Routledge Handbook on Middle East Cities
Presenting the current debate about cities in the Middle East from Sanaa, Beirut and Jerusalem to Cairo, Marrakesh and Gaza, this book explores urban planning and policy, migration, gender and identity and the politics and economics of urban settings in the region.
This handbook moves beyond essentialist and reductive analyses of identity, urban politics, planning and development in cities in the Middle East and instead critically engages with both historical and contemporary urban processes in the region. It approaches cities as multidimensional sites; products of political processes, knowledge production and exchange; local and global visions; and spatial artefacts. Importantly, in the different case studies and theoretical approaches, there is no attempt to idealise urban politics, planning and everyday life in the Middle East which (as with many other cities elsewhere) are also situations of contestation and violence but rather to highlight how cities in the region, and especially those that are understudied, revolve around issues of housing, infrastructure, participation and identity, among other concerns.
Analysing a variety of cities in the Middle East, the book is a significant contribution to Middle East studies. It is an essential resource for students and academics interested in geography and regional and urban studies of the Middle East.
Haim Yacobi is a professor of development planning at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London. In 1999 he formulated the idea of establishing Bimkom Planners for Planning Rights and co-founded this NGO that deals with human rights and planning in Israel/Palestine. His research interests in relation to urban space include social justice, urban health, migration and colonial planning. His latest books are Rethinking Israeli Space: Periphery and Identity (2011, with Erez Tzfadia) and Israel and Africa: A Genealogy of Moral Geography (2016).
Mansour Nasasra is a lecturer in Middle East politics and international relations at the Department of Politics and Government, Ben Gurion University of the Negev. He was a research fellow at the Council for British Research in the Levant and has been a recipient of British Academy grants. Nasasra is the author of The Naqab Bedouins: A Century of Politics and Resistance (2017). He is also co-editor of The Naqab Bedouin and Colonialism: New Perspectives (2015).
This volume offers valuable critical perspectives on the complexities of cities in the Middle East and North Africa. Centring on the production of knowledge about the region, the authors address thorny topics, ranging from geopolitics to the continuing impact of colonial policies, memory, ethnicity, religion, everyday life, and violence. The Handbook is comprehensive, useful, and provocative.
Zeynep elik , New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA
The many critical essays in this volume restore the status of the Middle Eastern cities on their own terms, instead of measuring them by the Western model. The critical approach and the wide-ranging issues discussed in the book from space, culture, and cosmopolitanism, to social movements, colonialism, and tourism offer a productive lens to understand the urban reality of the Middle East while engaging with the field of urban studies in general. A valuable resource book.
Asef Bayat , University of Illinois, USA
First published 2020
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2020 selection and editorial matter, Haim Yacobi and Mansour Nasasra; individual chapters, the contributors
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ISBN: 978-1-138-65074-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-62516-4 (ebk)
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Wafa Al-Daily is a senior international development expert with experience in urban studies, international planning development and governance. Her research interest focuses on the impact of urban development on peoples lives and cities, informal housing, community development, social development and sustainability. She is a faculty member at Virginia Tech University and an assistant professor in the College of Engineering at Sanaa University. She also serves as a consultant for public and international agencies and is co-founder of the Foundation of Yemen Impact for Development and Humanitarian Response. She holds a PhD degree in planning, governance and globalization from Virginia Tech, a masters degree in city and regional studies from Rutgers University, and a bachelors degree in architectural engineering from Sanaa University.
Aomar Boum is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles and a faculty fellow at the Universit Internationale de Rabat. He is interested in the place of religious and ethnic minorities such as Jews, Bahais, Shias and Christians in post-independence Middle Eastern and North African nation states. He is the author of Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco (2013). This book was translated into Arabic and published in Morocco in 2015. He is also the co-author of the Historical Dictionary of Morocco (2016) and The Holocaust and North Africa (2018).
Tara F. Deubel is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Her research in North Africa focuses on gender and womens rights, language and performance and social memory. She is also interested in the anthropology of development, with a focus in the Sahel region of West Africa. She co-edited Saharan Crossroads: Exploring Historical, Cultural and Artistic Linkages between North and West Africa (2014).
Yasmeen El Khoudary is a London-based independent research consultant with a special interest in Gazas archaeological and cultural heritage. In 2015 she moved to the United Kingdom from Gaza, where she had been actively engaged in various projects aimed at preserving the citys archaeological heritage. She holds a masters degree in cultural heritage studies from University College London (UCL) and is currently writing a book on the contemporary history of Gaza.
