https://doi.org/10.1177/1206331217697137 Space and Culture 1–21 © The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1206331217697137 journals.sagepub.com/home/sac Article Cairo: Restoration? And the Limits of Street Politics Mona Abaza 1 Abstract In this piece, I argue that the city of Cairo has witnessed unprecedented urban transformations for the past 4 years, owing to urban wars and confrontations during the two regimes that followed Mubarak’s ouster. Street politics, although mesmerizing, have been highly exhausting. With the reemergence of the army in civil life, after the ousting of President Morsi, street activism is becoming hazardous and highly costly in terms of human life. Whether Egypt is witnessing the persistence of a counter-revolutionary moment, firmly marching toward the uncompromising neoliberal city, exemplified in Dubai as a model and planned prior to 2011, will be difficult to answer, precisely because Cairo is not Dubai. Experts on Arab revolutions have spoken of the emergence of new “subjectivities” that have opened novel mental, visual, and physical interactions in the city, perhaps encouraging optimism in the long term. Keywords violence, new political subjectivities, neoliberal city, downtown gentrification Introduction “We are being punished for having made the revolution.” This is a recurring statement heard in Cairo since the military takeover in 2013. The resigned collective response that has come to domi- nate Egyptian political life is highly revealing of the paradox of the “incomplete revolution.” The neoliberal policies that were established under Mubarak’s “cabinet of businessmen” and their entourage of crony capitalists, following the dominant “laissez faire” free market economic poli- cies and accompanied by the massive deregulation of the working condition and firing of workers, continue to be carried out under the current military regime. For example, workers have been detained, as in the recent attacks on bus and shipyard workers in October 2016 (Retrieved from https://egyptsolidarityinitiative.org/2016/10/17/alexandria-shipyard-workers-and-cairo-bus- workers-in-court-18-and-19-october/; Abaza, 2013b). Observers have been debating about the latent conflicts of interest between the so-called “twenty powerful family” crony capitalists—the former business elite who were in the entourage of Gamal Mubarak—and the parallel economy of the armed forces, 1 which has gained greater public visibility after 2013. However, as Stephan Roll argues, the business elite continues to prosper, as none of them were seriously put on trial for the previous corruption cases nor was their inflated wealth confiscated. The dilemma remains; the same “ancien régime” mind-set is continuing today under military rule. Meanwhile, even harsher 1 The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt Corresponding Author: Mona Abaza, The American University in Cairo, 113 Kasr El Aini Street, Cairo 11511, Egypt. Email: moabaza@aucegypt.edu 697137SAC XX X 10.1177/1206331217697137Space and CultureAbaza research-article 2017