Mediterranean cities are often imagined through Renaissance images of historic ports, monumental architecture, and blue skies (Bernié-Boissard et al., 2017). Although there is no surviving evidence that William Shakespeare ever left England, his romanticised vision continues to shape the perception of Mediterranean cities (Schülting, 2019). Works such as Othello (Shakespeare, 1622), The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare, 1600), The Tempest (Shakespeare, 1623), and Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare, 1623) present images of the Mediterranean that reflect both geopolitical and cultural tensions.
A postcard that renders the Mediterranean as a product of political borders and maps, viewing it as a dividing line between nations, rather than a shared cultural territory long shaped by plural identities, exchange, migration, commerce, and layered histories (Miles, 2022). This investigation suggests that behind these representations lies a far more complex dynamic of urban and cultural environments, where identities are not only redefined by political borders but also by social expression and everyday experience.
By studying Alexandria and Marseille, the research proposes an alternative methodology for understanding these Mediterranean cities. It encourages a shift in focus from official and political inherited narratives toward the city’s ordinary spaces where urban life unfolds. Through a combination of qualitative research, art-based research, and urban heritage field studies, the research promotes a cultural dialogue across the Mediterranean. It explores how societies are influenced and shaped by urban identity, cultural heritage, and collective social memory, highlighting how similarities and differences are various expressions of a shared Mediterranean vocabulary, as evident in architecture, urban planning, and social practices. This is not meant to be a direct comparison between the two cities, but rather a visual dialogue that reexamines Mediterranean identities through societal norms and forms of urban life.
Beyond the Postcard City
Despite their different histories and political contexts, Alexandria and Marseille might share a similar urban setting. Both cities are often described as second cities (Gohar, 2025) operating in the shadow of the domination of Cairo and Paris while maintaining strong and distinctive local identities. This condition, sometimes referred to as the Second City Syndrome (Ali, 2021), shapes how their urban narratives are constructed and perceived. Yet the similarities can also be misleading; although they share certain Mediterranean sociocultural patterns, their urban realities remain fundamentally different.
This vernacular interpretation of the Mediterranean tends to read the contemporary city beyond the postcard and borders. The city is observed as a sensory experience shaped by the unique light, textures, and spatial densities that characterise Mediterranean cities. Instead of immediately identifying specific locations, Alexandria and Marseille are presented together, with no explicit distinction. The two cities resonate with each other through their worn surfaces, layered façades, and intermediate spaces where urban life is practised. The presence of people is evident rather than depicted, reflected in the uses and transformations of spaces and the traces of societal life. The ordinary urban fabrics, thresholds, shopfronts, staircases, and improvised extensions of buildings invite us to observe the Mediterranean not as a single identity, but as a collective of shared conditions that produce multiple urban forms. These seemingly minor elements form the true structure of everyday urban life and become the primary site where inhabitants adapt, repair, and reinterpret their environment.
Figure 1: Alexandria and Marseille are presented suggestively, linked by the sea and observed from a distance, focusing on the ordinary spaces and everyday practices that shape urban fabric (illustration by the author, 2025)
Urban proximity without monumentality
The Mediterranean city is characterised by its ordinary spaces of public and social interactions and the compact areas where multiple functions coexist without a hierarchical structure. It rather emerges from meanings associated with everyday environments that are shaped by collective presence (Kolluoğlu & Toksöz, 2010). The Mediterranean urban settlements are not the result of merely monumental architecture and top-down autocratic planning.
“Every single time we wander the streets of a pre-planned city, we are experimenting with the dreams of someone else. There is a good dream, and there is also an incubus (nightmare). Or maybe both exist in one vision. Is Alexandria a good or bad dream? Do we have the liberty to question a 2000-year-old dream? I guess yes. This dream is shaping my reality. Or maybe I am the one who is modifying the dream. I wish we, the architects, would taste what we cook. Our dreamer was Dinocrates; not being an Alexandrian did not prevent him from building what he had imagined was good for me. Dinocrates drew very linear and very long streets, which do not fit my nature. I wish he had consulted me before he envisioned my city. I would have told him: Dino, look, I totally understand you but…, Alexandrians prefer short streets, whether angular or curved, they make us happier. Look what you have done! Do you know how they misuse your design now? They drive very fast, pollute my air and in the end, they fight together. Dino, are you happy now? I cannot find any space just to walk because of the cars. Dino, yesterday, I was passing by the street that is named after you in Azaritta. Can you imagine that it is full of coffee shops! They arrange their tables and chairs in the street itself… Will you remain silent? Please defend your design now.”
(The Author, 2022)
Figure 2: scenes from Alexandria – top and Marseille – bottom, (illustration by the author, 2021,23)
The Third Place “Street” as Society’s Living Room
The informal use of public spaces represents a unique form of urban knowledge. It serves as an important indicator of how urban environments are utilised, adapted, and shared over time and space. This usage reveals patterns of how people domesticate and humanise their surroundings before any official design takes place. By viewing the street as a Mediterranean living room instead of merely an infrastructure, we can reframe public space as a social construct. This construct is maintained through habitual use and mutual recognition, emphasising that urban life is sustained through proximity and coexistence rather than solely through formal planning.
Mediterranean Street is a neutral public space that promotes social gathering, inclusion and equity. This specific form of urban space could be described as a Third Place (Oldenburg, 1989), a concept identified by the urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg as places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work. In contrast to first places (home) and second places (work), a third place allows an individual to put aside their worries and concerns and enjoy the company and conversation around them. In this context, the third place is viewed as a communal living room for society. The street or open space serves as the liveable ground, while the buildings act as the walls or edges of this room (city), as described by the urban planner Kevin Lynch (1960). Additionally, this third place can often extend vertically. This approach enables a comprehensive analysis of the socio-cultural dynamics of Mediterranean cities. It reconstructs alternative or parallel narratives that shed light on how society is influenced by both tangible and intangible heritage. Additionally, it examines the current functioning of these societies and the efforts of individuals from diverse backgrounds, age groups, and genders to adapt their physical environments to improve urban liveability.
Urban spaces of its time are influenced by various factors, including politics, social dynamics, craftsmanship and technology, fashion, and history. Cities are formed not just by movement but also by moments of pause. This research highlights instances of waiting or the inactive presence, which are vital Mediterranean activities that often go unnoticed but shape how cities are experienced.
Figure 3: Photographs and illustrations from Alexandria and Marseille (the author, 2022/24)
Figure 4: Illustration from Marseille (the author, 2022)
Figure 5: Illustration from Alexandria (the author, 2024)
Figure 6: Real elements from Marseille in a fictional scene (the author, 2025)
Figure 7: Real elements from Alexandria in a fictional scene (the author, 2024)
The Mediterranean as a shared cultural space, not a border, a territory with plural identities
With its rich heritage, Alexandria, as a Historic Urban Landscape (HUL), faces complex contemporary challenges, including the “second city syndrome” and centralisation. Safeguarding and managing the city’s heritage in a dynamic and constantly changing environment requires identification and layering of the interconnected stakeholders. Understanding contemporary society as a major stakeholder is crucial to addressing cultural heritage complexities. Bridging research and art can be a tool for knowledge production, as well as a communicative medium to disseminate this knowledge to a wider audience, fostering a connection between research and societal groups. I started a project exploring the concept of “Third Places,” or “Society’s living room,” to understand contemporary Alexandria’s socio-cultural dynamics. This research studies typical inclusive spaces that foster social gathering and interaction among diverse groups, aiming to reconstruct alternative narratives about Alexandria’s social history. This approach offers a counter-narrative to mainstream cosmopolitanism. The research focuses on public Third spaces (home is first and work as second), in the streets of Alexandria, as meeting points for diverse societal groups. The aim is to reread the city as we consume it daily, not only through its pre-structured historical perspectives. It explores how human actions shape and transform the physical environment and how physical structures influence human behaviour. The collected knowledge engages individuals on a personal level, avoiding generalisations and group representations, while acknowledging the contextualised socio-historical interplay with economic and political forces.
The same may apply to Marseille. Having the chance to live between the two cities has enabled me to investigate the city following the same methodology I utilise in my first hometown. Marseille is also facing “second city syndrome” and centralisation and is perceived through a pre-structured image that makes it hard for the untrained eye to correctly read the city. Adding to the equation, the deceiving similarities between Alexandria and Marseille make it even harder to understand that despite the two cities sharing some of their sociocultural components and dynamics, they are totally different as a final product.
This investigation is not meant for conducting any sort of comparison between the two Mediterranean cities (socio-cultural or physical built environment). They are rather a way to read the two interconnected metropolises in the broader scope of the Mediterranean basin that shares the same challenges. Additionally, the manually produced drawings represent real elements from both cities. However, the final product is fictional scenes that capture the city’s pattern. In other words, they are Mediterranean vocabularies used to reproduce a condensed image of the city. In this respect, these visuals articulate how Mediterranean sociability shapes urban forms. They become critical tools of reading and interpretation, a translator between cities rather than merely an artwork. The drawing process allows time, reflection, and subjectivity to enter the process of urban observation. Here, the city is not consumed visually but read slowly, revealing how meaning accumulates through repeated use and collective memory. This work does not document cities. It reads what is usually invisible, as it is too common.
Cities are never complete; they are always in repair, adjustment, and improvisation as fundamental processes of urban life. Rather than signs of failure, these actions reveal how inhabitants respond creatively to change and everyday needs. This exhibition invites visitors to move between visual fragments, traces, and observations, encouraging reflection on how cities are inhabited, remembered, and imagined today. The works operate as both artistic expressions and research artefacts, bridging visual culture, urban inquiry, and cultural heritage discourse.
Figure 8,9: Real elements from Alexandria in a fictional scene (the author, 2024)
Bibliography
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