Nezar AlSayyad is a Cairo-born professor of Architecture, Planning and Urban History and the chair of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. He explains the design and history of Tahrir Square:
Can you give us a bit of history of Tahrir Square in Cairo?
Tahrir Square came into existence 140 years ago during the time of another ruler who was considered ruthless, Ismail. He had lived in Paris, in Haussmann’s Paris and saw the changes that came about in France under Napoleon III and he wanted to remake Cairo in the image of Paris. If George Bush was the decider, Ismail was the modernizer. So he redesigned an area that was all pretty much vegetation adjacent Nile, and from time to time would be flooded by the Nile. It was known as Ismailia Square because of him.
But it’s not really a city square in strict urban planning terms is it?
No, it’s not exactly a square at all. For one, the Nile borders one edge, so that’s not straight. And it’s not surrounded by buildings on all four sides, it only has buildings on one side. It’s an ill-defined space that is constituted by five or six adjacent spaces, and in a sense no one really paid attention to it.
Why from a design angle was it so successful as a point of protest?
Twenty-three streets lead to different parts of it, which is why it was so successful with the demonstrators. There isn’t one big boulevard that you can block off, and there are two bridges that lead to it as well. One of them saw a clash between the regime and the demonstrators. It’s also the case that all of downtown Cairo, which isn’t that big, has a street that leads to side or another of Tahrir Square.