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In the aftermath of the 2011 revolution, the increase of neighbourhood-based mobilization in Cairo’s sprawling informal settlements has not only been noted by political scientists. It has also attracted the attention of the International urban planning community. While the former have given little regard to the impacts of these bottom-up processes on future urban development, the latter often seems to show little concern for the political implications of these movements. Rather than framing the interest in such local urban action in unpolitical terms such as “community-based initiatives”, this thesis argues, an empirical enquiry into their potential for future processes of urban upgrading and development needs to be situated in the larger framework of neoliberal transformation. But it also needs to take much more careful note of the actual structures of power and micro-practices on the ground. By comparing a case of local of resistance against an urban upgrading scheme with the current discourse in the emerging Cairo-wide networks of neighbourhood-based popular committees, Egyptian rights organisations, and local urban planners, this thesis aims to sketch out possible future scenarios for urban change. While the locally emerging practices can be read as claims to the urban commons, this thesis argues, their translation into future forms of urban governance and resource management moves onto contested political ground.