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New publication — Roman Stadnicki’s Au-delà de Dubaï

We’re happy to share some excellent news from the SpacePol orbit: Roman Stadnicki has a new book coming out, offering a timely, sharp-eyed invitation to rethink what we think we know about “modern” cities in the Arab world.

Original title (French): Au-delà de Dubaï. Projeter et produire la ville moderne dans le monde arabe
Official release date: 20 February 2026 (sortie officielle : 20 février 2026)

Beyond the postcard city

Dazzling megaprojects, spectacular infrastructures, strategic “visions”, glossy skylines… Over the past decades, many cities across the Arab world have undergone fast and highly visible transformations. But Roman’s argument is simple (and powerful): the real story doesn’t stop at the façade.

Behind the flashiest urban images lie quieter — and often more revealing — dynamics:

  • everyday negotiations around space and change
  • resistance to the erasure of traditions and the multiplication of norms
  • creative detours and reappropriations by residents
  • conflicts and power struggles, sometimes discreet, sometimes explosive

A multi-sited urban observatory

Drawing on fieldwork in Sanaa, Cairo, Kuwait (City), Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah (among others), the book treats these cities as observatories of plural, uneven modernities. Roman unpacks modernity through three tightly linked lenses:

  • Institutions that project urban modernity
  • Infrastructures that materialise it
  • Practices that challenge (and reshape) it

This book speaks directly to SpacePol’s core questions on how power produces urban space, how modernity is imagined and governed, and how the city is continuously made and unmade through tensions between top-down projects and lived, ordinary urban life.


OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Gülçin Erdi (23 janvier 2026). New publication — Roman Stadnicki’s Au-delà de Dubaï. ANR SPACEPOL. Consulté le 11 avril 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/15jyb


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