VIRTUAL Lisbon Livable Cities

Abstract

The research explores the potential of placemaking, focuses on the people who use the urban space. The context is complexity and density of the megacity of Cairo, concentrating on intangible heritage within three overlooked yet culturally potential linear spaces: the historic city gates of Bab Zuweila, Bab Futuh, and Bab Nasr; the Magra El Oyoun aqueduct; and the residual spaces beneath Zamalek’s urban bridges and new forms of infraspaces. Though diverse in function and location, the areas share spatial characteristics of linearity, fragmentation, and edge conditions, acting as urban thresholds between districts, histories, and publics. Often neglected parts, they hold latent potential for cultural revival through tactical urbanism. Adopting a three-pronged methodological framework—economic, sociocultural, and environmental—the aim is to propose site-specific placemaking interventions rooted in community engagement and the activation of intangible heritage. Ethnographic fieldwork, behavioral mapping, and narrative cartography inform low-cost, high-impact strategies to reintroduce play, ritual, and micro-economies into these spaces. The approach emphasizes responsive, culturally grounded tactics that emerge from everyday life and informal practices. Rather than large-scale redevelopment, this contribution advocates for incremental, culturally embedded acts of reclamation that reframe neglected urban edges as vibrant civic assets, adhering to the principles of sustainable community and livable cities. By leveraging the informal, the residual, and the performative, this approach repositions Cairo’s urban fringes as critical territories of livability and cultural continuity. This contributes to broader discussions on tactical urbanism and the transformative power of play in shaping equitable and imaginative cities.