Re-visioning Places of Public Gathering in the Contemporary Arab Urbanism

Abstract

CALL FOR PAPERS Guest Editor:  Dr Mona Helmy  Managing Editor:  Dr Luisa Bravo Over the past decades, contemporary urbanism in Arab cities has undergone a radical transformation under the influence of a variety of forces, such as globalization, with the influx of money, ideas, people, and development models. Consequently, development visions of cities in the Arab world have shifted from local to imported international models, generating new paradigms of Arab contemporary urbanism, strongly impacting on public places in particular. These paradigms commenced by establishing new urban typologies resembling Western urban imagery and icons, gated communities, themed cities, gigantic commercial centres and shopping malls. The multiplicity of opportunities for shaping, upgrading and rebuilding places of public gathering, from global paradigms to local realities, have stimulated many urban ambivalences and complexities, so that reconsidering places for public gathering nowadays implies a transdisciplinary understanding and a multifaceted perspective. The superimposing of changing and imported concepts has critically transformed settings, structure, and functions of places for public gathering, while (re)establishing the contemporary Arab urbanism as a powerful and iconic urban system.