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The capitalist urban landscape is increasingly stratified along class lines with the rich, poor, and middle-class insidiously segregated from one another. The results of this stratification are on full display in cities such as Doha where by both custom and by law, the lower classes are kept out of areas of the city more heavily trafficked by the upper classes or tourists. Architecture alone cannot change this situation, but it can draw attention to and comment on social issues such as these.+
Doha's class divisions are especially clear cut between the (very) wealthy upper class, the large skilled expatriate population, and the still larger population of unskilled migrant laborers. Doha is of particular interest as a case study not only due to the clarity of its class divisions, both socially and physically, but also for the added weight of what it means culturally to have a stratified class society in a largely Muslim city. A large-scale, pedestrian-oriented urban intervention has the potential to bring these groups together within one spatial zone. The emphasis on the pedestrian is important as it not only reflects a current trend in the development of the city, but it also places all classes on more or less equal ground, as opposed to, for example, what a vehicular-accessible or -oriented space would do. Simply bringing both upper and lower class groups together in a space is noticeable and makes obvious the divisions imposed elsewhere in the city, such as at the Souq Waqif. But simply being undivided is not the extent of what this intervention can do; the opportunity for greater and more meaningful social commentary is something to be explored throughout this project's development. How can this space become at least as desirable to the upper classes as other exclusive spaces, yet still remain usable for migrant laborers? How can this space encourage classes to cohabitate a space, rather than self-segregate? The challenge becomes how to make this zone attractive and accessible to people of all classes simultaneously.
I think its a lot harder to realize the physicality of integrating classes in the public realm, or rather this pedestrian spatial zone. A thought I had (which goes rather against my ideas of city development and public spatial organization) is celebrating the car as a means to bring classes together. It seems like everyone in Doha has a car, or multiple (although I'm not sure about how many workers do), would it be possible to develop social interaction and integrate separate classes through the automobile? This has become their culture, maybe you should take advantage of it.
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