Building Successful Modern Arab Cities | Yasser Elsheshtawy
Yasser Elsheshtawy – adjunct professor of architecture at Columbia’s GSAPP and non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington – joins us on the Tasmeem Doha podcast to talk about his keynote speech from the conference “(Re)Constructing Urban Spaces: Unearthing the Palimpsest in Arabia”. This conversation delves into the concept of permanence and erasure in modern cities, looking individually at Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha and Riyadh as examples of modern urban spaces and realizations of our urban imaginaries. Thinking about cities as a culmination of societal and historic layers, Elsheshtawy shares insights on the lifecycles of cities, what we can learn from Dubai, and what he considers to be the most livable Arab City.
Yasser Elsheshtawy is a Professor of Architecture and Independent Scholar. His scholarship focuses on urbanization in developing societies, informal urbanism, urban history and environment-behavior studies, with a particular focus on Middle Eastern cities. He is currently a Non-Resident Scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, DC and an Adjunct Professor at Columbia GSAPP where he teaches two courses: “Housing in the Arab World” and “Arab Cities & Cinema.”
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Tasmeem Doha Podcast
Each edition of the Tasmeem Doha biennial international conference is accompanied with a new season of this podcast series powered by afikra, showcasing the best people, works and efforts around the chosen theme of the event. For 2024, the theme is “Under Construction”, which is both a metaphor for creative research and a celebration and investigation of transformation.
