آليات تطبيق الأطر التنظيمية على المخالفات البنائية في البيئة العمرانية في مصر The enforcement mechanisms of regulatory frameworks on building contraventions in the urban environment in Egypt

Egypt has been facing the challenges of illegal construction since decades, and most of the adopted intervention policies have failed to effectively solve its problems. The issuance of the Building Reconciliation law no.17/2019 has imposed a new reality as a temporary exceptional solution to this phenomenon, allowing the legalization and reconciliation with the previously stigmatized illegal constructions which Egypt has long been facing its challenges. This resulted in wide debates over the ambiguous results and impacts of its implementation on the urban environment, as well as the ambiguity of its feasibility in solving the existing illegal building problem, because of the scarce scientific research about building violations’ legalization policies in Egypt and the impact of their implementation. Therefore, the research’s objective is to study the existing as well as the potential results and impacts of the law’s implementation, to provide recommendations for a proposed policy to optimize the Reconciliation experience’s results and impacts on the urban environment in Egypt. This research consists of five main axes followed by general conclusions and recommendations. Data was gathered about the dealing mechanisms with building violations, and the Legalization tool in specific, in the first axis, and about the current situation in Egypt, the illegal building problem, and the Reconciliation Law issuance, in the second axis. In the third axis, data was gathered about different international legalization examples, and the similar examples were defined through undergoing a double-step filtration process using comparative analysis whereas Jaccard similarity coefficient method was used to measure the similarity of the analyzed data sets with that of the Egyptian experience. Data was then gathered about the outcomes and impacts of the similar examples’ implementation, then comparatively analyzing them, in order to define their possibility of occurrence in the Egyptian experience. The validation of the concluded possibilities was then tested by comparing them with the Reconciliation Law’s so far yieled implementation results on the macro-scale level of the whole of Egypt, as well as the case of New Cairo city as a micro-scale example, in the fourth axis. Finally in the fifth axis, comparative analysis was undergone to evaluate the law’s so far resultant outcomes and impacts in terms of its reported goals and objectives. The research concluded that using Legalization as an approach to dealing with illegal building is not novel, either nationally or internationally. Also, almost all of the concluded possibilities proved valid upon their testing on both scales; the macro scale of Egypt, and the micro scale one of New Cairo city. Generally-speaking, the law has not achieve its reported goals yet. The research shows that law was not sufficiently studied on all related aspects before its issuance, which is the main reason why the results came generally weak. A proposed policy was defined to achieve the law’s desired goals and objectives, avoid possible challenges or mitigate their unfavourable impacts, based on the analysis of the law’s implementation results along with the conclusions and lessons to be learnt from similar international examples.