New School Grads Rock! | From the mind of the incredible Joseph Heathcott →

Nadia Elokdah is an urbanist, designer, and cultural producer.  She graduated in 2015 from the MA Theories of Urban Practice at Parsons The New School For Design.  Prior to that, she earned a Bachelor of Architecture from Temple University in her hometown of Philadlephia. 

While at Parsons, she focused on concepts of inclusion, belonging, and co-creation of urban imaginaries through creative practice.  She currently serves as Deputy Director & Director of Programs for Grantmakers in the Arts, where she works to increase support for peoples, communities, and cultural organizations often marginalized by arts insitutions. 

For the last two years, Nadia served as Special Projects Manager with the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, as the agency worked to prepare two major policy documents: the Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers Report and CreateNYC, the first-ever comprehensive cultural plan for NYC in 2017.  For the Commission Report, Nadia co-led the design of the research and public engagement processes, which sought to integrate deeply personal values and public opinions of New Yorkers with legal and theoretical analysis of public art. The report made an urgent call to confront histories of structural racism and exclusion embodied in our public spaces, and laid out a process for evaluating monuments or markers that may create controversy and strong public response in the future.    

In the production of CreateNYC, Nadia led hundreds of engagements with nearly 200,000 people — collaborating with cultural producers, artists, community-based organizations, and residents — to serve as the foundation of this plan for an equitable, inclusive, and resilient cultural future for all New Yorkers. In the Plan, the City committed to increasing support for arts and culture in under-resourced communities, and also addressed critical issues such as: displacement and affordability; arts, culture, and science education; social and economic impact, and; public space, among others.

Nadia is a published author, adjunct lecturer at Parsons School of Design, and a founding Partner of in.site collaborative, an international collective of women designers and researchers working to make urban transformation more participatory and equitable, most recently participating in Philadelphia Assembled with artsit Jeanne van Heeswijk, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and more than 300 collaborators from Philadelphia.  She is devoted to engagement in culturally responsible and equitable design practice with emphasis on inclusion, exemplified in collaborations with the International Design Clinic, a community youth center in North Philadelphia, and an arab-led arts and culture non-profit Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture.

FINDING THE COMMONS IN TAHRIR SQUARE: agnostic democracy, a common struggle →

Aerial photo of Tahrir Square with community organized and managed zones identified, including KFC Clinic, Toilets, Flag Sellers, and Campsite. Source: BBC.com.

BACKGROUND & APPROACH
At the beginning of 2011, burgeoning digital discontent emerged through the physical and political occupation of Tahrir Square by Cairo’s activists and youth. While the initial events leading to the ouster of Former President Hosni Mubarak lasted eighteen days, from 25 January to 11 February, the conflict continues through the present day. Within this research, the lens is cast around the first year of the struggle for democracy, 2011. Throughout this time period many spheres of public space were utilized to allow for confrontation of socio-political ideas and principles, sometimes amongst adversaries, but more often between polarized factions. 

From the beginnings of the occupation of Tahrir Square through the fall of the Mubarak Regime to the inauguration of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), Egypt underwent vast shifts in public opinion and social discourse, as explained through the series of stakeholder diagrams on the following page. This dynamic and contentious atmosphere led to confusion and disorder within the public realm. How do these shifts relate to the notions of publicity and privacy within these contemporary, newly democratic societies? How is engagement within the public discourse facilitated and understood as intrinsically common? As well, within this practice, who is included and excluded from participating?

Collage of images from news media coverage of women protestors during the 2011 Arab Spring Egyptian Revolution. Source: Google News Search.

Of great significance to this discourse is the struggle of one particular subset: highly targeted, politically engaged, and commonly marginalized young women within public space. Widely accepted cultural practices of harassment toward and even violence against women run rampant throughout the public domain of Cairo, often limiting their ability to participate within the public space of Egyptian politics. How can a society claim democratic practices when differences cannot be confronted and the overall culture is not committed to collective, agonistic existence?

Screen shot from HarassMap showing reported incidents from Jan - Dec 2011. Source: HarassMap.org.

Planned is Greater Than Unplanned

The Imbaba neighborhood in Cairo is one of the largest informal housing Mega-slums in the world. The region is overcrowded, lacks basic access to clean water, and the electricity can be cut-off without a moment’s notice. Imbaba is seen as an inconsequential rural settlement struggling to operate as a city, with unfinished brick buildings encasing the small market streets. Despite its sheer size and density, the Egyptian government has long ignored much of the region, until recently when, as a part of the Cairo 2050 plan, this land seemed too valuable to go to waste as informal settlement.

The government put into place a new urban plan for Imbaba, one that would allow for a new urban park, roadway extensions, and low-income housing for the long ignored residents. However, as shown, these new apartments disregard the existing hierarchy of the informal urban environment developed for access to the market, neighborhood relationships, and visual privacy. None of the planning or intention of the informal settlement is recognized by the government’s formal plan. This lack of acknowledgment exemplifies the struggle between the ruling body and the inhabitants. Why is the informal city viewed as unplanned and therefore inferior? Why is the vision of Cairo’s master plan valued more so than the informal settlement? It seems to be that the power to create a planned vision of the city seen as forward-thinking and recognizes the ideals of Western cities. Is this an image Egyptians should seek to manifest? Is the image of a planned city inherently greater than the function of an informal one?