In this paper, I begin by revisiting the arguments made with respect to cinema, the railroad and the shopping mall to think more specifically about contemporary Cairo. Anne Friedberg’s Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern examines the ways in which particular forms of nineteenth century entertainment fed into the “pleasures” of cinema, the shopping mall and video games. In a similar vein, Kirby’s Parallel Tracks: The Railroad and Silent Cinema suggests that at the turn of the twentieth century the railroad and the cinema were developing as “mechanical doubles.” The postmodern and colonial gaze has since been modified to reflect an increasingly mediated and militarized technological context. I ask, what are the cultural, social and urban particularities that shape the spectator/consumer experience in Cairo today? I then explore the specific cultural components pertaining to spectatorship that have been reproduced in these new settings, by examining how the cinema and screen culture more broadly might in turn help us to understand other monuments as they exist in the visual landscape and in relation to a moving spectator – the billboard and construction site. I doing so, I connect cinematic spectatorship with what John Urry refers to as the “‘system’ of automobility” in the context of contemporary Cairo. The presentation will focus on the construction of new transportation routes and networks in New Cairo, which I argue have resulted in the modification of specific cultural and consumption practices. The moving images displayed – having evolved from static billboards to light boxes and screens – have created new sites of cultural exchange between the advertiser and the driver/passenger. Set against the mechanics of automobility and the construction industry, I suggest that the cinematic spectator has evolved in the context of the technologies and apparatus that have been made part of (as well as crucial to the construction of) the American/Arab Gulf style mall and multiplex cinema. The unfolding of these spaces in real time can be used to understand the corporate/colonial/military logic that has made such mega projects possible. Featherstone, Mike, Nigel Thrift and John Urry. Automobilities. Sage, 2005. Friedberg, Anne. Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern. University of California Press, 1994. Kirby, Lynn. Parallel Tracks: The Railroad and Silent CInema. Duke University Press, 1997. Shiel, Mark and Tony Fitzmaurice. Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in A Global Context. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.