Community-led infrastructure development in informal areas in urban Egypt: A case study Jennifer Bremer, Shahjahan H. Bhuiyan * Department of Public Policy & Administration, School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, The American University in Cairo, New Cairo 11835, Egypt article info Article history: Available online Keywords: Infrastructure development Informal area Grassroots publiceprivate partnership Community self-help Water services Egypt abstract This article examines how infrastructure development takes place outside of formal government involvement through the successful implementation of self-help projects by the residents of an informal area in Egypt. Drawing on a case study of community-based efforts in Ezbet el-Haggana, one of Cairo's largest informal areas, this study focuses on how residents have organized to gain access to infrastructure services, by turns negotiating with, collaborating with, or working around the local administration to bring electricity, water, and sanitation services to their neighborhoods. It explores their use of organi- zational and financing strategies, particularly self-funding. The study's findings argue that community contributions to infrastructure development in informal areas are an essential component of any feasible strategy to meet the need for such services in a timely fashion. Such a feasible strategy would enable the needs for basic services in rapidly-growing informal areas to be met, but they require governments to consider alternative approaches that partner with local communities and prioritize essential infra- structure needs, integration of informal communities into the urban fabric, and social justice. The paper offers recommendations for integrating self-help approaches into government-led development plans and programs to scale up “grassroots publiceprivate partnerships” and expand their use. This strategy can advance sustainable development in Egypt and other developing and transitional countries, but it will require building government capacity for outcome-oriented community partnering and greater regulatory flexibility. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Growing concern over the gap between urban infrastructure networks in developing countries and rapidly growing urban populations has led to calls for greater use of inter-sectoral part- nerships to increase network coverage. Such approaches bring together government, nonprofits, business and community-based organizations to improve delivery of essential public services. Private sector collaboration in providing services traditionally supplied by the government may generally be termed “pub- liceprivate partnership” (PPP). While there are many models for PPPs, what Sedjari (2004: 303) terms “a culture of engagement” is needed to ensure that both economic viability and social benefits are achieved. Although large-scale PPPs have come under criticism (Hensley & Suryodipuro, 2013), a detailed study of large urban water PPPs finds that such projects were serving 160 million residents in 38 countries by 2007, with good performance (Marin, 2009: 2). This paper addresses a very different type of water infrastruc- ture PPP: micro-scale projects implemented by community orga- nizations building onto public networks to serve low-income neighborhoods. In contrast to typical large-scale water PPPs, these “grassroots PPPs” (G-PPPs) do not have the comprehensive contractual arrangements nor complex guarantees typical of the former. Indeed, they may be carried out without formal authori- zation from the public water provider. Their financing scheme is minimalist in the extreme, scaled to provide an essential service at an affordable price to a specific low-income neighborhood. They are not a model for urban water provision over the long term, but they provide an interim solution to the urgent problem of supply- ing water to unserved poor urban residents. Such projects are carried out every day and serve millions of people around the world, particularly those living in urban informal areas, the unau- thorized, self-built subdivisions that are now home to over a billion people (Neuwirth, 2005a: 9). The main objective of this paper is to improve our under- standing of how such self-help systems are developed at the micro * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ20 2 2615 3384 (work); fax: þ20 2 2795 7565. E-mail addresses: bremer.jennifer@gmail.com (J. Bremer), sbhuiyan@aucegypt. edu, sbhuiyan_68@yahoo.com (S.H. Bhuiyan). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Habitat International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/habitatint http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2014.07.004 0197-3975/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Habitat International 44 (2014) 258e267