Quantifying the Driving Forces of Informal Urbanization in the Western Part of the Greater Cairo Metropolitan Region
1
Department of Architecture and Urban Design, Kyushu University, Fukuoka-shi, Higashi-Ku, Hakomatsu 3-20-31, Hayashibiru 209, Fukuoka 812-0061, Japan
2
Faculty of Urban and Regional Planning, Cairo University, Giza 12411, Egypt
3
Graduate School of Human-Environment Studies, Kyushu University, Hakozaki 6-10-1, Higashi-Ku, Fukuoka 812-8581, Japan
4
Department of Urban Engineering, Saga University, Saga 840-8502, Japan
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Teiji Watanabe
Environments 2016, 3(2), 13; https://doi.org/10.3390/environments3020013
Received: 17 February 2016 / Revised: 20 April 2016 / Accepted: 19 May 2016 / Published: 2 June 2016
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Land Use Change in the Changing Environment)
This paper discusses the driving forces (DFs) of informal urbanization (IU) in the greater Cairo metropolitan region (GCMR) using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The IU patterns in the GCMR have been extremely influenced by seven DFs: geographical characteristics, availability of life facilities, economic incentives, land demand and supply, population increase, administrative function, and development plans. This research found that these forces vary significantly in how they influence urban growth in the three study sectors, namely, the middle, north, and south areas in the western part of the GCMR. The forces with the highest influence were economic incentives in the middle sector, population increase in the north sector, and the administrative function in the south sector. Due to the lower availability of buildable land in the middle sector, the land demand and supply force had a lesser influence in this sector compared to in the north and south sectors. The development plans force had medium influence in all sectors. The geographical characteristics force had little influence in both the middle and the north sectors, but higher influence than economic incentives, availability of life facilities, and development plans in the south sector. Because of the spatial variances in life facilities organizations in the GCMR, the life facilities availability force had little effect on IU in the south sector.
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Keywords:
informal urbanization; AHP; driving forces; slums; urban development; Egypt
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MDPI and ACS Style
Osman, T.; Divigalpitiya, P.; Arima, T. Quantifying the Driving Forces of Informal Urbanization in the Western Part of the Greater Cairo Metropolitan Region. Environments 2016, 3, 13.
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