This paper investigates the politics of mobilizing competing understandings of the “public” in the struggle over contested spaces in globally-connected Istanbul and Cairo. In particular it focuses on the politics of historical preservation, and how different actors mobilize competing visions and plans for public spaces in historical Cairo and Istanbul to gain authority and jurisdiction over transforming the city. With the adoption of neo-liberal economic policies and the thickening density of global ties, Istanbul and Cairo are increasingly governed by fragmentary rather than centralized urban planning policies. Hence, many actors including entrepreneurs, local and international NGOs and multiple state organizations are involved in transforming both cities. Each of these actors defends their transformational project as furthering “public interest.” The struggle over the authority to define the “public interest” takes material form in the competition over planning the city’s public spaces. The cities are not empty crucibles however, and as they become more globally-connected more urban dwellers and global audiences have a stake in the city’s transformation and in particular over its shared or “public” spaces. They too actively seek to transform these shared spaces to what suits their needs whether through everyday uses of these spaces or the buying power of international investors. Relying on eleven months of fieldwork research in Cairo and Istanbul in 2011-2012 that included semi-structured interviews, collection of plans and other documentary evidence, and participant observation, I conducted a comparative study of three urban transformational projects in historical Istanbul and another three in Cairo to study these questions. The comparative analysis is conducted across both cities and within the cities comparing the visions and projects of different sets of actors, as well as the local and global audiences that have a stake in the cities’ futures. This comparative lens allows me to study the heterogeneity of forces and contestations shaping cities of the Middle East today, challenging the notion that increasing globalization and neo-liberalization will produce uniform “neoliberal cities.” I trace the mechanics of the politics of historical preservation to argue that it is only in understanding the heterogeneity of forces and overlapping geographical scales shaping and being shaped by Middle Eastern cities that we can appreciate the ways in which publics are being constructed in the urban Middle East.