'Build Back Better' or 'Business as Usual'? Notes on a Post-Covid Urbanization Paradigm in the Arab World and Beyond

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 292-310
Author(s):  
Yasser Elsheshtawy
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Urban Research ◽  
The Many ◽  
Business As Usual

As the world's metropolitan centres are slowly entering into what has been described as a post-Covid urbanization paradigm, a number of international organizations, consultancies and think tanks have been vocal in suggesting that we have an opportunity to 'build back Better'. Yet many critics have pointed out that such approaches are in fact nothing but a reconstitution of pre-pandemic agendas that ultimately will result in exclusionary measures by catering for a select few at the expense of the many. This essay reflects on these matters by providing a brief overview of changes that have taken place worldwide, and exploring the extent to which the pandemic has impacted urban research. The discussion then turns to the Arab world. To that end some of the ongoing projects in two major cities in the region – Cairo and Riyadh – are examined in detail to understand how they constitute a continuation of conventional practices and how they may result in gentrification. Ultimately the aim is to highlight that we are faced with a truly unique opportunity to re-configure our cities to be more humane and responsive to people's needs and that we should not succumb to the allure of financial profit by reconstituting and revamping old agendas.

The Many-Colored Cloak

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Malik Mufti
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Electoral Participation ◽  
Critical Questions ◽  
Ibn Rushd ◽  
The People ◽  
Democratic Principles ◽  
The Many ◽  
Religion And Democracy

This articles argues (a) that democratic discourse has already become hegemonic among mainstream Islamist movements in Turkey and the Arab world; (b) that while this development originated in tactical calculations, it constitutes a consequential transformation in Islamist political thought; and (c) that this transformation, in turn, raises critical questions about the interaction of religion and democracy with which contemporary Islamists have not yet grappled adequately but which were anticipated by medieval philosophers such as al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd. The argument is laid out through an analysis (based on textual sources and interviews) of key decisions on electoral participation made by Turkey’s AK Party and the Muslim Brotherhoods in Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Particular attention is focused on these movements’ gradual embrace of three key democratic principles: pluralism, the people as the source of political authority, and the legitimacy of such procedural mechanisms as multiple parties and regular elections.

scholarly journals Applying the SDGs to Cities: Business as Usual or a New Dawn?

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 3201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Zinkernagel ◽  
James Evans ◽  
Lena Neij
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Sustainable Urban Development ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Urban Contexts ◽  
The Many ◽  
Business As Usual ◽  
The City ◽  
Indicator Sets

With growing urbanisation the sustainability of cities has become increasingly important. Although cities have been using indicators for a long time it is only in the last decades that attempts have been made to collate indicators into sets that reflect the many different aspects required to assess the sustainability of a city. The aim of this paper is to review the evolution of indicators for monitoring sustainable urban development in order to understand how ‘new’ the indicators suggested by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are for cities and the challenges they may face in using them. The review reveals that previous indicator sets emphasised environmental sustainability, health and economic growth. It is also shown that indicator sets that pre-date the SDGs lacked dimensions such as gender equality and reduced inequalities. In all, the SDG indicators provide the possibility of a more balanced and integrated approach to urban sustainability monitoring. At the same time, further research is needed to understand how to adapt the SDGs, targets and indicators to specific urban contexts. Challenges of local application include their large number, their generic characteristics and the need to complement them with specific indicators that are more relevant at the city level.

The Making and Breaking of States: The End of Empire in India Revisited

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith M. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Arab World ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
State And Society ◽  
The World ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Imperial State ◽  
Second World

Recent events in the Arab world have sharpened and widened public interest in the way states can be broken and made. Since the end of the Second World War the world has seen three great waves of state-breaking and state-making: the end of European empires; the collapse of the Soviet Union; and the contemporary ‘Arab Spring’. By revisiting an example from the first of these great waves, perhaps the greatest ‘imperial ending’—the end of British imperial rule in India in 1947, this lecture investigates issues which may prove instructive in probing the dynamics of other phases of turbulence in the structures and nature of states. It addresses four major questions which are relevant across the many different episodes of state breaking and making, with the help of evidence from the case of the South Asian subcontinent. What is the relationship between state and society and the patterns of relationship which help to determine the nature and vulnerability of the state? What makes a viable and destabilising opposition to the imperial state? What is the nature of the breaking or collapse of that state? How are states refashioned out of the inheritance of the previous regime and the breaking process?

scholarly journals Les politiques méditerranéennes de l'Espagne à la recherche d'un équilibre entre l'impératif de la sécurité et l'éthique de l'interdépendance (Note)

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-327
Author(s):  
Bernard Labatut
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Arab World ◽  
International System ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
The World ◽  
Security Problem ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Many

Franco's Spain flattered itself as enjoying a preferential relationship with the Arab World, as with Latin America as well - a kind of compensation for Spain's lack of normalization within the international System. With its transition to democracy, Spain's place in the world has been redefined and, consequently, so have its relations in the Mediterranean. This has taken place in a context made difficult by Spain's integration into European and Western institutions, an integration that holsters it but no longer lets it take advantage of its different status. This redefinition has also occurred as Spain faces increased risks of destabilization from countries along the southern shoreline, which pose a very direct security problem for Spain. The policies it has implemented expose the divisions between several kinds of logic. They also reveal the many constraints Spain must face in a region split along different lines and in which it finds itself completely immersed.

The Many Faces of National Security in the Arab World

1993 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 175
Author(s):  
William B. Quandt ◽  
Bahgat Korany ◽  
Paul Noble ◽  
Rex Brynen
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Arab World ◽  
The Many

The Logistics of Interviewing in International Organizations

1970 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Miles
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Survey Research ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Field Experience ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Individual

This note is intended primarily for graduate students and other researchers without previous field experience in studying international organizations. I do not propose either to summarize or to repeat the many expositions on survey research, interviewing, and the like; radier the focus here will be primarily on a number of the “nuts and bolts” problems not usually treated in the literature that the researcher is likely to face. If the individual is aware of these beforehand he can save himself time and a few mistakes.

scholarly journals Le touriste et le terroriste ou les deux extrêmes du continuum transnational

2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-252
Author(s):  
James N. Rosenau
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Units Of Analysis ◽  
Micro Parts ◽  
National Boundaries ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Third World ◽  
Global Agenda ◽  
Global Food

This paper proceeds from the premise that profound changes have transformed the structure of world politics and that, consequently, a new, transnational paradigm of the global system needs to be developed. All the existing paradigms are found to be incapable of handling the proliferation of actors, the declining capacities of governments, the mushrooming of subgroup loyalties, the growing demands of the Third World, and the expansion of the range of issues on the global agenda - to mention only the most salient of the transformations that have rendered world politics both more decentralized and more complex. What is needed, it is argued, is a model organized around micro units of analysis that are common to both the new and old actors, issues, and structures and that thus form the foundation of the many new macro aggregations which have come to share the world stage with governments and international organizations. After developing a conception of four types of aggregational processes through which micro parts are converted into macro wholes, the analysis focuses on two types of transnational roles as worthy of consideration as the basic micro units of the new paradigm. The two types are designated as primitive and derivative roles. The former refers to roles in macro units that would not exist if their activities did not span national boundaries (the multinational corporation is an example), while the latter refers to roles in macro aggregations that do not depend on transnational interactions for their existence even though performances in them to have transnational consequences (examples are farmers, parents, and car drivers, who are both active and inadvertent participants in, respectively, today's global food, population, and energy issues). Whatever the issue involved, and irrespective of whether they are primitive or derivative, all transnational roles can be located on a legitimacy-authority continuum and seen as varying between two extremes, one which gives exclusive priority to the citizen role in a nation-state and the other which accords exclusive loyalty to the transnational role. The tourist and the terrorist are offered as examples of roles at the two extremes of this important continuum.

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