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Saturday, 14 December 2013, 10.00-16.30 @ MansionWatch videos of some of the presentations below!Open air spaces, whether designed for leisure purposes or as busy city squares, often serve as public meeting places that can acquire a more specific significance for the assertion of citizen rights and contesting political power. The aim of this panel is to discuss to what extent the spaces are used the way they were designed, who determines their use and whether and how this use is culturally and politically contested. Questions revolve around the symbolic, normative and practical frameworks of collectively used open air spaces. How and under what circumstance do spontaneous popular practices create public open air space or alter its character? In how far is the use of open air space culturally and politically encoded and contested? What are the public order policies applied to such spaces and who is responsible for them? The panel also proposes alternative readings of public space.Lucie Ryzova: Strolling in Enemy Territory: Contested spaces and spatial practices in Downtown Cairo, a historical analysisSoraya Batmanghelichi: Red-lights in Parks: A social history of Park-e Razi(No video available)Rana ElNemr: Olympic Garden I &#38; II + III / Lecture performance(No video available)Maïa Sinno: The ‘Gulfization’ of the Cairo Downtown ‘Corniche’(No video available)Abir Saksouk-Sasso: Contesting National Authority in the Construction of Public Space: the making of communal spaces in BeirutKonstantin Kastrissianakis: Rethinking Public Space in Beirut since the Ta’if AgreementDiscussants: Mona Harb and Anton Escher