Despite the extensive focus on Jerusalem in Palestinian history, very little attention has been given to Arab Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967. The majority of work on Jerusalem after the Nakba focuses on the loss of its western neighbourhoods, the “New City.” This paper discusses how Palestinians in Arab Jerusalem continued to reproduce their material worlds, discourses and meanings in the aftermath of the Nakba, particularly during the first decade after 1948. The paper gives an overview of the destructive consequences of the colonization of Palestine on Arab Jerusalem, which was rendered a city of refugees, located at the border with its lost homeland under the rule of Jordan. In particular, it highlights the results of the New City’s displacement and occupation on Arab Jerusalem, which left its residents without essential infrastructure, a city centre, the townhall, and other significant urban assets. In light of this loss, the paper describes how different social groups in the city, including refugees and the poor as well as merchants and property owners, negotiated within the city’s public space for strategies to survive and revive its destroyed economy. The paper embarks on a journey into what became the city-centre of Arab Jerusalem, starting from Bab al-‘Amoud [Damascus Gate], the main gate of the Old City, through the main street leading to Bab al-Sahrih [Herod’s Gate] and Salah al-Din street. Drawing on the records of the municipality of Arab Jerusalem and Palestinian press accounts, the paper highlights how different social groups used petitions, essays in the local press and mediation to engage the municipality and reproduce their city as a productive space. For instance, merchants in Bab al-Sahrih petitioned the authorities to cancel colonial mandate planning policies that prevented the development of the areas surrounding the Old City, and poor vendors pleaded with the municipality to allow them to use the gaps in the Old City’s walls to set their booths as they did not have the financial means to rent shops. Indeed, the strategies of survival and revival that allowed for the material and conceptual (re)making of Arab Jerusalem after the Nakba, were at the heart of Palestinian world- and identity-making in localities that were not destroyed in 1948 yet lived under the conditions of national loss.