The Informal Settlements sub-component will support the Municipality of Aleppo in developing an Informal Settlements Policy and Implementation Strategy, based on the principles of decentralization and participation that would address the problems of existing informal settlements and minimize their growth in the future. This would be done as an integral part of the Aleppo City Development Strategy (CDS) and the Informal Settlements program Steering Committee would operate alongside and in close collaboration with the CDS Work Groups.

The first activity of IS Project was the development of a better understanding of the problems, assets and potentials of informal settlements in order to support the policy formulation and strategy development processes. This activity falls into three categories:

1.  an overview of all the informal settlements in the city, giving emphasis to the residents’ perceptions of their dominant problems and principal assets, that can help in setting priorities for the implementation of policy and might form the start to an accessible city-wide database on low-income housing areas;
2.  a detailed study of the informal land markets and prevailing legislation that drive the informal settlements as the only affordable solution to housing the lowest income families in the city, that can help in developing strategic approaches to minimising the growth of informal settlements in the future;
3. a number of pilot projects to test and demonstrate approaches to engaging informal settlement households and communities in the governance and upgrading of their social, economic and environmental conditions in collaboration with government and the private sector.