Urban Renewal, Social Cohesion And Urban Housing Policies, Incentives And Challenges In North African Cities

الملخص

Current available research and NGOs’ studies reveal that countries in the Maghreb have made progress in developing initiatives to increase the supply of affordable housing. Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt have made commitments to the upgrading of derived and slum areas, providing alternative affordable housing, each using a different model. They have developed dedicated housing agencies that conduct planning, fund projects with participation from the private sector. Tunisia was the first Arab country to eliminate slums, restore historic areas, regularise land tenure and ensure basic services to the urban poor. Morocco, which has the most developed affordable housing among Maghreb, and Arab, countries, reduced slums by 65 percent over two decades until 2010. Its national public holding company producing social housing, resettles slum dwellers and develops new towns. However, despite these initiatives by governments in these countries, this paper seeks answers to questions relating to the inter-relationships between urban renewal, social and economic development programmes and the impact on affordable housing versus the social cohesion/seclusion in urban areas. It poses major questions to examine the impact of urban regeneration and renewal to maintain the urban growth and development under control as opposed to sprawl and the spread of slums and poverty housing in Maghreb countries. It first reviews theories of urbanism in difference to affordable housing and development with association to social and economic parameters. Second, it narrows down the research to a comparative statistic in major Maghreb cities to account for housing for lower and middle income households. The paper addresses issues of social cohesion and seclusion, land value, economic crisis and urban regeneration and their cross impact on social affordable housing in Maghreb cities by tabulating the results, available from current available research, to arrive at conclusions to answer key questions of this research and far as government and private sectors policies and incentives are concerned. Keywords: Urbanism, Urban renewal, affordable housing, social cohesion.