Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the urban environment of the Old City of Jerusalem, describing how the lack of private space, exacerbated by the summer heat, has led residents to develop new perspectives on the commons through a communal system of sharing the shade.

Paper long abstract:

As cities around the world struggle with rising summer temperatures, the built environment of ancient urban centers has become a site of anguish but also adaptation. This paper explores two spaces central to the social and spatial dynamics of old cities throughout the Middle East: the hosh, or family compound, and the hara, or neighborhood.

Drawing on extended fieldwork in the Old City of Jerusalem, it describes how these spaces have changed from semi-private domestic spaces to the shared spaces of strangers – including family compounds shared by non-kin, Palestinian neighborhoods beset by Israeli settlements, and streets of crowded homes adjacent empty houses of absentee landlords. It highlights how the lack of private space is only exacerbated by the heat of summer, when residents seek to escape encirclement by old city stone.

The rest of the paper describes how Palestinian Old City residents avoid the heat through a variety of means, including collective trips to “take the air” outside the city gates and regular visitation and hosting of others at compounds with trees and shade and space. I argue that implicit in these acts is a local theory of the commons which is submerged in much writing about the city – a theory which views space (especially “green” space), as conditionally shared according to need, season, and solidarity.