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Reshaping Riyadh Alsolh Square: Mapping the Narratives of Protesting Crowds in Beirut

Received: 8 August 2021     Accepted: 10 September 2021     Published: 19 November 2021
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Abstract

The conception of the state's ownership of public space and its control over its physical and psychological accessibility have shaped the spaces and the extent of public engagement. On the other side, civil movements challenge this dominance and contribute to reshaping the spaces through different modes of political gatherings. Several spaces in the Middle East have developed their significance through the competition of conflictual actors. This paper aims at identifying the spatial tools of the occupational competition for dominating the space. The article examines the method of generating time-aware maps of the spatial practices of protesting crowd out from the scattered archive of visual and verbal narratives using ArcGIS. By employing 395 archived videos which documented the protest event of 22nd – 24th, August 2015 in Riyadh Alsolh square, Beirut – Lebanon, the paper produced 144 plural patterns of the protestors' crowd movement per 10 minutes within 250 m radius of Riyadh Alsolh square's surroundings. The article defined four patterns of the crowd's territory based on their physical, functional and relational characteristics. The conflictual sense of the contradictory crowds can be used to identify the status of competition for dominance. It also indicates the correlation between the features of the pattern and the potential of raising the conflictual sense. The examined method helps to analyse crowds' contribution in shaping public spaces during urban events; however, the more available spatiotemporal recordings, the more figured characteristics of the produced space.

Published in Urban and Regional Planning (Volume 6, Issue 4)
DOI 10.11648/j.urp.20210604.13
Page(s) 115-122
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Public Space, Socio-political Movement, Spatial Contestation, Crowd Mapping, ArcGIS, Riyadh Alsolh Square, Beirut

References
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[3] Tonnelat, S., 2010. The sociology of urban public spaces. Territorial evolution and planning solution: experiences from China and France, pp. 84-92.
[4] Lofland, L. H., 2017. The public realm: Exploring the city's quintessential social territory. Routledge.
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Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Reem Albarakt, Gehan Selim, Amal Iaaly. (2021). Reshaping Riyadh Alsolh Square: Mapping the Narratives of Protesting Crowds in Beirut. Urban and Regional Planning, 6(4), 115-122. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.urp.20210604.13

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    ACS Style

    Reem Albarakt; Gehan Selim; Amal Iaaly. Reshaping Riyadh Alsolh Square: Mapping the Narratives of Protesting Crowds in Beirut. Urban Reg. Plan. 2021, 6(4), 115-122. doi: 10.11648/j.urp.20210604.13

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    AMA Style

    Reem Albarakt, Gehan Selim, Amal Iaaly. Reshaping Riyadh Alsolh Square: Mapping the Narratives of Protesting Crowds in Beirut. Urban Reg Plan. 2021;6(4):115-122. doi: 10.11648/j.urp.20210604.13

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  • @article{10.11648/j.urp.20210604.13,
      author = {Reem Albarakt and Gehan Selim and Amal Iaaly},
      title = {Reshaping Riyadh Alsolh Square: Mapping the Narratives of Protesting Crowds in Beirut},
      journal = {Urban and Regional Planning},
      volume = {6},
      number = {4},
      pages = {115-122},
      doi = {10.11648/j.urp.20210604.13},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.urp.20210604.13},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.urp.20210604.13},
      abstract = {The conception of the state's ownership of public space and its control over its physical and psychological accessibility have shaped the spaces and the extent of public engagement. On the other side, civil movements challenge this dominance and contribute to reshaping the spaces through different modes of political gatherings. Several spaces in the Middle East have developed their significance through the competition of conflictual actors. This paper aims at identifying the spatial tools of the occupational competition for dominating the space. The article examines the method of generating time-aware maps of the spatial practices of protesting crowd out from the scattered archive of visual and verbal narratives using ArcGIS. By employing 395 archived videos which documented the protest event of 22nd – 24th, August 2015 in Riyadh Alsolh square, Beirut – Lebanon, the paper produced 144 plural patterns of the protestors' crowd movement per 10 minutes within 250 m radius of Riyadh Alsolh square's surroundings. The article defined four patterns of the crowd's territory based on their physical, functional and relational characteristics. The conflictual sense of the contradictory crowds can be used to identify the status of competition for dominance. It also indicates the correlation between the features of the pattern and the potential of raising the conflictual sense. The examined method helps to analyse crowds' contribution in shaping public spaces during urban events; however, the more available spatiotemporal recordings, the more figured characteristics of the produced space.},
     year = {2021}
    }
    

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    T1  - Reshaping Riyadh Alsolh Square: Mapping the Narratives of Protesting Crowds in Beirut
    AU  - Reem Albarakt
    AU  - Gehan Selim
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    T2  - Urban and Regional Planning
    JF  - Urban and Regional Planning
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    PB  - Science Publishing Group
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    UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.urp.20210604.13
    AB  - The conception of the state's ownership of public space and its control over its physical and psychological accessibility have shaped the spaces and the extent of public engagement. On the other side, civil movements challenge this dominance and contribute to reshaping the spaces through different modes of political gatherings. Several spaces in the Middle East have developed their significance through the competition of conflictual actors. This paper aims at identifying the spatial tools of the occupational competition for dominating the space. The article examines the method of generating time-aware maps of the spatial practices of protesting crowd out from the scattered archive of visual and verbal narratives using ArcGIS. By employing 395 archived videos which documented the protest event of 22nd – 24th, August 2015 in Riyadh Alsolh square, Beirut – Lebanon, the paper produced 144 plural patterns of the protestors' crowd movement per 10 minutes within 250 m radius of Riyadh Alsolh square's surroundings. The article defined four patterns of the crowd's territory based on their physical, functional and relational characteristics. The conflictual sense of the contradictory crowds can be used to identify the status of competition for dominance. It also indicates the correlation between the features of the pattern and the potential of raising the conflictual sense. The examined method helps to analyse crowds' contribution in shaping public spaces during urban events; however, the more available spatiotemporal recordings, the more figured characteristics of the produced space.
    VL  - 6
    IS  - 4
    ER  - 

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Author Information
  • Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Applied Science Private University, Amman, Jordan

  • Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

  • Faculty of Engineering, University of Balamand, El-Koura, Lebanon

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