity of the groups and groupings that make up city-dwellers. As Elena Piffero argues in her chapter, it is especially important not to fall into using designations such as “informal settlements” for particular city areas without examining them critically for both analytical and empirical accuracy. The literature on urban poverty has long argued that squatter slum areas are neither marginal nor isolated nor to be seen in dichotomous opposition to middle-class or elite areas of the city.3 There is no need to reinvent these wheels in the Middle Eastern context, while recognizing that development agencies and governing authorities may indeed continue to harbour such perspectives on city areas that are seen as “ungovernable.” the middle east as prism

What does the Middle East have to offer the broader literature on urban processes and dynamics? In this volume, the examination of the term “neoliberalism” emerges as the key linkage to global processes and comparative literatures. Examining a set of processes that, taken together, are considered as the defining features of neoliberal urban development, enables new comparisons that did not make much sense before. For example, previous comparisons of Amman and Beirut would have been hard-pressed to go beyond a comparison of the conditions and experiences of Palestinian refugee camps. Now, however, the entanglements that connect the two cities are apparent in the role of the real estate development company, Solidere, in both the reconstruction of the Beirut city centre and in the major urban project of Abdali in Amman. This means that a comparison of the present developments, and future images, of these two cities can be discussed in the same paragraph and make sense as a comparative research project. In the discussion of neoliberalism as inflected in the urban gov­ ernance of the three cities examined in the volume, several of the chapters discuss the role of Gulf-based capital – whether deployed by states or by private investment companies, e.g., the chapters by Khaled Adham, Tamam Mango, and Eliana Abu-Hamdi. Sarah Tobin’s examination of the Islamized Postal Savings as a neoliberal economic innovation describes an entrepreneurial solution that provides financial inclusion to the poor and marginalized who are seeking Islamic-friendly savings options. The volume thus offers us some

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ways of assessing what it means to assert that the neoliberal version of the city is the entrepreneurial city. The examination of particular cases alerts us to the coexistence, as Khirfan emphasizes (Introduction, 18), of interconnected contradictions of governance within the same urban entity. This is an important insight that opens up routes for future research agendas. It also offers an opportunity to carefully examine what is often glossed too easily as neoliberalism. Christopher Harker, in chapter 1, argues that neoliberalism is too narrow an understanding of urban governance. In tracing the genealogies of neoliberalism as a concept, Harker unpacks the class and power dimensions of the concept and argues that “the theoretical presumption of neoliberalism’s hegemonic power ignores the spatial and temporal specificity of actual processes of change” (41). One avenue of bringing together the empirical evidence with the conceptual framing, suggested by the various chapters in this volume, is in noting the very specific modes of “inter-referencing” that become apparent between the three case-study cities as well as with other cities in the region (especially Dubai) and in the greater Asian expanse. As elaborated by Ananya Roy and Aihwa Ong, the notion of urban inter-referencing examines the mental as well as material connections that link cities to one another.4 This includes the circu­ lation of urban planning elites, as described by Khaled Adham in chapter 4. These connections and circulations may have long histories but are clearly being reconfigured in a neoliberal age, not least because more distant connections and images from Asia via the Gulf become ever more present and urgent. We can question, as Adham does, how useful it is to talk about a Dubai model in Cairo and other cities. However, the connections can be empirically traced and they are not limited to Dubai but can also be seen in the importation of the Solidere model to Amman’s Abdali. These particular forms of “transnational entanglements,” as Harker calls them (36), provide a “global hypermarket of city symbols, brand names and lifestyles” (Khaled Adham, 126) that are assembled and reassembled in various ways through the different projects and plans and daily practices of urban governance. conclusion

Compared to the project on urban governance that I had the good fortune of managing in the late 1990s,5 and that involved some of the same cities examined in this volume, we see important changes

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in empirical realities, which, in turn, enable new theoretical innovations and developments in the understanding of urban governance. At that time, Cairo and other cities in the region were in the third period of “real estate development” described by Khaled Adham and thus were just beginning to witness the effect of new types of land development and direct capital investments on the morphology of the cities, which speeded up considerably in the new millennium. The planning as well as the governance of cities in that period still seemed to involve the state in its more traditional and direct role, and the examples of “private-public partnerships” that is so central to the notion of “good governance” were just making their appearance. It was difficult at that time to argue whole-heartedly that there was a “withdrawal of the state” from urban services. The state was still the main provider of urban resources, even if there was some measure of decentralization and empowerment of municipal and local urban authorities taking place and even though the 1990s was certainly the period of the rise of the N G O sector. At present, the advance of privatization in the delivery of services and resources can clearly be seen, and, especially in the largescale urban restructuring projects and changes, the state often appears as one actor, hidden within dense and opaque institutional arrangements. The analysis of urban governance thus now has to take into account assemblages that constitute a complex geography. These include various groups of city-dwellers; different levels of state and municipal authorities; private companies, N G O s, and other types of associations, development agencies, and so on. There are thus great challenges in the practical mediation of the order and disorder that characterizes our cities and these real-world challenges should urge us to focus the best of our research and analytical energies on these questions for a long time to come.

notes

  1 This is not at all to argue that the dynamics of the processes of change in the region are only taking place in cities, but rather to look at the role of cities in the broader sweep of events.  2 https://www.facebook.com/ElMidan.ElTalet. Accessed 28 January 2014.

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  3 The works of Lisa Peattie, starting with The View from the Barrio (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968), are the best known, and generated several generations of critical research contesting the notion of urban “informality.”   4 See Ananya Roy and Aihwa Ong, eds., Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).   5 Seteney Shami, ed., Capital Cities: Ethnographies of Urban Governance in the Middle East (Toronto: University of Toronto, Centre for Urban and Community Studies, 2001).

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Contributors

Elia n a A b u- H a md i earned a PhD in architecture at U C Berkeley. Her research on architecture and development in Jordan contributes to the debates on the political economy of urbanism in developing cities, thereby establishing a connection between their geopolitical histories and urban present. She is an experienced architectural practitioner and educator. K ha led A d ha m is associate professor at the Department of Architectural Engineering, United Arab Emirates University. He received a PhD in architecture from Texas A&M University. His publications and current research activities are focused on the impact of late capitalism on the architectural and urban transformations of Cairo, Doha, and Dubai. C hr istop he r H a r k e r received his PhD from the University of British Columbia in 2009 and now works in the Department of Geography at Durham University, UK . His work examines the practice and politics of everyday life in the Occupied West Bank. His current project, “Families and Cities,” funded by The Leverhulme Trust, explores how the spatiality of obligations and debt enable and undermine contemporary forms of endurance in the city of Ramallah. Lu n a K hi r fa n is associate professor at the School of Planning, the University of Waterloo, in Ontario. Her work investigates the relationship between public engagement, place making, and place experience such as in the urban rehabilitation of historic cities and

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222 Contributors

in the adaptation to climate change in coastal regions. Khirfan is a Fulbright Scholar (2001–03). Ta ma m M a ngo received her PhD in politics at the University of Exeter. Her previous studies include undergraduate and graduate degrees in urban planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004, Mango joined the Jordan National Competitiveness Team at the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation and later the Jordan Agency for Enterprise and Investment Development. She is currently partner at Leading Point Management Advisory Services. B essma Mo ma ni is professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and Balsillie School of International Affairs. She is also a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, a 2015 fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, and a Fulbright Scholar. Elen a Pi f f e ro received a PhD in international cooperation and sustainable development policies from the University of Bologna, Italy, in 2009 with a thesis on the promotion of political participation in Cairo’s informal areas. Her research interests focus on urban governance and management, in particular on the socio-political dynamics of informal urbanization. Seten ey Sh a mi is founding director-general of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences since 2012. She is an anthropologist from Jordan and obtained her B A from the American University of Beirut and her MA and PhD from University of California, Berkeley. After teaching and setting up a graduate department of anthropology at Yarmouk University, Jordan, she moved to the regional office of the Population Council in Cairo as director of the Middle East Awards in Population and the Social Sciences (M E Awards) in 1996. In July 1999, she joined the Social Science Research Council in New York as program director for the program on the Middle East and North Africa and also the program on Eurasia (until 2010). She has been a visiting professor at UC Berkeley, Georgetown University, University of Chicago, Stockholm University, and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (Uppsala).

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Sa r a h a . T ob i n is associate director of Middle East studies at Brown University. She is an anthropologist with expertise in economic anthropology, Islam, and gender in the Middle East. She has published a dozen articles. Her book Everyday Piety: Islam and Economy in Jordan is available from Cornell University Press.

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Index

Abdali: King Abdullah II, 139; private interests, 133, 137, 148, 158; protest, 145–6; segregation, 170–2; urban image, 140, 146, 150, 159, 166–8 Abel Fattah El Sisi, 66 Abu-Lughod, 36, 42 Abu Dhabi, 78 accountability, 4–5 adaptability, 6 agency, 25 agricultural land, 60, 65, 93 alienation, 24 Al-Hadid, Nidhal, 143 Al-Nahar, 175 al-Nour Party, 17 al-Qa‘ida, 17 Amman: amalgamation, 92–3; electoral system, 83; globalization, 45–6; neoliberalism, 37, 40, 43; planning process, 21; protests, 9, 14; tyranny, 84, 89 Amman Institute, 21, 86, 140, 144–5 Amman Master Plan, 85, 142–4 amalgamation, 14, 87–93 Arab-Israeli conflict, 79

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Arab Gulf States, 79, 115 Arab Spring, 3; neoliberalism, 15; reflections, 8, 17, 91, 215 Arab-world cities, 35–8, 42 architecture, 126–7, 140 Arnstein’s ladder, 84–5 appropriation, 41 assemblages, 37, 218 associations, 84, 135, 170, 195, 203, 214 authority of the state, 4 authoritarian: bargains, 5; regimes, 5–6, 8, 15–16 authoritarianism, 6, 20–1 autocracy, 6 automobile, 18 autonomy, 12–13, 16 Barakat, Hoda, 175 Beauregard, Robert, 143 Beirut, 9, 12, 14, 16, 18, 23, 24, 37, 39, 50, 106, 125, 147, 157–76, 212–16; Solidere, 16, 23, 147, 157–9, 162–70, 175–6, 216–17 bio-politics, 5 bottom-up, 19, 64, 68 bureaucracy, 40, 61, 64, 81, 150

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226 Index

bureaucratic rule, 5 Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), 9, 18, 87, 89–96 Cairo: Capital Cairo Project, 16; commodification, 38, 45, 145; family ethos, 49; image, 22, 123; informal areas, 57–65, 70–2; marketing, 120–2; municipal services, 9; real estate, 109, 116, 117, 120; social movements, 14, 213; Tahrir Square, 213; urban life, 49–50, 59, 65–6, 73, 120 capital cities, 22, 90, 157–8, 173 capitalism, 14, 110, 190; crony capitalism, 14, 15; western capitalism, 109 charities, 58 cities, 11–12, 16, 36, 42, 82, 127, 140, 158, 169, 212–18 city centres, 24, 82, 158–62, 176; in ancient Greece, 160 city-dwellers, 36, 47, 48, 58, 215, 216, 218 city-making, 59 city planning, 81, 83, 138, 176. See also urban: planning city-state, 37, 79, 81, 108 citizens, 4–5, 18, 39, 58, 70, 80–1, 96, 141–7, 165–72, 176, 204, 215 citizenship, 3, 24–5, 41, 70, 157, 159, 161, 172–3, 176, 214–15; hegemonic process, 174; representative political, 4; segregation, 172; technologies of, 4, 8, 15–16, 92; urban, 141–2 civil liberties, 5, 134–5 civil society, 3, 83, 172, 192; civil society institutions, 150

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civil unrest, 14 civil war, 158, 162–3, 176 class, 8, 17, 37, 39, 48, 65, 88, 127, 161, 175, 189, 216–17; capitalist class, 23, 38, 138; class relations, 39, 48; class solidarity, 41; refugee class, 139 classical liberalism, 47 Coaffee, Jon, 18 coercive governance, 23, 136, 150 co-ethnicity, 48 collective ethos, 19, 96 collusion, 16 colonialism, 42, 45 Columbia University Middle East Research Center, 143 commodification, 9, 120, 134, 142, 145, 173 commons, 40 community, 13, 59, 64, 69, 72, 74, 82, 121, 126, 141, 143, 167; community participation, 144, 191 comparative research, 18, 216 conceptual framework, 3 constitutional state, 4 construction, 110, 113, 115, 125, 140, 144, 148–9, 204 control, 4–7, 11, 13, 66, 81–5, 95, 133, 150, conundrum, 3, 15–16 conventions, 5 corrupt elites, 18, 23 corruption, 5, 8, 16, 67, 195 countries, 5, 81, 115, 193, 198, 200, 205–6; developing, 68; Muslim, 194 critical inquiry, 47

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Index 227

Da‘esh, 17 decentralization, 13, 82, 192, 218 decision-making, 13, 21, 91, 96, 137, 146; tyranny, 88–90 decisions, 14, 18, 94, 143; facilitation, 23, 138; planning, 82, 89–90, 133, 140 democracy, 5, 7, 38, 47–8, 134–5, 150, 173 democratization, 6, 8, 22, 133–7, 150 desert land, 60–1 developers, 21, 23, 43, 66, 89, 107, 110–27, 138, 169, 194 discourse, 4, 37, 40–1, 44, 57–8, 107, 174, 176; developmental, 23, 43, 46, 139–40, 146; global city, 158; neoliberal, 19, 41, 46, 81 disorder, 20, 57–8, 218 distribution, 9, 16, 40, 64, 87, 119, 127, 206 domination, 6, 36, 79 Dubai, 22, 37–8, 106–9, 217; Dubai model, 22, 105–8, 124, 217 dynamics, 3–10, 17, 20–5, 59, 69–73, 85, 96, 116, 190, 214–16 economy, 4–6, 8, 12, 21–2, 37, 39–45, 105, 115, 145, 160, 190, 200–3; economic agendas, 8, 15; economic bubbles, 11; economic development, 5, 16, 205; ­economic elites, 6; economic ­liberalization, 5; economic opportunities, 15; economic policies, 9; economic provisioning, 40; economic reform, 82; economic restructuring, 37

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Egypt, 8, 16–20, 43, 57, 68, 109– 28, 196, 198; informal areas, 71; intelligentsia, 58; NGOs, 69 electoral power, 83 elites, 6, 11, 15, 18–20, 23, 38–9, 45, 217 entrepreneurial ideas, 22, 127 environment, 82, 84, 93, 159, 189 equity, 88 establishment, 17, 59, 161, 203 ethnicity, 39, 48, 141 ethnography of gender, 50 ethnography of governance, 19 exclusion, 6, 12–17, 22–3, 45, 59, 140, 163, 195, 197 export, 11, 22, 106, 112, 126–8, 162 expropriation, 148–49, 157 factions, 17–18, 213 Fairouz, 175 families, 19, 49, 65–6, 109, 192, 199 fiscal conservatism, 81 foreign aid, 50 foreign investment, 11, 38, 108, 126, 141 formal-informal dichotomy, 71 Foucault, Michel, 4, 5, 37, 40, 92–3, 173 framework, 3–6, 18, 23, 42, 46, 73, 80, 118, 133, 137, 141, 147, 157–8, 163, 168, 176, 214 freedoms, 4, 132–3, 146 Freedom and Justice Party, 66 free market, 9, 23, 41, 137 functionalist, 40 future, 3, 66, 81, 85–6, 95–97, 123, 165–66, 168–9, 216

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228 Index

gated communities, 43–4, 86, 118, 139 gender, 39, 41, 50, 87, 159 General Organization for Physical Planning (G OPP), 62 generative power, 14, 17, 21 geography, 35, 47, 49, 73, 218 German Technical Cooperation (GT Z ), 62, 68–70 global benchmarks, 40 global entrepreneurial urban logic, 22, 126–7 global North, 42 global South, 42, 44–5, 50 governance, 3; coercive, 23, 136, 150; frameworks, 5; gap, 3, 5, 14; hierarchical, 4, 13, 126; informal, 13–14; institutions, 18, 64, 83, 198; neoliberal governance, 9, 11–13, 18, 37, 42, 118, 132; participatory, 13, 21, 80, 215; traditional, 13; urban governance, 3–4, 35, 45, 49 governmentality, 4, 40 governmental logic, 37 governmental punitive approach, 20, 67 grassroots, 21, 68 Greater Amman Municipality (GA M), 21, 79–94, 133, 142–8, 163 Gulf, 11–12, 65, 107–28, 216; cities, 37, 106–7; states, 79, 108, 144, 212 Haider, Donald, 159 Hariri, Rafiq, 162, 163 Harvey, David, 24, 38, 118, 189, 192 Hashemite, 189, 192

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Healey, Patsy, 18 heritage, 24, 143–4, 158, 163–9, 175–6 high-rise, 21, 87–9, 94, 139, 145, 159 history, 127, 150, 166, 197 housing, 19, 24, 44, 49, 65, 109– 10, 115, 193, 206 identity, 7, 24, 41, 82, 136, 141, 163, 165, 175 ideology, 5, 39, 41, 44, 126 I KEA -style, 20, 69, 70, 215 image, 16, 22, 26, 58, 106, 118, 125–7, 140, 165, 176, 217 immigration, 61, 79 inclination, 3, 14–16, 21, 23 income, 87, 91, 97, 109, 159, 171, 194, 197; lower income, 43, 109–12, 114, 198 ineffective controversy, 47 informal areas, 57–73, 110; informal districts, 20 informalization, 23, 60, 138 infrastructure, 25, 42, 62, 70, 71, 82, 94, 97, 108, 145, 158–9, 164, 190–8, 212; physical, 25, 63, 65, 90, 94, 108, 173, 191; social, 25, 64, 191 institutions, 4, 6, 7, 13, 18, 64, 83, 111, 142, 147, 150, 161, 174, 196, 198, 203 interactions, 3, 4, 7, 15, 19, 20, 173 international, 67, 73, 106, 119, 127, 139; aid, 38; consultants, 12; development, 59, 62; market, 124; organizations, 4, 10, 45, 58, 69 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 134

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Index 229

intervention, 62, 82, 118 investment networks, 39, 45 Islamic State (I S ), 17 Islamist, 8, 17 Islamized Postal Savings, 24, 189, 206, 216 Jakarta, 49 Jordan First Initiative, 133, 140–1, 150 Jordan Gate Towers, 16, 18, 23, 133, 142–5 journalism, 46 juridical, 57 justice, 64, 161, 173, 190 Kifaya, 14 King Abdullah II, 22–3, 79, 83, 132–3, 137–50, 203 King Hussein, 22–3, 82, 132–7, 150 kinship, 48, 82 ladder of citizen participation, 84–5 law enforcement, 64 leadership, 6–7, 24, 93, 166 Lebanese, 162, 165, 168–9; communities, 161; identity, 174–5; reconstruction effort, 158 legality, 39, 62 legitimacy, 4, 5, 13, 39, 134–5; electoral, 5, 83, 96, 133–6; legitimization, 5, 61 liberalism, 4, 9, 23, 37, 42, 47 locality, 7, 18–19 Ma‘an, 134–5, 150 Maani, Omar, 79, 87, 143 majority, 15, 36, 44, 47, 48, 50; clan-based, 21; religious-based,

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21, 24; urban residents, 44, 47, 50, 189 manipulation, 5, 6, 14, 83, 85 Manshiet Nasser, 20, 59–62, 68–71, 214–15 marginalization, 68 market, 4, 12; actors, 12, 15–16, 22; forces, 10, 16, 19, 24, 118, 176, 212 marketing, 22, 43, 44, 58, 119–24, 158, 164, 168 Marxism, 37, 108; Marxistinspired scholarship, 37 Mayor’s Round Table, 88–9, 215 media, 18, 59, 86, 89, 108, 112, 213 metropolitan, 22, 127 Middle East and North Africa (MENA ), 3, 82, 190, 196, 222 military model, 41 mistrust, 17–18, 24, 190–1, 195, 197, 205, 215 monarchical regime, 20, 83 morphology, 36, 42, 218 mosque, 63, 146 movements, 8, 14 17, 40, 173; social non-movements, 7, 14, 46 Mubarak regime, 66–7 mukhtar, 21, 97 Muslim, 50, 106, 190–4; Brotherhood, 8, 66; modernity, 22, 106 Muwaggar, 91–2, 96 narrative, 41, 58, 80, 158–9, 165–6; authoritarian, 5; official, 80–9; oppositional, 20, 59; public, 21 negotiating capacity, 7, 13, 14, 20 neighbourhoods, 21, 43, 48, 94, 112, 170

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230 Index

neoliberal economic agenda, 8, 15, neoliberal elites, 19, 45 neoliberalism 3, 36–50, 132–7, 189, 206, 216–17; free market, 9; governance, 10–11, 15 New Towns, 65–6 New York Times, 165 nexus, 3–4, 192, 206 Nile Delta valley, 66 non-governmental organizations (NGO s), 20, 46, 58, 69, 70, 84, 195, 218 normativity, 106 norms, 13, 18, 106 opinion, 23, 90–2, 133, 140–5, 158, 167, 192; aggregate, 46 order, 3, 20, 57, 218; autocratic, 8; democratic, 8; political, 59, 175; social, 3, 8 ordered-disordered, 20, 59 Orientalist, 36 Paris, 66, 164 participatory planning, 12, 21, 72, 79–98, 215 paternalistic, 69 permission, 14 planning cultures, 19 policy-making process, 20, 67 polis, 160, 171, 175 political: apathy, 14, 91; awareness, 14, 69; citizenship, 4; convention, 5; economy, 38, 39, 107, 165; imaginary, 19, 45; landscape, 20, 38, 59; life, 46, 68, 70; opposition, 63; order, 20, 59, 175; participation, 5; party, 48; policies, 15; procedures, 5; rationality, 4–5, 15;

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science, 73, 80; scientists, 4, 6; structures, 5 politics of notables, 64, 69, 215 population, 46, 60, 64, 70, 169; growth, 60, 79, 82; marginalized, 59, 70, 96, 190 postal savings, 189–206, 216 postcolonial, 42–3 post-Soviet, 41 poststructuralism, 38 postwar, 158, 162 power, 3–21; advantage, 6, 17, 23; hegemonic, 41, 217; monopoly, 39, 66; of negotiation, 8; preemptive, 6, 7, 16, 21; relations, 5, 7, 81, 174 practices of engagement, 48 private property, 24, 60, 133, 157 private sector, 22, 112, 157, 162, 191, 193, 204 privatization, 11, 37, 38, 43, 45, 133, 149, 158, 187, 218; public realm, 133, 149; urban space, 45, 175 processes of integration, 20 public engagement, 81, 86–9, 97 public participation, 21, 68, 80–9, 94, 144, 176 public-private partnerships (PPPs), 22, 23, 46, 132, 149, 191–3, 218 public projects, 18 public sector, 9, 10, 38, 110, 157 public subsidies, 38, 134, 157 public voice, 23, 133, 137, 142, 150 pull: factors, 3, 9, 11, 12, 21, 22, 23; strategies, 15, 21 puritanical, 17 push: factors, 3, 9, 11, 12, 21, 23; tactics, 15, 21

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Index 231

Rand, Ayn, 163 real estate, 15, 24, 44, 79, 107–26, 139, 157, 164, 218; developers, 43, 111, 117, 146, 216; entrepreneurs, 22; investments, 22, 139 real estate and construction holding companies (RECHCOs), 23, 157– 65, 169–76 reform, 3, 167, 197; administrative, 3; economic, 22, 82 refugees, 139, 162, 203 regime face, 6 regime theory, 6–7 religion, 20, 50, 161, 190 religious bodies, 195 religious organizations, 98 rescaling, 10; downward, 12–13; sideways, 12–13; upward, 12–13 research approaches, 19 resilience, 6, 9, 11 resistance, 19, 25, 41, 45, 71, 214 resources, 3, 16, 18, 39, 63, 67, 72, 83, 93, 173, 193, 218; advantage, 6, 23; capital, 198; financial, 190, 199; political, 49; urban, 82, 90, 218 rhetoric, 80, 82, 86, 109 Rossi, Aldo, 164 ruling party, 68 Salafi Islam, 17 segregation, 170–3 self-interest, 15, 18, 45, 67 semi-authoritarian, 5, 68 sense of place, 24, 175, 176 Shari‘a law, 17, 190 shock, 7, 17 slums, 58, 212 social: contract, 11, 17, 64, 81; networks, 17, 136; order, 3–4, 8,

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160; processes, 39; services, 8, 14, 24, 81, 191, 199; support, 38, 43; welfare, 37, 145 socio-economic, 58, 87, 161, 212; disparity, 15; division, 170; transformation, 38 sociological institutionalist perspective, 18 Solidere, 147, 157–76, 216 Souq, 168 squatter settlements, 58–62, 216 stakeholders, 68, 70, 88, 96 static products, 36 status symbol, 18 stereotypes, 72 Stone, Clarence, 6 structural adjustments, 38 struggles, 19, 71, 163, 173, 215, 216 subsidies, 38, 134, 157, 200 Sueret, Françoise, 167 survey, 86, 97, 158–74, 198 sustainable development, 68 Sydney, 66 Syria, 17, 166, 214; refugees, 203 tabula rasa, 25, 212 tactics, 15, 21 technologies: of power, 3–9, 15–16; of citizenship, 3–9, 92; of government, 10, 12 tenements, 58 tensions, 13, 203; market and civil society, 14; socioeconomic, 8, 12; urban political dynamics, 17 tokenism, 21, 84–5, 95 Tokyo, 66 top-down, 4, 43, 64, 70, 215 Toronto, 80, 144 totalitarianism, 5

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232 Index

tourists, 38, 57, 127, 170–3 transit system, 18 transnational, 37, 39, 175; capital, 10, 23, 133, 140, 142, 149; entanglements, 38, 217; investment networks, 39, 45; investors, 158, 173 transparency, 14, 80, 91, 96, 140, 149, 192, 193; government, 5; public consultation process, 86 trans-urban, 49 tribal: allegiances, 135, 141; leaders, 21; networks, 19; societies, 108 TripAdvisor, 46 trust, 88, 194–5, 200 tyranny, 80, 96; decision-making, 85, 88–92; of the method, 88–9, 92, 96; of participation, 95, 215 ultra-conservative, 17 unemployment, 8, 15, 82 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (U N ES CO), 164 United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Amman, 139 urban: affairs, 14, 17; arena, 21; assemblages, 37; change, 37;

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design, 123, 162, 173; entrepreneurs, 15–16; fabric, 140, 158, 214; informality, 20, 59, 66; life, 35–50, 73, 127; lifestyles, 22; planning, 12, 58, 65, 80–98, 217 (see also city planning); political space, 18; politics, 14; practices, 42, 133; processes, 25, 43, 132, 216; scale, 18; space, 35, 47, 66, 73, 169, 214; transformations, 22–3, 118, 132; villagers, 169 urban development, 10, 16, 68, 84, 93, 106, 118, 133, 199, 205, 216; in Amman, 80, 93, 142; in Cairo, 127; in Dubai, 124 urbanism, 73, 105, 137; Arabworld urbanism, 36, 50; contemporary urbanism, 44, 47 urban landscape, 24, 59; in Amman, 86, 91; in Cairo, 20, 22, 70 urban model, 22, 107, 127; Dubai model, 22, 105–8, 124, 217 values, 18, 37, 136, 158, 192 wasta, 20, 64, 69

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