Revolutionary agorà: Space of protest in the Arab revolutions

Regardless the political results what is more evident is that the Arab revolts or revolutions are largely urban in character.

Protesters gathered around the main squares that represent the regimes, such as Bourguiba Avenue or Kasbah square in Tunis or Tahrir Square in Cairo, occupying and controlling public spaces with the aim to change political institutions. The occupation of these simbolic squares showed us powerful images of these capitals in which contestation and degradation of the icons of power took place, besides mass mobilization claiming for democratic rights and the end of oppression.

Cities are the main arenas for the shaping of identities, citizenship, rights and conflict, and cities yet are the center of the protest. The surrounding country areas seem far less involved, even if definitely very poor and subjected to unfair economic and social policies.

These struggles are urban even in their reasons as well as they spread as a consequence of a lack of basic city functions such as housing and public services.

If revolutions started, organized and empowered trough the virtual agorà of social media, spreading from facebook and twitter into society at large yet the real space of resistance is still the physical square. The revolution in Cairo has provided powerful evidence that the virtual is not enough: the occupation of physical urban space has been crucial to the success and continuity of the revolution. Although the ways of relating and communicating within the occupied public space are deeply influenced by social media, resistance took place by reshaping the meaning and the use of public space. Tahrir square became a real agorà, a hub for social activity and despite the prohibition of public assembly. Thus the occupation of the main square is a simbolic action that involves the re-appropriation of democratic space.