IAS Book Launch Routledge Handbook on Middle East Cities

Join us for the launch of Routledge Handbook on Middle East Cities edited by Haim Yacobi and Mansour Nasasra as part of the celebration of World Habitat Day

Editors: Haim Yacobi and Mansour Nasasra

Presenting the current debate about cities in the Middle East from Sana’a, Beirut and Jerusalem to Cairo, Marrakesh and Gaza, the book explores urban planning and policy, migration, gender and identity as well as 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 offers critical engagement with both historical and contemporary urban processes in the region. Approaching 'cities' as multi-dimensional sites, products of political processes, knowledge production and exchange, and local and global visions as well as 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 which are understudied, revolve around issues of housing, infrastructure, participation and identity, amongst 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, Regional and Urban Studies of the Middle East.

Running order:

• 17:30-17:45 Opening and Greetings:
  • Prof. Tamar Garb (Institute of Advance Studies, UCL)
  • Prof. Caren Levy (Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL)
• 17:45-18:00 Editors introduction:
  • Dr. Mansour Nasasra (Ben Gurion University)
  • Prof. Haim Yacobi (Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL)
• 18:00-19:00: Routledge Handbook on Middle East Cities
  • Dr Mohammad Sakhnini (Woolfe Institute, Cambridge and The King Fahd Academy London): In the eyes of some Britons: Aleppo, a cosmopolitan city
  • Dr Azadeh Mashayekhi (Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL): The politics of building in post-Revolution Tehran
  • Prof Bruce Stanley (Richmond University in London): Rethinking “building resilience”: conflict and the Middle East city
  • Discussants: Dr. Sertaç Sehlikoglu (University of Cambridge) and Dr. Craig Larkin (Kings College London)
  • Chair: Prof Camillo Boano (Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL)
• 19:00-19:15 Break
• 19:15-20:30 Keynote Speaker: Prof. Zeynep Çelik (New Jersey Institute of Technology and Columbia University)
  "Whose Modernity? Whose Imperial Order? Jerusalem between the Late Ottoman Empire and the Early British Mandate"

  • Discussant: Prof. Murray Fraser (The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL)

  • Chair: Prof. Haim Yacobi (Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL)

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