Spontaneous Areas in Egypt and the Concept of Self-Sufficiency

Abstract

Egypt faces many urban challenges such as Spontaneous growth on agricultural lands, which causes the inability to fulfilling the needs of the increase population, and it is necessary to contribute to the development of a comprehensive strategy to guide the growth of those spontaneous self-constructed communities (as we redefine them in this paper) correctly to be effective communities. The trend of self-sufficiency in development contributes to the effectiveness of those areas, in not completely relying on the state only and contributing to a comprehensive renaissance, and facing some of urban challenges by their residents with the help of specialists and those interested. Since these regions possess many characteristics of self-sufficiency ,such as, collective living , proximity and they are spontaneous, self-constructed communities by their residents to solve their problems and this was a reason to think about the possibility of applying the idea of self-sufficiency to developing them. Therefore, we in this paper aims to clarify the idea of self-sufficiency and its importance, and an experiment for its application to extract some criteria by which it is possible to start a strategy to guide the growth of spontaneous communities in Egypt with the concept of self- sufficiency.

Keywords

• spontaneous growth
• self-development
• self-construction
• self-sufficient communities
• self sufficiency