Public space is often described through what a city provides – parks, plazas, seating, shade. This essay looks instead at what the people who build and service Muscat tend to use day to day.
For South Asian blue-collar migrants, time is the first constraint. Long shifts and fragmented days off leave leisure as leftover, so social life gravitates to whatever is nearest: a shopfront edge, a tea stall, a building’s threshold. Proximity outweighs quality. Formal spaces close by often stay empty, not for lack of need, but because their social codes, and the sense of being out of place, make them harder to use.
Visibility shapes things too. When being noticed feels costly, time outside is kept brief and low-profile, and gathering tends toward quieter, less exposed corners. As this unfolds, public life folds inward: from the street to the alley, the threshold, and finally the roof. Withdrawal here is not the absence of public life but one of its forms.
These frames ask not where the parks are, but under what conditions everyday presence can be sustained.
To read Nusrat Jahan’s Thesis on this topic click >here<