Publication: Reshaping Egypt's Economic Geography : Domestic Integration as a
Development Platform
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2012-06
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2012-12-03
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This report investigates Egypt's regional economic growth, explores the causes for geographically unbalanced development, and proposes policy options to make unbalanced growth compatible with inclusive development. Regional disparities in income and consumption may be attributed to differences in natural endowments and geographical location, but unbalanced growth is mostly due to economies of scale, spillover effects, and the lower transaction costs that result from agglomeration. In Egypt, despite rapid progress in most welfare indicators in lagging regions, there are still substantial gaps in consumption and opportunities between growth poles and the rest of the country. Adopting integration as a development platform is not simple because spatial disparities are spanned in three dimensions: urban/rural dichotomies, the upper Egypt/lower Egypt duality, and the differences between large metropolises and the rest of the country. This typology of instruments underlies the menu of options presented in this report as the basis of domestic spatial integration as a development platform to achieve more balanced and equitable development without sacrificing growth. This report first identifies the gaps in consumption and in opportunities, showing the stark contrasts between regions and how they evolve through time. It then explores the causes of the gaps, revealing a multiplicity of factors and exposing the complexity of the problem. Finally, the bulk of the report presents the policy options to address the integration challenges.
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“World Bank. 2012. Reshaping Egypt's Economic Geography : Domestic Integration as a
Development Platform. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/11869 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication Arab Republic of Egypt - Reshaping Egypt's Economic Geography : Domestic Integration as a Development Platform, Volume 1(Washington, DC, 2012-06)This report investigates Egypt's regional economic growth, explores the causes for geographically unbalanced development, and proposes policy options to make unbalanced growth compatible with inclusive development. In Egypt, despite rapid progress in most welfare indicators in lagging regions, there are still substantial gaps in consumption and opportunities between growth poles and the rest of the country. This report's central proposal is adopting spatial integration as a development platform, in which the policy focus shifts from spreading out industrial location to spreading out access to basic public services and facilitating factor mobility, which will make growth more inclusive and development more balanced in Egypt. Egypt's new political environment provides an opportunity to examine this perennial problem from a new perspective. Adopting integration as a development platform is not simple because spatial disparities are spanned in three dimensions: urban/rural dichotomies, the upper Egypt/lower Egypt duality, and the differences between large metropolises and the rest of the country. This report first identifies the gaps in consumption and in opportunities, showing the stark contrasts between regions and how they evolve through time. It then explores the causes of the gaps, revealing a multiplicity of factors and exposing the complexity of the problem. Finally, the bulk of the report presents the policy options to address the integration challenges.Publication Territorial Development Policy : A Practitioner's Guide(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-05-05)Policymakers in developing countries are increasingly recognizing the necessity of developing strategies and identifying specific investment programs to reduce spatial differences in living standards within their national territories. Choosing among alternate policy instruments to support spatial convergence is not straightforward. Should the focus be social policies that support human development in lagging regions and promote migration to leading regions? Or infrastructure policies that connect lagging regions with markets in leading ones? Or investment and regulatory policies to create new clusters of economic activity in regions not favored by the market? The 2009 World Development Report (WDR) provides a policy framework for integrating lagging and leading areas within countries, prioritizing and sequencing policy instruments based on the severity of the territorial integration challenge. To operationalize the WDR's policy priorities, this report discusses analytic tools to measure the magnitude of regional disparities and identify where and in what activities specific policies and investments can be most effective. It also highlights potential economic and social tradeoffs of alternative policy instruments for pursuing spatial equity. Country case studies are provided to illustrate how these tools either inform a specific policy debate on territorial development or have been directly used to guide ongoing policy discussions between the Bank and counterparts in national and sub national governments.Publication Study of Japanese Experiences on Sustainable Urban Development including Pollution Control and Management, Resource/Energy Efficiency and GHG Reduction(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-02)In Japan, the sustainable development of cities and provinces has been vigorously pursued since the late 1990s under various programs through the initiative of the central government and local authorities. In 2009, the World Bank launched an urban development initiative called Eco2 Cities: Ecological Cities as Economic Cities (Eco2 Cities Initiative) to help cities in developing countries achieve greater synergistic ecological and economic sustainability. This study, entitled 'Study of Japanese Experiences on Sustainable Urban Development including Pollution Control and Management, Resource/Energy Efficiency and GHG Reduction,' was conducted to cover components A and C of the Eco2 East Asia Program with the following objectives: (i) To undertake a study of Japanese experiences on sustainable urban development including pollution control and management, resource/energy efficiency and GHG reduction (Task 1), and (ii) To coordinate and prepare the Eco2 international conference in Yokohama, Japan, on 21-23 October 2010 (Task 2). This report mainly focuses on Task 1, whose objectives are to compile and analyze Japanese experiences on sustainable urban development, including pollution control and management and resource/energy efficiency and GHG reduction, which are relevant to the Eco2 initiative and its implementation in cities in developing countries, as well as to draw lessons from these experiences for the implementation of the Eco2 initiative.Publication Land and Urban Policies for Poverty Reduction : Proceedings of the Third International Urban Research Symposium Held in Brasilia, April 2005, Volume 2(World Bank, Brasilia, 2007)The first paper of this section (Durand-Laserve) documents how increasing pressures on urban land and the 'commodification' of shelter and settlement has increased 'market evictions' of families holding intermediate tide to property, although international declarations and pressures have contributed to reducing 'forced evictions.' The second paper (Mooya and Cloete) uses the tools of the New Institutional Economics to analyze the argument in Hernando DeSoto's path-breaking book, The Mystery of Capital, that full legal tide is the key to turning 'dead capital' in the form of informal property held by many low-income families into an economic asset and to detonating broad-based economic growth. The paper concludes that intermediate forms of tenure can have the virtues of full legal tide if properly constructed, and then examines the case of Namibia in this context. The third paper (Fernandes) documents and assesses the recent efforts of the Brazilian federal Ministry of Cities to develop a comprehensive approach for regularizing title throughout that country. In the fourth paper, Abramo gives a structural and theoretical over-view of informal settlement in Brazil. The fifth paper (Rakodi) looks at traditional land delivery systems in five medium-sized Sub-Saharan African cities, and concludes that policies and programs can build on their strengths.Publication Land and Urban Policies for Poverty Reduction : Proceedings of the Third International Urban Research Symposium Held in Brasilia, April 2005, Volume 1(World Bank, Washington, DC and Institute for Applied Economic Research, Brasilia, 2007)The first paper of this section (Durand-Laserve) documents how increasing pressures on urban land and the 'commodification' of shelter and settlement has increased 'market evictions' of families holding intermediate tide to property, although international declarations and pressures have contributed to reducing 'forced evictions.' The second paper (Mooya and Cloete) uses the tools of the New Institutional Economics to analyze the argument in Hernando DeSoto's path-breaking book, The Mystery of Capital, that full legal tide is the key to turning 'dead capital' in the form of informal property held by many low-income families into an economic asset and to detonating broad-based economic growth. The paper concludes that intermediate forms of tenure can have the virtues of full legal tide if properly constructed, and then examines the case of Namibia in this context. The third paper (Fernandes) documents and assesses the recent efforts of the Brazilian federal Ministry of Cities to develop a comprehensive approach for regularizing title throughout that country. In the fourth paper, Abramo gives a structural and theoretical over-view of informal settlement in Brazil. The fifth paper (Rakodi) looks at traditional land delivery systems in five medium-sized Sub-Saharan African cities, and concludes that policies and programs can build on their strengths.
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