Towards Strategic Planning Implementation for Egyptian Cities

Marwa Ahmed Soliman

doi:10.21625/essd.v2i2.171

Marwa Ahmed Soliman

https://doi.org/10.21625/essd.v2i2.171

Issue
Vol. 2 Issue 2 (2017): Resilient Development toward a Sustainable Environment

Submitted
January 30, 2018

Accepted
January 30, 2018

Published
January 31, 2018

Keywords:

Strategic planning, strategic planning process, Implementation tools, Implementation problems, implementation system

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Abstract

Strategic urban planning plays a real and significant role in developing the urban areas worldwide because it helps in mitigating the loss of lands; especially in diversion of urban growth away from the “agricultural lands”. It provides better urban services and utilities; in terms of quality; and enhances local economy, livability, and sustainability. This paper explores the importance of strategic plans and their role in sustainable development, in addition to exploring the importance of the implementation process. A questionnaire with the local authorities for a group of 19 cities was implemented. The case studies for the planning of such cities started more than 4 years ago. It has been found that there are many implementation problems that prevent the conversion process.
The aim of this paper is represented in two main points. Firstly, illustrating the concept of the strategic planning process and how Egypt deals with it. Secondly, suggesting a new implementation system which can solve the main implementation problems in Egypt.
In conclusion, the paper identifies, through statistics, the perspectives of local government staff in Egypt towards the preparation and implementation of the strategic plans which includes proposed solutions for a problem treatment as well as the opportunity of community participation.

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References

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Authors

Marwa Ahmed Soliman

Ph. D, Urban Planning, Informal Settlements Development Fund, Egypt

[email protected] (Primary Contact)

Author Biography

Marwa Ahmed Soliman, Ph. D, Urban Planning, Informal Settlements Development Fund, Egypt

Ph. D, urban planning, Informal Settlements Development Fund - Egypt

Soliman, M. A. (2018). Towards Strategic Planning Implementation for Egyptian Cities. Environmental Science & Sustainable Development, 2(2), 99–114. https://doi.org/10.21625/essd.v2i2.171

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Received 2018-01-30
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1. Introduction

The concept of strategic planning was applied as a way of administrative and economic planning since the twenties of the last century; then it was used in the urban planning fields, in order to apply an integrated future vision through projections for the rates and trends of the current growth in the future; The analysis of the relation between external environment and the exploitation of the available resources contributes to the composition of this future vision of the city (Goodstein et al., 1993).

Strategic planning did not have adequate attention at the beginning as an administrative method until the beginning of the fifties and sixties from the last century; through Chandler who defined the strategic planning as ”the definition of the long-term organizational goals and the adoption of the work and the allocation of resources to achieve them” which emphasized the strategic objective work and basic the fundamental process. Andrius described the strategy as” patterns of goals, objectives and policies needed to achieve the main goals and plans,” Chandler focused on the economic environment, while Andrius had other dimensions, such as administrative values and social responsibility and organizational ambition.

Use of strategic planning approach has begun in the seventies and eighties of the last century when urban planning had been necessary to interact with community. For this reason, the decision of planning is no longer taken only by the specialized state authorities, as in the traditional planning approach, but it has become an integration between both community and State, which requires mutual active participation between all stakeholders; this is considered the first step in the strategic planning.

The implementation of the strategic approach in Egypt has started in 2004, and over the past years the strategic planning of the Egyptian villages was approved. The year 2007 witnessed the start of the strategic planning for 231 cities (Physical Planning, 2015) of different population census and administrative and economic roles. About 100 strategic plans for cities have been approved since the second half of the year 2009 to date; however, what is implemented out of such plans doesn’t exceed the approval on the urban boundaries, which is supposed to represent the first step of the implementation process. Such urban boundaries define the lands available for development, and help in issuing the licenses required for construction, implementing priority projects, and preparing detailed plans.

However, this doesn’t actually give the ability to implement the plan. There are technical problems related to the process and the methods of preparing some of the strategic plan outputs; such as city vision formulation and its relation to the proposed projects. Moreover, there are institutional and administrative problems related to the multi- ple parties and stakeholders and the delay in the adoption of planned operations and its implementation, in addition to funding problems, such as non-inclusion of the planned projects within the state budget, making the provision of the necessary funding for the implementation difficult; especially with the current economic difficulties that Egypt has been facing since the revolutions of January 25, 2011 and June 30, 2013.

We can summarize the problem of failing to implement the plans in the relations among the elements of the effective implementation, namely the stakeholders participating in the planning process, funding, legislation, and governance.

2. Strategic Planning

The strategic thinking represents an essential input in the successful management processes for individuals, various organizations and institutions. The origin of this idea was used in military operations by the ancient Greek, the word was derived from ”Astratejos” which means the ”art of leadership” (Khatab, 2012).

Since the twenties of the last century, the concept of strategic planning has emerged as an approach for administrative and economic planning. By the beginning of the fifties, the interest in this approach has increased. The first application of strategic planning was applied between 1961and 1965 in the United States of America and this system showed a great success in companies and institutions. Before the mid-sixties of this century, the strategic planning has been used in various economic, social and urban areas in many countries worldwide.

Jloueck (Baross, 1991) defined the strategy as a unified and comprehensive scheme linking all the threads together, covering all acts and functions of the society.

The Dnhardt (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2009) defined the strategy as the current design of tasks and actions that make the society capable of coping with what will happen in the future by its concepts and not the concepts of other external forces.

For Shapiro (Shapiro, 2003) the strategy is identifying the relationship between the community and the outside surroundings, forming a logical guide and directed to achieve the sustainable development functions and duties.

Accordingly, the strategic planning can be defined as a comprehensive and integrated interactive frame, where all the external environment analysis levels are involved in the formulation. They are involved as well in self-capacity evaluation and formulation of the objectives and strategies, in addition to choosing of general and subsidiary strategies of operations, and setting of policies, plans, and budgets within the frame of specific planning assumptions. (Center, 2007).

Whereas the strategic thinking takes the future vision into consideration, it shall have a sense of creativity, innovation and imagination to discover this future, and shall include the following characteristics:

Inclusiveness and integration
Interaction among different levels
Flexibility
Interaction between the planning and implementation

This basis, the strategic planning of cities is defined as:

A process aimed at achieving a better future for the residents of cities in all urban, social, economic, and environmental areas based on inclusiveness and integration with the surrounding environmental variables, with the importance of interaction with different planning levels in order to achieve flexibility to meet future changes, in addition to the continuous interaction between planning and implementation.

3. Strategic Planning and City Development

The United Nations Memorandum (2002) refers that, in most cases, the poor living in urban and slum areas are completely ignored, and the laws governing land use and development standards are incompatible with their living standards and income, such as the nature of works that are managed from homes.

Over years; there was a gradual shift from physical and spatial planning carried out by the local government or powerful sectoral ministries to decentralized management approach in cities. Then, a management approach appeared, which is based on the principles of democracy and civic participation, seeks to reconcile competing interests and reach the maximal benefit of scarce resources. Thus, the strategic approach for development operations and urban management is based on achieving the results of a continuous participation process of the national community and the private sector to develop proposals that contribute in enhancing the city role in local economic development.

This new approach succeeded - especially for the urban poor areas - in making these plans more responsive to reality. Slums are recognized and included in those plans, the building standards, land-use and zoning regulations became more flexible, and the poor have a voice in urban planning, even if their participation takes place at specific times during the project term, and are often limited to the preparation and design phase only, and in many experiments this participation is no more than filling the strategic planning documents. Regarding the final production and implementation of the plans, the decision is only taken by the government authorities and powerful parties.

The sustainable urban development is defined as a good management of the development process for the best exploitation of the available natural resources to meet the present generation needs without compromising the opportunities of the upcoming generations, which makes the strategic plan, including the objectives, policies and plans for economic and social development and urban environment, an important tool to achieve the sustainable development.

Accordingly, the urban strategic planning process of an inhabited city provides at least unlimited aspirations for better jobs, increasing income, desirable opportunities in the field of education, culture, entertainment and social life, so that they can ensure a better life as required for an urban city life, providing housing that everyone can afford without any financial strains (Kumar, 2002).

Based on such strategic approach, finding a city qualified for living in a civilized urban manner shall require development and implementation of strategic planning in order to ensure the achievement of the following development items (Harlem, 1987):

Reviving economic development for the city to reduce poverty.
Controlling population growth in the city.
Meeting the main needs of the city to provide adequate housing and services available to all.
Finding sustainable growth patterns that preserve energy consumption
Preserving and strengthening the basic resources of production and consumption in the city.
Searching for new technologies.
Merging the environmental and economic considerations in decision-making processes.
Activating mechanisms and institutions for strategic intervention in the city management.
Delegation of authority to the people of the city to develop the city according to domestic needs.
Providing communications and transportation means that are affordable to everyone.

Here Steinberg sees (Steinberg, 2002) the Urban strategic planning as ”a process that allows the activation of stakeholders’ initiatives from private and public sectors, who are looking for solidarity to reconstruct and develop the city.”

In doing so, the revival and development of cities as planned requires a change in the city management strategy by attracting the creative skills of citizens; businessmen and members of the government bodies by participating not only in the urban planning in a traditional manner, but also in the preparation of urban strategic planning for the city in order to restore and improve their city, which will bring its competitiveness and open up a new funding for urban projects. Spatially, this is more selective and flexible than the general plan as well as more comprehensive in the development plan.

4. Main Process

The strategic urban planning of the city goes through the same basic stages that are required for the preparation of a strategic plan of the development and direction of large organizations or institutions. The city can be likened to a large organization or institution that includes many administrative and multi-level administrative units; serving many employees and clients. It is a planning that is based on the cooperation and participation of many local government agencies, private sector and local community.

The strategic plan aims at answering four main questions that represent the basic theoretical outputs of the planning process:

Where are we now? This includes the commencement of the plan, participation of development partners, analysis of the current situation and assessment of needs.
Where would we like to go? It includes vision, issues, objectives and projects.
How can we get there? Through the development strategy, planning for action, and then organization and implementation.
Have we arrived? Through monitoring & evaluation, and then by making the required adjustments.

5. Implementation: Tools & Issues

Strategic implementation is the process that translates the strategy into action procedures within the framework of building planning systems and of allocation of material and human resources, systems of incentives and rewards, organizational structure, regulatory policies in force, information systems, communications, leadership, and the system of evaluating strategic performance. Therefore, it is a series of activities correlated together, which include the strategic requirements that have been selected (A, 2008).

The success in the formulation of the strategy does not necessarily guarantee success in the implementation, and most probably implementation is more difficult because it includes actual operations and activities contained, and because of the multiplicity of the involved stakeholders and responsible parties.

Developmental institutions exert a lot of efforts in the process of preparing strategic plans, formulation of programs and projects as well as develop policies, mechanisms and methodologies in order to achieve actual and successful implementation. Unfortunately, the institutions eventually are occupied and drifted away from putting the real plans that ensure the implementation thereof into force. Many researchers have pointed out that the majority of the strategic planning processes did not go beyond the drafting stage because there was a significant failure in implementation. Most of the studies that are concerned with implementation have dealt with the method of strategic planning implementation (Atkinson, n.d.).

States and governments thereof seek cooperation with local institutions and international organizations to prepare a strategy for the development of plans, but they mainly aim at implementing programs and development projects in hand. While the implementation process of developmental plan contains many active parties because of overlapping complicated issues, it is required to coordinate the mutual activities and relations properly among var- ious governmental authorities, community and private agencies; such as the planning department employees, the committees concerned with local, regional and national planning, governmental ministries and service authorities, urban developers, investors, environment preservers, housing associations etc.

Sometimes the planner resort to preparing what is called:” Implementation Manual or Guideline” which display a simplified way to coordinate the activities that are part of urban planning and implementation process in general. In other cases, an implementation guideline is prepared for each city or the state separately. The guideline includes the implementing regulations or development regulations to create and control different activities in order to achieve and enhance justice as a program for urban intervention, expropriation and compensation procedures,

infrastructure, licenses, historical sites, panel discussions and dialogue ... etc. Such regulations include implementation stages, powers and duties of local authorities, administrative procedures, institutional arrangement, funding, partnership, transparency and community participation, monitoring and evaluation, and amendment preparation steps.

The guideline is necessary for several factors, including but not limited to the following:

Non-conformance between the formulation of the strategic urban plan and the public investment plans.
Lack of standards for the level of services to be provided in the hierarchy of urban centers.
Lack of clear assigned responsibilities and roles among the various institutions and the relevant authorities.
No legal framework and clear procedures for the preparation and implemention of the plan.

Different implementation tools can be classified into three main groups controlled by two sets of mechanisms as follows:

Spatial tools

The spatial tools depend on geographical scope and venue of the implementation process. The new building standards led to a multiplicity of central areas in major cities through the development of urban operations. The domestic policy has been committed with basic principles in the organization of areas to lessen the operations of housing changing, and to balance among the reconstruction of areas projects; allowing exploitation of local properties in the downtown in the economic development operations (Tewdwr-Jones, 2002). The annexation of new lands to cities is an essential aspect in the urban expansion process, despite the fact that it requires legal and statutory mechanisms to allow land possession and the re-division to provide the required housing and services.

Human tools

It means all of the man powers and resources involved in the implementation process, which include the following:

Technical capabilities and governmental competencies.
Leaders and decision makers.
Executive sector personnel from different administrative levels.
Local community members who are targeted by this development.
Businessmen and private sector.
Consultants and experts

The choice of leaderships, who are supervising the process of planning preparation or execution, is considered the most important step. They shall have good communication and negotiation skills, putting into consideration the moral values and ethics of all parties. Everyone is targeting the same objective that is to implement the scheme development. It is worth mentioning that any negligence from any of the mentioned persons, such as a deficiency of senior management or ignorance of the key persons who are assigned to implement the strategic plan or failure of the operators to link between the strategic plan and the actual tasks, this will negatively affect the implementation process and the efficiency thereof, directly or indirectly. (DeLisi, 2001).

Funding tools

In general, the development depends on the availability of funding; domestic funding is considered as a necessary and essential aspect to establish the local development; which require the mobilization of the maximum amount of local funding resources. Domestic funding is deemed to mean all the available funding resources which can be provided from different sources for funding the local development in the best way that can achieve the greatest levels of such development over time, and enhance the independence of the local councils from the central government to achieve the required local development.

In addition, for the development of funding resources, the authority of local administration to obtain self-revenue shall be expanded, and each administration shall have their own independent budget, prepared at the local level, in order to rationalize public spending, develop technical and administrative capabilities of the staff, prepare technical and economic studies, create a proper atmosphere for investment, and organize the self-efforts of individuals and private sector as well as the financial support of decentralization by expanding the powers of local units in the imposition of taxes and fees in the framework of centralized regulations.

The local funding management resources are divided to two main types; First: Local self-resources resulting from local taxes, fees for services, and operation and investment of local facilities. Second: External financial resources resulting from financial supports (presented by the state to its local bodies to support their budgets), low interest loans, and donations from citizens and civic organizations or international grants.

The above mentioned local funding sources are only traditional sources. Governments are looking forward to finding new financial tools at the local and national levels as non-traditional alternatives to finance development projects. This has urged the United Nations to form a leading group for presenting creative tools for development funding, (Sundaram, 2013) and to propose new ideas and mechanisms to support development in different countries, including but not limited to:

Charging fees on gases causing global warming
Imposing tax on fuel use.
Solidarity tax on airline tickets.
Taxes on jet fuel and ships.
Fees for extraction of natural resources in the global commons areas.

United Nations program of Human settlements was interested in funding based on the exploitation of land for the sake of urban development (HABITAT, 2013) to enhance the availability of resources for local development and to move cities towards long term self-sustainability, in addition to mitigate the negative effects on local budgets and private investments. It has benefited cities in sustainable urban development such as Beijing, Hong Kong, Mumbai and Sao Paulo and others.

LBF is a flexible set of tools that can be adapted to a variety of institutional and cultural contexts. LBF ensures the achievement of secure access to land and sustainable urban development objectives, it includes the following tools (Walters, 2015):

Recurring taxes on land & building
Betterment charges & special assessments
Developer exaction
Land value increment taxes
Sale of development rights
Land leases & sale of public lands
Transfer taxes & stamp duties

Legal and legislative mechanisms

States and Governments rely on legal mechanisms as ones of the recognized authorities in the implementation operations through laws of urban planning, urban development and renewal, construction, and division of territory, and identifying the involved implementing parties or participants, which can also determine the allowed aspects and sources of finance.

Therefore, it is Law that gives the State and different bodies thereof a permanent or temporary authority for funding, coordination and implementation as well as monitoring. This determines the state obligation to secure the necessary lands required for public services by purchasing, leasing or participating with the private sector, and guarantees to maintain the sustainability of the development and the rights of future generations.

Administration and institutional mechanisms

Governments seek to use identified and specific administrative and institutional mechanisms in the stages of the development of the strategic plan, starting from the Strategic Development Plan, till the stages of implementation and follow up. This includes: ministries, city councils, local bodies and civil society. In order to coordinate the work among all the parties of implementation, it is required to establish a clear framework for the management of the respective parties through agreements, protocols, and basic and subsidiary committees. The framework shall define the responsibilities of such parties. Some states also try to establish independent executive institutions for the implementation of development plans and play a role in monitoring and follow-up and evaluation to ensure the transparency of the implementation progress.

It is worth mentioning that centralization of government performance was the cause of failure of many of development, therefore autonomy and independence, commitment of government agencies to participate in the process having the same objectives with committed leadership are considered as common factors in the success of the implementation processes (Cities & Governments, 2010)

The urban development planning and management in developing countries face the following problems in the implementation process:

Table 1.Matrix of problems& issues of implementation
Problems of urban plan’s implementationIssues
	Participation	Finance	Legislation	Governance
Ineffective policies that guide the urban development implementation
Inappropriate urban planning methodology
Delay of approval on urban development plans
Weak of the institutional structure of the government urban development authorities
Urban planning systems focus on control instead of directing development
Political instability and interference in the implementation of urban development plans
Weak of the legal mechanism to implement development plans
Insufficient awareness and poor community participation in urban planning activities
Weak of funding available for implementation

According to the previous matrix all implementation problems can be summarized in four major issues as the following:

Participation; as one of the pillars of the strategic planning process, it does not take place at one stage and ends thereafter, but it is a continuing contribution in the stages of preparation, adoption and approval, and finally at the stages of implementation, evaluation and follow-up. This includes the active participation of all parties of individuals, institutions and governmental and non-governmental organizations, and the higher the level of participation is, the higher the planned output is expected to be more realistic and appropriate to the reality of society.

Funding; Provision of funding represents one of the significant direct impacts on the implementation and efficiency issues. The development of the local economy is basically the most important objective of the strategic plans for the development of cities. Creating jobs of better quality to increase local wealth, and enabling communities to identify investment priorities, in addition to creating opportunities for collaboration and partnership, and empowering of communities to determine investment priorities and to change the future for a better one, all of that will help in the provision of local sustainable funding for business development and implementation of plans, with the permanent searching for other non-traditional funding sources to face the funding deficiency.

Legislation; is the main link between all the implementation tools and the main factor of the relation between regulatory implementation issues of all types. Legislation defines the general framework of participation, whether of members of the community or of the official authorities, and specifies the sources of funding for development projects located in all disciplines. Legislation can also control urban growth trends and policies of economic and social development, and the provision of land and services, Legislation and Law are the guarantee for true justice in social services and development.

Governance; is driving the development processes in developing communities and is the main base for decision-making. Through following strategic participation approaches in urban planning and development processes; such governments shall provide appropriate organizational structure to cope with the strategy that has been selected and shall be supportive and responsive to the strategy requirements. This is what urged governments achieve what called ”good governance,”.

The good governance systems of countries achieve greater success in generating investment, growth and job opportunities having transparency as one of the basic demands of governance and in mitigating the corruption by governments. Governance as well supports the credibility between the private and public sectors, which contributes to the achievement of co-partnerships for the implementation of development projects and programs.

6. Evolution the urban planning in Egypt

In Egypt; it should be noted that the evolution of urban planning thinking and methods was linked to the political and economic conditions of the state, in the 1952 revolution; Egypt used the planning approach of the central levels, and the government institutions that were concerned with construction had control over the planning process, and adopted a comprehensive planning scheme based on the preparation of master plans.

Egypt had continued sticking to following this approach until the new millennium starts, despite the emergence of many new planning methods since the mid-sixties, which were based on the importance of community involvement in the planning process and focused on the social, economic and environmental issues, as well as many of the political changes in Egypt calling for freedom from central control since the mid-seventies. However, the Urban Planning Law No. 3 of 1983, was shocking and disappointing to many planning specialists and professionals; stating the necessity to develop general planning of cities and villages in order to achieve their needs over long term without any community involvement.

Since the beginning of the nineties of the last century, claims to go along with the global trend towards the growth of democracy and community participation had increased, and with the entry of many international donors, some experiments and research processes and attempts that were made in collaboration with those sectors have emerged, which forced Egypt to move towards the existing strategic planning approach to engage communities with government institutions to develop a vision for the future of urbanism and made decisions that meet the actual demands of community. The year 2005 witnessed the first strategic plan set up in the village of Cherbas - Damietta governorate as a pilot model. During the fiscal year 2006-2007; the project of the preparation of the general strategic plans for cities nationwide has started through the General Organization for Physical Planning in its capacity as the concerned party responsible for the preparation of the plans according to the law. In the year 2007-2008 the UN-HABITAT subscribed in this project, targeting small towns less than 60 thousand people, and this planning approach is still adopted in Egypt till present.

The project attempted to find solutions to many problems such as the urban sprawl on agricultural land as a result of population growth and weak capacity of controlling urban growth, in addition to the weakness of the local economy, and the lack of services and infrastructure, with spread of poverty and the inability to get the necessary services.

7. Strategic planning implementation in Egyptian cities

The plans were prepared by GOPP and United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-HABITAT) in 2008 to urge a number of cities to prepare their plans according to the terms of reference of each party. In 2010, the (GOPP) issued a revised working manual to avoid some problems that emerged after the first phase of the project, while the United Nations Guideline avoided these problems since the beginning of the project. In the year 2014 a new manual was issued by each party and in 2016, the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-HABITAT) issued the updated terms of reference.

The two guidelines comply with the theoretical stages, and versions thereof have been repeatedly issued to avoid and address the problems that emerge during the preparation of plans. As an example of the mentioned versions, a logical framework was added and the urban boundary is almost finished and presented to the urban committee (GOPP) for approval before being submitted to the stakeholders.

By reviewing the relation between the law and terms of reference as a mechanism to convert the law into executive procedures, it is clear that the law and manuals do not support the actual implementation of the strategic plans. It is clear that the law and business manuals do not support the actual implementation of the schemes.

The law did not specify who is responsible for the implementation of the strategic plan, but only referred to some issues related to implementation issues without setting specific and clear texts; for example the process of participation, despite its importance in the preparation and implementation, did not specify who is responsible from the enabling partners to implement their roles and responsibilities on the local level in the strategic plans, while the law pointed out to the need for the Supreme Council for Planning at the national level.

Also, the projects in the strategic plan are not included in the general budget of the State, in addition to the overlap of Law No. 119 with a number of other laws and legislation, in addition to the lack of time limit for the preparation of the detailed plans after the approval of the strategy, with the change in the status quo, with no penalties in the event of non-implementation, so there is no obligation to action.

The guidelines were better than the legal texts. They identified many items related to implementation issues through explicit provisions to be followed in the preparation of the plans, but in the end they did not bring the implementation into force, as the duration of the project was set by 6 months to 9 Months and then to 15 months,

in addition, reviewing the strategic plan for the city of Sohag— as an example - shows that the preparation and approval of the plan took two years and nine months.

For studying the actual implementation process for a number of cities nationwide, recognized through a statistical survey, using a questionnaire with engineering departments, boards of cities; as local authorities responsible for implementation and follow-up, as it was among the participants in the preparation of those plans, this survey was analyzed using the SPSS program1.⁽¹⁾

The questionnaire form includes questions and information about the following:

Starting of the project — the date of the adoption of the urban boundary - the date of adoption of the Strategic plan.
Participation in the preparation of the outline.
Implementation and follow-up of urban boundary.
Implementation of the priority project scheme.
Preparation of detailed plans.
The achievement of planned targets.
The planned outputs and the order of priorities.
Implementation problems and ranking of their importance.

The total number of cities whose plans have been approved since the commencement of the project and until the year 2015 were 75 cities (Physical Planning, 2015) and according to research selection criteria, cities have been selected as per the following:

First: The Date of Approval (accreditation)

Is intended to allow sufficient time for the implementation of any of the outputs of the strategic plan, it has been identified in three or more years from the date of approval.

Second: The Region

The cities consist of different regions; what possibilities do they have and what kind of risks they may face. Third: Population

The cities include different number of population. GOPP set up plans for medium and big cities, and while the UN-HABITAT prepared plans for small towns of 60 thousand people, and because of their different guideline manuals, each of the chosen cities depicts the scope of its own.

Fourth: The Role Of The City

The role of a city is embodied in the aspirations and dreams of its inhabitants, this is reflected in the size of the participation and the resulted vision, and the demands of development. The chosen cities differ among capitals and medium and small cities.

According to previous criteria, 39 cities conform with the criteria, but due to difficulty to conduct direct interviews with all city councils, only 19 cities were selected, representing approximately 49% of the core sample.

8. Statistical results

The results of the questionnaire showed that the priority projects agreed with the approved plans were not imple-mented. In addition to the impact of the political situation experienced by Egypt during the previous years. The participants attributed the lack of implementation to a set of major operational problems:

Availability and empowerment of lands.
Delayed detailed plans
Number of entities involved in implementation
Relevant laws and regulations
The lack of realistic vision and weak link to goals
Agreement on goals that may not be in the public interest.

As well as a host of other problems related to the provision of funding and change of the status quo, with the lack of competence in local administration, and the lack of control and follow-up implementation. Some statistical results are as follows:

Figure 1 indicates that the implementation of priority projects was weak, and is clearly evident in terms of services and investment, while housing is 57%, but it includes private and governmental housing. As shown in Figure 2, the land allocation for governmental housing is about 56% and for services 16%.

Figure 3 shows the result of one of the main goals of the strategic plan; reducing the random urban sprawl on three levels, general (19th cities), regional level, and function of the city. The highest percentage is not achieved as shown in upper Egypt with 57%.

Figure 1.Implementation ofpriority projects

Figure 2.Land allocation forhousing and services

Regarding the planned target, the results were very depressing. The questionnaire has shown that there were no aspects for attracting investment at the city, and consequently there was a lack of local economic development.

Figure 3 compares between the provision of lands for governmental and private housing, it shows that this goal is not achieved (100%) completely in medium cities for government housing, while it is quite better when it comes

to private housing (42.9%).

Figure 3.Reductionof random urban sprawl

The results of the survey show the ranking of implementation problems as chosen by the local authorities, the unavailability or empowerment of lands take the first rank, and as expected the Lack of qualifications in the local authority administration came at the last rank as the participants do not acknowledge this as a fatal cause of failure.

Figure 4.Provision of landsfor housing

Table 2.
Elements	%	Ranking of Importance
Unavailability and empowerment of lands for public projects (housing / services)	12.6	1
The existing situation has changed because of delayed approval on the plans	12.5	2
The planning and construction requirements are not enforceable	10.5	3
Delay in preparing detailed plans	10.3	4
Lack of availability of government funding	9.6	5
Lack of realism, clarity of vision and future goals of the city	8.3	6
Multiple parties involved in the implementation process	7.6	7
The inappropriateness of the priority projects proposed in the plan	7.5	8
Laws and relevant legislation	7.5	9
Lack of effective control and monitoring of implementation processes	6.6	10
Centralization of the urban boundary committee	4.2	11
Lack of qualifications in the local authority administration	2.8	12

9. Proposed implementation system

The law does not assign the responsibility of implementation to a particular party. It is mainly the responsibility of the local authorities and governorates, with the participation of various service departments, in addition to the contribution of individuals, civil organizations and the private sector.

The system deals with the four implementation issues referred hereto: participation, funding, legislation, and governance. Through the rearrangement of some tasks and activities in parallel rather than sequential, with the addition of new parties and tasks that contribute to modifying the operational process and identifying key actors based on the performance of the task and participants from different parties.

The proposed system is based on:

A set of guidelines for participants from government and society and defining their roles.
Achieving higher levels of community participation to reach Grade 8 (control).
Providing funding for land availability and sustainable and non-traditional project implementation.
Achieving the principles of governance.
A framework of legislative and legal amendments to ensure effective management of the system.

Figure 5.Implementation system

As Figure 5 shows the implementation system includes different levels of participation, starting from level 3 & 4 (Informing, Consultation) and it is also achieved in levels 6, 7 & 8 (Partnership, Delegated Power, & Citizen Control).

This system takes into consideration the governance principles as an important target needed to achieve accountability and transparency abiding by law, by being responsive, equitable and inclusive to reach effectiveness and efficiency through Participation.

10. Conclusions

In Egypt, there may be a need to create an implementation guideline for strategic planning for a city, as a result of the discrepancy between strategic urban planning and public investment plans, as the output projects are not included in the state budget, as there is no legal framework or clear procedures for implementation, and because of the multiplicity of the executive partners without the clarity of the tasks and responsibilities of each party.
The characteristics of the strategic plans in Egypt:
Inability to achieve the interaction between planning and execution as a result of many obstacles, which include the lack of funding availability, the inability to provide lands for public services or government housing programs, in addition to the change in the existing situation over the period of plan preparation.
Lack of flexibility due to the inability of such plans to cope with the rapid changes that occur in the surrounding environment, the rapid urban growth, and the sudden economic changes, whether in the internal or external environment.
Many cities didn’t achieve the interaction required between the different levels of planning, as many cities, in their future vision, have not considered the importance of regional or national relations, so the vision is to a great extent similar for small towns or big cities or even capitals.Activation of the proposed system through the following recommendations:
Formulation of the implementation guideline for strategic plans, specifically all parties and institutions involved in implementation, with the assignment of tasks and roles for each party, and by determining the means of communication and coordination.
Use of a comprehensive monitoring system to identify responsible parties, and achieve observation of performance and progress towards the aspired targets, using urban indicator lists formulated according to technical standards, linked to national urban observatory indicators with active community involvement.
Develop a framework to raise the community awareness about the importance of strategic plans and their role in participation.
Formulating capacity building training programs for local authorities at all levels of executive, administrative and technical, and achieving communication and coordination with various government institutions.
Reviewing laws and legislative context and benefiting from the Arab and international experiences.
Providing the necessary funding by establishing a local fund for the implementation of development plans and involving civil society in financing, administration and monitoring.

11. Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all those who contributed to the completion of this paper from the consultants, experts and employees of the local administration and the General Organization for physical Planning, who have influenced the research with their views and contributions of the questionnaire and data.

Footnotes:

1This survey conducted between January 2014 and June 2015, some updated on 2016

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[BIBR-1] Atkinson H.. Strategy implementation: A Role for the Balanced Card Management Decision. 44(10):1-17.

[BIBR-2] Baross P.. Working Paper: Netherlands, Rotterdam; 1991.

[BIBR-3] DeLisi P.. Strategy execution: An oxymoron or a powerful formula for corporate success. Organizational Synergies. 2001. Publisher Full Text

[BIBR-4] Denhardt R.B., Denhardt J.V.. Thomson Corporation: USA; 2009.

[BIBR-5] GOPP: Cairo; 2007.

[BIBR-6] GOPP: Cairo; 2014.

[BIBR-7] Physical Planning General Organization. GOPP: Cairo; 2015.

[BIBR-8] Goodstein L., Nolan T., Pfeiffer J.. Pfeiffer & Company / McGraw-Hill: New York; 1993.

[BIBR-9] Hamdi N., Geothert R.. John Wily & Sons: New Jersey; 1997.

[BIBR-10] Harlem B.G.. Oxford University Press: New York; 1987.

[BIBR-11] Healey P., McDougall G., Thomas M.J.. Pergamon Press: Oxford; 1982.

[BIBR-12] Khatab A.. Mas Printing & Publishing: Cairo; 2012.

[BIBR-13] Kumar T.M.Vinod. Strategic urban planning initiatives for liveable cities”. ITPI Journal. 2002; 20(2)

[BIBR-14] Landry C.. Earthscan/ James & James: London; 2000.

[BIBR-15] M Levy J.. Prentical Hall: USA; 1999.

[BIBR-16] Center Media Production. Kingdom of: Saudi Arabia; 2007.

[BIBR-17] Ethiopian Government: Ethiopia; 2010.

[BIBR-18] A Salem. Implementation and strategic formulation are two sides of a single coin". Journal of Urban Dialogue. 2008; 2150

[BIBR-19] Shapiro J.. CIVICUS, World Alliance for Citizen Participation: South Africa; 2003.

[BIBR-20] Steinberg F.. Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS: Rotterdam; 2002.

[BIBR-21] Sundaram J.K.. Innovation in development finance. Project, Syndicate. 2013. Publisher Full Text

[BIBR-22] Tewdwr-Jones M.. Routledge: London; 2002.

[BIBR-23] Urban development strategies and shelter strategy for the poor: item 6 of the provisional agenda, 19th session. 2012.

[BIBR-24] HABITAT U.N.-. Draft Report of the board council of the United Nations Human Settlements Program: The role of cities in creating better economic opportunities for all, with particular reference to youth and gender. 24th session. 2013.

[BIBR-25] HABITAT U.N.-. Terms of reference for preparing strategic urban plans for small cities. workshop “reviewing UN-HABITAT’s TOR, 17-6-2015”. 2016.

[BIBR-26] Cities United, Governments Local. United Cities and Local Governments: Mexico; 2010.

Towards Strategic Planning Implementation for Egyptian Cities

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Marwa Ahmed Soliman, Ph. D, Urban Planning, Informal Settlements Development Fund, Egypt

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