New Typologies of Contemporary Shopping Malls in Egypt

Contemporary shopping malls in Egypt have created new public spaces for lifestyle and leisure, which complement the commercial logic of consumer behavior. Mega malls in Egypt are simultaneously merging shopping, leisure, and entertainment, creating an ambivalence. They are representations of the globalized economy, but also manifest a certain uniqueness through their typology, their mode of insertion in the urban fabric and the type of public spaces created in them. This paper traces four new typologies in the design of six mega shopping malls in Egypt, constructed since 2010, as they integrate new public gathering spaces for leisure, recreation, and entertainment. Data on the new malls in Egypt was collected from corporate websites and promotional brochures, Google Maps and Street View, TripAdvisor, social media websites, visitor comments and news articles. A key finding is the trend of integration of large outdoor recreational spaces such as courtyards and plazas in mall design, the inclusion of a water element for attraction as well as the transition in function from simply offering goods and services to one that offers experiences and events to encourage recurring visits to the mall. The transformation of the mall parallels changes in conceptualizing the city of the 20th century as a large marketplace, an emporium of consumption, to conceptualizing the city of the 21st century as a large theatre and a festive place.

Public Space as a Venue for Peacebuilding in Lebanon? The Role of Civic Movements in Reclaiming Public Space in Beirut and Tripoli

The issue of public spaces is increasingly at the core of civic movements and discourse of reform in Lebanon, coming to the fore most recently in the mass protests of October 2019. Yet, these most recent movements build on years of activism and contestation, seeking to reclaim rights to access and engage with public spaces in the face of encroachments, mainly by the private sector. Urban spaces, including the country’s two biggest cities – Beirut and Tripoli – have been largely privatised and the preserve of an elite few, and post-war development has been marred with criticism of corruption and exclusivity. This article explores the history of public spaces in Beirut and Tripoli and the successive civic movements, which have sought to realise rights to public space. The article argues that reclaiming public space is central to reform and re-building relationships across divides after years of conflict. First, the article describes the evolution of Lebanon’s two main urban centres. Second, it moves to discuss the role of the consociational system in the partition and regulation of public space. Then it describes the various civic movements related to public space and examines the opportunities created by the October 2019 movement. Penultimately it interrogates the limits imposed by COVID-19 and recent crises. Lastly, it explores how placemaking and public space can contribute to peacebuilding and concludes that public spaces are essential to citizen relationships and inclusive participation in public life and affairs.

Fostering Interactions at Public Open Spaces. The Role of Physical Interface in Facilitating User Interactions in the UAE

Over the past few decades, the importance of public open spaces has been substantially increased due to rapid urbanization and developments. Likewise, cities and communities in the Arab world are also going through urban transformation; driven by the global context in which cities are being reshaped along with the modernization of urban planning themes. Over the last 15 years, Dubai has emerged as one of the world’s fastest growing cities. It has been associated with the desire to build tall buildings as a statement of modernity, globalization, and economic prosperity, which lead to a rapid growth in population. This expansion has caused many environmental and urban planning challenges. Hasty urbanization, demographic, and economic growth alongside land privatization process has progressively changed the nature and theme of public open spaces within the UAE which in turn creates a gap between social life and community urban planning. The regeneration of public open spaces in cities of the UAE is a major issue as multiple factors must be taken into consideration during the design stages. This paper aims at understanding the role of physical interface of the public open spaces in context of UAE and its transformation over the years. These spaces act as a catalyst which accelerate this transformation of urban scenario and there by citizens life. Open places play an important role for bringing people closer and act as a socio-cultural entity for the sake of improving social life and interactivity. Social well-being arises from a sense of security, belonging, familiarity, support, cohesion, and integration of social groups, based on respect for different cultures, traditions, and backgrounds. Hence this research analyzes the influence of such tangible and intangible elements in the public open spaces, through which the social interaction happens and offers unprecedented experience to the users, visitors and urban community alike.

Post-development Practices of Public Space, Between Cohabitation and "Domination" of New Atmospheres

Public space becomes a major issue during urban restructuring. To better understand this specificity, we chose the Rabat’s dock developed as part of the Bouregreg valley development project, as a case study. This space, with its background, has been subjected to a profound restructuring as part of the project. The study of the social uses and practices of citizens through their manifestations in this space makes it possible to identify the evolution of the relationship between the transformation of spatial structures and the production of landscapes representative of the image of the urban area. The transformations brought by this mega-project in our study area show new urbanities. In front of a tendency to micro-appropriation by the upper social classes and the tendency to a smoothed and polished urbanity, is found a more diverse and more complex urbanity which oscillates between a consensual social sharing of public (physical) space and / or maintaining old practices.

Khobar City Plan and the New Public Space in Saudi Arabia

The launch of Khobar city plan in 1947 as the first ever planned city in Saudi Arabia marked a radical change in public space making, which shifted from pre-industrial intimate and human-focused public realm to automobile-ridden open-ended public space. This study examines the impact of this radical shift by focusing on one particular street, King Khalid street, which was once the bustling urban core of the new city of Khobar. Data were collected from multiple sources given the inconsistency in the documentation of the planning and development process of the city. This included relevant popular as well as specialist literature, archival maps, historical photographs, and interviews with local residents who grew up or lived in the city for most of their lives. In addition, brief fieldwork was conducted to assess and examine the current street conditions. In comparison to the desolate current condition of King Khalid street, this study reveals multiple factors which helped to galvanize the exceptional position of this street in the past as a primary public space within a seemingly consistent gridiron city. These factors include accessibility, scale, architectural characteristics, economic offerings, and the general urban experience. The study concludes by discussing ways to resurrect the street based on parallel experiments from the region.

What Happened to the Public Spaces of the Arab World? From Colonisation to Revolution: The Case of Lebanon

Public spaces were first introduced into the Arab world through colonial authorities in a vision to “modernise” what was seen as “oriental cities”, since the 19th century until today. However, this process was brought under severe political, social, cultural, and economic circumstances. In the due date, the imported western models of public spaces were superimposed on the existing fabric, dismissing any of those components, which left public spaces to their tragic fate in the Arab cities. In that context, they were also snatched from their democratic and civic nature under the dictator regimes. The paper will be divided into five sections, starting with a look at the historical evolution of public spaces under colonisation, then it will take Beirut, Lebanon as a case study; a city that was torn by war and patched by western ideologies following the m­odernist movement. This will take a critical approach by looking at several players in the process of implementation of public spaces in Beirut. One of these being Solidere and its reconstruction plans of the city centre of Beirut after the civil war (1975-1990), which was heavily influenced by the western models of public spaces. In the third section, a comparative study between Piazza del Duomo in Italy and Martyrs’ Square in Lebanon will set a wider understanding of the product of this evolution. Eventually, the paper will analyse the impact of the Lebanese revolution (2019) on reclaiming the public spaces for the people, similar to other revolutions in the Arab world that date back to 2011, through examples like “The Egg”, Samir Kassir Garden and Martyr’s Square. By the hands of the revolutions, the people were able to domesticate what did not reflect their identity, culture or needs, and transform them into inclusive spaces for everyone from all races, classes and backgrounds as an opportunity to set a collective vision for the future. By that, a look and a recommendation for the future of the public spaces in the Arab world, especially Beirut, will take place through a concluding section.

Heritage in the Street: Megawra | BEC’s Athar Lina Initiative in Historic Cairo

Based in al-Khalifa in Historic Cairo and run by the Megawra-Built Environment Collective, Athar Lina is a participatory initiative to establish modalities of citizen participation in heritage conservation based on a vision of heritage as a resource not a burden. Since its inception in 2012, Athar Lina has worked on conservation, heritage education, urban revitalization and heritage industries. It has conserved four domes from the 12th and 14th century and is currently working on the conservation of two other monuments including al-Imam al-Shafi’i shrine. It runs an Open-Spaces Program focusing on improving infrastructure and services to upgrade quality of open spaces. This is directly linked to Athar Lina’s Ground Water Research Project which seeks to resolve problems of groundwater-rise in heritage sites by extracting water and reusing it for the benefit of the community for purposes such as irrigation and cleaning. In addition to its Heritage Education Program and the Heritage Summer School it runs for al-Khalifa’s children, it runs the Athar Lina Heritage Design Thinking School which explores the potential of heritage for income-generation. Finally, through its research and advocacy project, Citizen Participation in Historic Cairo, Athar Lina is working on conservation, revitalization and management plans for al-Khalifa.

Investigating Users Changing Needs in Relation to Non-designed or Unplanned Public Spaces in Cairo

In recent studies, public spaces are defined as living organisms that are subjected to continuous change. These changes affect the different uses of the urban space, its composition and design aspects, in order to cope with the users’ changing needs. Rather than that, users intervene in the space formation either formally, by including the community and stakeholders in the design process fully or partially; or informally, by small or big actions done by the space users in order for the space to satisfy their current needs. Several spaces in Cairo are dealt with as leftovers of the buildings design and construction process. These spaces have passed through several changes that affected and was affected by the Cairines (Cairo citizens) and their culture of dealing with public spaces to accommodate their changing needs. The deficiency in public spaces in Cairo urban spaces is reviewed. And the inability of the formal designed/planned spaces to respond to the spaces’ users with their changing needs is investigated throughout the research. In order to focus on a public space in Nasr city district in Cairo, sequential mapping to the area over different ages is carried on, examining the changes -formally and informally- in the space to cope with area users. That is accompanied by surveys and questionnaires that aim to determine the needs of the users in the space and whether they are met or not. The questionnaire also aims to measure the level of intervention and satisfaction of the users in this space, to explain how its users intervene in adapting to the existing formal design, and to find out how these interventions shape and affect directly and indirectly the dynamism of the space as a formal planned public space. The paper aims to review and find out theories and practices that provide solutions for dealing with non-designed open spaces development in terms of users changing needs and contributions. The results from the study show some development considerations that need to be respected in Cairo public spaces with more concern for people’s usage and interaction with the space.

The Segregation in Access to Spaces for Urban Activities during COVID-19 Pandemic in Relation to Gated Communities in Egypt

Despite the long history of physical and social segregation by various types of gated communities in Egypt, they are attracting more residents. This is a result of the sense of privacy, security, access to proper services and the quality of green areas and public spaces that they offer. In most cases, such privileges and spaces for urban activities have restricted access to users who do not own residential units in such gated communities. With the current COVID-19 pandemic, starting in early 2020, and the Egyptian government’s preventive measures, people’s daily lives have been affected both economically and socially. Regulations such as the application of a curfew, and the closure of public services and facilities have had a considerable impact on population’s urban activities and the use of the public spaces. Yet, it could be argued that urban activities within gated communities have increased as the residents were forced to stay at home, or within the gated compounds’ walls. Thus, this paper investigates the use of the spaces for urban activities inside the gated communities; whether residential or beach destinations, in Egypt during the pandemic. It then studies the segregation in the rights of use of open urban spaces inside and outside gated communities, during the pandemic.

Public Spaces in the Arab Region

The Arab Region has been facing several challenges. While some countries are facing socio-economic issues, others have been civil strife and conflict. In both cases, public spaces play an important role in tackling these issues, and in cities’ social, economic, health and environmental life, since they contribute to build social cohesion, improve the quality of human interactions and the physical and mental health of inhabitants. Based on this, UN-Habitat has been supporting the development of ‘Public Spaces in the Arab Region’ programme since 2016. The programme has been rehabilitating public spaces using participatory tools to foster sustainable development and ultimately achieve SDG 11, target 11.7. However, the implementation of these siloed projects, coupled with lack of data, inadequate design and improper management didn’t allow for the development of a strategic plan for public spaces in the cities of the Arab Region. Acknowledging such issues and challenges, the programme in cooperation with the UN-Habitat's Global Public Space programme is further developing the regional approach to focus on rehabilitating public spaces that are safe for the most vulnerable groups, in particular women and girls, given the violence they face in the public domain. The programme is also working with relevant stakeholders and authorities to upscale such projects and to develop a city-wide public space network that is aligned with a strategic action plan.