Abstract— Heterotopia is where every community lives, works, and socializes, and within which there is a network of public spaces supporting its social life and connecting it to other heterotopias within a metropolitan. Cairo is a metropolitan with distinct heterotopias that represent the manifestation of power that shaped their public spaces’ network. Nodes and connectors are a new typology introduced by this paper, constituting the network of public open spaces within each heterotopia to understand the manifestation of power over their articulation. Two distinct heterotopias are investigated: Madinet Nasr, which represents public-sector power over its public spaces’ articulation; and New Cairo, which represents the empowerment of private-sector over the same. Through this investigation, it is concluded that in Cairene context since 1952, public sector is more concerned about the resilience of movement for individuals by providing accessible public spaces (connectors) to ensure the proclaimed equality and global connectivity. However, it is not concerned about the public spaces' social nature (nodes typology). While private sector, on the contrary, provides more concern about the social nature of nodes typology regardless of giving equal opportunities among the whole society to access these nodes through their connectors network. |
