Kathmandu's streets, Sangam-Chowk and other public places, which were supposed to be in a regular rhythm as always, were suddenly filled with thousands of Gen-G youths with different objectives on August 23, 2082. Perhaps for the first time, the aim of the young people who took to the streets was to peacefully protest the government's authoritarian misrule, widespread corruption in political circles, and social media bans aimed at curbing freedom of expression.

This initiative, which started with a collective campaign called Nepo-Kids, where various youth groups were organized in the social network that can be experienced through the use of technology-based infrastructure such as 'Digital Platform', was gradually expanded from a virtual place to a public physical place in the city as a demonstration. At the same time, on August 23rd, the news of the death of at least one and a half dozen youths due to the harsh repression by the ruling party in the parliament building and the surrounding streets spread rapidly. This demonstration had an impact at the national level.

As a result, the second day of protests turned violent, with clashes, arson and vandalism taking place on the city's main roads and inner streets, river corridors and open spaces. Major administrative and judicial structures such as Federal Parliament Building, Singh Darbar, Supreme Court, Abuse of Authority Investigation Commission were damaged, while private properties including residences of former Prime Ministers, leaders of various political parties, media houses like Kantipur Media Group headquarters and jails were targeted. From

campaign to demonstration

Gen-G's initiative can be understood as more of a campaign than a movement and the demonstration it spawned. Although the human, political, social, and economic aspects of this kind of demonstration, expressed as the climax of the campaign started from virtual space, are discussed from different angles, its local dimensions and local manifestations are not discussed so much in the context of Nepal. 

An exploration of local dimensions and local expressions is important in understanding this kind of performance. Because the local dimensions such as streets, squares, bridges, power centers or cultural venues determine the direction of the demonstration, in such public places the demonstration is directly manifested in local expressions such as processions, competition, control, violence, occupation. In this context, it would be desirable to shed light on the local dimensions and local expression of the movement and demonstration on August 23 and 24. control of

symbolic centers  Where the

takes place and what location is targeted is meaningful in itself. In terms of local expression, Gen-J's performance first took place on the first day, with youth making their presence felt in key public spaces and temporarily occupying them. According to famous German social scientist Prisca Daffy, researcher of social movements, occupying large symbolic places such as squares, parks or government buildings and performing public demonstrations there are the main means for protesters to reveal the power and message of the movement. 

Similar to Egypt's Tahrir Square or Istanbul's Gezi Park, Zen-G first occupied and temporarily took control of other important administrative and judicial building structures, including the parliament building, and the centers representing power around them, such as the new Baneshwar streets and Maitighar Mandalas, synonymous with busy urban culture in Kathmandu. This resistance was a rejection of the structures and foundations used to run the corrupt state power that the youth had lost faith in, a message that challenged the symbolic meaning of power. 

This dissatisfaction and protest centered on big roads and Sangam-Chowk was seen as a place to show resistance to the streets-tolls, Bagmati River banks and the neglected corners under the bridges. Thus, public spaces became not only geographies, but also contested arenas of resistance, control, and violence. In these spaces, the controlled resistance of Zen-ji, the control of state power through siege, and the violence of an anarchic third party were simultaneously manifested—representing the status of performance and the city's open public spaces and the symbolic locality expressed in them.

Roads and Congestion Points

From a local perspective, Gen-G's performance initially focused on roads and busy road junctions like New Baneshwar and Maitighar. The gathering and sloganeering of the youth here made the movement very visible and effective. According to Yuwan Su, a researcher of social movements, road structures, roadblocks and crowd dynamics play an important role in a demonstration moving from a peaceful stage to a violent stage. 

Gen-G's natural initial display, which began in the most accessible and easily accessible streets and intersections to the public, soon manifested itself in constriction points such as alley-corridors, Bagmati riverbanks and dark corners under bridges. Youth demonstrations made these areas unstable and dynamic, providing them with a local environment to quickly gather, disperse, hide and break police cordons. Constriction points also created barriers, making it easier for the police to use force. 

According to the French sociologist Henri Lebreu's concept, the public spaces of Kathmandu are not just physical structures visible on the map, they have become a confluence of planning, control and direct experience of the protestors. These locations on the one hand empowered the demonstrations and on the other helped to intensify violent confrontations. Important public buildings and their courtyards eventually became sites of symbolic occupation. 

These dimensions of urban structure became mixed with the youth crowd's anger from immature political decisions, police tactics, corruption, socio-economic discontent, and these places became the physical environment that reflected them. which reveals the local dimension of urban planning. 

digital space and mixed public circles 

In today's rapidly changing digital age, one of the facilities available to Gen-G to discuss current affairs is a largely virtual space, which has helped build a virtual public circle among them. This virtual public-circle, started in this way and extended to social networks, became a factor in connecting young people involved in anti-corruption digital campaigns to organizational groups. 

After trying to control this circle by the state, young people came out from virtual places to physical places such as streets and squares and performed mass demonstrations in public places available in the city, which created a mixed-public circle, albeit temporarily. 

In this context, the famous German thinker Jürgen Habermas has explained the public circle as a place where citizens can freely discuss and challenge the state. Likewise, as Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells has argued, the discussion and networked expansion of Gen-G through digital platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok for performance created the necessary conceptual basis for performance issues. At the same time, the other thing seen during the construction of such a mixed public circle is the cognitive part, which is how the mental process of the place-use of the protestor, the power of thinking-understanding was used. Under which he used social media to create a necessary strategy for information exchange, ensuring common presence on the road, direction-regulation and mental maps related to safe areas, the reality of which was denied by the ruling party. 

Due to this negativity, existing public places in the city became synonymous with each other in terms of expressing the ideology created on social media. Public spaces in cities that were physically regulated by the state came under the control of social media users. In this sense, virtual and physical spaces became interrelated and complementary rather than separate in terms of freedom of expression. While the virtual space provided the idea for the performance, the public space provided the physical environment to embody it, revealing the local dimension of the performance. 

Architecture and urban planning

Another aspect of this exhibition is how local expression is intertwined with architecture and urban planning. How public spaces, including streets, constriction points, urban awareness and mixed public circles, urban spatial planning frameworks and forms and symbolic architecture are related to structure. Although studies of social movements in the

tradition have often focused more on the weaknesses of existing governance systems and technologies such as social media, this Gen-G demonstration shows that the interrelationship between the physical form of the city and architectural forms can also define the shape and type of demonstration.

For example, the width of the Maitighar-New Baneshwar road attracted crowds during demonstrations, while the narrowing points between dense residential areas along the surrounding roads determined crowd dynamics and police control. In the same way, the city's local road structure, large buildings and structures that are inaccessible to the general public surrounded by high borders-walls were seen as factors that reveal the diverse local dimensions of performance. 

It was found that the protestors considered the architecture of large administrative buildings such as Parliament House, Singh Darbar, and Sheetal Niwas, which have stood as a symbol of power for decades, as an expression of power and authority, and took their destruction as a symbolic goal. Synonymous with the local dimension of architecture, large buildings, high border-walls, large courtyards, controlled access and people-oriented, these structures were targeted by the protesters as a symbol of poor governance, transparency and accountability. It revealed not only the opposition to the regime, but also the symbolic exclusion and rejection of inequality, the expression of corrupt power inherent in architecture. 

Neglected, narrowed, access fragmented riverbanks/corridors or dark and cluttered empty negative spaces under bridges became locations of strategic importance for protestors during demonstrations, acting as vulnerable but effective attack/shelter sites. Gaps provided a place to resist, hide, or attack, even if they were unguarded. This was a direct result of the police being pushed towards the river and death/injury from stone pelting there. 

In this context, if we look at the history of past demonstrations and protest sites, the destruction of public property during this demonstration seems to be largely related to the unorganized local expansion plan of Kathmandu. An example can be seen in the limited role of the open space area of ​​Ratnapark, famous as the main center of numerous political movements. 

Ratnapark's role as a political meeting place seems to have shrunk due to immature urban planning decisions made to widen the road around the open forum area, increase traffic and make the surrounding area inaccessible to public pedestrians. A large number of Gen-G youths chose Maitighar-New Baneshwar as their primary venue for demonstrations, leaving the Ratnapark area relatively unscathed amid vandalism and arson. It shows how the structural transformation of public space affects the local expression of political performance.