On Cairobserver

A couple of weeks ago I attended the launch of the printed edition of www.cairobserver.com.  The blog has been online for almost 1.5 years and is concerned with ‘Cairo’s architecture and building, urban fabric and city life’ and is run by Mohamed Elshahed in an open contribution based format. The 2 hour launching event started with a short introduction from Mohamed and some comments from his guests and turned into a rather short open discussion with the audience on issues like land policies, public engagement, and informal settlements. In his introduction Mohamed emphasized that the publication spurred from his belief that the discourse about the city and its architecture should be based on wider societal participation and engagement, and that without careful repositioning of the professionals within a larger system of public conscious the field would only become more irrelevant by time.

After the event was over, I managed to carefully study the publication and come up with several points that I think are essential to highlight in order to have a better understanding of the state of discourse in Egypt.

Print matters

The decision to produce a printed edition of a blog is a very risky decision. Although this is not the first, only a few could be called successes, at least in this field. As we all turn to the internet to get our news and information, digital blogs have become the easiest way to engage with like-minded people. And that’s exactly its drawback. If you are not interested in these subjects, the likelihood of you stumbling upon cairobserver is very minimal. On the other hand, print has very different rules. Although its not as flexible nor extendable as a blog, engaging the reader physically still has its appeal to a lot of people. It is also a much easier way to engage a wider audience, especially in a place like Egypt. Printing the edition in A3 newspaper format, Mohammed also managed to keep the publication simple, share-able, lightweight, graphically elaborate, and cheap to produce. A publication that really doesn’t suffer from the real burdens associated with a publication.

Arabic… Arabic… Arabic:

Realizing that the real audience in such an endeavor use Arabic to discuss and debate these issues, and trying to engage with non-academics and non-specialists, Mohammed managed to translate many of the posts and articles from the blog that were originally written in English into Arabic. Architects are quite difficult to understand in any language they use, so the attempt to translate their texts into another language without loosing too much of the meaning, yet not resorting to direct translations that don’t make any sense, is quite a difficult task. With the help of Nabil Shawkat, I thought the translated texts were very clear and informative. They did not use any overly complicated terminology that architects usually use. The threads of ideas were quite easy to follow, and the arguments remained interesting. Again, this was a very successful decision to widen readership, engagement and debate. The blog itself has transformed over the last months to include more posts written in Arabic from different contributors, which indicates a genuine interest in this direction.

Why pay for that

I would like to think that the decision by the British Council to spend their grant money for artists on such a project is a decision based on a larger interest in promoting urbanism and architecture-related projects rather than a specific interest in cairobserver. Realizing the necessity of moving the discourse of architecture and the city from the professional realm to that of normal citizens and engaging them in order to create a larger ‘movement’ surrounding this field, instead of within it, is very promising. Their belief that architecture-related content deserves to be made available, read, and discussed by everybody makes a fundamental statement about the state of discourse in Egypt and its future.

The more the merrier

Although the publication presents opinions and arguments on a wide range of topics (from transportation to heritage to governance and public policy), I believe this diversity was a bit distracting even if it kept the publication fresh and fast-paced. Overall, I don’t think it compromised the continuous thread going through the whole publication, while keeping all of the different views juxtaposed. It also sent a message that collectiveness and collaboration are essential in dealing with the city, in dissecting its problems and in providing assumptions and positions.

The cairobserver publication is definitely a big step on the way of opening up the discussion on architectural and urban issues in a huge and out of control city like Cairo, especially in a post revolutionary condition, when a lot of the existing models and ideas need serious re-evaluation and re-positioning.

The complete publication is available for download here.