Biographies
TOM SLATER (Ph.D. 2003, King’s College London) is Reader in Urban Geography at the University of Edinburgh. His research centers on the relations between market processes and state structures in producing and reinforcing social inequalities in the city. He has written extensively on gentrification (notably the co-authored books, Gentrification, 2008 and The Gentrification Reader, 2010), displacement from urban space, territorial stigmatization, welfare reform, and social movements. He is currently working on a long term study of the role of right wing think tanks in manufacturing ignorance of the causes of urban poverty and inequality. For more information, including many downloadable papers, see http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/tslater.
ROBERT SALIBA is Professor of Architecture, Urban Design and Planning at the American University of Beirut. He has conducted extensive research on Beirut’s historic formation and postwar reconstruction. He is the author of Beyrouth Architectures: Aux Sources de la Modernité (Parenthèses, 2009), Beirut City Center Recovery: the Foch-Allenby and Etoile Conservation Area (Steidl, 2004), Beirut 1920-1940: Domestic Architecture between Tradition and Modernity (The Order of Engineers and Architects, 1998), and the editor of the forthcoming book Urban Design in the Arab World: Reconceptualizing Boundaries (Ashgate, June 2015). He is currently researching the paradigmatic changes in urban design education and practice in the region with a focus on postwar Lebanon. He coordinated the graduate program in Urban Planning and Policy and Urban Design at AUB between 2008 and 2011 and was a visiting professor in urban design at the Department of Architecture, Technical University of Damstadt, Germany, in the spring of 2011. As a Chevening scholar at Oxford Brookes University, he conducted postgraduate research on coastal management in the Mediterranean region. He has served as a land use consultant with the World Bank and UN-Habitat on the state of the environment in Lebanon and previously worked as an urban design consultant and a city planning associate at the Community Redevelopment Agency in Los Angeles, California.
ANDREW HARRIS is a Lecturer in Geography and Urban Studies at University College London, where he convenes the interdisciplinary Urban Studies MSc, and is a Co-Director of the UCL Urban Laboratory. His research develops critical perspectives on the role of art, creativity and culture in recent processes of urban restructuring, and on three-dimensional geographies of contemporary cities. He has published articles in various journals including Urban Studies, Cities, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Progress in Human Geography and Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. He is currently writing up material from a project exploring geographies of flyover and skywalk construction in Mumbai. Working between London and Mumbai, he uses comparative frameworks to highlight particularities both between and within cities, and to fashion more diverse and cosmopolitan agendas of urban research and policy-making.
RYAN CENTNER is Assistant Professor of Urban Geography at the London School of Economics. His research and teaching interests include cities and international development, urban planning, globalization, and social theory. He is especially focused on neighbourhood transformation, how local places are shaped by a variety of interests, demands, and narratives. Ryan has researched redevelopment across Latin American cities; variations in the implementation of “the right to the city” in South America; the geopolitics of urban imaginaries in Argentina, Brazil, Turkey, and Lebanon; middle-class development in the cities of middle-income countries; and experimental urban spaces in San Francisco, Boston, and London. He is particularly interested in furthering conceptualizations of space as a resource in relation to other forms of capital (as “spatial capital”), and in struggles over forming “the right kind of city.” Ryan received his PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and was formerly Assistant Professor of Sociology at Tufts University.
EBRU SOYTEMEL is a Research Associate at the Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities, at University of Oxford, having completed a PhD in Sociology at the University of Manchester in 2011. Her PhD research focused on the ways in which urban policies, gentrification and socio-economic policies impact upon class composition, housing, and patterns of belonging of different social classes in Istanbul. She examined the tactics and strategies employed by people of different classes regarding housing, and low-income groups’ strategies of ‘making ends meet’. Her research interests mainly center on: social inequality, cultural class analysis, urban theory, social-spatial dislocation, restructuring and rescaling of space, using mixed methods (ethnographic research, multiple correspondence analysis and social network analysis). She has published research papers on gentrification, neighbourhood belonging, urban poverty in Istanbul. Recent publications include: Soytemel, Ebru. (2014). “Belonging” in the Gentrified Golden Horn/Halic Neighbourhoods of Istanbul. Urban Geography, October 2014-online preview; Soytemel, Ebru. (2013) The Power of the Powerless: Neighbourhood based Self-help Networks of the Poor in Istanbul. Women’s Studies International Forum, 41: 76-87.
FRAN TONKISS is Professor of Sociology, and Director of the Cities Programme. Her research and teaching is in the fields of urban and economic sociology. Her interests in urbanism include cities and social theory, urban development and design, urban inequalities, spatial divisions and public space. In economic sociology, her research focuses on markets, globalisation, trust and social capital. Publications in these fields include Space, the City and Social Theory (Polity, 2005), and Contemporary Economic Sociology: Globalisation, Production, Inequality (Routledge, 2006). She is the co-author of Market Society: Markets and Modern Social Theory (Polity, 2001, with Don Slater), and co-editor of Trust and Civil Society (Macmillan, 2000, with Andrew Passey). She is currently managing editor of Economy and Society; she was previously an editor of the British Journal of Sociology, and remains a member of the editorial board. Fran Tonkiss supervises doctoral students undertaking research on urban development, economic and spatial restructuring, public space, urban economies and governance.
HISHAM ASHKAR is an architect, urban planner, cartographer, photographer and investigative researcher. He is currently pursuing a PhD candidate in urbanism at HafenCity Universität-Hamburg, Germany. His dissertation is centered on the changing nature of public space in association with the gentrification process. Personal website: hishamashkar.com.
MONA KHECHEN is a part-time senior lecturer at the American University of Beirut (AUB), Department of Landscape Design and Ecosystem Management (LDEM) and previously Department of Architecture and Design (ArD). She is a co-organizer of City Debates 2015 and director of the research component of the “Gentrification and Urban Change in Ras Beirut Project”, initiated by the AUB Neighborhood Initiative with support from the London School of Economics and the Ford Foundation. Mona’s expertise is in urban heritage and socio-economic development. She also offers urban planning and policy support to concerned municipal and central governments in addressing the challenges of post-war reconstruction and rapid urbanization, and formulating strategic planning frameworks and action plans. She has worked in several countries (Lebanon, USA, Afghanistan, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Tunisia) and with several international agencies (Aga Khan Trust for Culture, the World Bank, UN-ESCWA, UNDP), academic institutions, private and public actors, community organizations and the non-profit sector. Mona’s professional work integrates the spatial, social, economic, cultural, and institutional dimensions of urban development and planning; and advocates socially inclusive and participatory interventions and responses. Her academic research interests include: urban transformations, cultural heritage and identity politics, and “alternative” tourism. She holds a Doctor of Design degree from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, Masters of Science in Development and Planning from the Development Planning Unit at University College London, and Bachelors of Architecture from AUB.
MARIEKE KRIJNEN is a PhD-student at the Department of Conflict and Development Studies at Ghent University, Belgium, supervised by Prof. Christopher Parker and Prof. Sami Zemni. She obtained her master’s degree in Middle East Studies from the American University of Beirut in 2010 with a thesis titled ‘Facilitating real estate development in Beirut: A peculiar case of neoliberal public policy’, supervised by Prof. Mona Fawaz. After that, she worked at MAJAL Academic Urban Observatory, ALBA/University of Balamand under Serge Yazigi, on several projects including the collection of data on gentrification in Zokak el-Blat, a survey of listed heritage buildings and a project to map the creative industries in Mar Mikhael. Since October 2011, she has continued to study urban change in Beirut as a PhD-student in Belgium, focusing on the role of the state, the Lebanese diaspora and circulating ideas, capital and actors. Her doctoral dissertation investigates this process via several case studies: she assesses the usefulness and relevance of using the term ‘neoliberal urbanism’ to describe urban development in Beirut, through a study of Lebanon’s unique history of laissez-faire capitalism, responds to the postcolonial challenge of Western urban theory by assessing this critique using case studies of gentrification from Beirut, and investigates the transnational making of place and the role of the Lebanese diaspora herein. She continuously seeks to unsettle reifications such as local-global and the notion of the state. Marieke has published in Built Environment and Jadaliyya about the strategies and practices of real estate developers in Beirut and the conflict between a municipality and a ministry surrounding Beirut’s Sunday market. She also has a book chapter coming out in the edited volume Global gentrifications: Uneven development and displacement (editors: Loretta Lees, Hyun Bang Shin and Ernesto Lopez), appearing in January 2015 with Policy Press.
BRUNO MAROT is a PhD candidate in urban planning, policy, and design at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He holds a BA from Paris-Sorbonne University and two masters degrees in city planning and regional development from the Institut d’Urbanisme de Paris and the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, France. He is also a graduate research fellow at the Institut Français du Proche Orient in Beirut, Lebanon. His doctoral research investigates the political economy of urban transformations in Eastern Mediterranean cities by looking at the way property-led restructuring is governed in Beirut, Lebanon. More generally, Bruno’s research interests include issues tied to housing provision and land management in contested urban environments, metropolitan and regional public policy, urban regeneration, and urban governance.
OMAR ABDULAZIZ HALLAJ is a consultant on urban planning, development and local governance. He is a visiting assistant professor at the American University in Beirut. Formerly, he was the CEO of the Syria Trust for Development, and served on the boards of several NGO’s, and public commissions. His professional and research work relates institutional, financial and political frameworks to the production of built environment. In 2007, Mr. Hallaj was the recipient of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture as team leader of the Shibam Urban Development Project (GIZ).
BAHAR SAKIZLIOGLU studied the impacts of urban renewal in Istanbul during her Masters study in Sociology at the Middle East Technical University, Turkey. She recently received her PhD in human geography from Urban and Regional Research Center at the University of Utrecht. Her PhD study entitled A comparative Look at the Residents’ Displacement Experiences: The Cases of Amsterdam and Istanbul investigates and compares residents’ displacement experiences in disadvantaged neighborhoods of Amsterdam and Istanbul through the analytical lens of accumulation by dispossession. Among her main research interests are uneven urban development, displacement, gentrification, accumulation of dispossession, comparative urbanism, gender and social movements. She has written papers on politics of gentrification and displacement experiences of disadvantaged groups in restructuring neighborhoods.
ÖZLEM ÜNSAL is an Istanbul based urban researcher working on neoliberal urban policies, grassroots resistance movements and rights to the city. She completed her thesis on a comparative analysis of neighbourhood movements in two inner-city poverty and conservation zones of Istanbul –i.e. Sulukule and Tarlabaşı- undergoing state-led urban transformation at the City University of London, Department of Sociology. She still works on the transformative capacities of urban social movements and takes part in independent collaborative projects in architecture, planning and urban design. Her written works appeared in such monthly magazines and periodical journals as Betonart, Yeni Mimar, Express and Istanbul.
MOHAMED ELSHAHED is an Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices fellow at the Berlin-based Forum for Transregional Studies. He recently completed his PhD at the Middle East Studies Department at New York University (NYU). His dissertation, “Revolutionary Modernism? Architecture and the Politics of Transition in Egypt, 1936-1967,” argues that 1950s urban and architectural development associated with Nasserism refashioned preexisting architectural production in the service of Egypt’s “necessary transitional authoritarianism.” Elshahed’s research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council and the American Research Center in Egypt. He also holds a MA in Architecture Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Bachelor of Architecture from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Elshahed is the founder and editor of the architecture and urbanism blog Cairobserver.com
KHALED ABDELHALIM graduated as an architect/planners from Cairo University in 1990, received M.A. in Architecture Housing Studies from the University of Newcastle, UK in 1995, and Ph.D. in housing policy, planning and practice from the University of Central England in Birmingham, UK in 2003. He worked more than six years for German Technical Cooperation (GIZ-Egypt) in participatory upgrading of informal areas, combining practice in a pilot area with policy advice to a number of ministries and conceptural development of participatory tools. He also worked as a consultant to UN Habitat for strategic planning of governorates in Egypt and contributed to a number of Habitat regional reports. Dr. Abdelhalim has been the director of the Local Development Observatory at the Local Administration Reform Unit; a UNDP program supporting the Ministry of Local Development on decentralization, local development and governance reforms. He is now the program dirctor. Dr. Abdelhalim has also been a lecturer at the Department of Architecture at Helwan University, and regularly lectures at other Egyptian universities. He is currently a visiting assistant professor of urban policy at AUC, the Public Policy and Administration Department, the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. He is also a founding member of the Egyptian Earth Construction Association since 1996; NGO that promotes appropriate building technologies and sustainable development, and recently a co-founder of TAKAMOL; a foundation for integrated development. Dr. Abdelhalim has publications, studies and a combination of research and practice interests in the fields of informal areas, participation and local governance.
MONA SERAGELDIN is the Vice President of the Institute for International Urban Development. She taught as an Adjunct Professor of Urban Planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design from 1985 to 2008. Dr. Serageldin has over 35 years of professional experience working in the Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Europe. Dr. Serageldin specializes in strategic planning, local development, social inclusion, and policy and program assessment. She has worked on: decentralization; municipal finance of urban development; participatory urban planning and management; land regularization and infrastructure services; migration patterns and the impacts of remittances on land and housing markets; microcredit for housing and infrastructure; and revitalization of the historic urban fabric. Dr. Serageldin has worked on projects sponsored by UNDP, UN-HABITAT, the World Bank, the InterAmerican Development Bank, and various foundations. In 2003-2004 she served as a member of the Millennium Project Task Force on improving the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020. Dr. Serageldin holds a Ph.D in City and Regional Planning from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, an M.C.P. from the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, and a B.Sc. from the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University.
ERNESTO LÓPEZ-MORALES is Associate Professor in the University of Chile and PhD in Urban Planning from the Development Planning Unit, University College London. He is principal researcher in the CONTESTED CITIES international network where he focuses on gentrification, neoliberal urbanism and housing in Chile and Ibero-American cities. He has recently authored an ebook named: Urbanismo proempresarial y destrucción creativa (Redalyc, 2013), co-authored a book named: Global gentrifications and comparative urbanisms (Polity Press, forthcoming), and co-edited two books named: Global gentrifications: Uneven development and displacement (Policy Press, 2015), and Chile Urbano hacia el Siglo XXI (Editorial Universitaria, 2013). Other publications on the matter are: (2010) Real estate market, urban policy and entrepreneurial ideology in the ‘gentrification by ground rent dispossession’ of Santiago de Chile. Journal of Latin American Geography, 9(1), 145-173, (2011) Gentrification by Ground Rent Dispossession: the Shadows Cast by Large Scale Urban Renewal in Santiago de Chile. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35(2), 1-28, (2013) Insurgency and institutionalized social participation in local-level urban planning: The case of PAC comuna, Santiago de Chile, 2003-2005. In T. Samara, S. He & G. Chen (Eds.), Locating right to the city in the Global South: transnational urban governance and socio-spatial transformations (pp. 221-246): Routledge, and (2013) Gentrificación en Chile: aportes conceptuales y evidencias para una discusión necesaria. Revista de Geografía Norte Grande (56), 31-52.
TOLGA ISLAM is working as an associate professor in the Urban Planning Department of Yildiz Technical University. As a researcher, he has been working on gentrification and urban transformation for the past 10 years, mainly focusing on the gentrification processes taking place in Istanbul. He has co-edited the book “Istanbul’da Soylulaştırma” [Gentrification in Istanbul] and written several articles on classical and state-led gentrification processes in Istanbul. http://www.tolgaislam.com
YAHIA SHAWKAT is co-founder of 10 Tooba, a nascent think and do tank based in Cairo that aims to work on participatory urban upgrading and produce knowledge on the built environment from a social justice perspective. Yahia was Housing and Land Rights Officer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights over the past two years, where he conducted research and coordinated field teams and litigators engaging in both direct and strategic litigation. His research focused on housing policy releasing a number of policy notes and an in-depth report. Yahia also identified patterns in development-based forced eviction for the purposes of litigation, where government agencies have regularly exploited the wide-spread lack of clear legal tenure in poorer communities. The third aspect of his work focused on Egypt’s phenomena of building collapses, where he was able to build the first data-base on collapses with two years’ worth of data, presented in an interactive data visualisation – in partnership with Tactical Tech. In 2012, Yahia set up the Right to Housing Initiative, which chronicled the residents of a number of deprived communities in Egypt through ten short documentaries focusing on self-building, forced eviction and infrastructure. The initiative also produced the infographic book; Social Justice and the Built environment | A Map of Egypt (Ar), which analysed and re-read data and statistics on key issues such as resource distribution, budgets and the state of housing. This work formed an extension of his blog Shadow Ministry of Housing, which up till then had only engaged with issues on the built environment in the virtual realm. Yahia has also consulted for the watchdog, BIC as well as for the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS. Yahia Shawkat is a trained architect and planner and holds a BSc in Architecture from Cairo University.
MONA HARB is Associate Professor of Urban Studies and Politics at the American University of Beirut. She received her PhD in Political Science in 2005 from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Aix-en-Provence (France). She is the author of Le Hezbollah à Beyrouth (1985-2005): de la banlieue à la ville (Karthala-IFPO, 2010), co-author with Lara Deeb of Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi’ite South Beirut (Princeton University Press, 2013—winner of the 2015 BKFS first prize), and co-editor with Sami Atallah of Local Governments and Public Goods: Assessing Decentralization in the Arab World (forthcoming with LCPS, 2015). Her ongoing research investigates policy mobilities and city strategies, as well as public space practices and urban politics. Harb is the recipient of grants from the LSE, EU-FP7, Wenner-Gren, ACLS, and the Middle-East Awards. She serves on the editorial boards of IJURR and CSSAME, and is a trustee of the Arab Council of Social Sciences. She is the founder and co-editor of the Cities Page on Jadaliyya e-zine. She has provided professional advice on urban development issues for many international organizations (ESCWA, WB, EU, UNDP). http://aub.academia.edu/MonaHarb
KHALDUN BSHARA is a conservation architect and anthropologist. He is currently the co-director of RIWAQ where he has been working since 1994. He got his BA in Architectural Engineering from Birzeit University (1996), and MA in Conservation of Historic Towns and Buildings from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium (2000). In 2007, on a Fulbright scholarship, Bshara joined the graduate program of social and cultural anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, where he obtained his MA in anthropology in 2009, and his PhD in 2012. Bshara carried out many architectural design and restoration projects in Palestine. In addition, he is the editor of RIWAQ’s Monograph Series on Architectural History of Palestine (2010-present), and the author and co-author of number of books and articles, including Restoration and Rehabilitation in Palestine: Hosh el Etem in the Historic Centre of Birzeit (2013 English and French). “Heritage in Palestine: Colonial Legacy in Postcolonial Discourse” in Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress 9(2): 295-319 (2013). Tashgheel-Job Creation through Restoration 2001-2011 (English 2011), RIWAQ’s Guidelines for Maintenance and Restoration of Historic Buildings in Palestine (Arabic 2005), and Ramallah, Architecture and History (Arabic 2002).
AZIZA CHAOUNI is the founding principal of Aziza Chaouni Projects (ACP), based in Fez, Morocco and Toronto, Canada. She is also an assistant professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. Chaouni also directs the research platform Design Ecological Tourism (DET) at Daniels. DET Projects have won several awards in 2012 including the ACSA Collaborative Award and a Progressive Architecture (P/A) Award Citation. She holds a Masters of Architecture with distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Science with Honors in Civil Engineering from Columbia University. Aziza’s personal research and teaching are focused both on developing world design issues and on methodologies to integrate architecture and landscape, particularly through investigating the potential of green technologies in arid climates. Aziza is the author of Ecotourism, Nature Conservation and Development: Re-Imagining Jordan’s Shobak Arid Region, and the co-author with Liat Margolis of Out of Water, Design Solutions for Arid Climates. Both Aziza’s former office, Bureau E.A.S.T., and her firm Aziza Chaouni Projects have been recognized with top awards for both the Global and Regional Africa and the Middle East competition from the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction; the Architectural League of New York Young Architects Award; Environmental Design Research Association Great Places Award; the American Society of Landscape Architects Design Awards; and other professional design awards and prizes. Chaouni’s work has been published and exhibited internationally, including the International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam; INDEX:Design to Improve Life in Copenhagen; the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN HABITAT) World Urban Forum; The Venice Biennale; the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen.
AHMED HELMI is the General Manager of Ismaelia for Real Estate Investment; a company focusing on acquiring and renovating prime real estate in Downtown Cairo with the aim of revitalizing the historic neighborhood and celebrating its unique, organic urban framework. He is leading a team of 60 employees in development, marketing, finance, legal and property management departments, managing more than 200 residential and commercial tenants across 76000 square meters of residential, retail, entertainment and office real estate. Ismaelia has an ambitious plan to restore properties with $ 200 million and reintroduce them in the market with concepts that meet current market needs. Before Ismaelia, Ahmed’s sixteen years of experience underpins engagements in strategic planning, market research and real estate due diligence; property acquisitions; deal making and new venture creation. He worked on due diligence and negotiations of properties for acquisition/disposition with a value of $800 million, feasibility analysis of mega mixed use real estate, totaling 15 million square meters; In addition to his real estate experience Ahmed engaged in a number of business consulting assignments in various firms including Arthur Andersen. Engagements covered diagnostic studies, strategic planning, market opportunity (feasibility) study, and international marketing planning; design and implementation of marketing programs across different industries including Fast Moving Consumer Goods, Consumer Durables, and Industrial Products. He graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology with a Master in Business Administration back in 2003. His undergraduate studies were in the American University in Cairo, where he acquired his Bachelor degree in International relations and Economics in 1996.
HANA ALAMUDDIN started her practice in Lebanon in 1999. The practice, Almimariya, Architects and Designers for Sustainable Development, works on architectural, urban design and landscape projects within the perimeters of sustainable development and energy efficient construction. She has projects built in Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. (www.almimariya.com) Ms. Alamuddin served as a technical reviewer for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for three consecutive cycles. (1998, 2001, 2004) As a member of the executive committee of the Association Pour la Protection des Sites et Anciennes Demeurs Liban (APSAD) from 1999 to 2008, she worked on several heritage preservation projects in Lebanon and published several articles on the built environment. Ms. Alamuddin is a senior lecturer at American University of Beirut where she teaches architectural and urban design courses. She was elected to the board of the Lebanon Green Building Council in 2014. Ms. Alamuddin is a LEED Accredited Professional in Neighborhood Design.
XAVIER CASANOVAS is an architect and engineering who also graduated in archaeology. Professor at Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC Tech), he is in charge of architectural, urban and environmental rehabilitation within the Col-legi d’Aparelladors Arquitectes Tecnics i Enginyers d’Edificacio de Barcelona. President of REHABIMED, he is an expert for European Council, UNESCO and UNDP, member of ICOMOS and of the Board of GBCe (Green Building Council°. He has a long experience in building rehabilitation, restoration, urban regeneration and cultural heritage development. As an international senior expert, he is working mainly in MENA countries such as Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Palestine, Syria or Lebanon in the Mediterranean area, but also in the Ibeaoamerican region, such as in Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua or Bolivia. He teaches and lectures on rehabilitation and is the author of many studies and publications on the subject.
ERIC HUYBRECHTS ,senior architect and urban/regional planner, is in charge of the international affairs of the Regional planning agency of Paris/Ile-de-France (www.iau-idf), representative of this agency as Lead partner of the World urban campaign (UN-Habitat), associated professor at the Institut français d’urbanisme of Paris-East university, member of the Scientific council of Labex Dynamite. He was also the former director of Cermoc (now IFPO). His experience is covering several scales from projects on urban heritage (Balat and Fener rehabilitation project on the Golden horn in Istanbul, or North Gamalia project in Cairo old town) to land use regulation in Tripoli-Libya city center or Greater Mumbai development plan revision, towards metropolitan planning (Phnom Penh-Cambodia, Greater Algiers master plan, Rio de Janeiro metropolitan development) and regional planning (Ethiopia urban scheme, Bangalore-Mumbai economic development corridor, Damascus regional plan).
SERGE YAZIGI is a Regional Consultant in sustainable development and has acquired experience working in the Mashreq Countries. In 2007, he founded Majal, the Academic Urban Observatory (ALBA/UOB), which he presides. He has provided Technical Assistance to several Local Authorities in the elaboration of sustainable development plans. Moreover, he has coordinated projects aimed at facilitating research in planning related topics and is also in charge of courses related to History and Theory in Planning at ALBA University.
CAECILIA PIERI is the Head of the Urban Observatory at the French Institute of the Near-East (IFPO), Beirut, where she brings a comparative approach to the field of modern urban history and urban anthropology in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern areas. She received her PhD at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, on the subject of the modernization of Baghdad, where she has been conducting fieldwork since 2003. She is particularly concerned with cities in conflict, and the use of heritage as a social marker and tool for politics, and is the leading coordinator of a new research program within Ifpo (2015-2017) about “Heritage at war in the Mediterranean region”, with partnerships in Lebanon, Algeria, Egypt, Turkey, Bosnia and Italy. Member of ICOMOS- International and of DOCOMOMO-Lebanon, she is also an expert within the UNESCO (World Heritage) steering committee for the safeguard of urban and architectural modern heritage in the Arab World. Among her publications as an author or scientific editor: Baghdad Arts Deco, 1920-1950 (American University of Cairo Press, 2011), The Le Corbusier Gymnasium in Baghdad (co-authored with Mina Marefat and Gilles Ragot), and a forthcoming book based on her PhD: Baghdad. La construction d’une capitale moderne, 1914-1960 (2015, Presses de l’Ifpo).
PETER MARCUSE ,a planner and lawyer, is Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at Columbia University in New York City. He has a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a Ph. D in planning from the University of California at Berkeley. He practiced law in Waterbury, CT, for twenty years, specializing in labor and civil rights law, and was majority leader of its Board of Aldermen, chaired its anti-poverty agency, and was a member of its City Planning commission. . He was thereafter Professor of Urban Planning at UCLA, and President of the Los Angeles Planning Commission and member of Community Board 9M in New York City… His fields of research include city planning, housing, the use of public space, the right to the city, social justice in the city, globalization, and urban history, with some focus New York City. He has taught in both West and East Germany, Australia, the Union of South Africa, Canada, Austria, Spain, Canada, and Brazil, and written extensively in both professional journals and the popular press. His most recent publication is Peter Marcuse, ed., with Neil Brenner and Margit Mayer, Cities For People, Not For Profit: Critical Urban Theory And The Right To The City, London: Routledge, 2011. He also has a blog on critical planning at pmarcuse.wordpress.com. His current projects include a historically-grounded political history of urban planning, the formulation of a theory of critical planning, including the attempt to make critical urban theory useful to the U.S. Right to the City Alliance, and an analysis and proposals to deal with the subprime mortgage foreclosure crisis in the United States.
CYNTHIA MYNTTI is Professor of Public Health Practice at the American University of Beirut (AUB). She earned her doctorate in social anthropology from the London School of Economics (1983), and has graduate degrees from AUB (MA, 1974), Johns Hopkins University (MPH, 1986) and Yale University (M Arch 2004). Cynthia worked as a program officer for the Ford Foundation in Cairo and Jakarta, and has held university teaching positions in London, Minneapolis, Sanaa and Beirut. She is the author of “Paris along the Nile: Architecture in Cairo from the Belle Epoque” (American University in Cairo Press) and numerous scholarly articles on women’s and children’s health, and university-community partnerships. Since 2006, Cynthia has directed the Neighborhood Initiative at AUB. The Neighborhood Initiative mobilizes faculty, staff and students of AUB to apply their knowledge to solving the problems of the university’s Ras Beirut neighbors. Current projects fall under three themes: the Urban Environment; Community and Well-Being; Neighborhood Diversity.