Ms. Fawwaz’s presentation was based on her dissertation research in Hay el Sellom, a very poor and highly congested neighborhood located at the fringes of the southern suburbs and Beirut’s largest informal settlement. The findings indicate that developers involved in land sales and housing construction resorted to public institutions (e.g. land registries, state-recognized topographers) and regulations (state law, urban codes, etc.) recurrently in their operations. Thus, the developers in Hay El Sellom used methods similar to those employed by their counterparts in the formal sector in order to secure their sales, acquire symbolic legitimacy, and organize the process of land subdivision and construction. These findings contradict the perception that cities grow through rule making by one group and rule breaking by another, and show that both the state and the residents of informal settlements contribute together in the production of the urban regulations of informal settlements.