Aliaa Elsayed
Aliaa Elsayed is an MSc International Relations Student at the University of Edinburgh with three years of experience implementing UN projects on Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change.
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Aliaa Elsayed made a comment
The most-similar method is a very common approach in research methodology not just in studying economics. However, it is impossible to say that the cases under examination are the same, given the fact that external and internal contexts can never be the same. The North-South Korea example makes more sense to me unlike the Australia/ Argentina one. I would not...
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Aliaa Elsayed made a comment
I would like to thank all the course and SLURC team for your efforts and for this amazing learning opportunity, and thanks to all my colleagues for the interesting and knowledgable discussion.
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Aliaa Elsayed made a comment
I have learned a lot of concepts but spatial justice and the relation between colonial heritage and spatial inequality and segregation was one the biggest takeaways for me in this course. Furthermore, the course was an eye-opener on the blurred line between the formal and informal and how " informality of the poor is criminalised, informality of the rich may...
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Aliaa Elsayed made a comment
I cannot agree more with decentralization being the first concrete step to achieve a sustainable solution, especially if local governments are elected by the people not appointed by the national government, then they can be held accountable by the people for the provision of services and access to infrastructure. Only then would the real needs of the people be...
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Aliaa Elsayed made a comment
This is particularly true as in 2015 the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (successor of the Hyogo Framework 2005-2015) took into consideration small-scale risk in addition to large scale risks, frequent and infrequent, sudden and slow-onset disasters, caused by natural or manmade hazards as well as related environmental, technological and...
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Thank you!
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This is a very interesting perspective. I would be interested to know more about the secession movements that took place in these areas. Please feel free to provide me with some sources.
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Aliaa Elsayed made a comment
I cannot fully comprehend the idea of the savings group, it is unfamiliar to me. Like how can these savings cover all their needs, how is it considered participatory planning (in ways other than the few examples in the text) and what happens if someone borrows money they cannot return. The lady from the video was very confident of the trust among this...
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I agree and this also goes back to the colonial heritage where during independence and post-independence era, the main goal was the unification of the country against any cost to stand up against colonizers so one-party system, personal rule, centralization became dominant and very justifiable who would happily mobilize around a strong charismatic leader who...
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I could not agree more with what this article states. In Egypt, there are around 30 governorates with mayors, yet all the decision-making comes from the central government with no fiscal autonomy to these governorates. Accordingly, I would refer to it as local administration instead of local government. The country also suffers from the dominant major city...
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Aliaa Elsayed made a comment
Tax evasion has always been a dilemma in countries with administrative and bureaucratic corruption, where you find the rich manipulating taxation systems whether by having property named after different family members rather than the real owner to avoid taxes imposed on multiple property ownership, same goes for taxes on multiple vehicle ownership. In my own...
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Aliaa Elsayed made a comment
This video shows the dependency of both sectors on each other to survive in a very simple way and from the map, it is clear that the selling points for those residing in informal settlements target formal areas more than informal ones, showing that if these economic ties were cut not only informal livelihoods would be threatened but formal areas would lack the...
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Aliaa Elsayed made a comment
Informal economic activities are on the rise in my country, Egypt. A very clear example from my country was transportation through new applications such as " uber" which are most common among youth. The service challenged registered taxis and threatened the existing market as it introduced fixed fares, safer tracking methods, easy employment and at the...
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Aliaa Elsayed made a comment
I am a UN consultant and therefore I am tax-exempted. Yet, I pay taxes through the products I buy and the services I use. The services and goods I buy vary from the informal to the formal sector of the economy, yet during the quarantine, I believe that those who work in the informal sector are those who were harmed the most.
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Aliaa Elsayed made a comment
Land Reclamation is a new concept for me. The first thing I learned from working in Disaster Risk Reduction is that exposure and vulnerability are what transforms hazards into disasters. To see people trying to escape the risks of being homeless by putting themselves in direct exposure to the risk of floods shows the amount of effort that needs to be done...
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Aliaa Elsayed made a comment
Urban development for me is to ensure that all interconnected systems are functioning properly (infrastructures such as water, sanitation, communication, transportation..etc) and reachable to all population groups. This can be done through urban planning where the political will and good governance initiate and sustain the process of development.
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Aliaa Elsayed made a comment
Hello Everyone, I am Aliaa Elsayed. I am an urban resilience consultant from the Arab region. I hold a BSc. Degree in political science (2018 graduate) and I have been working in disaster risk reduction and cities' resilience for two years now, which is the main driver for why I joined this course. I am looking forward to this learning experience.