'In Unfinished Places: The Politics of (Re) making Cairo’s Old Quarters, Gehan Selim presents to us a thorough study of Bulaq, an old neighborhood in the City. In it, she employs the different types of planning produced under the Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak regimes to illustrate how the shifts in their forms of governance resulted in different forms of urbanism.' - Nezar AlSayyad, Professor of Architecture and Planning, University of California, Berkeley, USA'Unfinished Places is a commanding discourse on urbanism and politics in one of the most important cities in the world. Representing a distinct yet elegiac interdisciplinary approach, Selim’s emphasis on the past and its impact on our future is a timely tour de force.' - Beverley Milton-Edwards, Convenor for MA Violence, Terrorism and Security, Queens University of Belfast, Northern Ireland'Cairo's long history is one of extraordinary richness, yet the experience of urban life for its citizens is largely hidden. Recent events have illustrated how the city's public realm has the potential to reflect the authentic voice of its population in a frame created by its elite. Unfinished Places is a detailed study of the Bulaq district of Cairo which subverts many of the assumptions about Arab cities and provides an exemplary template through which the exploration of world urbanism might be pursued in the future.' - Eamonn Canniffe, Principal Lecturer, Manchester School of Art, UK