Designed to exclude: The commodification of Egypt’s public space

Imagine two Egyptians: one standing in Al-Masalla Square in the city of Fayoum, the other in Mohamed Farid Square in Cairo. Both have just finished a tough work day but neither is quite ready to head home. The two men take a 500 meters walk without a single tree on the horizon. They walk alongside the traffic for the sidewalks are too narrow to use, and on the rare occasion when they widen, shops claim the extra space.

The walk becomes tiring under the summer heat, both begin looking for a place to rest. They find no public benches so they keep going for another kilometer or more on foot. The man in Fayoum reaches Bahr Youssef (a branch of the Nile) where he finds a string of cafés stretching along its shore. Some have appropriated the waterfront’s public benches for their own use, so anyone wishing to sit has to order, and therefore pay.

The other man walks past Downtown Cairo’s cafés but declines their overpriced teas he can’t afford. His feet eventually carry him to Abdel Moneim Riad Square, where he finally finds a spot to rest—or so he thinks.

In Fayoum, the man reluctantly orders a cup of tea; it is the only way he can enjoy the city’s polluted waterway even for a moment. His eyes wander back to those cushioned benches that were once free for all but have become the property of cafés. He notices that some are not fixed to the ground, they appear to have been uprooted and relocated. Nearby, a fisherman has brought his own chair. His fishing gear lies strewn beside him, while a line of stunted trees stretches into the distance. Behind them, police cars on patrol drift in and out of view.

Back in Cairo’s busy square, the other man perches on a concrete bench, apparently designed by someone unfamiliar with the concept of comfortable sitting. Looking around, he notices that the benches are far apart from each other, as though the square was deliberately designed to prevent strangers from striking up a conversation—heaven forbid. Here too there are no trees in sight, leaving the glaring sun to discourage people from lingering.

Discomfort forces the man to stand. He wishes there were a simple, affordable tea stand nearby, but you can’t have everything. At the entrance to Champollion Street, police vehicles monitor the area. They pay particular attention to anyone approaching the statue of the hero Abdel Moneim Riad, a renowned military officer who led Egypt in the Six-Day War.

In unison, our two friends ask themselves: “I wasn’t asking for much… why do I feel trapped?”

Hostile architecture

The answer to this sense of being “trapped” lies in a concept known as hostile architecture.

At its basic level, hostile architecture refers to the design, or deliberate modification, of public spaces in ways that limit how they could be used, or who could use them. One example is the 2021 decision by officials in Portland, Oregon, to spend $500,000 on what they called “defensive furnishings” for the city’s only park. These included anti-homeless benches fitted with movable spikes to discourage prolonged sitting, decorative rocks scattered over grassy areas to make sleeping difficult, and concrete benches engineered to make prolonged sitting uncomfortable.

Supporters of such measures argue that they enhance public safety, deter crime, and help preserve a city’s appearance. Yet the question remains: does installing a concrete bench that prevents a homeless from sleeping or people from sitting actually reduce crime?

The war on the homeless

One can understand hostile architecture to be a product of neoliberalism, designed at its core to wage war on the homeless, or more broadly, on those deemed nonparticipants in society because they are not consuming enough.

It is also rooted in urban segregation, dividing middle and upper-income groups, who have the means to enjoy public spaces, from poorer working-class and marginalized communities.

According to Tom Baker, a lecturer in human geography at the University of Auckland, “Different castes of people that might occupy the same place live in largely different universes, so that the wealthy and the middle-class scurry between different parts of the city, largely sealed off from those that are less well off. I think the homeless are the pointy end of that.”

In this vision of the city, public space ceases to be a shared civic resource and become something closer to a business venture. Spaces are valued not for the social life they enable, but for the revenue they can generate.

When the city becomes a corporation concerned only with profit, public spaces are transformed into commodities

What is called a public space may therefore contain all the characteristics of a private one, stripped of its most important function: serving as an open arena where social life can unfold and communities can create their own forms of activity.

Take a staircase, for example. While it has a primary function, good design leaves room for people to use it in unexpected ways. A staircase can become a place to sit, gather, talk, or even exercise; activities that may never have occurred to its designer. But when a space is treated solely as a product or commodity, an authoritarian approach to public space inevitably follows.

Today, according to the French Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre in “The Social Production of Space,” public space has become one of the defining products of the neoliberal era. It is therefore unsurprising that hostile architecture emerges within it. Public space is no longer merely a tool for reinforcing capitalism; it has itself become commodified, creating a distinction between those who own it and those who simply use it.

From that perspective, the growing acceptance of privatized public spaces becomes easier to understand. The boundary between public authority and private interests in shaping urban space grows increasingly blurred. When the city becomes a corporation concerned only with profit, public spaces are transformed into commodities. Residents are displaced in favor of consumers, and those who do not participate in consumption are excluded. The city ceases to belong to everyone. Instead, it becomes an arena of class conflict, where the interests of the wealthy are advanced at the expense of the poor.

The milking of public space

In Egypt, public spaces have moved beyond the stage of class conflict. Nearly everything that can be described as public space has become an opportunity for profit.

This begins with waterfront promenades of every kind, regardless of how poorly designed they are. The simple act of viewing a body of water becomes a luxury, not only because of bad planning, but also because large sections of the waterfront have been appropriated for paid services such as cafés.

The same logic extends to bridges, where the spaces beneath them have been transformed into cafés, shops, and parking lots. The impulse is familiar: every unused corner is treated as an asset to be exploited, leaving little room for anyone who cannot afford to pay for access, or who simply wishes to exist in the city without consuming.

It culminates with green spaces, which have all but disappeared because of their privatization, remaining readily accessible only in affluent neighborhoods and gated compounds.

This narrative is reinforced by recent figures from Egypt’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, which show that the total number of botanical gardens and public parks declined from 1,256 to 1,115 between 2022 and 2024.

Other public spaces, such as squares, are marked by constant police surveillance that limits freedom of use. They are often poorly designed as well, offering few places to sit, or only a scattering of uncomfortable concrete benches that discourage people from lingering.

Meanwhile, sidewalks are locked in a constant struggle for space. On one side are traffic lanes; on the other, shops and cafés that steadily encroach on the pavement. The result is another manifestation of the milking of public space, where the needs of pedestrians are treated as an afterthought.

The problem is compounded by poor design and a lack of planning. A well designed sidewalk should accommodate a bicycle lane, trees, benches, and sufficient room for pedestrians to move comfortably without having to weave through crowds or constantly dodge potential collisions. Only once these basic functions have been met should space be allocated for café seating, and only where the sidewalk is wide enough to support it.

If walking poses such difficulties for an able bodied adult man, what must the experience be like for children, the elderly, and people with disabilities? And what of women navigating this congestion, which can create conditions more conducive to harassment and abuse?

When rest, shade, safety, and even a place to sit become privileges rather than rights, public space ceases to be public at all.