Cities, Vol. 22, No. 3, p. 183–188, 2005

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Editorial

Cities in the Middle East: Politics,Representation and History

Relli ShechterDepartment of Middle East Studies, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel

Haim YacobiDepartment of Politics and Government, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel

Available online 23 May 2005

This introductory paper identifies existing gaps in the current research on the re-organizationof urban space and the mobilization of urban dwellers from above and below, which are at thecore of shaping contemporary city life in the Middle East. It further calls for deeper probinginto processes of urban planning and urban political decision-making. The authors discuss theviability of comparative study of cities in the Middle East, which is brought into relief in anoverview of the past and present political economy of the region and its interactions with tran-sitions of cityscapes from the late Ottoman era and up to the present. The editorial later dem-onstrates how each of the articles in this special issue, while coming from a different discipline,contributes to a more elaborate discourse on Middle Eastern cities as economic, socio-culturaland political complexities.� 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Research on urbanity in the ‘‘traditional’’ West hasundergone a transition in the last two decades,whereby the city has been studied more closely asa socio-political arena.1 This new trend points outthe powerful forces of nationalism, capitalism andglobalization as central in transforming urbanspaces. It further formulates new theoretical toolsfor better understanding of such dynamics.2 As a re-sult, we have a sounder grasp of changes, such as there-organization of urban regimes and the mobiliza-tion of urban dwellers from above and below, whichare re-shaping city life. We are also more attuned to

ellish@bgumail.bgu.ac.il (Relli Shechter), yappan@il (Haim Yacobi).ors would like to thank Alona Nitzan-Shiftan andtarr for their useful comments on an earlier version ofuction.der review see: Tzfadia, E., Yacobi H., Yiftachel, O.,he Shifting Sands of Urban Politics, Planning anda Review Essay’’. Geopolitics 7(3), 183–194.

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the role of complex social relations in urban plan-ning and urban policies.3

In the study of cities in the Middle East (includingNorth Africa), this transition in research has yet tomake a significant impact. Attention is graduallymoving away from essentialist, Weberian-type dis-cussions on the ‘‘Islamic’’ or ‘‘Oriental’’ city, inwhich the region�s urban history was studied underone paradigmatic umbrella. But there is still far togo until cities such as Cairo, Damascus and Istanbulare researched in the same comparative—ratherthan an essentializing—manner as cities elsewhere.This lag is especially surprising when we considerthe amount of available research and public interestin regional politics, which, however, has hardly

3See for example: Castells, M., (1997). The Power of Identity:Economy, Society and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell; Fainstein, S.(1995). ‘‘Politics, Economics, and Planning: Why Urban RegimesMatter.’’ Planning Theory 14: 34–43; Forester, J. (1999). TheDeliberative Practitioner: Encouraging Participatory Processes.Boston, MIT Press; Healey, P. (1997). Collaborative Planning:Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies. London, Macmillan;Sassen, S. (1991). The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo,Princeton, Princeton University Press.

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materialized into studies of the influence of theArab–Israeli conflict on Jerusalem or the Americaninvasions of Iraq on Baghdad. The role of economicreforms, local politics and socio-cultural transitionsin shaping cities is also hardly discussed. Further-more, over half the population of the Middle Eastand North Africa lives in urban settings; the numberpromises to grow in the future, which makes the gapbetween existing research and the significance of cit-ies in the region even more glaring.

In this special issue of Cities we call for the studyof urbanization in the Middle East as economic,political and socio-cultural complexities. We believethat this agenda requires a broader, cross-disciplin-ary ‘‘conversation’’ on such complexities and theirinteractions with urban landscapes. The five articlespresented here, in fact, originated in an interdisci-plinary endeavor at Ben-Gurion University,4 wherethe aim was to initiate a cross-field discussion onsome key themes of cities in the Middle East. Theauthors are from a variety of disciplines—architec-ture, geography, literature, political science and ur-ban planning—and present a variety of casestudies, focusing on ‘‘central’’ cities like Alexandriaand Jerusalem as well as ‘‘peripheral’’ ones such asMardin (in Turkey). Their case studies foster widerunderstanding of the interplay of global, nationaland local power in shaping present urban settings,demonstrate the depth of such processes and theirsignificance in the multifaceted spheres of urbandaily life.

Is it valid to discuss such a large and diverse re-gion as the Middle East all at once? We believethat the risk of oversimplification and perhapssome inaccuracy in bringing a variety of elaboratecontexts together is well compensated for by thebroad overview it enables and by cross-fertilizingresearch created in the process. One question,however, remains open—what should be the size(also implying content) of the region under study?The tendency lately has been to treat cities in theMiddle East as belonging to the Mediterranean re-gion; this is clearly visible in but not exclusive tothe Israeli academic and public discourse, whichwe, the guest editors of this volume, are part of.In our overview below, we show that Israeli, andother cities, have undoubtedly been influenced byEuropean modernism, colonialism, and national-ism, but not necessarily their southern Europeancounterparts, as is implied in the Mediterraneannotion. However, whether Israelis and others likeit or not, Israel is part of the Middle East and citylife in the country has been significantly influencedby this location. We feel that for all their diversity,

4The International Research Workshop on ‘‘Cities in the MiddleEast: History, Representation and Politics’’ was supported by theChaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy andthe Arthur Goldreich Trust.

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this still holds for other cities in the Middle Eastas well. Current large-scale migration and inter-re-gional cooperation certainly link the Middle Eastand Europe in a variety of new ways that meritstudy. Nevertheless, even Turkey�s possible futurejoining of the EU does not diminish the validityof considering the past and present of its citiesin a Middle Eastern context.

Time, space, and the production of the urban inthe Middle East

In light of the above, we now propose a moreintegrative approach to urbanism in the region.To demonstrate its ‘‘connectedness,’’ we locatethe discussion on cities within a historical narra-tive, which suggests ‘‘intersections’’ of time andspace shared by different urban entities in theMiddle East. We focus mostly on transitions inthe global and local political economy and theirinteraction with urban spheres. Our narrative setsthe stage for the articles in suggesting that individ-ual case studies are relevant to other settings be-cause cities in the Middle East share much intheir past and present development. The purposehere, however, is not to regress to past essential-ism, or to homogenize cities� experiences as‘‘Middle Eastern’’; we do not propose a singlemonolithic process of space production in all theregion�s urban environments. Rather, this is an ef-fort to flesh out a variety of shared experiences,which transformed cities in the Middle East.

The late Ottoman era is a significant startingpoint. During this period, cities were planned anddeveloped under the dual influence of Europeanpolitical interference and local peripheralization inthe European-led world economy. Early Europeanmodernism further influenced state officials and pri-vate entrepreneurs. As a result, local cityscapes wereenvisioned through processes of adoption, adapta-tion, or resistance to increasingly global (European)models. The development of cities was most notablein state capitals such as Cairo. From the 1860s, mod-ernization and Westernization under Ismail followedHaussmann�s model, and new neighborhoods, publicbuildings, and public spaces resembled the latestParisian fashion. The vision of the renovated citymanifested Europeanized perceptions of how citiesshould look and function. Deeper integration intothe world economy also meant the rise of port citieslike Alexandria, Beirut, and Izmir, which becamethe locus of import–export businesses. New localelites and European businessmen translated wealthearned in trade into novel districts, often inspiredby European/Colonial styles.

The newly emerging planned and modern/West-ernized urban environments throughout the regionseemingly created a split city, where different ur-ban spaces represented binary oppositions: the‘‘old city’’ stood for ‘‘tradition’’ and ‘‘local’’ life,

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the new public buildings, commercial centers, andresidential neighborhoods created an urban ico-nography of the imported ‘‘modern’’. Still, hous-ing, work and leisure spaces were not exclusive,and the separation between ‘‘traditional’’ and‘‘modern’’ city life was never total. Nor did the‘‘new’’ replace the ‘‘old’’, as visualized by localplanners or European visitors. For these reasons,we would argue that it is better to read contempo-rary city spaces as an amalgam of old and new,and as a melange of global and local architecturaltastes, rather than as an assortment of segmentedbuilt and lived-in environments.

The period after World War I witnessed the earlyformation of national states in Egypt and Turkey,but also the further colonization of territories for-merly belonging to the Ottoman Empire—for exam-ple, today�s states of Iraq, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine,and Syria, in the form of British and French man-dates. In the mandates, this political transformationsignificantly influenced the design of cities, espe-cially those that changed from being provincial tomandatory and later national capitals. MandatoryJerusalem well exemplified this trend. There theBritish introduced spatial and symbolic politicalintervention through planning; in the course of themandate period, five master plans were prepared,some by well known architects and planners suchas Patrick Geddes (1919), Lord Ashbee (1922) andClifford Holliday (1930), which enhanced the city�s‘‘holy’’ appearance.

With the rise of the nation-state in the MiddleEast, local governments became more active in bothplanning and effecting city transformations. Theypaid attention to their capitals, where they weremotivated to construct (tangibly and symbolically)national iconography through the erection of publicmonuments. States also pressed for the expansion ofadministration and public services, which requiredexpansion into the urban landscape.

Urban planning in this phase was often applied asa positivistic tool that modern societies use to orga-nize space, distribute resources and to balance dif-ferent interests for the benefit of society at large.This was expressed in the notion of zoning and thecreation of open public spaces, drawn from Wes-tern-universal planning concepts; it was largely aliento the social and cultural norms of Middle Easterncity dwellers. The conjunction of national ideologies,independence and modernization furthermore re-sulted in ‘‘forced urbanization’’ of nomads, ethnicminorities and migrants. To the deficiencies in theparadigm of guiding planning and the evolution ofcity space, we should add unsustainable investmentin development, where states let their vision of rapidtransformation run wild.

From the late 1960s on, the disarray became con-spicuous, to the detriment of cities and their inhab-itants. An economic opening enhanced by the oilboom in the Middle East, and later by global transi-

tions in the world economy, would gradually bringabout a re-alignment in state-citizens economic rela-tions, and a new division of labor between the gov-ernment and the private sector induced urbantransitions. During this period, non- or small oilexporters, such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria,and especially Yemen, sent millions of migrantworkers to oil exporting countries. Large sums inworkers� remittances were sent home, and used topurchase land and build private and commercialvenues. This greatly influenced urban developmentin cities and in the countryside. Remittances oftenentered the ‘‘hidden economy’’ and were spent oninformal construction. In Egypt, for example,large-scale construction in the countryside oftenmeant the suburbanization of former rural settle-ments. Oil-exporting rentier states implementedfar-reaching development schemes, through whichsmall towns, like Kuwait City, turned into highlymodern places and attracted large numbers of newlymiddle-class citizens to city life.

The end of the oil boom in the early 1980s, and thesudden collapse of the former Soviet block in theearly 1990s, reiterated the need for economic re-forms. But such reforms were not easy to implementand quite painful for many citizens because they of-ten involved cuts in public services and official sub-sidies. Devaluation of wages in the public sector,where many urbanites found a living, also increasedthe economic plight of city dwellers. Furthermore,unlike some other developing countries, the eco-nomic opening up, globalization and privatizationthat such reforms entailed have yet to show the ex-pected improvement in the material well-being ofthe majority of local populations; contemporary con-ventional economic wisdom (the Washington con-sensus) has had only a partial positive impact onthe region. With the exception of a few global cities,such as Istanbul, Tel Aviv, and Dubai which havebecome international hubs of manufacturing, com-merce, and communication, cities in the region havenot profited significantly from global, free-marketopportunities.

Throughout the second half of the twentieth cen-tury, cities rapidly grew because of rural-to-urbanmigration, the pull of new job opportunities, proxim-ity to state services and a significant demographicincrease. As the state became less involved, munici-palities at times took over (most notably in Turkey).Private entrepreneurs joined in, often with tacit offi-cial support or backed by cronyism. Initiatives ‘‘frombelow’’ leapt to fill the vacuum in supplying housingdemand. With local variants, these trends are com-mon to many countries in the Middle East, and theyhave yielded similar fashions in urban renewal.‘‘Modern’’ (colonial) and ‘‘traditional’’ (Islamic)styles are being renovated; the old city and the colo-nial downtown are undergoing gentrification, whichoften expels existing residents, replacing them withthe more affluent. Damascus, Beirut, and Jaffa are

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examples of cities that are being ‘‘rediscovered’’ insuch a manner by locals, expatriates and interna-tional investors dedicated to the preservation of his-torical sites. Yet such reshaping of city landscapes isalso often motivated by newly evolved notions of lo-cal identity and nostalgia. These cityscapes are at thevery core of contemporary public discourses on past,present, and future national agendas, and as a corol-lary, debates on globalization, where discoursesabout authenticity, heritage, and lifestyle graduallyformulate novel �glocal� notions of desirable livingspaces.

Globalization in the city is further noticeable incities� business, leisure and commercial districts,which are frequently inspired by postmodern globalvisions. Such structures often ignore the living tissueof their surroundings in their physical outlook and incatering to new, exclusive sections of the local econ-omy. High-rise dwellings, often located in the midstof less-affluent city spaces, further exemplify thisnovel, decontexualized urban reality. A variety ofshopping sites—department stores, food and otherchain stores, fashionable, designer boutiques—create new exclusive spaces, also polarizing theurban environment and emphasizing socio-economicgaps; many of the less affluent, however, do partici-pate in leisure through consumption of such placesthrough window shopping.

The other side of privatization in the creationof city space has to do with those (commonly‘‘invisible’’) urban residents who create homesinformally. Informality is often the result of there-writing of the social-contract between regimesand their citizens, who are now expected to makedo with less government services and to dependmore on their own limited resources. Activity inthe urban ‘‘hidden economy,’’ which might be asbig as the reported one, partially relieves eco-nomic pressures. Informality is not only the expe-rience of the urban poor. In Cairo and Alexandria,it is also a part of lower-middle and middle classurban life; the same is true for Turkey, wheremore than half of the population in Ankara andIstanbul lives in informal settlements. Informality,therefore, cannot be considered independently ofthe formal economy and construction. In MiddleEastern cities, the two are interrelated in a varietyof intimate ways that shape the urban experience.While going counter to the rational-modernistlogic of state urban planning, informality is apractical solution, which is more and more ac-cepted by states in attempting to mitigate the cur-rent deterioration of services provided to theircitizens.

International and local NGOs, especially Isla-mic, have also been active in the more humbleparts of the city, providing the less affluent withsome of the benefits distributed by the state inthe past—education, health, welfare. The impactof insufficient resources, coupled with an increase

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in inequality in the region, has been especiallystrong as attempts at economic reform have aggra-vated the already severe problem of unemploy-ment, which increases existing socio-economicgaps and frustration. Local political protest andviolence often find expression in insurgent Islamicmovements and Islamic terms; militant Islamicactivity, in turn, further reduces the quality of lifein cities.

The content of the volume

Keeping the broader, common context in mind,we now introduce the case studies in this volume.In the first article, ‘‘Middle East City Networksand the �New Urbanism�,’’ Bruce Stanley re-conceptualizes the urban in the Middle Eastthroughthe lens of city-level networks as opposedto the usual state-city or inter-state (regional andglobal) relations. He refers to the work of Cas-tells, Sassen and Taylor in examining the impactof urbanization and globalization on city life inthe Middle East. His overview explores common-alities in cities� lives, such as local, personal andcommunity resistance to external policies. Stanleyfurther studies developments common to MiddleEastern cities, like the gradual evolution of a mu-nicipal foreign policy, which takes place in con-junction with, but also in competition with, statepolicy.

Although Middle Eastern cities currently playonly a minor role in a wider city network, this mayopen new options for cities in the region. More re-gional and global cooperation will allow cities (andtheir inhabitants) greater agency, empowering themin their relations with the state. Moreover, betternetworks will create novel venues for city growththrough interactions on the economic, social, andcultural levels with other cities, allowing city playersa chance to provide for their own as Middle Easternstates retreat from past social contracts with theircitizens.

While Stanley offers new horizons to cities inthe Middle East through a structural, ‘‘macro-level’’ analysis, Avinoam Meir takes the discussionon globalization and its potential to empower intoa more specific, ‘‘micro-level’’ setting. His article‘‘Bedouin, the Israeli State and Insurgent Plan-ning: Globalization, Localization or Glocaliza-tion?’’ offers greater insight into the to-date littlediscussed impact of state and global transforma-tions on the urban life of marginal ethnic andcultural/religious minority groups. Subjected to‘‘forced urbanization,’’ Bedouin society in Israelhas long resisted this process, but until recentlyit was mostly trapped in the dialectics of modernurban planning. Current Bedouin urban life in se-ven state-planned towns is the result of Western-ized metropolitan culture and space perceptions;their self-vision of less centralized, more rural

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(read �traditional�) community dwellings, officiallytermed ‘‘the unrecognized settlements’’, has beenat best tolerated but generally fiercely resisted bystate authorities. Recently, things have begun tochange. A local NGO, an instrument inspired byglobal trends, offers an alternative, resurrectionplanning to that of the state. Meir�s meticulousexamination of the plan demonstrates how thecentripetal force of state planning is being sub-verted by local centrifugal forces. Furthermore, lo-cal players are gradually managing to maneuverthe state into recognizing their settlements andestablishing a regional municipality for the provi-sion of services to the ill-served Bedouin ‘‘disper-sion.’’ Thus, much as shown in Stanley�s article,the relaxing of the state�s heavy handed control,coupled with the emergence of local alternativesinspired by global transitions, enables sub-nationalvoices to emerge and take greater responsibilityfor community and urban life.

Deborah Starr presents a different disciplinaryoutlook on local-national-global city interactionsin her ‘‘Recuperating Cosmopolitan Alexandria:Circulation of Narratives and Narratives of Circula-tion.’’ Starr juxtaposes a comprehensive analysis ofIbrahim Abdel Meguid�s novel Ambergris Birdswith a study of contemporary transformation inAlexandria�s cityscape. Her discussion of urban re-newal as expressed in both sources demonstrateshow a global marketing strategy for Alexandriafacilitates the circulation of nostalgic images andnarratives of the city�s cosmopolitan past. The arti-cle resonates with a broader discourse in contem-porary Egyptian life, in which the country�shistory is reconsidered in the context of negotiatingits present and future. Alexandria went from beinga cosmopolitan/colonial city to a national/Egyptianone in the post-colonial era. Its local and Europeanminority communities, which had played a signifi-cant role in shaping the city�s culture, institutionsand built environment, were compelled to leaveEgypt in the process. Today, Alexandria�s historyis revisited, its ‘‘closed’’ national phase is examinedmore critically by some, and its contemporaryopening up to global trends is rendered in morefavorable accounts of its cosmopolitan past. Thisshift in national imagination through the urban isassociated with ‘‘globalizers’’ that are quite differ-ent from those in Meir�s article. They come fromthe leading business, political and intellectual eliterather than from a marginalized community. How-ever, whether from the center or the periphery,both have much to gain from local adaptations ofglobal transitions.

The last two articles in this volume furtherexplore the barely discussed issue of cities as are-nas of conflicting national identities. As suggestedin our overview above, and explored in these arti-cles, the constitution of urban environments is anact of ‘‘double construction’’—the tangible build-

up (and sometimes destruction) of city spaces,but also the symbolic meanings attached to suchan act in creating national iconography andsentiments.

Alona Nitzan-Shiftan�s article ‘‘A Capital orSpiritual Center? The Politics of Architecture inPost-�67 Jerusalem,’’ emphasizes the central placeof architects and architecture in this process. Nit-zan-Shiftan investigates a debate that developedafter the 1967 war, when Israel viewed its captureof East Jerusalem with both excitement and confu-sion. The urban fabric of occupied East Jerusalemcontrasted heavily with that of West Jerusalem,and the vision of ‘‘unified’’ Jerusalem became acontested issue. The article focuses on a 1970meeting of the Jerusalem Committee, at whichworld luminaries of post-World War II architec-ture demanded that the urban design of Jerusalemrepresent its spiritual values. The unanimous deci-sion of the international committee flew in theface of the local (Israeli) architectural establish-ment. The latter strongly supported a modernist–nationalist representation of the renewed state inJerusalem�s architecture and urban form. Never-theless, resorting to a preservationist attitude whenarguing for ‘‘universal’’ values, and using its widelyacknowledged professional expertise, the Jerusa-lem Committee finally won the day and dictateda global vision on an emerging national city (thePalestinian side was all but excluded from the dis-course both by the Israeli establishment and theCommittee).

Kerem Oktem�s ‘‘Faces of the City: Poetic,Mediagenic and Traumatic Images of a Multi-cultural City in Southeast Turkey’’ discusses theperipheral city of Mardin, in contrast to Nitzan-Shiftan�s engagement in Israel�s capital. It focuseson a post-national building process, when an al-ready hegemonic state is looking to coalesce andheal the wounds of a nation after a civil war. Ok-tem�s unique contribution lies in the exposure ofdifferent narratives about the city as a centralstage for the discourse on Mardin�s (and Turkey�s)national identity. Mardin�s rich architectural, reli-gious and ethnic fabric formed over centuries ofnon-national, imperial (Ottoman) rule. It is furtherevolving today in statist/hegemonic accounts of thecity as a new symbol of multi-culturalism in thecontested southeast Turkey. Oktem discloses rival-ing conceptualizations of the city, its urban spaceand its rural hinterland, and their underlying polit-ical positions. He does so through a detailed com-parison of Mardin�s representations in its officialon-line website, in a contemporary Turkish TVsoap, and ‘‘on the ground,’’ as discovered on afield trip and reconstructed in human rights re-ports. Although his analysis demonstrates how apost-conflict situation opens up opportunities fora new debate on national identity, rather thanmerely carrying the struggle over territory into

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the realm of symbolic politics, the containment ofan ethnic conflict also means its (partial) suppres-sion from the nation�s memory.

Through an overview of Middle East cities�past andpresent, we suggested that this geographical unit mer-its comparative, as opposed to essentialist, researchinto transformations in its urban spaces and theirmeaning; both are currently influenced by shifts in lo-cal and global political economy. We hope that thepresentation of the articles further showed that schol-

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ars from a variety of disciplines indeed ask similarquestions on city-state-global interactions in the Mid-dle East, while answering them in discipline-specificways. Moreover, cross-field research into urban lifein the region elucidates an abundance of intricate ven-ues in which these transitions have an impact on citylife. We find such cross-cooperation, and the newopportunities it offers, highly rewarding, and call forfurther multi-disciplinary research in a comparativestudy of city life in the region.