This is a kind of reverse-orientalism

- Yazid
This is worrying me a bit, it reminds me of the beginnings of studying architecture, this European way of defining cities, its population size and what symptoms can you refer to in order to call the space 'a city'. For me, this approach is totally European. It doesn’t really matter if Ramallah is called a city or a village. It's just a human population living in a built-up fabric. Why should we always define things by a fixed caliber? I find this very tedious. I don't find the European case to be a good reference. Therefore Nasser, I have a real problem with your article. It's reference is a European way of looking at the space, it reminds me of the story by Raymond Williams about a guy who was living in a valley (determined to be rural) then he left to London where he became a big-shot intellectual and then returned to the valley. The way he looked at the valley on the return is the way you are looking at Ramallah. I think Ramallah is really different from this, Ramallah is not you or me, it's the people living there, and also not just about those who live there but those who go there, it's a popular way of looking at space.

- Nasser
Actually, there are many points to be made about Eurocentrism. But I have a problem with your absolute differentiation between a European model as the norm and then an Arab, Eastern one. I feel this is a kind of reverse-Orientalism - to interpret our cities as totally different from European ones, there is nothing in common. As if living in a village or a city doesn't matter. I find that problematic. The fact that the discipline was developed under a European cannon is true but it doesn't mean that there are no objectives, no universals, in that. I wasn't trying to slide into a Eurocentric kind of thing, actually the references that you talk about is exactly the kind of self-referencing that happens at an elite and maybe even at a popular level in Ramallah. The point I was trying to make is that people in Ramallah think that they have achieved a kind of metropolitan modernity, in a way this becomes a trade-off. It becomes a positive outcome of a negative situation: you're enclosed, you're confined but somehow you are isolated from the Islamic trends of the rest of Palestinian society. You're given room to urbanize in a metropolitan, secular, modern way. The point was to judge the argument along its own credentials as well. When claiming to be an urban modern metropolis this is what it means. Whether that's a positively good thing or bad is another issue, it doesn't mean it’s a model to be reached. Nor is it sufficient to say that this is just a European model. There are many Eastern cities that have this level of complexity and hold this level of multiplicity, so it's not such a clear-cut European-Oriental dichotomy.

(extracts from conversation N. 1/Oct. 2008)

Ramallah is the place of corruption!

- Nasser
We’re interested in how space and the production of space and it’s articulation with new power, different types of power – economic power, class power, political power – different kinds of power is producing a city or what appears to be a city but is underpinning a much larger political project that is sometimes opaque, sometimes not very clear.

What does the production of space in Ramallah mean today? What does the articulation of the city mean? How does this fit into the wider context? How does it fit into wider political projects? how does it fit into political economic, neoliberal projects?

- Yazid
Ramallah is the place of corruption, it's the place of opportunity, central policing, money, power, etc. PA being used as an authority. Institutions are difficult to uproot, building institutions is a way of controlling the Palestinians. I disagree with Nasser using the growth of the art scene as the problem. But economics is right, I know so many businessmen becoming millionaires through building the city, using the PA as a bait for making money.

- Nasser
It's not so guilt-free. This is not just an institutional dynamic; there are people who actively collaborate, there are people who tie their own interests to the institution [PA] at a political level, economic level, intellectual level, cultural level, all these levels consciously or unconsciously.

- Yazan
I think it's important to remember that the PA is not a socialist movement. It came with a capitalist movement, with its businessmen. It did not try to produce a socialist society. Even now, taxes are being reduced and everyone is happy, they do not understand or care about what taxes mean for health or education. Ramallah is the core of this capitalist notion of this emerging Palestinian state. But if you go to Nablus and Hebron you will also see capitalists. So there is not a new project, it’s the continuation of a capitalist project which is booming in Ramallah. And if businessmen can choose to come and invest they will choose the best for them, not the best for society.

- Laura
Sure it was capitalist but the primary project was to build a state. Now, the building of a state necessarily needs different behavior, so its not a natural way of building a state. The way the PA behaves now is actually exploiting the building of a state for its own benefit.

- Yazan
But what's keeping the PA alive is what is being invested in it.

- Sandi
Yes, Ramallah is a project propped up by Israel, but it's important to understand the collateral effects which Ramallah could produce. What energy it is capable of producing.

(extracts from conversations N. 1/Oct. 2008 and N. 2/Dec. 2008)