ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes five threads that posit planning as a central, but contested, practice in the making of Arab cities, without oversimplifying the Arab world as a monolithic geographical entity. They are: Planning, state building, and elite affirmation; tension between modernization and preservation; a connected and networked history; planning cultures and roles of "planners", and planning and ordinary citizens. The chapter describes the entanglement of planning in the Arab world with state building, economic and political violence, the unfolding of capitalism, the tense relation between historic and modern urban fabric. Planning in the Arab world including the rise of local experts, and the ways non-experts navigate planning systems or operate outside them. The chapter provides a synthetic review of planning histories in cities of the Arab world, a historiography of planning history in this region has yet to be written.
