Essential Readings on the Urban Question in the Arab World: Money, Rights, Violence

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Jun 27, 2022
Essential Readings on the Urban Question in the Arab World: Money, Rights, Violence

Essential Readings on the Urban Question in the Arab World: Money, Rights, Violence

By : Deen Sharp

[The Essential Readings series is curated by the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI) team at the Arab Studies Institute. MESPI invites scholars to contribute to our Essential Readings modules by submitting an “Essential Readings” list on a topic/theme pertinent to their research/specialization in Middle East studies. Authors are asked to keep the selection relatively short while providing as much representation/diversity as possible. This difficult task may ultimately leave out numerous works which merit inclusion from different vantage points. Each topic may eventually be addressed by more than one author. Articles such as this will appear permanently on www.MESPI.org and www.Jadaliyya.com. Email us at info@MESPI.org for any inquiries.

This Essential Readings installment is part of a larger series exploring questions of urbanism and spatial production across the region. Encompassing a broad range of entry points to researching and teaching about the urban, the series allows authors to define the specific parameters of emphasis in their installment.]

The Arab world is undoubtedly an urban one: Lebanon can be understood as a completely urbanized nation; the Nile a seemingly never-ending linear city; and the Gulf countries have produced spectacular new urban regions that have extended their urbanization into the ocean. From the river to the sea, the subterranean to the heavens, the intensification and extension of urbanization has been a common feature across the region, despite the vastly differentiated socio-economic, political, and demographic contexts. How can we explain and understand this intensification of the urbanization process?

The Arab world has not urbanized in isolation. There is a vast literature that has tried to come to grips with the planetary scale of urbanization over the past fifty years within the field of urban studies. This work led by critical urban studies scholars Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, and more recently Neil Brenner and Christian Schmid, has been central to outlining the planetary urbanization thesis. There is a ferocious debate within urban studies around the extent to which urbanization now exists on a planetary scale. It is a discussion that I will not cover in this short, annotated list. Here I focus on Essential Readings in the growing vibrant sub-field of Middle East urban studies. I offer a few highlights from this scholarship through three distinct but intersecting categories: (1) Neoliberalism to Financialization, (2) Politics and Urbanization, and the (3) Urbanization of Violence and Conflict.          

In many respects, it is the best of times for research on the Arab urban. An expanding group of scholars and activists are trying to get to grips with such questions as: who and what is driving urbanization within and across the region; what is the social impact of it; is there a distinctive Arab urbanization process? Indeed, there has been a blossoming of urban-focused research initiatives, such as Arab Urbanism, the Beirut Urban Lab, Tadamon, Jadaliyya’s Cities Page, and the Arab Centre for Architecture, to name just a few. I, with Noura Wahby, have also launched the first Middle East Urban Studies book series with the American University in Cairo Press.

It is the worst of times, however, for far too many urban contexts throughout the region. From the systematic destruction of the contemporary and historical urban fabric to the collapse of basic urban services, such as water and electricity: an Arab urbanization that fulfills the needs, wants, and desires of its users is unravelling before us. The region features some of the most extreme examples of urban inequality, injustice, and failing urban services. The climate crisis is bringing increasing challenges in the form of extreme heat, increased precipitation and flooding, sea level rises, and dust storms that are leading some to question the human viability of many urban settlements across the region. Critical urban research has never been so urgent.   

Neoliberalism to Financialization

Neoliberalism has become an important explanatory framework in Middle East urban studies to elucidate the vast contemporary urbanization and the integral role that real estate has taken on in organizing many of the region’s economies in recent years. Neoliberalism, understood simply as market-led urbanization, has been identified as the central vector that has driven the region-wide proliferation of urban mega and infrastructure projects, gated communities, shopping malls, and the like. One of the earliest and most significant interventions on the importance of neoliberalism to the shape of urbanization in the region is Timothy Mitchell’s (Review of African Political Economy, 1999) essay, “No Factories, No Problems: The Logic of Neo-Liberalism in Egypt.”[1] Mitchell writes that neoliberalism took the form of state-imposed fiscal discipline and monetary control that helped produce “the most phenomenal real estate explosion Egypt had ever seen.” Neoliberalism resulted in the private developers (often backed by the state) building luxury gated communities, shopping malls, theme parks, golf courses, and polo grounds. Since Mitchell’s article, there have been many other scholars who have also documented the role of neoliberalism and the production of “new” urban spaces in Egypt and across the region.

The city-state of Dubai is often seen as the poster child for neoliberal urbanization, and indeed, is featured on the front cover of Mike Davis and Daniel Monk’s (The New Press, 2008) edited volume, Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism: Evil Paradises. Mike Davis in his own contribution penned a furious takedown of neoliberal Dubai entitled: “Sand, Fear and Money in Dubai.” For a more grounded and sober account of neoliberalism in this city-state, readers should direct themselves to Ahmed Kanna’s (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) Dubai: The City as Corporation. Kanna details what he identifies as Maktoum-led neoliberalism and notes how Dubai’s ruling family aligned “free-market” values with “local” cultural attitudes and dispositions – detailing that the urban form and architecture has been critical to achieving this. I should stress that there are notable scholarly accounts of Dubai that have sought to read the city from outside the prism of neoliberalism, such as Yasser Elsheshtawy’s (Routledge, 2010) Dubai: Behind an Urban Spectacle and the more recent contribution by Todd Reisz (Stanford University Press, 2020) Showpiece City: How Architecture Made Dubai.    

There is now a voluminous country-specific scholarship on the intersection of neoliberalism and urbanization in the Arab region. While the scholarship is too large to list here, some notable monographs include: Koenraad Bogaert’s (University of Minnesota, 2018) account of Globalized Authoritarianism: Megaprojects, Slums, and Class Relations in Urban Morocco; Hannes Baumann’s (Hurst Publishers, 2011) Citizen Hariri: Lebanon’s Neo-Liberal Reconstruction; and Kareem Rabie’s (Duke University Press, 2021) Palestine is Throwing a Party and the Whole World is Invited: Capital and State Building in the West Bank that focuses on the case study of Rawabi, the West Bank’s “first planned city.”

In the wake of the global financial crisis in 2007/2008 critical scholars increasingly placed a focus not just on the relationship between neoliberalism and urbanization but to the more specific idea of the financialization of the built environment. Financialization as a type of market-led urbanization, is an analytical framework that points towards, for instance, private equity groups and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) creating new political economies of urbanization. In the Middle East, in particular the Gulf, while still relatively small, REITs are rapidly making their presence felt. The work of Adam Hanieh has been critical in examining the financialization of the Arab region that, as he notes, has otherwise been absent (despite its central role in global financialization) in the wider financial literature. Hanieh’s (Antipode, 2016) article, “Absent Regions: Spaces of Financialisation in the Arab World,” notes that financialization has important implications for process of class and state formation in the region. It also has significant impacts of the built environment that are only just starting to be explored. Özlem Celik (Housing Studies, 2021), for instance, has written on, “The roles of the state in the financialisation of housing in Turkey,” and it is hoped that further scholarly attention is brought to bear across the region on this topic.

Politics and Urbanization: The Right to the City

The scholarship of neoliberal urbanization often intersects with analysis of urban social movements. At this intersection, the thinking of Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991), has been an important influence on both urban scholarship and activism in the Arab region. Lefebvre, as noted above, has been central to the planetary urbanization thesis, he also coined the idea of the “right to the city.” Lefebvre was a prolific and undisciplined scholar, who is notoriously difficult for readers to engage with. Stuart Elden has provided this useful guide on “Where to start with reading Henri Lefebvre?” to help navigate both Lefebvre’s writings directly and the numerous scholarly introductions to his work.

What Lefebvre meant by the “right to the city” is the subject of extensive debate that has only intensified as the concept has been widely taken up in activist and policy circles across the world. In the context of the Arab uprisings, Lefebvre’s idea of the “right to the city” has been important both within and beyond the confines of the academic, with several activists groups across the region taking up the term. In the scholarly literature, Lefebvrian inspired work of Asef Bayat has been influential. He has written powerfully about the spatial implications of “neoliberal cities” in the Arab region regarding the urban poor’s “right to the city”. In Bayat’s (Stanford University Press, 2009) book Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East, he details how neoliberalism pushed the urban poor out literally onto the streets, to a certain extent forcing them to claim their “right to the city” as an act of survival. Mona Fawaz, however, in her work on the right to the city has presented are far less empowering analysis of the consequences of neoliberalism on the urban poor. In “Neoliberal Urbanity and the Right to the City: A View from Beirut’s Periphery,” (Development and Change, 2009) Fawaz argues that while informal settlements have historically given the new urban poor a right to the city, the neoliberal era had resulted in a marked erosion of the informal dwellers ability to claim this right and resulted in an exacerbation of injustice. 

The right to the city continues to be a powerful conceptual framework for the struggle for urban justice in the Arab region. It is an idea that is not only hotly debated within academia but also in activists and policy circles. The struggle for the right to the city is, as Lefebvre put it, a cry and demand. One that has resonated across a wide and diverse array of groups in the Arab world and beyond. It is a cry and demand, however, that has been all too frequently drowned out in the context of large-scale urban warfare. 

The Urbanization of Violence and Conflict

The violent counter-revolutionary forces that have attempted to quash the Arab uprisings has made urban injustice and violence a critical area of research in relation to the urban question. My own work has focused on many different aspects of the urbanization of violence and conflict. This has included the conflation of urban informality with security threats, in the article: “Haphazard urbanisation: Urban informality, politics and power in Egypt” (Urban Studies, 2022), and the concept of “urbicide” in the chapter, “Urbicide and the Arrangement of Violence in Syria” in my co-edited volume Beyond the Square: Urbanism and the Arab Uprisings (Urban Research, 2016). I have also examined the role of concrete and cement in warfare in the article, “Concretising conflict” (The Journal of Architecture, 2022). A central argument in this work is that we must be attentive to the construction and planning of the built environment as part of conflict – as much as to spectacular acts of destruction.

The writings of Eyal Weizman and Stephen Graham have been particularly important to considerations of the urbanization of violence and conflict. Weizman (Verso, 2007) wrote the seminal work Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation that expertly illuminated the active role of the urban context in conflict. The chapter “Walking through Walls”, for example, details the way in which the IDF did not move through open streets, roads, or through external doors that make up the order of the city but blasted their way through party walls, ceilings and floors – across the sold fabric of the city. Stephen Graham’s (Verso, 2011) Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism is the culmination of decades of work on the urbanization of violence and conflict. Graham charts the shift of conflict from open fields to everyday urban sites. Graham also writes about “Lessons in Urbicide” detailing how Israel utilized the D-9 armoured Caterpillar bulldozer to “plough through built-up Palestinian areas with impunity.”

There is now a firmly established literature within Middle East studies on urban conflict. In addition to Palestine/Israel, Lebanon has become a prominent case study in relation to the urbanization of conflict. Notable recent contributions include Sara Fregonese’s (Bloomsbury, 2019) War and the City: Urban Geopolitics in Lebanon that examines how the Lebanese Civil War transformed the urban landscape of Beirut, focusing on the initial phase of the war (1975-1976). And Hiba Bou Akar’s (Stanford University Press, 2018) For the War Yet to Come: Planning Beirut’s Frontiers who examines how Beirut’s urban fabric is actively planned—through zoning, planning regulations, real estate—for conflict.     

Conclusion
 

This is a small selection of Essential Readings in relation to the increasing urgent urban question(s) in the Arab region. There is a rich Arab urban studies scholarship on infrastructure, displacement, urban informality, housing, gentrification, basic urban services, urban public goods, logistics, graffiti, materiality, reconstruction, and more recently climate urbanism, to name a few, that I have not been able to touch upon. It is hoped that growing depth and sophistication of the critical Arab urban studies research can make its impact on the actually existing urban fabric in the region toward more beautiful, just, and equitable cities.   


[1] This essay, or a close variation of it, has also been published in Mitchell’s book The Rule of Experts under the title “Dreamland”.
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Aug 27, 2020 Lebanon
Noor Tayeh By :
Noor Tayeh

COVID-19 and Urban Marginalization in Saudi Arabia

Cities in the Arabian Peninsula, from Dubai to Mecca, often elicit images of cosmopolitanism, utopianism, and ambitious urban mega-development schemes. In recent years, with increased global interest in labor politics and the oppressive labor regimes within the Gulf states, these same cities have also become notorious for their enclaved urban structures, which segregate spaces not simply along class lines but based on ethnicity and nationality. Yet the less affluent urban geographies inhabited by low-wage expatriate workers remain marginalized in most journalistic and academic discussions. Highlighting the plight of these workers, who have borne the brunt of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, has never been more urgent. It reveals how spatial and social structures of marginalization are a threat to urban welfare in contemporary neoliberal societies. Taking the form of a longstanding systematic exclusion from civil rights and basic infrastructure, this marginalization undermined expatriates' right to the city and placed them in a particularly vulnerable position. As the home of the third-largest migrant population in the world, and ranking among the top fifteen countries in terms of COVID-19 Cases, Saudi Arabia presents a critical case study to understand these spatial politics and advocate for a post-pandemic urban policy based on sustainability and inclusion.

Geographies of Infection


The spatial fragmentation at the heart of most of the peninsula’s cities is rooted in the social structure that draws boundaries between the indigenous and the foreigner or “stranger.” The stranger here is the expatriate worker who occupies a variety of jobs, whether in the rare skilled professions such as in medicine and engineering or in the more common domestic service and menial labor whose role is instrumental to the very building and functioning of cities. Labeled as "guest workers," their encounters with city life revolve around their work experience, which is considered temporary and lacks prospects of citizenship within the countries they build. This temporariness, along with the sponsorship system (kafala) that governs it, are the main ingredients of their marginalized existence.   

 In Saudi Arabian cities, as in other neighboring ones, nationality and social status govern geographies and typologies of living following a specific structure: many locals reside in detached units within suburban-like neighborhoods; middle and low-income Saudis along with some skilled migrant professionals live in apartments and flats; and the rest of the low-skilled migrant workers live in various accommodation types scattered around the city. The dwellings of the latter group, who are often single men, are restricted to their work locations and provided by their sponsor employers. In most cases, they do not have the option of moving elsewhere without violating their work visa.     

In the capital, Riyadh, migrants make up thirty-six percent of the city’s overall population. Low-skilled migrant workers occupy dwellings that range from designated camps on the city outskirt to rented shared units in mixed-use buildings along commercial corridors. The majority occupy cheap accommodations in the old city center within neighborhoods such as al-Dirah and al-Shemaysi, once vibrant commercial districts that declined as the city expanded to the north. These areas maintained a level of commercial activity for low-income residents along with affordable housing options for the most marginalized in the community, seventy-eight percent of whom are migrants.

Across the otherwise sprawling capital, accommodations for migrant workers were marked by overcrowding and unsanitary conditions. Where individual space in housing units across the country ranged between forty-two to sixty square meters per person, migrants had about four square meters per person, usually restricted to the area of their bunk bed. The barracks-style living facilities in particular became perfect breeding grounds for COVID-19. According to the Saudi Ministry of Health, around seventy percent of the infected cases in the country were registered among migrant groups during the first wave in March. As migrants’ accommodations became foci for the virus during the first surge of the pandemic, Saudi authorities announced them as “places of danger.” The pandemic has severely exacerbated the already poor conditions of low-wage migrant workers.

Neoliberalism, Crisis, and Political Inevitability 


In light of the pandemic, the very nature of the contemporary global neoliberal social structure was shaken. Local governments worldwide were forced to assume the frontlines of containing and combating the viral outbreak and mitigating its economic detriments. This was a problem that could not be solved through "individual entrepreneurialism." New forms of politics, therefore, emerged that unprecedentedly increased the role of local authorities in civic affairs. 

In Saudi Arabia, the situation was no different. Authorities had to make difficult decisions despite their severe economic consequences. In early March, as the first cases of infection were announced in the country, domestic and international travel were suspended. Authorities implemented lockdown measures that included a ban on gatherings and the closure of schools, businesses, and places of worship. Total and partial curfews were announced in all cities along with a system of stringent penalties in case of violation. This continued until June, when the authorities started gradually easing restrictions on economic activities. They also enhanced medical capacities by increasing the supply of workers and equipment, both within existing facilities and the recent pop-up clinics (Tetamman) for testing and triage, providing free care to everyone, including visa violators. The response also included the deployment of a number of digital platforms in various languages to raise awareness and deliver fact sheets, provide medical assessments, and manage movement permits during curfew. The efforts to combat the novel virus were a result of the mobilization of several state actors, including the Ministry of Health (MOH), Saudi Center for Disease Prevention and Control (Weqayah), and the General Commission for Survey, among others.      

The first infection cases among migrant communities in the country were detected in six slums in Mecca. The authorities subsequently isolated the neighborhoods of al-Nakkasah and Ajyad, preventing entry or exit. Days later, the entire city was under full curfew. The Ministry of Health sent medical teams to these areas to conduct mass testing and provide medical care. Similar field testing took place in all infected areas in large cities, typically inhabited by a majority of migrant workers. As the crisis deepened, the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs (MOMRA) was deployed to address the outbreak among workers and, on 13 April, formed a committee to do so. The committee sought to temporarily house migrants in school buildings. Around 3,400 buildings were dedicated to this effort. 

MOMRA Also passed several regulations for a set of design standards for migrant dwellings to ensure healthy living arrangements. These regulations mandated durable safe structures for housing workers with adequate space of twelve square meters per person, proper lighting and ventilation, adequate sanitation and dining facilities, and the widespread availability of hygienic products and protective equipment. MOMRA inspection teams gave employers forty-eight hours to rectify the situation and relocate their employees to prevent overcrowding. To facilitate the relocation, MOMRA created an online platform allowing residents to register vacant property available either for rent or donation. Thousands of properties were quickly identified and thousands of workers were relocated there. By late May, infection rates among migrants decreased by fifty percent. However, a second wave of infection began as a result of easing lockdown measures, with total cases in the country doubling shortly thereafter.
Amidst the crisis of COVID-19, the “displacement of crisis” functions again through the expulsion of expatriate workers which became a legal mechanism to transfer health and economic burdens to other countries.

The sponsorship system, or kafala, which aimed to privatize the management of the migrant workforce to relieve authorities from such a responsibility, is one major cause of this health crisis. Under private sponsorship (either individual or institutional), and in the absence of regulations, workers were subjected to exploitative practices. The jail-like overcrowded living arrangements were one flagrant example. The kafala system restricts the movement of workers and does not permit them to change residence or employment without authorization from the sponsor, which prevented migrants from enhancing their living and working conditions. Deportation, or the threat thereof, is another tool that sponsors could deploy if they were to terminate employment contracts. The government, however, eased up these restrictions during the pandemic, thereby allowing legal migrants to accept other jobs. Nonetheless, on 22 April, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs offered voluntary repatriation (awdah) through an online application that facilitated departure after obtaining approval from migrants' home countries. This welcome move nonetheless placed the financial burden on workers themselves, who largely had to pay for the trip. By mid-July, over 47,500 people were repatriated. Large-scale deportations of illegal migrants were also reported during the pandemic, despite government assurances. Jadwa Investment estimated that around 1.2 million foreign migrants will leave the country in 2020.  

Such developments recall discussions of the social structure in Gulf cities, one that is based on the temporariness of expatriate workers and how it operates in times of adversity. Adam Hanieh argues that this spatial structuring of class has provided a "spatial fix" which enabled the "displacement of crisis" away from the Gulf to migrant-source countries. He uses the 2008 global financial crisis to demonstrate how Gulf states avoided much of the social consequences of unemployment when funding for real estate projects was suspended by expelling thousands of migrant workers. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the “displacement of crisis” functions again through the expulsion of expatriate workers, which became a legal mechanism to transfer health and economic burdens to other countries.

The displacement of crisis took another form too. Saudi authorities attempted to mitigate the economic impacts of COVID-19 by passing several stimulus packages to safeguard private enterprises that had suffered financially as a result of the pandemic. The packages, however, only benefited national citizens who applied for assistance, altogether excluding expatriate workers who made up around eighty percent of employees in the private sector. These faced greater precarity and were left with few real options: unpaid leave, changing employment, or returning to their country of origin. The authorities defended these measures as continuations of the labor nationalization policies, known as Saudization, that started decades ago to replace foreign workers with Saudi nationals through a set of incentives for private enterprises. However, unpaid leave and job losses posed financial challenges for many low-income workers as well as some vulnerable Saudi communities. To assist both groups, the Ministry of Human Recourses and Social Development established a fund with twenty-five million SR in April. Partnering with several charities, the fund established the "our food is one" initiative to provide food baskets for those in need. It is unclear though if a wide range of low-income workers have benefited from such initiatives.

Saudi authorities’ marginalization of low-wage expatriate workers has led to the long disregard for their dismal living conditions. The authorities only intervened, as they did during the pandemic, when these workers posed a threat to the health of the “nation.” The ability to devise and enact housing regulations on such short notice, and during times of social and economic duress, only amplifies the fact that the decision not to do so in the past was a political one. Also, as migrant workers continue to bear the majority of the economic burden of the crisis, their financial security and overall wellbeing remains jeopardized. Unsurprisingly, state interventions were increased only to the necessary extent of protecting public health while shifting a great deal of risk to individual migrants who are treated as a national security threat that should be removed. This highlights how neoliberalism operates in migrant-destination countries and how it contributes to systematic structures of injustice.    

A Trajectory for Reform? 


The COVID-19 crisis highlighted where many cities went wrong, with most early responses calling for a capacity increase of healthcare infrastructure, including hospitals, testing, and tracing capacities. These calls were detached from health conditions in the urban environment and the underlying socio-economic inequalities which determined geographies of infection. Instead, sustainable housing infrastructures should be seen as the main defense mechanism against infectious diseases, forming the cornerstone of urban welfare. The pandemic has shown that the commodification of housing has especially hindered sustainable city-building initiatives. Adequate housing was recognized in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights as part of the right to an adequate standard of living, and it was at the center of the New Urban Agenda announced during Habitat III in 2015.

In the case of Saudi Arabia, the commitment toward sustainable development was announced in 2014 through the Future Saudi Cities Program (FSCP), which aimed to align with the UN New Urban Agenda's call for the creation of inclusive and prosperous cities. The FSCP deployed different indices to determine prosperity levels in Saudi cities, including a social inclusion index. Yet, expatriate workers are not part of this index and are mentioned as mere numbers in demographic data. For a city to be truly inclusive, all social groups must be presented. To this end, reconciling concepts of temporariness and sustainable livelihoods based on the right to the city should be explored.

The post-pandemic Saudi city should place social equity at the center of urban living, paying more attention to those on the margins whose suffering was foregrounded by the COVID-19 crisis. A recent report by Amnesty International declares that "COVID-19 makes Gulf countries’ abuse of migrant workers impossible to ignore," pointing out that the pandemic poses an opportunity for reforms that entail all aspects of expatriate workers’ lives. Such reforms should consider adequate living conditions, fair pay, health care, and rights of domestic workers, among others. 

While the recent housing regulations issued by the Saudi authorities is a step in the right direction, some concerns can be raised as a result of these regulations being labeled as pandemic precautions. Such regulations should be a permanent practice providing the needed safety net to protect low-wage expatriate workers’ rights for adequate living conditions and should not be viewed as a crisis pop-up solution. Furthermore, the fact that many foreign workers will be in precarious conditions as long as they remain excluded from governmental financial support calls for immediate action to ensure the protection of their livelihoods in the long term.  

Disasters and global pandemics cause destruction and suffering, but they also present opportunities for change. The encounter with COVID-19 has revealed that sustainable political choices need to be made to challenge the old economic, environmental, and social models of city governance that are contributing to the creation of various inequalities and vulnerabilities that threaten urban welfare. This could be the wakeup call that cities need to initiate positive change that leaves no one behind.