Presentation short abstract

Grassroots acts in Ramallah-Al-Bireh’s streets, Palestine, reclaim the (right of way) as spatial justice. Against settler-colonial land grabs and car-centric neoliberal planning, these micro-practices form a bottom-up urbanism, reimagining streets as sites of civic life and self-determination

Presentation long abstract

In the Palestinian context of multi-layered spatial violence, where settler-colonialism enforces land appropriation and fragmentation, and centralized neoliberal planning regimes enforce a car-centric logic that erodes public space, this paper seeks to reclaim the (right of way) as a profound social, collective, and political right integral to the struggle for the (right to the city.)

Focusing on the streetscape of Ramallah-Al-Bireh, where communal life is systematically erased under a dual pressure of colonial domination over resources and the internalization of top-down neoliberal planning models, the study poses a central question: how can grassroots, micro-level practices re-appropriate constrained urban infrastructure to restore the street as a physical site of resistance, memory, and spatial justice?

Employing an ethnographic methodology attuned to fragmented everyday acts under layered oppression, the research traces scattered tactics such as spontaneous sidewalk gatherings, murals, and community events. These practices reveal a dual claim: the right to remain amidst colonial erasure and the right to liveable space amid privatized, vehicle-centric governance.

Building on feminist political ecology and participatory design, the paper argues that these micro-practices constitute emergent seeds of a scalable, bottom-up spatial justice framework. This framework reimagines streets not as mere conduits, but as crucial terrains where civic life is nurtured and autonomous self-determination is performed daily.

The study thus contributes to global debates on urban resistance and decolonial praxis, highlighting pathways to democratize public space where such democratization is most violently contested in cities caught between the clamp of colonial spatial repression and market-led urbanism