Beyond Four Walls: Public Space as the "Living Room" for the Displaced in Conflict-Affected Cities

In cities shaped by conflict, displacement, and rapid informal urbanization, the most important social infrastructure is frequently invisible to formal planning systems -embodied instead in tea stalls, shared courtyards, repurposed open lots, and the street-level spaces where displaced communities rebuild social bonds and economic life. This lecture examines public space as a "living room" for displaced populations in Greater Khartoum, proposing a new typology to recognize and integrate these grassroots spaces into post-conflict urban recovery frameworks. It argues that dominant planning models - largely rooted in Eurocentric spatial concepts - not only fail to capture these realities but also actively erase what communities have built for themselves. The lecture calls for a genuinely African urbanism that takes informality, hybridity, and socio-spatial negotiation as its starting point, rather than as problems to be overcome.