In her essay, the Sudanese architect Ola Hassanain examines Khartoum’s spatial disposition during the 2018–2019 revolution, tracing how different urban actors, despite extreme repression, devised a spatial “grammar of being outside” that opened up spheres of action in the city beyond state terror. Only four years after the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir, armed conflict again erupted in Khartoum in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The violence quickly escalated into a nationwide war, displacing millions and causing one of today’s most severe humanitarian catastrophes. Against this backdrop, Hassanain’s analysis remains urgent: It asks what significance spatial strategies of “being/creating an outside” might hold for urban development in (post-)conflict societies.
