Conférence Midan Mounira : « Urban Ecologies in Egypt », Dalila Ghodbane, Aya Nassar — Le Caire, 11 juin 2023

Storytelling, Poetics, and Urban Political Ecology: An Elemental Geography of the City

السرد و فن الشعر والايكولوجيا السياسية الحضرية: الجغرافيا المادية للمدينة

Abstract: In my talk, I explore the idea of the elemental city, both by sharing some observations about the use of elemental geography in thinking about the urban and mainly by demonstrating how different modes of elemental readings of the city may work. I propose that paying attention to the elemental make-up of space can help us with some insights about our relationship to the city, and its environment, “built” or found. I work towards this proposition by discussing the three cinematic cities/towns: Cairo as it appears In the Last Days of the City (2016), Beirut in Taste of Cement (2017) and Merowe of The Dam (2022).  I suggest that elemental geography and thinking might offer us a creative space to entangle thinking about questions of memory, architecture, politics and ecology in the city.

Aya Nassar is a British Academy postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Warwick. She is an interdisciplinary political and urban geographer who writes about materiality, affect and storytelling in cities of the Middle East. She has taught at the universities of London (Royal Holloway), Durham and Sussex.

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Climate through its Urban Fabric: For a Sociological Approach to Environmental Issues in Architecture.

المناخ من خلال نسيجه العمراني من اجل منظور اجتماعي للقضايا البيئية في الهندسة المعمارية.

Architectural solutions to urban climate problems are most often constructive and technical. Nevertheless, understanding the contrasting ways in which urban climate affects city dwellers in their own homes is a prerequisite for the effective design and implementation of these solutions. This presentation will look at this issue from the case of Cairo.

Dalila Ghodbane (PhD) is an architect and urban planner (French Institute of Urbanism, ENSA Paris la Villette, University of Italian Switzerland). She has conducted research related to domestic construction practices in Brussels (Vrije Universiteit Brussels) and in Cairo (CEDEJ). Her research interest lies at the intersection of architecture and social sciences, which allows her to approach urban development from the perspective of lived experience. In 2022, she joined the Brussels planning office perspective.brussels to manage the observatory of productive activities.

سلسلة محاضرات ميدان المنيرة هي محاضرات شهرية موجهه للجمهور الواسع ينظمها بشكل مشترك المعهد الفرنسي بمصر والمعهد الفرنسي للآثار الشرقية و المعهد الدومنيكي للدراسات الشرقية ومركز التوثيق والدراسات الاجتماعية والقانونية ويدعى اليها خبراء مصريين وفرنسيين ودوليين للحديث حول موضوع: “مصر والشرق الأوسط – ديناميكيات ورهانات وتاريخ”. الضيوف هم بشكل أساسي باحثين من ذوي الخبرة في العلوم الاجتماعية قادرين على التوجه للجمهور العام حول قضايا الساعة

À retrouver sur le site du CEDEJ