The Informal Response and Rethinking Precarious Neighborhoods
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Theme:
Format:
Date:
Nov 26, 2017 6:00–8:00pm
Organized by: CLUSTER (Cairo Lab for Urban Studies, Training and Environmental Research)
Venue: Institut Français d'Egypte
Address: 1 Madraset El Hokouk El Frinseya St. MOUNIRA,
5 Shafeek El Deeb Street, Heliopolis
Admission: Free public event
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/345802225882850/


Part of Making the Sustainable City: a French-Egyptian Week

Housing Cairo: The Informal Response and Rethinking Precarious Neighborhoods
Joint Book Launch & Panel Discussion 
Venue: Institut Français d’Égypte: 1 Madrasset El Huquq El Frinseya Road, El Mounira, Cairo
Sunday 26 November 2017, 6:00 pm

Panel discussion with: 
Dr. Agnès Deboulet, Laboratoire Architecture, Ville, Urbanisme, Environnement (LAVUE), French National 
Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)
Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Director, MAS Urban Design
Hamdy Reda, Founder, Artellewa 
Dr. Irène Salenson, Research Officer, Economic Assessment and Public Policy Department, French Development Agency (AFD)
Leonard Streich, Co-Founder, Something Fantastic, MAS Urban Design
Omar Nagati, Co- Founder, CLUSTER 

Moderated by Yahia Shawkat, Co-founder & Research Coordinator | 10 Tooba 

About Housing Cairo: The Informal Response (Ruby Press)

Initiated by Charlotte Malterre-Barthes at the Chair of Marc Angélil, in collaboration with Something Fantastic and CLUSTER, Housing Cairo: The Informal Response was developed within the Master of Advanced Studies (MAS) in Urban Design at ETH Zurich. Published in early 2016 by Berlin-based publisher Ruby Press, Housing Cairo received the Architectural Book Award from the German Architecture Museum in October 2016.

Housing Cairo: The Informal Response is a publication that aims to illuminate the architecture of informality and its mechanism, focused on the neighborhood of Ard-el-Liwa. It challenges the usual negative perception attached to informal areas. Instead, it tries to attract a stronger engagement of architects and designers in these neighborhoods, with an ultimate aim of calling for governmental awareness to recognize, legalize and integrate these areas as an essential part of the city.

Housing Cairo is not merely about the informal architecture and urbanism in Cairo, it is also about the development of the linguistic expression of the urban informality. Accompanying the expansion of the informal urbanism, the one and only term “informality” cannot be used for everything that wasn’t approved by the authorities. Terminologies and terms describing informal urban expansion should also be developed in a more balanced way. By opening with an “anti-glossary,” Housing Cairo draws attention on the importance of the development of terminologies and terms, and how these terms would contribute to a sustained informal and formal urban expansion in Cairo.

About Rethinking Precarious Neighborhoods (AFD) 
The scientific coordination was undertaken by Agnès Deboulet with the LAVUE, a CNRS research center (Laboratoire Architecture, Ville, Urbanisme, Environnement) and Centre SUD. The book includes 13 original contributions from international researchers who all share continuous empirical and theoretical observations on the topic and in various city-regions of the world. Under the supervision of Irène Salenson, AFD has kindly accepted to edit the book in both English and French (Repenser les quartiers précaires). 

On the occasion of the United Nations Habitat III Conference on cities, which took place in Quito (Ecuador) in October 2016, this research publication proposes an innovative reflection on precarious neighborhoods - whose populations are set to double over the next twenty years. Building on extensive field research across all continents, the different contributions show that these precarious neighborhoods suffer above all else from a negative vision that poses an obstacle to grasping their diversity and understanding their singularities. Yet, these neighborhoods are home to ordinary citizens who work, move around the city, and build their dwellings with no financial support from public authorities. Since the 1960s, researchers have been deconstructing the accepted ideas about such precarious neighborhoods. They have been showing how a policy based on the ideals of justice could be envisioned, by challenging traditional programs aimed at clearance and ex.situ rehousing... Rethinking precarious neighborhoods also means that it is important to develop an ambition for knowledge – in depth – of these neighborhoods, linked to a policy for recognition, beyond the technical categories of rehabilitation or the formal categories of citizenship.

Housing Cairo: The Informal Response and Rethinking Precarious Neighborhoods book launch and panel discussion is supported in part by Pro Helvetia Cairo as part of "Making the Sustainable City: a French-Egyptian Week."

Book launch and panel organized by Institut Français d’Égypte (IFE), the French Development Agency (AFD), and CLUSTER as part of "Making the Sustainable City: a French-Egyptian Week."