Absurd-City, Subver-City

Sharif, Y. and Golzari, N. 2021. Absurd-City, Subver-City. in: Sorkin, M. and Sharp, D. (ed.) Open Gaza: Architecture of Hope The American University in Cairo Press. pp. 96-119

Chapter titleAbsurd-City, Subver-City
AuthorsSharif, Y. and Golzari, N.
EditorsSorkin, M. and Sharp, D.
Abstract

The Gaza Strip is one of the most beleaguered environments on earth. Crammed into a space of 139 square miles (360 square kilometers), 1.8 million people live under an Israeli siege, enforcing conditions that continue to plummet to ever more unimaginable depths of degradation and despair. Gaza, however, is more than an endless encyclopedia of depressing statistics. It is also a place of fortitude, resistance, and imagination; a context in which inhabitants go to remarkable lengths to create the ordinary conditions of the everyday and to reject their exceptional status. Inspired by Gaza’s inhabitants, this book builds on the positive capabilities of Gazans. It brings together environmentalists, planners, activists, and scholars from Palestine and Israel, the US, the UK, India, and elsewhere to create hopeful interventions that imagine a better place for Gazans and Palestinians. Open Gaza engages the Gaza Strip within and beyond the logics of siege and warfare, it considers how life can be improved inside the limitations imposed by the Israeli blockade, and outside the idiocy of violence and warfare.

KeywordsGaza
Hope
design
reconstruction
Book titleOpen Gaza: Architecture of Hope
Page range96-119
Year2021
PublisherThe American University in Cairo Press
Publication dates
PublishedMar 2021
ISBN9781649030719
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2ks71tx.11

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