“The Arab world is undoubtedly an urban one. Home to the some of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and to a number of the newest, the Arab region is a critical but neglected research site for scholars trying to grapple with our urban age. Arab Urbanism is a long overdue place for the agglomeration of urban researchers working on and in the Arab world. It will be a key staging post for critical and progressive urban studies of the Arab world that will help in the never ending struggle to ensure that urbanisation is undertaken with the inhabitants of the region and not against them.” - Deen Sharp
“The urban is a critical site to understand the political but also a condition of possibility for politics. I am very excited to be part of a project that centres Arab urbanism(s) not only as a product of imperial relations of power but also as producers of new conditions and relations of possibility.” - Omar Jabary Salamanca
“What does the word Arab mean in urban planning? The region is the cradle of so many influences that it is difficult to describe Arab urbanism as such, other than by opening up the richness of its successive historical and civilizational layers. This platform is a formidable opportunity to showcase and analyse the current trends of cities with multiple faces and heritage.” - Leila Khaldi
“Arab Urbanism fills a gap in academic research on urban studies in the Arab world: a means of quickly and simply disseminating research outside the academic sphere, while at the same time ensuring the dissemination of the work carried out by researchers in the region thanks to its bilingualism. And as a French geographer, I'm honoured to be part of this adventure!” - Anne Bouhali
“Arab Urbanism is an important platform for new and local voices to share their understanding of urban settings in the Arab region through complex lived experiences and adapted paradigms. It is both an exercise for us, as Arabs, to better understand our lifeworlds, present and past, and an opportunity to contribute to larger urban debates. “ - Diala Lteif
“Within urban studies, contemporary Arab cities have generally been subsumed into discussions of the Global South. This positioning has sometimes prevented a regional perspective from emerging, one that can uniquely learn from both the differences and similarities within Arab cities. Such platforms already exist for the arts and politics, Arab Urbanism now allows this approach to be extended to the study of the city.” - Dena Qaddumi
“Our region is simultaneously overstudied and understudied. We have valuable knowledge produced by numerous individuals and institutions, but we have very few platforms by us and for us in which we can publish. The Arab Urbanism project is rooted in the region and formulates our urban issues to both ourselves and to the world, on our own terms. This is reflected both in our selection, and editorial processes, and importantly in the types of content that we are publishing. The research that we are sharing with our readers in this edition spans a wide range of topics, and I'm excited to be involved in presenting it to you.” - Majd al-Shehabi
“AU for me is a chance to reflect on the politics of writing cities of here/elsewhere. To write about urbanity is to weave stories, narratives and sense of self. We, inadvertently, inhabit grammars, theoretical baggages, and disciplinary trainings that might fix the urban in some form and in some language. But we are also travellers amongst cities, constantly grappling with politics of translation (or its impossibility). AU might be just the place to dwell on these uncomfortable questions of knowledge production. “ - Aya Nassar
“I joined Arab Urbanism because I see it filling a gap in our historical and contemporary knowledge of Arab cities. As a bilingual platform steered by Arab scholars that are trained at the world's top universities, AU offers a unique perspective of the region through the lens of expert scholars, making it a uniquely significant initiative. This is an ambitious project. On the long term, I'd like to see AU an independent institution disseminating knowledge about urban matters in the region.” - Anwar Jaber
“To me, the Arab Urbanism Magazine is an opportunity for discussion and for opening up questions. What is urban? And what is Arab urbanism? These might seem like intuitive questions, but they are far from it. The magazine is thus an opportunity to take up these questions, among others, from different theoretical standpoints, and through diverse researches that touch upon our contemporary reality and its historical roots. We live in a moment of deep change, with rising and falling identities, built and destroyed borders, and a shifting social class formation. It is critical to build a space to investigate this reality from the perspective of the urban built environment and influence on it.” - Faiq Mar’i
“To me, the Arab Urbanism Magazine is an opportunity for discussion and for opening up questions. What is urban? And what is Arab urbanism? These might seem like intuitive questions, but they are far from it. The magazine is thus an opportunity to take up these questions, among others, from different theoretical standpoints, and through diverse researches that touch upon our contemporary reality and its historical roots. We live in a moment of deep change, with rising and falling identities, built and destroyed borders, and a shifting social class formation. It is critical to build a space to investigate this reality from the perspective of the urban built environment and influence on it.”
