Urban Metamorphoses: Socio-Spatial Dynamics in Arab Cities
Métamorphoses urbaines. Une analyse des dynamiques socio-spatiales dans les villes arabes
Revue « EchoGéo »
Published on Tuesday, October 21, 2025
Abstract
Since the beginning of the 20th century, the Arab world has undergone rapid urbanization. Today, global cities in the region such as Doha and Dubai have themselves become exporters of new urban paradigms to the wider Arab world and beyond. This issue of EchoGéo aims to explore these urban metamorphoses through a multidisciplinary and comparative approach, connecting dynamics across North Africa and the Middle East, and to bridge three elements: understanding the forces that deeply transform Arab cities, examining how they unfold in concrete places, and giving full attention to the resistances, detours, and inventions that redraw urban life.
Announcement
Argument
Since the beginning of the 20th century, the Arab world has undergone rapid urbanization, initially shaped by the importation of Western planning and industrial models. This dynamic has since shifted: today, global cities in the region such as Doha and Dubai have themselves become exporters of new urban paradigms to the wider Arab world and beyond. Arab cities thus serve as a privileged analytical prism through which to decipher the profound socio-political, territorial, and economic transformations that these societies are experiencing.
This issue aims to explore these urban metamorphoses through a multidisciplinary and comparative approach, connecting dynamics across North Africa and the Middle East – two subregions that are often studied separately. This global analytical perspective, which seeks to combine theory with territorial action, will be complemented by a micro-sociological approach. Contributions will draw on emblematic places that serve as observatories for concretely grasping socio-urban change. By rooting the reflection in specific spaces, the issue seeks to reveal how large-scale structural forces manifest at the everyday level, and how residents in turn shape their territories.
Thinking about the Arab city today means bridging three elements: understanding the forces that deeply transform it, examining how they unfold in concrete places, and giving full attention to the resistances, detours, and inventions that redraw urban life. This issue thus invites us to navigate these tensions and to grasp the vitality of Arab urban worlds.
To achieve this, we propose to structure the issue around three main lines of inquiry:
(I) the structural dynamics and theoretical frameworks of urban transformations;
(II) empirical studies centered on emblematic sites chosen as observatories of contemporary urban realities; and
(III) the (re)actions triggered by the transformations and uncertainties of urban worlds.
It should be emphasized that, despite their analytical distinction, these three axes are designed to intertwine and jointly illuminate the complexity of the urban condition.
Axis 1 - Structural Dynamics and Theoretical Frameworks of Urban Transformations
This axis seeks to interrogate the underlying forces that are reshaping the urban landscape in the Arab world. It is a matter of analyzing the complex transformations at play and the challenges they generate for societies and territories. We particularly welcome contributions addressing:
A genealogy of urban transformations
Authors are encouraged to situate contemporary urban dynamics within a historical perspective, in order to grasp the genesis of development models and the ruptures or continuities that characterize them. The aim is to understand how cities in the Arab world have evolved over time into their present configurations. Particular attention may also be given to the circulation and appropriation of urban models between the West, the Gulf, and North Africa, in order to capture how these transfers shape imaginaries, planning practices, and the material forms of contemporary Arab cities.
Neoliberalism, branding, and urban uniformity
Analyses of the impact of neoliberalism and the proliferation of mega-projects on urban production are welcome. Contributions may focus on the growing role of consulting firms in planning processes that tend to homogenize urban landscapes globally. This approach will help to better grasp why cities in the region increasingly resemble one another, while also questioning the paradoxes of a proclaimed yet often stereotyped urban identity.
The nexus of urbanism and ecology
We also invite contributions that explore the intersection between urban planning and environmental challenges. Articles might question how ecological issues (water scarcity, pollution, desertification) are—or are not—integrated into the urban fabric of the region, and the resulting tensions between economic growth and sustainability.
The securitization and control of urban spaces
Contributions addressing the control and securitization of urban space are equally welcome. They may examine both historical and contemporary developments, exploring mechanisms of surveillance and exclusionary policies that shape daily life and mobility in Arab cities.
Axis 2 - Observing Transformations Through Emblematic Places: Case Studies
To ground theoretical analysis in the realities of cities, this axis focuses on a series of empirical case studies. By examining specific places, chosen as privileged observatories of contemporary transformations, the goal is to document urban production in the Arab world and reveal how structural dynamics manifest at the local level. Possible sites of inquiry include (but are not limited to):
Zawiyas
By exploring the transformation of these traditional spaces of spirituality and sociability, contributors may analyze the redefinition of the sacred in secularized or politicized urban contexts.
Hammams
These spaces, at once public and intimate, bear witness to privatization policies, shifting social practices linked to modernity, and heritage challenges in the face of destruction.
Public gardens and sanctuaries
Revealing urban imaginaries and political priorities, their management and evolution provide insights into environmental policies, the role of nature in the city, and tensions between public and private space.
Malls and markets
As spaces of exchange and consumption, they symbolize neoliberalism. Their study allows an analysis of the homogenization of commercial practices, the influence of branding, and the privatization of public space.
Cafés
Historically hubs of sociability and politicization, cafés reveal how public space is reinvested—or conversely, controlled. They reflect class dynamics and transformations in urban lifestyles.
Medinas
Embodying the paradox between heritage and modernity, their study opens discussion on conservation policies, the pressures of mass tourism, and how local populations adapt, resist, or transform these historic spaces.
Urban peripheries
Rapidly expanding zones where challenges of planning, social inequalities, and tensions linked to urbanization are most evident. They provide fertile ground for observing growth, uncertainty, and new forms of urban life.
Transport hubs
As central elements of major urban projects, transport sites have played a key role in contemporary transformations. Through the movement of people and goods, they host a multitude of activities and transactions that make them beating hearts of the urban economy.
Axis 3 - Acting in Response to Transformations and Uncertainties in Urban Worlds
The final axis focuses on the responses, adaptations, and actions that shape Arab cities. While structural forces tend to homogenize urban landscapes, local actors and citizen movements generate counter-narratives and initiatives that testify to capacities for innovation and resistance.
Drawing on the perspective of urban political ecology and the concept of urban metabolism, this axis invites us to think of the city not as a static entity but as a dynamic system of exchanges (materials, energy, water, information) and political reconfigurations. From this standpoint, contributions may analyze how local actions, whether formal or informal, transform flows and power relations. The aim is to shed light on dynamics of agency and to highlight how Arab cities serve as arenas of political and social creativity.
Contributions may focus on:
- Movements of resistance and citizen actions opposing neoliberal urban projects or securitization policies.
- The role of architects, planners, and other urban professionals in both constructing and contesting urban spaces—examining how these actors may reproduce dominant models or propose alternative, participatory, and resilient practices.
- Social and political innovations that seek to build new trajectories for cities in the region.
- Strategies of adaptation to environmental and social challenges, questioning how urban populations cope with uncertainty and crisis.
Text submission procedure
The articles in this dossier, written in French, English or Spanish, will be around 35,000 to 40,000 characters including spaces (plus illustrations). Please refer to the EchoGéo recommendations to authors for standards of presentation for the text and bibliography and illustrations.
All submissions must be sent by May 15 2026 to Nora Mareï (nora.marei@cnrs.fr), Asma Nouira (asma.nouira@carep-paris.org) et Isabel Ruck (isabel.ruck@carep-paris.org), the dossier's co-coordinators, with a copy to Karine Delaunay (EchoGeo@univ-paris1.fr), EchoGéo's editorial secretary, who will forward them to the evaluators. The dossier will be published in issue n° 79 of EchoGéo (January-March 2027).
NB. Authors are invited to contact the issue coordinators to discuss their article proposals before submitting their texts.
In addition to the articles in the Sur le champ (On the field) dossier, submissions that address the general theme of this call for papers may be included in the other sections of EchoGéo (Sur le métier/On the job, Sur l'image/On image, Sur l'écrit/On writing). These proposals must comply with the expectations of these sections, as indicated in the editorial line.
Coordinators of the thematic dossier
- Nora Mareï, geographer, is a research fellow at the CNRS and a member of the Prodig research unit.
- Asma Nouira, political scientist, is a researcher at CAREP Paris and an associate researcher at the Centre for Studies and Research in Administrative, Constitutional, Financial and Tax Law (CERDACFF) at the Université Côte d'Azur.
- Isabel Ruck, political scientist, is a researcher at CAREP Paris and a lecturer at Sciences Po Paris.
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Subjects
- Geography (Main category)
- Zones and regions > Africa > North Africa
- Zones and regions > Asia > Near East
- Society > Geography > Urban geography
- Society > Sociology > Urban sociology
- Society > Political studies > Political sociology
- Society > Geography > Geography: society and territory
Date(s)
- Friday, May 15, 2026
Attached files
Keywords
- ville, monde urbain, mutation urbaine, ville arabe, changement socio-urbain
Contact(s)
- Isabel Ruck
courriel : isabel [dot] ruck [at] carep-paris [dot] org - Nora Mareï
courriel : nora [dot] marei [at] cnrs [dot] fr - Asma Nouira
courriel : asma [dot] nouira [at] carep-paris [dot] org
Reference Urls
Information source
- Karine Delaunay
courriel : echogeo [at] univ-paris1 [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International - CC BY 4.0 .
To cite this announcement
Nora Mareï, Asma Nouira, Isabel Ruck, « Urban Metamorphoses: Socio-Spatial Dynamics in Arab Cities », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Tuesday, October 21, 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/1500c
