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Early 20th-century urban expansion developed alongside media technologies to aid communication across increasingly differentiated and divided social groupings. Early sociologists maintained that this technology was problematic in relation to the potential for social solidarity and broad citizen political participation. This article extends these ea...
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... part of its re-animation of place, Liverpool has developed the use of public TV screens. Liverpool's giant screen was launched in 2005 (part sponsored by the BBC, local council and local businesses) with the official aim of "providing a focal point for people in the city to gather and watch major events," as well as advertise local business wares, and officially sponsored proceed- ings and other city "attractions" (Council Leader, Liverpool Echo, June 18, 2004- Figure 5). The public screen provides an example whereby the distinction between domestic and public TV watching is collapsing, promulgating the medium's power of seductive marketing, pacification, and acquiescence (Mathiesen, 2004). ...
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... sonal behaviour and the need for global recognition might have played various roles, asBalirano et al. (2018) andDurante (2021) argued.The authoritarian placeless projects in Cairo (after 2017) contain tension between imprinting the space with authoritarian power, balancing the local image and imposing decision-makers' synoptic policy (for more about the Synoptic Policy and Viewing, seeColeman, 2019). Such tension can be identified between the image's various components. ...
Authoritarian placeless projects after 2017 introduced a significant shift in Cairo’s linguistic landscape; giant streets and electronic billboards, banners, and signs co-shaped the city’s global image. Promoting English and bilingualism (English-Arabic) created the study question. Why do advertisements address the Arabic-speaking population in English? This study aims at investigating the Cairene linguistic policy and its cultural meanings. The field study occurred between 2020 and 2022 in around twenty sites in Cairo, among which authoritarian placeless projects were significant. Exploring Cairene linguistic landscape in Cairo is based on former literature and observations while moving around in public spaces on foot and by car. Around 20 locations were visited, 120 photos were taken, and spontaneous interviews were conducted. The collected data were produced during two years (2020-2022) of fieldwork in Cairo. Describing and categorising the Cairene linguistic landscape identified its cultural values. Moreover, exploring historical changes in the 19th and 20th centuries explained the linguistic socio-cultural roots. The culture of shame bridges shifting from pride to profit in Cairo’s linguistic landscape, presenting countless symbolic meanings, among which cultural distinction, linguistic centrality and marginality are significant.
... Expressing individual actions in placemaking (informal placemaking) comes under pressure [25, p. 48]. Rejecting them lies in our 'synoptic viewing' of how the city must appear (see [26]), ranging from the old British planning school to the American vehicleoriented and Dubai models. Moreover, such rejection influences our understanding of placemaking and the community right to assert the place order. ...
The bottom-up or informal placemaking process is “illegal”, practised only by the “poor” and “unintellectual” classes. The author argues that various classes practise informal placemaking regardless of their economic status or educational level. Studying the spatial manifestation of in-formal placemaking helps to understand the concrete needs of the residents and reconsider their role in identifying places. Aiming to comprehend informal placemaking and its importance, this study investigates informal placemaking in Sheraton Residence, Heliopolis, Cairo. The area is chosen for its formality, socio-economic and cultural patterns. Cases of informal placemaking in Sheraton Residence are described and analysed to pinpoint their role in creating a sense of place, territorial identity and comprehending their meaning. A comparison with cases in informal low-income housing is conducted to construct diversities and similarities. The study encourages the re-thinking of the public role in placemaking as a place of negotiation and belonging. We can improve their urban quality by re-thinking informal placemaking and looking at how people use the place. The general impression that only informal housing and low-educated classes practise informal placemaking is incorrect.
This article is available at:https://www.scipublications.com/journal/index.php/jad/article/view/246
... During the Mubarak presidency (1981-2011), Egypt's government comprised technocrats and wealthy businesspeople using the built environment as a vehicle for generating and accumulating wealth [1]. For about two centuries, building and planning legislation was introduced to impose 'control over the built environment in both the short and long terms' [2, p. 188], and imposing control over the built environment should be the result of either Foucault's panoptic or Mathiesen's synoptic powers [3]- [5]. Synoptic power is the 'powerful state networks concerned with generating urban imaginaries created to be viewed as widely as possible.' ...
On the 25 th of January 2011, protestors stormed Cairo and other Egyptian cities practising their right to the City on a full scale for the first time since the 1919 revolution of Saad Zaghlul. This study investigates the impact of the socio-cultural attributes of authoritarian power on public political contestation in Cairo during the 25 th of January revolution 2011. Four significant contestation places in Cairo are physically and non-physically described, analysed according to the collective socio-cultural memory. The collective memory concerning the authoritarian right to assert the order of the urban setting played a significant role in ending the protestors' governance of Cairo's streets.
... Ismail Pasha's urban interventions aimed to invest the ruling class's cultural, social and political forces. He took advantage of his grandfather's 'synoptic infrastructure' and imposed a westernised elites 'synoptic viewing' (both terms are cited from (Coleman, 2018)). Mohammed Ali Pasha established the synoptic infrastructure in Cairo, and Ismail Pasha developed it further. ...
The city can be seen as the end-product of human civilisation, imposing various meninges, it can be an arena for political, economic, sociocultural and classes disputes, imbedding authoritarian power, control and discipline. This study investigates the architectural and urban traces of authoritarian power, control, and classes disputes in Cairo from around the end of the 18th Century until the first two decades of the 21st Century. The study adopts a descriptive and synthesis research method and approach by relating significant authoritarian urban projects in Cairo to political, economic, and sociocultural forces in action. The traces of authoritarian power shifted from the celebrative authoritarian architecture level before 1800 to medium-scale urban monumental interventions after the second half of the 19th Century. After 1960 Cairo witnessed several shifts in authoritarian power representation, leading to massive urbanisation and new spectacular capital. Cairo presented various power players shifting nodes along with its urban governance network. The power shift was accompanied by authoritarian control, discipline, and political propaganda while adopting a colonial topdown autocratic urban process
Drawing on public–private circuits for urban surveillance in Recife, Brazil, this article unpacks how camera operators and ordinary residents are sensorially attuned to what constitutes a threat to urban order, from the perspective of state security governance. Through the notion of sensory enskilment , the piece delves into how surveillant civilians learn to distinguish such threats in digitally mediated urban sightings. By attending to the development of scopic skills in everyday surveillance contexts, I shed light on how security events become visible and legible across communities of practice, contributing to the formation of policing subjectivities and the maintenance of broader regimes of vigilance. The analysis draws on qualitative research on two sets of sites that cultivate civilians' visual skills around urban security: video‐surveillance control rooms managed by the security secretariats of Recife and Pernambuco, and WhatsApp groups dedicated to the policing of specific territories. This article seeks to deepen recent debates on how vertical and lateral forms of surveillance shape political communities and sociospatial divides.
This article aims to explore whether or not digital space assumes the role of the spatial urban grid when movement of people is restricted under quarantine. The era of Web 2.0 and the increasingly easy access to mobile devices and the internet has created alternative virtual space for urban socio-spatial interactions. The article addresses these concepts in three parts. First, it adapts a theoretical framework that can address the emerging digital public and spatial restrictions. Second, it explores the possible inflation of digital space. Third, it questions the possibility of transfer of spatiality into virtual space. The finding shows significant inflation of digital space after quarantine, but no significant spatial characteristic can be identified among those interactions. The study emphasizes the importance of adapting existing theories for evolving urban challenges.
