Over the course of the twentieth century, cities have increasingly become privileged sites of identity production in both its collective and individual forms. This is a global phenomenon, where metropolises in different parts of the world – from Mexico City to London, from Tokyo to New York, from Cairo to Berlin – are posed as producers of dominant culture, social norms, ideologies, and political discourses. Whereas the interdisciplinary field of urban studies has grown exponentially, the Arab city – noting the caution that should be exercised when engaging the term to avoid its further Orientalization, as several studies have effectively pointed out (Aldous 2013, Elsheshtawy 2008) – remains a largely unexplored territory, especially regarding the interdependency of Arab urban space and contemporary Arab identities – national, private, social, gendered, and others.

Arab urban space is simultaneously an agent of transformation and its object – it is a site of revolution and political upheaval, of rapidly changing landscapes, of social movements, and of wartime destruction. It is also a powerful cultural force that continues to inform literary and cinematic masterpieces, such as Najīb Maḥfūẓ's Zuqāq al-Midaqq, Yūsuf Shāhīn's Alexandrian trilogy, Ilyās Khūrī's Al-Wujūh al-Bayḍā, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Munīf's Mudun al-Milḥ, and many others. Moreover, an Arab metropolis has the potential to generate an intense sense of belonging – so intense that it may override other identity affiliations. If “the labyrinthine spaces of the modern city have been construed as the sources of modern anxiety, from revolution and epidemic to phobia and alienation,” the close ties between the urban space and the psyche of its residents should be particularly visible in Arab metropolises, taking into consideration their turbulent histories (Vidler 1992: ix). Indeed, “it is within urban space that the social imaginary of a culture and its orders of civilization manifest themselves most clearly and where the culturally repressed and excluded resurfaces” (Rosenthal 2011: 3).

Thus, the exploration of the intersection of the Arab city – a powerful site of identity production and identity politics – and Arab autobiographical writing – a literary form particularly preoccupied with self-representation – offers compelling possibilities.