Urbanity of Insurrection: Space and Politics in the Middle Eastern Cities Recent uprisings in the Middle East ranging from the 2009 Green Movement to the Arab revolutions and Gezy protests all took shape in the urban spaces. The paper analyzes what are in the Middle Eastern cities that render them politically contentious; and why certain urban spaces are more prone to mobilization and street politics than others. The analysis draws on field studies of the cities of Tehran, Cairo, and Tunis that have seen widespread contentions in recent years. I will argue that urbanity generates particular needs (such as dependence on cash, collective consumption, urban jobs), and, at the same time, greater possibilities for forging urban subjectivity, collective identities and solidarities, which altogether may facilitate collective action. This paradoxical urbanity has become more pronounced in Middle Eastern cities because of their particular histories shaped by post-colonial project of uneven modernization that has fostered societal change but maintain political status quo, instigates social modernization but govern through authoritarian polity.