Billboards, Smartness, and Nightlife Atmospheres in Old Cairo

Introduction

Kafka’s (2015) apocalyptic alteration of the main character in The Metamorphosis is similar to what has occurred in the transformations of some historical cities in the Global South. In some of these public places, the chaos of illuminated billboards and outdoor screens, whether traditional or digital, and their contrast with the characteristics of urban environments is a noteworthy issue (Chmielewski et al., 2016). Research has documented the chaos that has a noticeable effect on changing the atmosphere of urban nightlife (Eldridge, 2019; van Liempt, 2015). This change reflects on the residents’ and visitors’ sense of belonging to the place or their reluctance to visit (Shaw, 2014). However, there is still much work to be done in this area.

Hence, the apparent problem is this mishmash can often appear compounded twofold. The first aspect is the worsening of harmful factors during and after the completion of some development projects due to the lack of proper application of urban planning and design guidelines. The second is that these random interventions from the new development projects may occur later by the citizens, themselves, many of whom are residents or owners of commercial and entertainment establishments there. Meanwhile, local authorities and citizens’ interventions are also critical in creating diverse urban nightlife atmospheres in public places and avoiding the impacts of change on the unstudied interventions of the illuminated billboards and outdoor screens (Begg, 1999; Kresl, 2013; Li, Hu, Huang, & Duan, 2017; Walters, 2011; Yigitcanlar, et al., 2018).

This chapter focuses on the side effects of the elements of contemporary technology that might change cities’ images and, consequently, the sense of belonging. Urban nightlife atmospheres emerge here as a setting with two implications. The first is how the illuminated billboards and outdoor screens in public places spread. The second concerns how citizens and local municipal authorities might take part in the random intervention for these intrusions. The chapter also explores more precise approaches for developing shapes, sizes, and organizations of illuminated billboards and outdoor screens in public places in historic cities. A more concise understanding of this approach is required to develop the urban nightlife atmospheres in a way that enhances the sense of belonging. Accordingly, our objective is to present new insights into restricting the random interventions related to these conventional places to configure the illuminated billboards and outdoor screens, whether this is done by citizens or local authorities. Moreover, this intent may lead to reconstructing urban nightlife atmospheres to enhance the sense of belonging in the historic public places in Cairo.

This chapter is a systematic review of past scholarship with a few current sources with one section of direct observation. The selection of literature was from journals indexed in Web of Science (WOS). Scanning English literature included in 2020 Journal Citation Report (JCR) yielded 214 articles in 8 journals. Then, data mining focused on words 'Smart' OR 'Billboard' OR 'Nightlife' AND 'Atmospheres' OR 'Nocturnal.' Refine process also selected the highly cited and hot papers in the field. The results yielded 20 articles in the last five years. The field inclusion was limited to 'Urban and Regional Planning' AND 'Environmental Studies' AND 'Urban Studies' AND 'Geography.' The exclusion was for the articles that out of the scope of listed categories like marketing science, business and cleaner production. Going beyond the selection of literature published in last five years, this chapter also go back to other pieces of research and myographs that document the same issue of investigation.