A Reflexive Reading of Urban Space New Directions in Planning Theory Series

Providing a critique of the concepts attached to the representation of urban space, this ground-breaking book formulates a new theory of space, which understands the dynamic interrelations between physical and social spaces while tracing the wider urban context. It offers a new tool to approach the reading of these interrelations through reflexive reading strategies that identify singular reading fragments of the different spaces through multiple reader-time-space relations. The strategies proposed in the volume seek to develop an integrative reading of urban space through recognition of the singular (influenced by discourse, institution, etc.); and temporal (influenced by reading perspective in space and time), thereby providing a relational perspective that goes beyond the paradox of place in between social and physical space, identifying each in terms of relationships oscillating between the conceptual, the physical and social content, and the context. In conclusion, the book suggests that space/place can be read through sequential fragments of people, place, context, mind, and author/reader. Operating at different scales between conceptual space and reality, the sequential reading helps the recognition of multiplicity and the dynamics of place as a transformational process without hierarchy or classification.

A Threshold, Part I Preliminary Reading of Urban Space,Chapter 1 Approaching a Reading Space, Chapter 2 Arché-deconstruction, Chapter 3 Cairo-Khōra, A Turning Point, Part II Three Reflexive Readings,Chapter 4 The Cultural Park for Children, Chapter 5 Social Space, Chapter 6 Arché-urban Space, To Be Continued..., Bibliography

Mona A. Abdelwahab is an Assistant Professor in Architecture, Department of Architecture and Environmental Design at the Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport, Egypt. She received her PhD in Architecture from Newcastle University, UK, where she is a visiting research fellow. She followed her post-doc studies at the Department of Spatial Planning, University of Groningen, NL, where she co-founded ‘YA-AESOP-Booklet Series: Conversations In-Planning’. She is also cofounder and managing editor of ‘Arcplan’: Arabic cities planning e-journal.