The seminar will focus on the concept of urbicide in the Palestinian context, combining approaches from sociology, history, and architecture that put colonial planning at the centre of the analysis. It will unpack how such planning is employed as a tool through which to deny the potential of the Palestinian city as a space of modernity, sovereignty, and the production of meaning. The seminar also seeks to show how colonial policies, by reshaping the urban space, attempt to undermine the material and symbolic conditions needed for the existence and continuity of the Palestinian city.
Presentations:
Urban and Architectural Genocide in Gaza: A Socio-Historical Reading Abaher El-Sakka, Birzeit University
Disrupted Urbanity in Colonial Settlement: Planning as Urbicide Abdullah Al Bayyari, Institute for Palestine Studies, and the American University in Cairo.
Systematic Dispossession: Towards Urbicide in Jerusalem Maha Samman, Al-Quds University
Moderated by Himmat Zoubi, Mada al-Carmel