Visible Publics

This chapter interrogates the contested design of visible public spaces as a lens into how competing redistributive practices redraw public/private boundaries in both Cairo and Istanbul, with a focus on the changing accessibility of shared spaces and their servicing. There are many ways in which the design of shared spaces is entangled with redistributive agendas, but in this chapter I focus on two: tourism and communal belonging. The chapter first investigates the complicated relationship tourism has with a redistributive agenda and negotiating the value of property in the city. It then travels to the contested design of parks, streets and alleys, balconies and windows, sewage infrastructures, and gardens to trace how the same redistributive agendas navigate competing tactics for redistributing resources in the city and in doing so shape the accessibility and servicing of the city.