Urban governance accumulation in post-colonial contexts: Institutional layering, heritage politics, and community participation in Port Said, Egypt

Royal Geographical Society and Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG) Annual International Conference 2026, RGS and Imperial College London, 01–04 September 2026

Multilayered urban governance frameworks may significantly limit meaningful community engagement, particularly when shaped by long-standing colonial legacies, conflict histories, and entrenched institutional practices. Rather than enabling inclusion, these layered systems may actively reproduce exclusion by privileging top-down decision-making and state control. As a result, locals and heritage users frequently experience marginalization, displacement, or forced relocation, often justified under narratives of the ‘greater public good’. Such dynamics reveal how participation, while theoretically promoted, can be systematically undermined in practice by heritage governance mechanisms.

This research adopts Port Said, a Suez Canal city in Egypt, as a case study to examine the impacts of layered governance on urban development and heritage practices. Since its establishment in the 19th century by the French Suez Canal Company during the late Ottoman period and subsequent decades under British colonial rule, the city has been shaped by overlapping administrative structures and complex governance arrangements.

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