The Egyptian military regime of Abd al-Fattah el-Sisi has announced as part of its Vision 2030 its intention to eliminate informal urban areas. The regime has identified these areas – commonly known by the Arabic term ‘ashwa’iyyat (which means haphazard) – as a threat to the nation. The Egyptian state, however, has no clear conception of what urban informality constitutes or what exactly it is eradicating. To understand how and why the state has placed urban informality as central to its politics, I contend that we have to examine the political processes through which this uncertain yet powerful concept is produced. Urban informality, I argue, is a political intervention that is always fleeting and geographically specific in an otherwise haphazard context. Haphazard urbanisation points to the complex power struggles by a range of actors, both within and beyond the state, through which the formal and informal divide can mark urban life. In a critical reading of the first major study of informality in Egypt, I show how the urban was divided into the formal and informal through outdated laws. I detail, by engaging sources in English and Arabic, how the Egyptian state militarised urban informality from the 1990s onwards. I argue that it is through this historical framing that we must understand el-Sisi’s current war against urban informality. In turn, I argue that the regime’s attempt to eliminate informality has not resulted in greater control over what and how urban informality appears but has deepened the hazardisation of urban life.

埃及军事政权 Abd al-Fattah el-Sisi 已宣布，作为其 2030 年愿景的一部分，其打算消除非正规城市地区。该政权已经确定了这些地区——通常以阿拉伯语“ashwa'iyyat”而闻名（这意味着偶然）——作为对国家的威胁。然而，埃及政府对于城市非正规性的构成或它究竟正在消除什么并没有明确的概念。为了理解国家如何以及为何将城市非正式性作为其政治的核心，我认为我们必须研究产生这个不确定但强大的概念的政治过程。我认为，城市非正规性是一种政治干预，在原本随意的环境中总是转瞬即逝且具有地理特定性。随意的城市化表明了国家内外一系列行为者的复杂权力斗争，正式和非正式的鸿沟可以通过这些斗争来标记城市生活。在对埃及非正规性的第一项主要研究的批判性阅读中，我展示了城市如何通过过时的法律分为正式和非正式的。我通过使用英语和阿拉伯语的资料详细介绍了埃及政府如何从 1990 年代起将城市非正式性军事化。我认为，正是通过这种历史框架，我们必须了解 el-Sisi 当前对城市非正规性的战争。反过来，我认为该政权试图消除非正规性并没有导致对城市非正规性出现什么和如何出现的更大控制，而是加深了城市生活的危险化。