IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ijurrs/v42y2018i3p461-482.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Seeing Like a City†State: Behavioural Planning and Governance in Egypt's First Affordable Gated Community

Author

Listed:
  • Nicholas Simcik Arese

Abstract

Haram City is Egypt's first ‘affordable’ gated community, hosting both aspirational middle†class homeowners and resettled poor urban residents. Amidst legal ambiguity during Egypt's 2011–2013 revolutionary period, the management team of this public–private partnership was tasked with creating a ‘fully self†sufficient’ city. While Haram City is the product of top†down ‘seeing like a state’ master planning (Scott, ), the day†to†day resolution of class vulnerabilities and disputes over ‘reasonableness’ in city life requires forms of interpersonal adjudication otherwise addressed through local urban law—‘seeing like a city’ (Valverde, ). This article uses ethnography of management techniques aiming to ‘upgrade behaviour’ to theorize that a private entity, in a strategically indeterminate relationship with the state, reconciles future†oriented planning and storied prejudices by merging two visions of governance. Imitating the repertoire of urban law, managers plan the very realm of bottom†up decision making. They then adapt top†down urban planning to bottom†up dispute resolution to spatially consolidate the ‘consensual’ outcomes of a rigged game. Evoking both colonial Egyptian vagrancy laws and neoliberal paternalist welfare, ‘seeing like a city†state’ governance amounts to authoritarianism that conceals itself within custom, appearing neutral so as to plan streets, codes and inner lives at once.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicholas Simcik Arese, 2018. "Seeing Like a City†State: Behavioural Planning and Governance in Egypt's First Affordable Gated Community," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(3), pages 461-482, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:42:y:2018:i:3:p:461-482
    DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.12601
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12601
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1468-2427.12601?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:42:y:2018:i:3:p:461-482. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0309-1317 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.