الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
There is broad consensus on the fact that housing has central significance to everyone’s quality of life and health with considerable economic, social, cultural and personal importance. In a rapidly changing and urbanizing world, the provision of adequate andaffordable housing remains a key priority for all governments. Over the past four decades, most of the trend towards global urbanization has occurred in the developing world. Egypt has undergone a demographic revolution leading to an increase in urban population and this revolution is expected to continue until the beginning of the 21st century. This exponential increase in building and population densities ranked Egypt the highest worldwide. No longer regarded as simply a roof over one’s head, housing today plays a crucial role in achieving sustainable development - as envisaged by the idea of sustainable housing. This complex web of inter-relationships between sustainability and housing is addressed by the policies for sustainable housing. Sustainable housing policies should deal with the affordability, social justice, cultural and economic impacts of housing, and contribute to making healthy residential neighborhoods and sustainable cities. A hard-won international experience over the past two decades indicates that the key ingredient to realizing more inclusive cities is neither money nor technology, nor even expertise (although these are important), but good urban governance. There is an emerging consensus that good governance is a key priority for sustainable human and settlements development Accordingly, in the 1990s the focus of research and policy shifted to the management of cities and to ”governance”. Thus, Monitoring and evaluation, through shelter and urban indicators and the documentation of best practices and action plans, should be part of human settlements
policies at all levels. This could take place through enhancing political will for setting new policies with an appropriate legal and regulatory framework allowing restructuring the institutional framework to avoid duplications of jobs, ensuring decentralization of decision making, planning and implementation, and enhancing the participation of private sector and civil society at all levels of the housing process. Also enabling the housing elements including incentives to owners/developers should be secured and effectively implemented/enforced including enhancing the security of property rights to land and real estate, making available well located and serviced land, streamlining bureaucratic procedures for land subdivision and building permit issuance and property registration, and enhancing the end-users’ affordability levels through among other things enhanced access to housing mortgage finance.