The government of Hosni Mubarak has shut down the internet. It has blocked cell phone service. But the public spaces of Cairo, so far, have belonged to the people.

by Vishaan ChakrabartiFebruary 16th, 2011 A Country of Cities, elsewhere, opinion, vishaan chakrabarti L-R: 1, 2 – Athens, Greece  | 3 – Chitral, Pakistan | 4 - Dublin, Ireland What follows is the ninth in a series of in which Vishaan Chakrabarti casts key current events — the climate talks in Denmark, the Gulf Oil Spill, the canceling of the ARC tunnel project — as rallying cries in his evolving argument for urban density, for a Country of Cities. In this installment, he examines the protests unfolding across the Middle East in terms of how urban space, specifically spaces of public...

About FoundationPartner SchoolsJournal ArchivePeer ReviewSubmissionsContact AudioEssaysFictionGalleryInterviewsOpinionsPartner NewsPeer ReviewedProjectsReviewsVideo ArchitectureArt Books BrandingBusinessCities / Places Community CraftCulture Design HistoryDesign Practice Development Disaster Relief EcologyEconomy Education EnergyEnvironment Film / VideoFood/AgricultureGeography Global / LocalGraphic DesignHealth / Safety History Ideas IndustryInfrastructureInternet / BlogsJournalismLandscape Magazines Media Motion Design Museums NaturePeace Photography PlanningPoetryPolitics / Policy Popular Culture Poverty PreservationProduct DesignPublic / PrivatePublic ArtReligionReputations Shelter Social Enterprise SportsSustainabilityTechnologyTheory/CriticismTransportationUrbanismWater ArchiveBooks + StoreJob BoardEmail ArchiveCommentsAboutContact Posted 02.27.11 | PERMALINK | PRINT Tahrir Square, February 2011. [All photos by Mohamed Elshahed except where noted]A few months ago I moved from Brooklyn back to Cairo for what I anticipated would be a...

Dr. Tali Hatuka looks at recent Middle Eastern protests with her architecture lens.

In Tunisia, it was Mohammed Bouazizi, the 26 year old vegetable seller who self-immolated himself as an act of protest. In Egypt, it was Wael Said Abbas Ghonim, the 30 year old who administered the El Shaheeed facebook page that galvanized opposition. Each other country in the middle-east that has been set aflame in protest – Algeria, Iran, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, Palestine – also had individuals who played a significant role in sparking their respective uprisings. But another common, and less discussed, thread that runs through each of the aforementioned protest movements is that they all occurred in...

One possible reason for the Middle East protests: untapped creative potential

Recent events in Egypt proved that large urban spaces are essential to the healthy expression of civil dissent. Dr. Tali Hatuka of Tel Aviv University says that architects and city planners should design useful and effective spaces to allow for widespread assembly and civil participation.

February 23rd, 2011 Go to Placemaking Blog Home Posted by: Categories: Blog, Civic Centers, Creating Public Multi-use Destinations, Downtowns, Squares Tags: civic expression, democracy, Egypt, public space With no place to voice our views as citizens, do we become more passive about what happens to our country and our future? The influence of the new digital commons in democratic uprisings from Tunisia to Egypt to Bahrain has been chronicled at length in news reports from the Middle East, wi...

Nezar AlSayyad is a Cairo-born professor of Architecture, Planning and Urban History and the chair of Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. He's also a lucid thinker and the author of the forthcoming book Cairo: Histories of a City from Harvard University Press. I've spoken with Nezar a couple times before, but with the magnificent success of the recent Egyptian protests and with Tahrir Square entering the popular American lexicon I wanted to put a few…