The Bazaar in the Spring: Public Space and the Modern Gulf City

Abstract

Traditional shoppingscapes that characterized many Islamic cities known as the souk/bazaar constructed spaces in the city that specialized centres of production, and exchange, commonly depicted as spaces of socio-cultural interaction accessible to all. However, these spaces of consumption became tamed with the advent of the modern city and the department store, they became more institutionalized, homogenised and tourist/souvenir oriented. Changes in urban planning policies, societies and civil lives of its citizens allowed malls to expand as spaces of inclusion and exclusion to certain social groups, their success affected the morphology of the Souk which still remains present in the modern Gulf city as a space of interaction and exchange of cheap goods, fruits and vegetables. Devouring any form of public space in the city, planners and policy makers gradually exchange any form of public space with contemporary shoppingscapes. This paper examines shoppingscapes of the contemporary Arab/Gulf city by tracing the development of souk/bazaar genealogy and examining the socio-cultural drift that created such change. It also intends to investigate the notion of public space and its diminishing role in the Gulf cities.