VIRTUAL Barcelona Livable Cities

Abstract

Reading a city is fundamental to decode its urban character and complexity, and mostly the common space where the urban community shares space and life over time. Cairo is a mosaic city with a combination of cosmopolitan city and different identities. It is also a special urban frame in social and urban studies, to observe and compare. The research focuses on themes of contemporary urban life: the image of the City, the human scale and density, the local identity and globalization, the cultural heritage and tourism, and the street life connected with the consumed city. The methodology to observe includes short video, social mapping to support the visual perception of different areas between the historical part of the city and the new development in progress to decode this urban paradox. The aim is the reflection and translation of the observation in urban narratives, where it will be possible to compare different points of view and interpret the transformation and new scenario of this megacity as important exercise to learn how the city talk about their needs and dreams like Italo Calvino (1972) defined well “With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear. Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.” Keywords: cultural city, urban narrative, social mapping, everyday life