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BOARD OF EDITORS
The journal of an association of institutes concerned with the quality of built environment.The publishing framework is shaped around the forces which act on built environment,which maintain, change and transform it. The content consists of articles which deal withthese issues and in particular with responsive, self-sustaining and re-usable environ-ments which have the capacity to respond to change, provide user choice and value formoney.
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Dr.Iftekhar Ahmed, RMIT University, Australia.
Dr. Zainab F. Ali, University of Damman, SaudiArabia.
Dr. Robert Brown, University of Westminster,London, Great Britain.
Prof.Marta Calzolaretti, Housing Lab, SapienzaUniversita di Roma, Italy.
Dr. German T. Cruz, Ball State UniversityMuncie, USA.
Carla Corbin, Department of LandscapeArchitecture, Ball State University, USA.
Ype Cuperus, Delft University of TechnologyDelft, The Netherlands.
Dr. Ayona Datta, University of Leeds, UK.
Dr.Md Nasir Daud, University of Malaya,Malaysia.
Forbes Davidson, Institute of Housing & UrbanDevelopment Studies, Rotterdam, TheNetherlands.
Diane Diacon, Building and Social HousingFoundation, Coalville, Great Britain.
Prof. Yurdanur Dulgeroglu-Yuksel,Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey.
Prof. Jin-Ho Park, Inha University, Korea
Prof. Bruce Frankel, Ball State University, USA.
Prof. Avi Friedman, McGill University, Montreal,Canada.
Dr. Ahmed Abu Al Haija, PhiladelphiaUniversity, Eng. & Arch. Dep.t, Jordan.
Prof. Keith Hilton, Mansle, France.
Dr. Karim Hadjri, University of Central lan-cashire, UK.
Prof. Nabeel Hamdi, Professor Emeritus,Oxford Brookes University, UK.
Dr. Mahmud Mohd Jusan, Faculty of BuiltEnvironment, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia(UTM).
Ripin Kalra, University of Westminster, and .(WSPimc), London.
Dr. Stephen Kendall, Emeritus Prof. ofArchitecture, 220 West Durand StreetPhiladelphia, PA., 19119
Prof. Bob Koester, Ball State UniversityMuncie, USA.
Prof. Roderick J. Lawrence, University ofGeneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Dr. Fuad Mallick, BRAC University, Bangladesh.
Prof. Andrea Martin-Chavez, UniversidadAutonoma Metropolitana, Mexico.
Dr. Magda Mostafa, Associate Professor, TheAmerican University in Cairo, Egypt
Babar Mumtaz, DPU, University CollegeLondon, London, UK.
Geoffery Payne, GPA Associates London, UK
Dr. Sule Tasli Pektas, Bilkent University, Turkey.
Prof. Gulsun Saglamer, Istanbul TechnicalUniversity, Istanbul, Turkey.
Prof. Jia Beisi, University of Hong Kong.Dr. Mark Napier, Urban LandMark, Pretoria,South Africa.
Dr. Masa Noguchi, University of Melbourne,Australia
Prof. Ibrahim Numan, Fatih Sultan MehmetUniversity, Turkey.
Dr. Yara Saifi, Al Quds University, Jerusalem,Palestine.
Prof. Paola Somma, University of Venice, Italy.
Dr. Peter Kellett, University of Newcastle uponTyne, Great Britain.
Dr. Omar Khattab, University of Kuwait.
Dr. Levente Mályusz, Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), Hungary.
Prof. Amos Rapoport, University of Wisconsinat Milwaukee, USA.
Prof. Seiji Sawada, Meiji University, Tokyo,Japan.
Dr. Florian Steinberg, Asian DevelopmentBank, The Philippines.
Dr. Quazi M Mahtab uz Zaman, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK
Prof. H. J Visscher, OTB, Delft Univertsity ofTechnology, Delft, The Netherlands.
Patrick Wakely, Professor Emeritus, UniversityCollege London, UK.
Dr. Christine Wamsler, University ofManchester, UK and University of Lund,Sweden.
: Esra Can, Emre Akbil, Eastern Mediterranean University Mersin 10 - Turkey. [email protected]: C. Punton, P.O Box 74, Gateshead,Tyne & Wear, NE9 5UZ, Great Britain. [email protected]: The Urban International Press, P.O Box 74, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear NE9 5UZ, Great Britain.: Printed by Pikaj Print House, Gazimagusa, Mersin 10, Turkey: Emmanuel Tibung Chenyi, Eastern Mediteranian University, Mersin 10, Turkey. [email protected]
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Aims
Open House International
The Open House International Association (OHIA) aimsto communicate, disseminate and exchange housing andplanning information. The focus of this exchange is ontools, methods and processes which enable the variousprofessional disciplines to understand the dynamics ofhousing and so contribute more effectively to it.To achieve its aims, the OHIA organizes and co-ordi-nates a number of activities which include the publicationof a quarterly journal, and, in the near future, an interna-tional seminar and an annual competition. TheAssociation has the more general aim of seeking toimprove the quality of built environment through encour-aging a greater sharing of decision-making by ordinarypeople and to help develop the necessary institutionalframeworks which will support the local initiatives of peo-ple in the building process.
The journal of an association of institutes and individualsconcerned with housing, design and development in thebuilt environment. Theories, tools and practice with spe-cial emphasis on the local scale.
Delft University of TechnologyDepartment of Housing Quality and Process Innovation OTBResearch Institute of Housing, Urban and Mobility StudiesJaffalaan 9, 2628 BX Delft, The Netherlands(Henk Visscher) [email protected] www.otb.tudelft.nl
McGill UniversitySchool of Architecture, Macdonald Harrington BuildingCentre for Minimum Cost Housing Studies, 815, SherbrookStreet West. Montreal, PQ. Canada H3A 2K6.(Avi Friedman)[email protected]
Ball State UniversityCollege of Architecture & Planning, Muncie, Indiana, 47306,USA. (Stephen Kendall) [email protected]/cap
HousingLabDipartimento di Architettura, Ateneo Federato delle ScienzeUmane delle Arti e dell'Ambiente, SAPIENZA Università diRoma, Roma, Italy. (Marta Calzolaretti)[email protected] http:w3.uniroma1.it/housinglab
The Glasgow School of ArtMackintosh School of Archirecture MEARU, 176 RenfrewStreet Glasgow G3 6RQ. Great Britain(Masa Noguchi) [email protected]
Budapest University of Technology & Econ. (BME)Faculty of Architecture Budapest, Muegyetem rkp. 3.1111 Hungary. (Levente Malyusz) [email protected]
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)Resource Development Division, Perpustakaan SultanahZanariah, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) 81310 SkudaiJohor, Malaysia. (Anuar Talib) [email protected] http://portal.psz.utm.my/psz/
Philadelphia University,Engineering & Architecture Department, Faculty ofEngineering, P.O Box 1, Jordan. (Ahmed Abu Al-Haija) [email protected]/content/view/448/590/
University of Malaya,Faculty of Built Environment, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (Md Nasir Daud) [email protected]://www.fbe.um.edu.my
Ajman University of Science & TechnologyAjman, P. O. Box 346, UAE. United Arab Emirates(Jihad Awad) [email protected]/austweb/index87ec.html?catid=46&langid=2
Qatar UniversityQatar University Library, Aquisitons Department,Bldg# B13 /Office Room # B154P.O Box 2713, Doha, Qatar. (Farook Ghori) [email protected]
BRAC University,Department of Architecture, Dhaka, Bangladesh,(Fuad H Mallick) [email protected] www.bracu.ac.bd
Universidad Del Rosario, Calle 14 No. 6-25, Bogotá, Colombia. (Janneth Espitia)[email protected] www.urosario.edu.co
Birzeit University Main LibraryRamallah, West Bank, P.O.Box: "14", Birzeit, Palestine(Taghgreed Shihadeh) [email protected]
Inha University, Department of Architecture, Inha University,Incheon, Korea. (Jin-Ho Park) [email protected] www.d-lab.k
Director & Editor-in-Chief
Nicholas Wilkinson, RIBA, RIBA,AA,Dipl., [email protected]
Collaborating Editor
Dr. Ashraf M. Salama,PhD. FRSA - FHEAHead of ArchitectureUniversity of Strathclyde Email: [email protected]
Web Editor
Emmanuel Tibung ChenyiEastern Mediterranean Univ. Dept of Comp. Via mersin 10.TREmail:[email protected]
International TechnicalEditor
Yonca Hurol, Eastern Mediterranean University, Department of Architecture,Mersin 10 [email protected]
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Contents
EDITORIAL:Paola Somma
POST-CONFLICT SYRIA: FROM DESTRUCTION TO RECONSTRUCTION.WHO’S INVOLVED AND TO WHICH EXTENT
Nura Ibold.
THE LATERAL CONFLICT OF URBAN PLANNING IN DAMASCUSEdwar Hanna and Nour Harastani
HOUSING IN JERUSALEM: FROM A FLOURISHING HOPE TO SLOW “URBICIDE”Yara Saifi and Maha Samman
SENSORY PERCEPTION EXPERIENCE IN BALATA REFUGEE CAMP. Shahd Adnan M. Qzeih, Rafooneh Moktarshahi Sani.
URBAN DEVELOPMENT OF CONFLICT ZONES. THE CASE OF GAZA CITY.Yousef J. M. Abukashif and Müge Rıza.
POST-WAR RE-SETTLEMENTS IN VAROSHA: PARADISE TO GHETTO.Aysu Arsoy, Hacer Basarir
THE LANDSCAPE OF WAR AND THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF PUBLIC SPHERE. Dijana Alic
EDUCATION IN CONFLICT: POST-WAR SCHOOL BUILDINGS OF CYPRUS.Sevil Aydınlık, Hıfsiye Pulhan.
VICTORIA BARRACKS OF DISAPPEARANCE: CONTESTED POST-MILITARYLANDSCAPE IN HIGH-DENSITY URBAN HONG KONG.
Jing Xiao, Charlie Q. L. Xue.
Open House International has been selected for coverage by EBSCO Publishing, the ELSEVIER Bibliographic DatabaseScopus and all products of THOMSON ISI index bases, SSCI, A&HCI,CC/S&BS and CC/A&H The journal is also listedon the following Architectural index lists: RIBA, ARCLIB, AVERY and EKISTICS. Open House International is online forsubscribers and gives limited access for non-subscribers at www.openhouse-int.com
NEXT ISSUE: VOL. 44.NO.3 2019: OPEN ISSUE
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THEME ISSUE : Covering… WAR AND CITIES.
Guest Editors: Paola SommaE-Mail: [email protected]
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Previous Issues
Guest Editors: Ashraf M. Salama and David GriersonE-Mail: [email protected] ,[email protected]
Edited by Nicholas Wilkinson RIBA, Eastern Mediterranean University, North Cyprus.DPU Associate, University College London, [email protected]
Editorial:Ashraf M. Salama, David GriersonThe Mirage of Smart Sustainable Cities in the Arab RegionAhmed O. El-Kholei, Ghada Yassine.Strategic Decision Support for Urban Service DesignNecmiye Yaprak Öz, Halime DemirkanTowards a Context Specific and Multidimensional Quality of Urban Life Model.Laura MacLean, Ashraf M. Salama.Measuring Qol in Doğanbey Urban Transformation Area in Bursa, Turkey.Miray Gür, Yavuz Taneli, Neslihan Dostoğlu.Exploring the Relationship Between Health and Walkability.Emre Seles, Yasemin Afacan.Walking to Occupational Activities Within Three Neighbourhoods in Basra City.Qaaid Al-Saraify, David GriersonUsing Auto-Photography to Explore Young People’s Belonging and Exclusion in Urban Spaces in Accra, Ghana.Kristijn van riel, Ashraf M. Salama.The Social Construction of a Neighbourhood Identity.Leandro Madrazo.Interrogating the Characteristics of Residential Neighbour- Hoods in the City of Tripoli / Libya.Adel M. remali, Huyam AbudibiExploring Urban Open Spaces of Regenerated Markets In Qatar.Remah Y. GharibFeatures of Design of Gardens And Parks with Symbolic Meaning In Shymkent City—kazakhstan.Akmaral Yussupova, Liu Songfu, Ardasher Namazbay, Ahad Nejad Ebrahimi
Vol. 44 No. 1 2019OPEN HOUSE INTERNATIONALOPEN ISSUE:
Vol. 43 No. 4 2018OPEN HOUSE INTERNATIONALOPEN ISSUE:
Editorial: Yonca Hurol
Multi-Criteria Decision Support System for Green Commercial Space Design.
Hao-Cheng Huang, Yeng-Horng Perng.
“Western” Influence on Architectural Potential of Palace Gardens.
Bekar, M. ‒ Var, M
A Spatial Analysis of the Urban Public Space: Case Study the Museum of Islamic Art Park, Doha.
Emine Malkoc True, Çigdem Kiliçaslan.
Post-Disaster Housing Construction:
Ugochukwu K. Elinwa, Nothando Moyo.
Built Environmental Variations Between Regular and Imax Theatres.
Chen Wang, Heng Li
Neighbourhood Parks as a Potential Stress Reliever: Review on Literature.
Syaidatul Azzreen Ishak, Hazreena Hussein, Adi Ainurzaman Jamaludin
A Different Experience in the Build-Sell Process in Ankara.
Cilga Resuloglu.
Alvar Aalto: An Anthill Under the Undulating Sky: A Critical View of Finnish Networking.
Marco Bruno.
Increasing Ecological Capacity by Designing Ecological High-Rise Buildings.
Talie Tohidi Moghadam, Mahmoud feizabadi
Flash Card Set as Rehearse Tool for Architecture Students.
Badiossadat Hassanpour, Adi Irfan Che-Ani, Nil Paşaoğluları Şahin, Alireza Tabrizi
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Previous IssuesVol. 43 No. 3 2018
OPEN HOUSE INTERNATIONALOPEN ISSUE:
Edited by Nicholas Wilkinson RIBA, Eastern Mediterranean University, North Cyprus.DPU Associate, University College London, UK.
Edited by Nicholas Wilkinson RIBA, Eastern Mediterranean University, North Cyprus.DPU Associate, University College London, UK.
Vol. 43 No. 2 2018OPEN HOUSE INTERNATIONAL
OPEN ISSUE:EDITORIAL:
Relationships Between Environmental Education, Environmental Attitudes,
and Behavioral Intentions Toward Ecolodging. Kuang Sheng Liu, Sung-Lin Hsueh, Han-Yi Chen
The Post-Phenomenology of Place:
NimaTalebian, TurkanUlusuUraz
Developing a Sustainable Strategy for CoaStal lanDS: Case Study Taiwan.
Yu-Sheng, Lin, Pi Ying Lai.
Relating Material Selection and Sustainability in Design.
Elif Sonmez , Filiz Tavsan
A study of the Relationships Between Urban Development And Environmental Quality
Chyi-Lu Jang, Luke H.C. Hsiao, Shang-Pao Yeh
ArchitecturAl exAminAtion on Feng Shui Bedroom.
Chen Wang, Wan Thing Hong, Hamzah Abdul-Rahman
Tea Houses as Third Places in MāsuliH’s Vernacular Settlement.
Ehsan Daneshyar
A secret component in architectural design studio: The “filtering” Concept.
Bengi Yurtsever, Polatoğlu
Sustainable Building Façades: Modern usages of the traditional MaShrabiya.
Reem Abdelkader, Jin-Ho Park
Urbanization and informal Settlement ChallengeS: Case Study Tehran metropolitan City.
Haniyeh Razavivand fard
Branding Cities through Medical Tourism
Mohammad Mehdi Kalantarzadeh, Mukaddes Fasli
Adaptation of Sustainable Community to the Site’S Natural Condition.
Avi Friedman
EDITORIAL:
Relationships Between Environmental Education, Environmental Attitudes,
and Behavioral Intentions Toward Ecolodging. Kuang Sheng Liu, Sung-Lin Hsueh, Han-Yi Chen
The Post-Phenomenology of Place:
NimaTalebian, TurkanUlusuUraz
Developing a Sustainable Strategy for CoaStal lanDS: Case Study Taiwan.
Yu-Sheng, Lin, Pi Ying Lai.
Relating Material Selection and Sustainability in Design.
Elif Sonmez , Filiz Tavsan
A study of the Relationships Between Urban Development And Environmental Quality
Chyi-Lu Jang, Luke H.C. Hsiao, Shang-Pao Yeh
ArchitecturAl exAminAtion on Feng Shui Bedroom.
Chen Wang, Wan Thing Hong, Hamzah Abdul-Rahman
Tea Houses as Third Places in MāsuliH’s Vernacular Settlement.
Ehsan Daneshyar
A secret component in architectural design studio: The “filtering” Concept.
Bengi Yurtsever, Polatoğlu
Sustainable Building Façades: Modern usages of the traditional MaShrabiya.
Reem Abdelkader, Jin-Ho Park
Urbanization and informal Settlement ChallengeS: Case Study Tehran metropolitan City.
Haniyeh Razavivand fard
Branding Cities through Medical Tourism
Mohammad Mehdi Kalantarzadeh, Mukaddes Fasli
Adaptation of Sustainable Community to the Site’S Natural Condition.
Avi Friedman
Editorial
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War and Ci t i e s
In 2002, an issue of Open House International hadalready addressed the subject of war and the city.Scholars with different backgrounds and experiencesreported on a number of cities. They analysed andreflected on the situation before the armed hostilities,both in physical terms and in terms of the conflicts ofethnic and civilian character, and the role of externalforces and actors; the war in its different manifesta-tions: a never ending conflict, a succession of battlesand precarious truces, bombing, the threat of bomb-ing; and the prospects of reconstruction, with partic-ular reference to the different effects for the variousgroups and interests.
Today, 17 years later, the ambition of thisissue, which renews OHI’s attention to the theme, isnot only to provide further empirical investigation butto contribute to the broadening of the discussion, at amoment in which both the number and scale of urbanconflicts does unfortunately not seem to have dimin-ished.
Indeed since then, both the number andscope of publications dealing with the war in, and on,cities has continued to expand, with new entries alter-nating between reports of devastation and reconstruc-tion projects. Quite often these documents include waras one among the many natural, and therefore“inevitable”, disasters we must all be prepared to faceand mitigate.
Resilience, that is the ability of a city to resistand react to the various “shocks, stresses and haz-ards, that may occur”, and adapt to changed circum-stances, is the key word of this paradigm, which trans-forms complex political problems in mere technicalchallenges.
The supporters of this approach place at thecore of their assumptions the fact that as “natural haz-ards are becoming more intense and frequent…armed conflicts are also becoming increasingly com-plex” (Unesco and World Bank, Culture in CityReconstruction and Recovery, 2018). Hence they taskbuilt environment’ professionals with making cities“less vulnerable to shocks such as violence or full-blown conflict”.
As a consequence, experts in urban manage-ment are nowadays asked to prepare safe and defen-sible urban environments and combine resilience withdevelopment. Similar recommendations areaddressed to the organizations and institutionsinvolved in the relief of war victims, which should notonly provide assistance to the affected communities,but finalize their intervention to the promotion of theeconomic development of the war-ravaged territories.
The slogan “bridge the humanitarian action anddevelopment divide” well captures the desired cooper-ation of all the actors involved in the rebuilding of“conflict affected” states and cities, whose roles aredivided as follows: “humanitarian actors respond tocrises, development actors build from them”.
The convergence of humanitarian, securityand development concerns has been canonized in2016 at the United Nations’ first World HumanitarianSummit that resulted in the creation of the GlobalAlliance for Urban Crises. The Alliance gathers 65organizations working on “post conflict developmentand humanitarian action”, and is premised on theidea that bringing together “the two constituencies of
urbanists and humanitarians will engender collabora-tions which meet both short-term humanitarian andlonger-term development needs of urban populationsand their environments”. As a matter of fact, theadhering organizations commit themselves “to work toenable urban communities to prepare for, cope withand recover from the effects of humanitarian crises,including forced displacement, natural disastersand/or armed conflicts”.
The emphasis on resilience risks to concealthe structural causes that trigger war; from the unequaldistribution and control of resources to the role offinancial investors and their political allies who fomentmutual hostility among different groups of population.
Besides, the combination of the termresilience with that of development, appears as a lex-ical artifice to make it acceptable that whilst war bringsdeath and woes, for some it still is an extraordinaryopportunity for profits. Put in order words, war is apowerful accelerator of “modernization and develop-ment “.
Therefore, it does not come as a surprise that,whether they are resilient or not, cities will continue tobe battlefields.
General Michael Evans (2016), the formerhead of the Australian Army think- thank and aProfessor in the School of Humanities and SocialSciences at Deakin University in Melbourne, is con-vinced that ”the art of war must seek closer interactionwith the science of cities”, and that western militarymust control the narrative of the events if they want tobecome better prepared to confront the challenges offuture conflicts in an urban dominated world.
“In the decades ahead”, he argues, “it is a melan-choly possibility that some cities in the developingworld may become contested battlespaces… thesezones of conflict will require the integration of the mil-itary art with the physical morphology and socialgeography of modern urban planning”.
General Evans is aware that “such an inter-disciplinary effort may prove to be challenging forscholars who harbour sensitivities towards the employ-ment of military force in populated areas”, butreminds urban scholars that “if they refuse to engagewith security officials on the challenge of controllingand ameliorating armed violence in cities, they areonly likely to contribute to increased numbers of civil-ian casualties”. The interest of military strategists forurban planning is not a novelty. The “command of thecities” has now become a branch of the “command ofthe geography” and in the United States, many ana-lysts have been calling for a long time for the creationof a dedicated urban warfare school, claiming that“the US army has jungle, mountain and arctic warfareschools, but not an urban one”.
What might surprise is that General Evans’spaper was not published in a journal of the armedforces, but in the International Review of the Red Cross(IRRC, 2016, vol. 98, n.1).
In actual facts, however, the cooperationbetween militaries, urban planners and humanitarianorganizations is openly encouraged by the internation-al institutions involved in the “recovery and reconstruc-tion” programmes.
For example, in November 2017, the confer-ence “Armed conflict in cities: humanitarian implica-tions and response”, jointly organized by the
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aInternational Institute of Strategic Studies and theInternational Committee of the Red Cross and sup-ported by the Swiss Federal Government, broughttogether practitioners and experts from the “communi-ties of architecture, development, humanitarianaction, international law, security and urbanism“ (IISS,2018).
All the participants agreed on the imperativeconvergence of “warfare, humanitarian action anddevelopment”.
This sinister message is well received by themany architects and urban designers who compete forthe generous assignments offered by the very sameinternational institutions that often played a pivotalrole in the breaking out of conflicts.
In the websites of such professionals the mes-sages that underline their willingness to seize theopportunities offered by the war are not rare. To givean example, Mangera Yvars architects say “ the factthat war has taken place does in many ways provideopenings in the city fabric where replenishment andredevelopment can provide improvement above andbeyond the prewar baseline condition … conflict,however terrible, also provides hope and opportunityfor change beyond the status quo” (MYAA, nd).
A completely different attitude is shared bythe authors who contributed to this special issue. All ofthem currently live or have lived in the places they aretalking about, and draw on both theoretical andempirical field based research.
Above all, their papers concern more thepeople- individuals, families, communities- than thebuildings or, to state it more correctly, their narrative isorganized in a way that the transformations of thephysical fabric can be understood only in connectionto what happens to the human beings.
The case studies deal with conflicts that brokeout at different historical moments and have involveddifferent types of warring parties.
Some are not yet finished. In Syria, forinstance, the regime’s war against the citizens is stillongoing but the gold rush of the reconstruction hasalready started, whist in Palestine the Israeli’s militaryoccupation and the annihilation of the inhabitantsseem destined to never end.
In other cases, the calm is only apparent.This happens in former Yugoslavia, where the westernpowers have imposed peace agreements after reach-ing their goal to dismember the national unitary statein order to accelerate the shift to a market economy.However, the many grievances that contributed to thespread of violence have not been fully addressed orresolved.
In Cyprus the fighting has also officiallyended, but United Nations peace keepers are stillpatrolling, since 1974, the buffer zone that divides thetwo communities, each of which identifies itself with amotherland far away, which contributes to persistentsuffering and insecurity.
The oldest conflict taken into considerationtook place in Hong Kong, where the traces of thecolonial rule mark the ground and impact on the landuse plans and urban design projects decades after theend of the British empire.
The two opening papers deal with Syria andprovide an accurate and dramatic picture of howurban planning machinery has been and still is sys-tematically used as a war weapon.
Nura Ibold’s investigation starts with the
analysis of the political situation that led to the upris-ing of 2011, with particular attention to the relation-ship between socio economic deprivation and thegrowing sectarian divide. Both these phenomenahave been exacerbated during the war and now, afterseven years of violence and death, and the forced dis-placement of hundreds of thousands of people, thesociety is more divided than in the past. Social disrup-tion and fragmentation are manifest on the ground.On the one hand, the extent of destruction is nothomogeneous over the country, and even in the mostdevastated cities there are significant differencesbetween “the loyalist and the rebel” districts.
On the other hand, there is a serious risk thatthe reconstruction process will reinforce discrimina-tion, privileging area held by the regime, pushing outimpoverished communities. Not without reason, theregime’s leaders proudly proclaim to have “reshapedthe demographics” and built a “healthier and morehomogeneous society”. Very suitably, in her analysis ofthe different strategies, actions and interests at play,Ibold underlines the ambiguity of international institu-tions which do not recognize the legitimacy of theregime but seem fearful to miss out on the reconstruc-tion business.
Edwar Hanna and Nour Harastani concen-trate their attention on the impact of the reconstructionpolicies on the Syrian citizens. The interpretative keyis the legal framework developed and applied by theregime to strengthen its alliance with developers,some segments of the private sector and crony capi-talists. Their detailed analysis of the property lawsaimed at demarcating zones where take ownership,dispossess and evict inhabitants and prevent displacedpeople to return is particularly relevant and timely. Asa matter of fact, “peace” will bring a surge of privateinvestment and a number of powerful urban develop-ment companies, both national and international, arealready targeting Syrian cities.
Hanna and Harastani’s paper also examinessome of the megaprojects launched before 2011,positing that they have become feasible thanks to theconflict that has cleared the land from the people whowere living there. Entire neighbourhoods have beenrazed and wiped out by the regime’s bulldozers, notduring, but after the fighting. This raises disturbingsimilarities with what happened in Beirut twenty yearsago, when the government took advantage of the warto clean up prime real estate areas and transformthem into enclaves of privilege and financial invest-ment.
A similar manifestation of “the productivecapacity of war” is emerging in Damascus where thereconstruction process is at the same time a politicaltool that facilitates the authoritarian stabilization andthe return to the pre-conflict neo- liberal order and ahuge deal for investors.
In this situation the area-based approachadopted in the templates prepared by UN Habitat andthe World Bank will very likely help the regime toadvance its political agenda. The lack of transparen-cy regarding the selection of neighbourhoods targetedfor rehabilitation and the priority for interventions inthe loyalist areas, will only strength inequality.
Besides providing information on the actualsituation, the two papers on Syria poignantly con-tribute to the discourse on the gap between thealleged technical nature of urban planning tools andtheir impact on the people lives.
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The vicious intertwining of zoning, demarca-tion of administrative boundaries and building regula-tions intentionally aimed at destroying a community isalso at the heart of the research developed by YaraSaifi and Maha Samman. The impact of the urbanplanning machine on the geopolitical map of thePalestinian territories occupied by Israeli is a well stud-ied issue. Countless fieldwork surveys have clearlyestablished how, trough the seizure of land and dis-possession, demolition and displacement, the occu-pants have built a landscape of apartheid.
Saifi and Samman contribute to this conver-sation by showing how a neighbourhood can be dev-astated even in absence of its physical destruction.Dahiyat al Bareed was built 60 years ago within themunicipality of Jerusalem. Today the territorial re-drawing imposed by the Israeli government, and theshifting of municipal boundaries has had among itsnefarious collateral damages the effect of strippinginhabitants of their residency rights, thus presentingthem with the dilemma whether to “spontaneously”leave their homes, or staying in them whilst losing theirright of residence. Both alternatives do substantialharm to the affected individuals and families who areforced either to hide, or to damage their own homesin an effort to make them appear uninhabited. Inaddition to worsen living conditions, such attempts atcircumventing rules against which people are power-less, undermine the population’s dignity and weakencommunity cohesion.
The research that Shahd Adnan M. Qzeihand Rafooneh Mokhtarshahi Sani have conducted inthe Balata refugee camp, adjacent to the city ofNablus, also deals with the relationship betweenmaterial living conditions and human dignity.Originally designed to provide temporary shelter for5000 people, Balata has become the largest andmost densely populated Palestinian camp in the WestBank. Since its establishment, in 1950, the environ-mental conditions have constantly deteriorated. Qzeihand Sani adopt an original approach in documentingthe situation as they filter the description of the physi-cal conditions through the perceptual sensory experi-ence of the inhabitants of the camp, where four gen-erations have now been living.
The darkness in the narrow passageways, theconstant loud noise, the unpleasant smells, theextreme cold or hot temperature, the absence of anyprivacy, are all causes of physical discomfort whichcontribute to make the life miserable and deprive thepeople trapped in the camp of their human dignity.
Gaza, which suffers from a long blockadeand is often defined as the biggest open-air prison inthe world, is another laboratory for observing the direimpact of military occupation on human beings. Yousef J. M. Abukashif and Müge Riza focus theirresearch on the multiple constraints - the limited avail-able land, the rapidly growing population, the eco-nomic decay - that affect the development of GazaCity.
Through the comparison and analysis of aseries of maps, their paper highlights how the patternof land occupation and the built fabric has beenshaped by war, resulting in a situation so desperatethat the UN warned that by 2020 Gaza will be “unfitfor human habitation”.
Stress and trauma have a lasting impact onthe population. This happens in many places over-whelmed by the war, where survivors struggle to
adapt to the new environment in an alternation of res-ignation and resistance. Quite often a sort of pro-longed frozen conflict is apparent in situations wherethe territorial disputes are still far from being resolvedand a strong resentment persists despite the absenceof visible violence.
Such is the case of Cyprus, where Aysu Arsoyand Hacer Basarir have studied Varosha, a touristased suburb of Famagusta whose inhabitants, afterthe division of the island in 1974, have been evacuat-ed and never allowed to return. The border estab-lished back then is still controlled by the UnitedNations troops, and after more than four decades ofabandonment most buildings are decaying andVarosha is labelled as a ghost town. Still its urbanlandscape is an archive from which the inhabitants ofthe two conflicting communities draw to build twodivergent narratives. It is not surprising to observe con-troversial perceptions among social groups when theyrecall stories of the past and their living spaces.However, the research’s findings suggest that this atti-tude deepens the cleavage and weakens the prospectsof the re-unification of the island.
In the last group of papers the authors look atthe ways in which meaning and significance of archi-tecture are transformed by the war.
Dijana Alic explores how during the longsiege of Sarajevo the physical transformations chal-lenged long established relationships between thebuilt fabric and the inhabitants, introducing newmodes of thinking and interpreting the city. Focusingon Baščaršija, the oldest part of the town, the researchcontributes to the debate on the notion of “thirdspace”introduced by Edward Soja. Alic elaborates on thisand argues that through direct experience, responsivethinking and personal interpretations of the city, thecitizens of besieged Sarajevo gave new importance tothe specifics of place in understanding the humancondition. On the one hand, the continuation of dailylife has been central to survival and “the home”, thedomestic space that provides physical shelter andholds the family’s memories has been the core of thepeople’s resistance. On the other, reconfiguring thebuilt fabric and reshaping the landscape of warappeared to inhabitants as the only possible concreteway to refuse the inevitability of war, a way to preventthe physical destruction from bringing with it also thedeletion of the memory of a normal life.
Cyprus is the subject of the research done bySevil Aydınlık and Hıfsiye Pulhan, whose aim is to sur-face the complex relationships between nationalismand educational institutions.
Education was segregated during the periodof British colonial rule, and the authors show how indifferent historical moments school buildings wereintentionally used to exacerbate the hostility betweenthe local communities. During the last years of theBritish occupation, which ended in 1960, the adop-tion by some Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot archi-tects of an architectural language inspired by theInternational style raised hopes of the possible shifttowards a unified education model. After 1974, how-ever, the political authorities that govern the two sidesof the island imposed two different educational sys-tems, whose intentional opposition is magnified bytheir architectural language and forms.
The long lasting legacy of the British colonialoccupation is also the subject of the paper by JingXiao and Charlie Q. L. Xue. The two carefully exam-
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aine the vicissitudes of Victoria Barracks, a physicalremnant of the British empire in a strategic site inHong Kong, trough the lenses of what is defined con-tested heritage. More specifically their aim is to docu-ment how the disappearance of a military landscapeof cultural significance is entangled with the laissezfaire strategy of urban planning. The paper highlightshow corporate interests and authoritarian planninginstitutions are cooperating to transform the site in afinancial investment opportunity erasing its historicalsignificance.
Taken as a whole, the papers selected for thisspecial issue not only provide interesting empiricalinvestigations on the many deliberate attempts to killcities and their inhabitants but combine an empathicapproach with scientific rigour thus contributing to thebroadening of the discussion going beyond the casestudy logic. They are an important reminder to us -scholars, academics, professionals of the built envi-ronment - to reject the widespread approach that con-siders cities ravaged by war as opportunities, dots ona map waiting for investment and flagship projects.
REFERENCES
EVANS M. (2016) Future War in Cities: Urbanization’schallenge to strategic studies in the 21stcentury, International Review of the Red Cross 98 (1)37-51.
MYAA (without date) Post conflict reconstructionavailable at http://www.myaa.eu/research/post-con-flict-reconstruction/accessed on 15th February 2019
The INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGICSTUDIES (2018) Armed conflict in cities: humanita-rian implications and responses, available at https://www.iiss.org/publications/strateg-ic-comments/2017/armed-conflict-in-citiesaccessed on 15th February 2019
The WORLD BANK, UNESCO (2018) Culture in CityReconstruction and Recovery. Washington, D.C. :World Bank Group.
Author(s):
Paola SommaEmail: [email protected]
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INTRODUCTION
The pro-democracy uprisings and anti-governmentprotests of the Arab Spring broke out in Syria in March2011, and unlike the preceding movements of theArab Spring, which resulted in regime change inTunisia, Egypt, and Libya, the Syrian civil movementturned into a proxy war which is overrun by othernations operating on the Syrian soil.
In order to understand the complexity androots of the ongoing war, one has to examine the his-tory and development of the Syrian social-politicalstructure over the last 100 years, and how the Syrianregime under the leadership of the Al-Assad familywas able to sustain its power over the country since the1960s.
Looking at the country’s modern history overthe last 500 years, one could trace how far thesequence of Syria’s rulers and the hierarchy of thepolitical system have deviated both the country and itspeople from any form of democratic or judicial expe-rience. These five centuries -mind the gap of three
years period between 1946 and 1949- were dominat-ed by either foreign conquerors or martial autocrats.This part of the Syrian history is gloomy indeed andrecognized through its adverse characteristics: poverty,atrocity, and multiple wars which left the Syrian peoplelonging for freedom, civil rights, and dignity (Saghieh2011:65-69).
SYRIA FROM 1914 - 1970: POST-COLONIAL TUR-MOILUntil the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the regionknown as Greater Syria had been under Ottoman rulefor nearly four centuries. Once World War I ended in1918, the Ottoman empire was dismantled, and in1922 the League of Nations divided the region intocontemporary states of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, andPalestine. France was granted mandate over bothSyria and Lebanon, while Jordan and Palestine wereput under the British authority (Hourani 1968: 52-55).
In this era, the concept of a mandate was per-ceived as a progressive attempt at breaking fromcolonialism, bestowing sovereignty through prepara-
Nura IboldAbstractThe wave of popular unrest in the Arab world reached Syria in March 2011, and what started as peaceful demonstra-tions with simple demands of justice and freedom turned into a brutal armed conflict and a full-scale civil war. Overseven years of conflict resulted in the deaths of over half a million Syrians, the forced displacement of millions more,and a huge loss of the country’s social and physical structures. What began as another Arab Spring movement againsta dictatorial regime has turned into a proxy war that has attracted the interests of the world and regional powers.The paper discusses Syria’s political history and investigates the motives for the Syrian uprising and argues that it isrelated to socio-economic deprivations rather than sectarianism. The work underlines the interests of the countriesinvolved in the Syrian conflict focusing on Russia, USA, Iran, and Turkey, as well as their contribution to the future recon-struction of the country. Over the past few years, the Syrian regime and its allies targeted many cities and destroyed opposition-held neigh-borhoods. The work considers if this destruction was part of an overall strategy adopted by the al-Assad regime to ter-rorize those who opposed it and change Syria demographically, examining the new laws issued by the government totransfer public properties into the hands of its loyal businessmen factions, as in the case of the reconstruction projectin the city of Homs. Seven years of war exhausted Syria’s financial stocks, and the country (and in turn the regime) is suffering the con-sequences of military spending. But like any other war, destruction is also a great opportunity to generate moneythrough reconstruction and growth. It is a “win-win situation”; the regime will use the fund designated for reviving thecountry to its own benefit, gaining future profits. Already invested in the conflict, involved countries will be part of thereconstruction process to secure their presence and control in Syria. United Nations agencies like UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) and UNHCR (United Nations HighCommissioner for Refugees) are working closely with the Syrian regime and its governmental representatives. Thisresearch examines their involvement and how their ‘humanitarian mission’ is being exploited to prop up the al-Assadregime.
Keywords: Syria, Civil War, Urban Policies, Reconstruction, UN agencies, International Involvement.
POST-CONFLICT SYRIA: FROM DESTRUCTION TORECONSTRUCTION – WHO’S INVOLVED AND TOWHICH EXTENT.
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oldtion of a national government capable of democratic
self-governance when the mandate period ended.However, the French government acted in its owninterest and at the expense of the countries under itsmandate and continued to suppress freedom ofspeech, and political and civil rights. The French actsof injustice were faced with mobilized Arab nationalistmovements, and Syria moved towards nationalistautonomy (Khoury 1987).
In 1944, Syria was granted sovereignty byboth the Soviet Union and the United States ofAmerica; in 1945, Britain joined the allied nationswhich pressured France to end its mandate in Syria.Syrian Independence was secured in April 1946 andthereafter the country underwent a state of strife andinstability as competing parties fought to take over itsgovernment. That era, which roughly lasted until1961, was known for infamous coups d’état andcounter-coups; many individuals acted as head of theSyrian government during this period (Library ofCongress 2005:3).
Between 1958 and 1961, a brief politicalunion was established between Syria and Egypt form-ing what was known as the ‘United Arab Republic’.Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser was appoint-ed the head of this coalition and soon after orderedthe dissolution of all Syrian political parties includingthe Arab Socialist Resurrection party (al-Baath party).As a result of the Egyptian domination over the Syrianpolitical life, Syria decided to secede from the union in1961, triggering yet another military coup in the cap-ital Damascus, which marked the start of another peri-od of instability and changes in the government(Parker 1962).
In 1963 that the al-Baath party lead its ownmilitary coup, the so-called ‘Baath Revolution’, acquir-ing the rule of the country. Many leaders of theBaathist regime were appointed as the head of state,precipitating another military coup, in November of1970, known as the ‘Syrian Corrective Revolution’, atwhich point Minister of Defense, Hafez al-Assad seizedpower (Library of Congress 2005:4).
SYRIA BETWEEN 1970 - 2000: THE REIGN OFHAFEZ AL-ASSADShortly after a popular referendum in 1971, al-Assadwas appointed the president of Syria and his thirtyyears presidency was sustained through shifting theutter control into his hands, by controlling both themilitary and security intelligence services. Al-Assadcreated an authoritarian regime where security andhigh influential positions were handed to people fromthe Alawites sect, to which his family belonged. It wasevident from day one that the regime portrayed itselfto be totalitarian with one exclusive political party; anydissent would be repressed and eliminated, by anymeans necessary.
The constitution of 1973 granted the Baathparty and its head al-Assad absolute primacy overSyria’s government; Article 8 of the Constitutionappointed the Socialist Arab Baath Party as the politi-cal leader of both ‘society and the state’, which meansthat the president and his chosen guards dictated thepolitical, security and economic life of the country. It istrue that the Syrian Constitution describes the govern-ment to have a republican scheme and to be “ademocratic, popular, socialist, and sovereign state”[Article (1.1)]. However, this description does notreflect the reality of Syria’s government, which is mili-
tary-dominated, one-state party and authoritarian.Syrian citizens cannot effect changes within the gov-ernment, and the president is not elected but ratherapproved through a popular referendum (CarnegieMiddle East Center 05/12/2012).
The domination of the Baath party, as well asthe martial support of the regime and the state ofemergency imposed on the country as part of theongoing struggle against Israel, assured the ruling ofHafez al-Assad for the following three decades.
As part of his plan to keep the national cohe-sion fragile, al-Assad encouraged pre-existing socialconflicts and delivered threats against organizationshe perceived to be dissenting from his agenda. Hepersonally eliminated any dissent movements, mas-sacring members of the Muslim Brotherhood and theirfamilies in the city of Hama in 1982 (Rodrigues 2011).
Notably, the Syrian regime distanced itselffrom the other formal regimes in the region; establish-ing strong bonds with Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon,Hamas in Palestine, and nominally forming a defen-sive front against Israel on behalf of the pan-Arabnation; these alliances provided a deceptive legitima-cy to the regime as a regional populist movement.(Hirst 2011).
Reforms concerning politics and economywere initiated during al-Assad’s era but never saw thelight of day. Stifled by corruption; emergency law, inthe country since 1963; the monopoly of the stateover freedom of expression and the violation of civiland human rights; the vast number of politicaldetainees; the Syrian people were pushed to theprecipice of rebellion (Human Rights Watch 2006).
SYRIA BETWEEN 2000 – 2011: THE REIGN OFBASHAR AL-ASSADBashar took office in 2000 after the death of hisfather, and despite the rising concerns about the suc-cession of power within the al-Assad’s family and turn-ing Syria’s rule into hereditary, a modern image of thisyoung, educated, and secular leader was circulatedamong the Syrian public and abroad.
Unlike his dictator father, in his early rulingperiod, Bashar was considered a reformist, andaccepted by the majority of Sunni and Christian bour-geoises who used to despise Hafez for his rural andpoor Alawite background and allies (Hokayem 2013:21-22).
Despite the perception that Bashar had areformative approach for the country, freedom ofexpression and civil rights continued to be restrained:criticizing the president, his family, the regime or ques-tioning its legitimacy continued to be forbidden.
People sympathized with the new presidentwho openly discussed his struggles with implementa-tion of reforms, both within the al-Baath party itself,and in resolving the culture of corruption amongst thecountry’s government officials. (Hokayem 2013:22).
Immediately after occupying the presidentialchair, Bashar faced the so-called Damascus Spring,during which several intellectual individuals metsecretly and formed political groups to discuss thenecessary steps for the political reform. As part of al-Assad’s plan to seek legitimacy to his presidency, heresponded to the demands and released many politi-cal prisoners, activists, and journalists, and a progres-sive outlook was then foreseen. Unfortunately, the bru-tality of the regime resumed primacy, hindering allnegotiations, and ultimately terminating the reforms
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proceedings. The Syrian prisons were soon filled againwith political prisoners, and those individuals that ini-tiated the movement were either detained or exiled(Human Rights Watch 2010).
Nonetheless, Bashar did provide people withhope; he stripped several corrupted officials of the for-mer regime from their powerful positions, and openedthe market for private investors as part of his strategyto liberalize and privatize the Syrian economy.Bashar’s plan was heavily criticized by the old Baathistguard, and the economic policy of the governmentcontinued to prop up the old neoliberal corruptedeconomy. As a result, unemployment levels wereincreasing, the gap between the rich and the poorwidened, and wealth continued to concentrate in thehands of a limited number of corrupted citizens fromBashar’s family and associates of both the military andthe al-Baath party (Rafizadeh 2013).
The Index of Corruption Perceptions releasedby Transparency International in 2010 appointed Syriato position 127 out of the 180 countries they surveyed(Transparency International 2010, pp. 3-12). This sta-tistic reflects how damaged the country’s economywas by the corruption that has obstructed any efforts tominimize the troubling 30% of the population whichhas been living under the poverty line (SRCC 2011:6).
According to the report, Bureau ofDemocracy, Human Rights, and Labor, released by theU.S. Department of State in 2004, the Syrian govern-ment and security services continue to commit vicioushuman rights abuses and violations which include:autocratic detention; torture; unfair trials and evenassassination and murder (The U.S. Department ofState 2005).
SYRIA IN 2011: THE SYRIAN UPRISINGSectarianism Poverty; lack of freedom; years of suppression, dicta-torship, and corruption; supremacy of the Alawiteminority over Syria’s capitals drove the frustratedSyrians into protesting, as the news of a flourishingArab Spring reached their country. Civilians took to thestreets with simple demands of freedom and end ofcorruption, but were faced by the government’s deadlyforces and calls for the president’s resignation haveerupted.
When the anti-government protests spread allover the Syrian cities, violence escalated; the Syrianregime responded to the civil movement by killing pro-testers and detaining many others. In response to theregime’s brutality, several political groups of the oppo-sition armed themselves for self-defense, and to pro-tect the civilians in their areas (Rodgers et al. 2015).
Even though the Syrian revolution occurredwithin the context of the Arab Spring, it developed in acompletely different way from its precursors; shiftingfrom nonviolent protests into extreme brutality by theregime, which in turn resulted in the militarization ofthe movement (Bonfatti 2017).
Deeply rooted sectarian and ethnic divisionswithin Syria played an important role for fueling theconflict. After the first popular wave of protests; Syriansstarted clinging to their sectarian identities, either forfeelings of socio-economic unity or simply as a way ofsurviving.
This division which has been mounting fordecades and upheld by the systematic sectarian dis-crimination and prejudice of the regime and the
Alawite dominance over the army and the securityapparatus, soon moved to shape the nature and nar-rative of the conflict from a movement of national unityinto a sectarian civil war fought between the Sunnimajority population against the country’s minoritieswith the Alwite president as their protector (Balanche2018)
Within this scope, it is important to point outthat Syria is not a secular country. Even though Islamis not allocated as the state’s religion, the Syrian con-stitution states that the Syrian president has to be aMuslim (Article 3.1) and Islamic jurisprudence is thefundamental legislative source (Article 3.2). Whilemost of the Sunni Muslims backed up the uprising, themain confessional minorities supported al-Assad andconsidered him the defender of their existence in theregion (Carnegie Middle East Center, 05/12/2012).
The conflict revealed a profound fact of sec-tarian and ethnic divisions within the Syrian populationand worsened alongside this sectarian fragmentation,which is deep-rooted in the Syrian society and datesall the way back to the Ottoman rule era and later tothe adopted policy of Hafez al-Assad “divide to reign”(Balanche 2018: xi).
But still one must conclude, that unlike thepopular assumption that the Syrian revolution iscaused by sectarian divisions, the uprising was basi-cally rooted in the deteriorated social and economicsituation within Syria before the conflict, that drovehundreds of thousands of Syrians to the streets. Inother words, the policy of neo-liberalization and priva-tization of the Syrian economy since Hafez’s Al-Assad’s era, which continued to exist and even wors-ened the situation from 2000 on when his son Basharwas made president, are the main drivers for theSyrian revolution (Bonfatti 2017).
Economic inequality Syria’s urban population had a major shift in numbersin the 1970s, and as the main cities and their sur-rounding areas were not equipped to deal with thesudden growth, most of the new incomers inhabitedwhat is known as ‘informal settlements’ which expand-ed geographically to host approximately 40% ofSyria’s population in 2004 (Clerc 2013).
Even though Syria’s national policy states thatall Syrian citizens are entitled to decent houses, thestate housing policies proved to be insufficient and theissue of informal areas was never resolved (Alsafadi2009). In 2000, informal housing issues were tackledand allegedly became a ‘priority’ to the government.Many urban projects and master plans were devel-oped for those areas but never took into considerationthe question of affordability: the developed housingzones were high-priced and people with low incomecouldn’t afford to buy a property within those areasincluded in the master plan, which puts the govern-ment commitment to resolve the problem under enor-mous suspicions. The issue with informal settlements inSyria is not limited to the lack of infrastructure and/orfacilities but extends to cover property rights and reg-istration. In those settlements (Wakely 2008): “theownership of the land is in dispute and/or is not legallyregistered; and/or the settlement is in contravention ofthe master-plan zoning regulations; and/or planningstandards are not met; and/or dwellings are construct-ed in contravention of building standards and regula-tions”.
Drawing on this information, it could be
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oldargued that the Syrian government deliberately
ignored the informal areas and denied those inhabit-ing them any property rights, which was part of anagenda to exploit the cities’ expansions later in up-scale development projects where poor people haveno records of land entitlements/registration. It isimportant to note that the informal settlements, socialstratification, and the struggle over land played anundeniable role in the Syrian uprising.
Economic expert, Jihad Yazigi argues that theSyrian government used the management of land andproperty, especially within the informal areas, as a toolto assure its political dominance over the country par-ticularly in the period between 2000-2010 withBashar al-Assad’s plans to liberalize Syria’s economy.As a result, many new regulations and laws werepassed to guarantee the regime’s supremacy overSyria’s both public and private properties, as well as toattract investors from the Gulf region and expatriateSyrian businessmen. One of those laws, was Law num-ber 26 of 2000 which authorized the government toconfiscate lands within city centers at reduced prices,as well as Law 41 passed in 2004 and amended in2008, which requires inhabitants of border cities topursue a ‘security clearance’ in order to sell theirproperties, which was in many times denied in order topressure those selling into paying bribes or givingaway properties to government-figures for unfairprices. Both laws paved the way for Law 15 issued in2008, which gave a green light to initiate many high-end residential and commercial construction projects.To allow foreign investment in those projects DecreeNo. 8, in 2007, granted the ownership of land to for-eign investors which plausibly led to the increase ofland prices and left those with lower income with nochoice but to move to the cities’ outskirts and informalareas (Yazigi 2017).
The regime’s economic agenda whichfocused on foreign trade liberalization came at theexpense of Syria’s poor population: the rising prices ofproperty; the laws that favor commercialized housingand deliberately ignore the needs of the domesticpopulation; the unwillingness of the government toinclude informal areas into their development plans aswell as centering all projects in the capital Damascusand Aleppo, those reasons and many more createdmore tension and pushed the Syrians to revolt in2011.
By 2012 the heavy fighting reachedDamascus, Syria’s capital. The increase of violenceand the violation of human rights pushed the interna-tional Red Cross to declare the Syrian conflict as a‘civil war’ (Blomfield 2012).
THE OPPOSITION WITHIN SYRIA: FROM THE FIGHTFOR DEMOCRACY TO WAR OVER POLITICAL ANDRELIGIOUS INFLUENCEIn August 2011 and as violence escalated, a moder-ate armed-opposition faction was formed and namedthe Syrian Free Army (FSA). The group containedmembers who used to fight alongside the regime, thendeserted the Syrian army for believing in the eligibilityof the Syrian revolution. The FSA had support fromboth the Western and the Gulf countries such as theU.S.A., U.K., France, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, amongothers. Over the course of the Syrian war and despitethe international backing, the FSA has spilt into manydifferent armed-groups, which unfortunately hasextremist Islamic roots and the fight against al-Assad
to them was merely to topple the miscreant Alawite-regime and to create an Islamic State (BBC13/12/2013).
From that point on, many fighters tied withone of the major militant groups, the al-Nusra front -a Jihadist group that joined the Syrian conflict at thebeginning of 2012-, while the remaining groups alliedwith Turkey, thereby aligning in its fight against theKurdish forces within Syria. Only a small percentage ofthe original FSA maintained following its primary prin-ciples of toppling the al-Assad regime to create ademocratic state with freedom of expression and civilrights. The religious- political division among the FSAfighting groups, as well as the uprising of extremistIslamic militias within Syria made it hard to distinguishfactions and their causes and goals (BBC13/12/2013).
The al-Nusra Islamic militant group wasdeclared a terrorist organization by the U.S. inDecember 2012 after carrying out a series of suicidebombing attacks and killing dozens of civilians. It istrue that both al-Nusra front and the later Islamic Stateof Syria and Iraq (ISIS) are branches of al-Qaeda, butthey operate as separate groups and do not engagewith one another (Gordon and Barnard 2012).
FOREIGN INTERFERENCE IN SYRIAWhat began as peaceful national protests against thegovernment escalated into a multi-sided armed inter-national funded conflict that has been fought betweenthe Syrian regime with its head Bashar al-Assad and itsallies -Russia, Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon- and theopposition factions on the Syrian ground, that arefunded and backed up by -Turkey, the United States,UK, France, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Seven years ofdevastating war turned Syria into a battlefield for mul-tiple conflicts driven either by regional advantages orthose of the world powers, each with their own agen-da. While the war is only getting deadlier and morecomplicated as time passes, it is safe to say that inter-national powers are determining Syria’s future outsideof the country’s borders.
To understand the nature and the multitudeof conflicts, one must analyze the international actorsinvolved as well as their motives for engaging in thiswar. Therefore, two categories can be identified: firstthe regional factors - and second global interests ofthe major world powers. Translated into the situationon the ground within Syria three intertwined conflictsand the involved players can be pointed out:
A) the Syrian regime backed by Russia and Iran vs. theanti-government rebel groups supported by the U.S.and its western allies;B) from 2015 on, the U.S. led military coalition vs. theIslamic State (ISIS);
C) the Turkish military operations against the SyrianKurdish militias with Syria.Each of these conflicts is contributing to deepening thestruggle and making a peaceful settlement whichcould end the war, impossible.
ISIS: foreign jihadist claiming a new caliphate betweenIraq and SyriaThe Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) beganits operations in Syria in 2013. The entity concen-trates its presence in the northern and eastern Syrianprovinces and has started with as many as 5.000
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jihadists that came from foreign origins. It has beenargued that ISIS cooperated with several oppositionrebel groups, as for example in capturing two militarybases which belong to the Syrian army. But on theother hand, the group committed many killingsagainst other competing Islamist militias, which leadto the worsening of the relationship between ISIS andother fighting groups (BBC 13/12/2013).
Outside of Syria ISIS gained recognition whenin 2015 the organization claimed to be responsible fora series of terrorist attacks across Europe. An interna-tional coalition was formed including U.S. as theleader, U.K., France, with the support of both Turkeyand Saudi Arabia with the purpose of carrying outairstrikes to defeat ISIS. In October, the SyrianDemocratic Forces (SDF) were created as an allianceto include both Kurdish and Arab fighting militiasagainst the Islamic State and to create a democratic,secular, and federal Syria, with the lead of the KurdishPeople’s Protection Unit (YPG) (Sheppard 2016).
The SDF received both funds and militarysupport from the U.S. led coalition and in August2016, Turkish troops entered the Syrian soil in coordi-nation with Turkish-aligned Syrian rebels, to fightagainst ISIS and to contain the Kurdish expansion innorthern Syria (Shaheen 24/08/2016).
Russia: keeping Al-Assad in power to protect itsgeostrategic interestsDuring the Cold War, Syria pledged allegiance to theSoviet bloc and therefore received economic aid,arms, military assistance and training from Russia andother former states within the Soviet Union. Syria heldan ideological resemblance to the Soviet Union espe-cially in its socialist economic plan and activating therole of the Communist Party in Syria’s political life(Library of Congress 2005:20).
Shortly after his military coup in 1970, theelder Hafez al-Assad visited Moscow seeking advoca-cy, funds, and weapons to secure his presidency (TheEconomist 30/09/2015). He consequently created anunbreakable longstanding bond with the Russianregime when, as part of their deal, in 1971 he builtthe sole Russian naval base on the Mediterranean Seain the Syrian port city of Tartus, and thus secured theRussian existence in the Middle East (Gardner 2012).The strong ties continued to exist when Bashar tookpower, especially as he expanded the Syrian-Russianweapons-deal and appointed Russia as his biggestsupplier of arms (The Economist 30/09/2015).
When the protests of the Arab Spring undersupport of western allied NATO-air strikes toppled theLibyan regime and its head Muammar Gaddafi in2011, Russia feared reducing its leverage in the Arabworld and considered the uprising against autocratsand their dictatorial regimes as an U.S. American leadconspiracy to gain power in the region, together withgenuinely fearing the increasing influence of Islamistgroups which have emerged in many Arab countries,which could spill over to the Russian Federation.Shortly after, President Putin started seeking thestrengthening of the Russian influence and henceturned into supporting its closest ally in the region, al-Assad to secure his regime (Rahman-Jones 2017).
If it is true that the Kremlin played a crucialrole in protecting al-Assad and his government, it isworth mentioning that the Russian involvement in Syriahas as well more to do with its role towards the west-ern world than with Syria itself. President Putin saw the
opportunity to bring Russia back into the roundtable ofglobal powers and to remind the western world ofRussia’s diplomatic influence and its indispensablerole in solving intricated political issues in the region(The Economist 30/09/2015).
Russia limited its interference in the first cou-ple of years of the conflict into supporting al-Assad byvetoing any attempts made by the UN Security Councilfor a military intervention led by the United Nationsagainst the Syrian regime. In September 2013, Russiaand the United States were engaged in negotiationtalks over a possible military strike against the Syrianregime in the light of the chemical attack carried outby the Syrian regime against its own people. As aresult, the American threats were withdrawn afterRussia -on behalf of al-Assad- agreed to surrender itschemical weapons (Borger et al. 2013).
It was only in October 2015 that Russia start-ed to engage in aggressive raids against oppositionfighting group within Syria. While Russia argued thatthese airstrikes are targeting the extremist Islamicorganization ISIS, US officials have revealed that thesestrikes were targeting the moderate rebels and anti-regime supporters, and in many cases even civilians(BBC 07/09/2018).
Since those airstrikes, al-Assad did not justreverse his losses, but from 2015 on expanded hisgains of the Syrian lands as well. Russia has providedthe regime with financial support and even moreimportant weapons, air-support, troops on theground, while parallel diplomatically represented theSyrian government in the UN peace-talks and negoti-ations with the Syrian opposition.
United States of America: topple the regime and gaininfluence in SyriaIn the early years of the revolution, the United Statessought to contain the conflict by advocating Bashar al-Assad to step down. Washington’s role was limited totraining and arming the ‘moderate’ Syrian rebelgroups on the ground, which led the fight to overthrowthe al-Assad regime (Pearson 2017). However, it mustbe noted that America’s intentions to terminate theSyrian government are still in question as the arma-ments were limited which left the opposition fighters ina constant struggle to settle the battles in their favor.
It was only in 2014 with the rise of the IslamicState that the U.S. led an international coalition ofnearly 60 countries and engaged in conductingairstrikes against the group and took responsibility tocease the use of chemical weapons by the Syrianregime against its people (The National14/04/2018).
Although the Obama administration consid-ered the use of chemical weapons a ‘red line’ whichrequires immediate action, the United States neverused force against the Syrian regime, but signed anagreement with Russia instead to destroy Syria’s stock-pile of those weapons and proved again that they arenot concerned about the Syrian people nor the rebelsfighting on the ground (Calamur 2018).
It is important to note that the al-Assadregime was accused of using chemical weaponsagainst Syrian civilians dozens of times, this act of vio-lation was faced with condemnation from the interna-tional community in 2013, 2017 and 2018 (al-Maghafi 2018).
Another major reason which pulled the U.S.deeper into the battlefields was its desire to contain the
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oldgrowing influence of Iran and to limit its regional and
international power by supporting its political and reli-gious opponents within Syria. Throughout the conflict,Iran played a major role in keeping the Al-Assadregime in power.
Iran: strengthen the axis between Iran and Hezbollahin LebanonAlthough Syria ostensibly is secular, its alliance withIran had religious and ideological aspects. As a matterof fact Syria’s Alawite sect was considered as part ofthe Shia sect in the 1970s, that is when Hafez al-Assadseized power and sought to establish an Alawite dom-inated government with the support of the Iranianregime, against the rule of the Sunni majority in theregion (Harvard Divinity School 2016: 11).
Syria is known to be Iran’s closest ally in theMiddle East since the Islamic revolution in 1979. Laterduring the Iraqi-Iranian war between 1980 and 1988,Syria was the only Arab country to stand explicitly byIran against the regime of Saddam Hussein. The tiesgrew tighter as both countries declared full commit-ment to form a ‘resistance front’ against Israel(Gelbart 2010:37-39).
The ongoing conflict between Iran and Israel,gave Syria’s strategic location a great value againstany possible Israeli attack on Iran, as well as havingthe possibility to arm Hezbollah in neighboringLebanon, which is Iran’s ultimate supporter in its waragainst Israel. Tehran’s involvement in Syria was sus-tained when Bashar inherited Syria’s presidency in2000, Iran and Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallahbecame the guardians of the regime and the Syrianland was transformed into an Iranian-like territory totransfer weapons to the fighting Shia militias,Hezbollah (Calamur 2018).
Since the beginning of 2011, Iran has sup-ported the Syrian government and its head al-Assadand aided the regime with funds, weapons, militarytraining, and intelligence divisions. The accumulatingwon-battles by the Islamic State and other oppositiongroups stoke serious fears on the regime’s ability tosustain its rule, Iran then intensified its interference andprovided troops on the ground including the eliteforce of the Iranian military, the Islamic RevolutionaryGuard Corps and Shiite foreign militias from Iraq,Afghanistan, and Pakistan. In addition to mobilizingand deploying Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon tofight against the Sunni terrorists. It is been argued thatIran, through its intervention in Syria, aims to create aShia-controlled land corridor which extends all theway from its land to reach Lebanon, through Syria andIraq (Pearson 2017).
The Iranians are in Syria to stay, theHezbollah ‘state within a state’ status in Lebanon isbeing replicated in Syria but by the Iranian proxieswhich in many areas forced out populations that donot support the Iranian intervention or do not belongto the Shiite sect. These acts have led and are leadingto a devastating demographic change within Syria(Alaaldin 2018).
Iraq joined Iran in supporting the al-Assadregime because of the rising fear of Sunni terroristgroups in the region. Iraq has militias fighting on theground as well as delivering Iranian arms and suppliesto the Syrian army.
Turkey: weaken a regional competitor and hinder thecreation of a semi-autonomous Kurdish region withinSyriaThe relationships between Turkey and Syria weretense even before the Syrian war mainly because ofthe alleged Syrian government’s support for theKurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and for matters relatedto the shared territories on the borders between thetwo countries and the clashes over the water of theEuphrates River (Library of Congress 2005:21).
The Syrian-Turkish ties improved in 2004 aspart of Erdogan’s plan to increase both military andeconomic cooperation with the Syrian regime. Soonafter the eruption of the protests in Syria, Turkey openlybacked up the Syrian opposition and presidentErdogan called for al-Assad to step aside. Ankara thenjoined the international coalition against the IslamicState and carried out many airstrikes as part of theU.S.-led coalition (Harvard Divinity School 2016:15).
Even though Turkey has supported the rebelssince the beginning of the conflict, it should be under-lined that the Turkish interest is focused on banningthe establishment of an independent Kurdish territoryin northern Syria, and thus Ankara used the Syrianrebels to fight its own war against the Kurdish militias.Turkey is also interested in terminating any efforts for aKurdish autonomy when the war settles. Ankaraargues that the Kurdish militias in Syria have ties withthe terrorist group PKK which carried many attacksagainst Turkey in the last decades (Almukhtar andWallace 2015).
The UN: mediating conflicts on the sidelinesThe U.S. and EU sanctions imposed on the Syrianregime and its associates since 2011 were deemedineffective for many reasons. The failure to put an endto al-Assad’s brutality could be attributed to the mili-tary and financial support he is receiving from theallies, but one could ascribe much blame on thehumanitarian mission led by the United Nations inSyria.
The regime’s involvement with the humanitar-ian mission started when it forced the UN Office forthe Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) tocentralize its work in the capital Damascus (Sparrow2018), and used its basic mandate of the UN GeneralAssembly Resolution 46/182, which states that (UnitedNations 1991): “humanitarian assistance should beprovided with the consent of the affected country” andthat “the affected State has the primary role in the ini-tiation, organization, coordination, and implementa-tion of humanitarian assistance within its territory.”Thus, the Syrian government assured its complete con-trol over the relief mission and its funds.
Despite the claim made by the UN that its aidprogram in Syria is designated to help the Syrian civil-ians, there have been many reports suggesting thatthis program is compromised and exploited to prop upthe regime that is responsible for the deaths of half amillion Syrians. Tens of millions of dollars is the worthof the contracts awarded by the UN and its agenciesto the regime’s closest circle of business partners andfamily (Hopkins and Beals 2016).
The World Health Organization (WHO) pro-vided the al-Assad regime with $30 billion designatedfor international humanitarian aid, however, these bil-lions are being used to overcome the sanctions impli-cations, as well as sponsor the regime’s war spending(Sparrow 2018).
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The UN mission awarded a considerable sumto individuals or companies that suffer the internation-al sanctions, as well as governmental institutions andnew-founded charities or shell companies: like the onechaired by Asmaa al-Assad, the president’s wife, andanother one run by his cousin and business partnerRami Makhlouf. While the UN declared that it is doingits best to oversee that the funds are well spent andreaching those in need, the organization is workinghand in hand with the dictator’s family whose con-cerns are far from helping the vulnerable citizens thathave been crushed by al-Assad’s killing machine forthe past seven years (Hopkins and Beals 2016).
The Guardian published in 2016 a detailedreport that exposes hundreds of lucrative contractswhich were granted since the launch of the UN mis-sion in 2011. Most notable was the $8.5m contractawarded by two UN agencies to a Syrian organizationset up by Asmaa al-Assad, named as Syria Trust char-ity, as well as $54m included in procurement docu-ments which show that the United Nation did businesswith at least another 258 Syrian companies that aredirectly linked to the al-Assad or those close to him(Hopkins and Beals 2016).
UN argues that its work with the Syrianregime is necessary and unavoidable in order to pro-vide relief to the Syrian civilians. This claim could betrue to some extent but the argument to be made hereis if this business of millions of dollars is actually in theinterest of the Syrian people at all. Another point is theagencies’ policy in prioritizing people who live in theregime-held areas and being unable to provide reliefto those living in the besieged opposition-controlledzones, who are in the greatest need.
THE SITUATION IN 2018: THE END OF THE REVO-LUTION AND MOST OF THE FIGHTINGWith the Russian and Iranian support, al-Assad isregaining both political control and major territorieshe had lost over the course of the conflict. His utmostgain was the fall of Aleppo in December 2016 whichwas achieved by Iranian and Afghani Shiite fighters.Al-Assad hailed this victory and considered it a criticalmoment in Syria’s history as it arguably secured thesurvival of his rule and regime (Shaheen15/12/2016).
There have been many peace talks betweenthe government and the opposition representatives toresolve the conflict but they have mainly failed. Themost famous were the Geneva peace talks in February2016 under the auspices of the UN for facilitating apeaceful political transition. However they weredeemed unsuccessful. Russia initiated more peacetalks in early 2017, in Astana the capital ofKazakhstan, including delegates from the Syrian gov-ernment, opposition leaders, and representatives ofboth Iran and Turkey, with the intention of discussingpolitical settlement in the post-conflict phase. Thenegotiations resulted in truce and cease-fire, but theywere violated soon after when the Syrian regime con-tinued to bomb rebel-held areas (Al Jazeera 2017).
By the end of 2018, Syria has returned inlarge parts under the control of the Syrian regime. Thecountry is in large regions within a condition of astandstill. The opposition on the ground has beenwidely defeated and its leftovers are concentrated in afew places in the north around the city of Idlib and inthe south near the Jordanian border. A defeat of theremaining armed groups seems inevitable. Iranian,
Russian and Hezbollah forces are still operating on theground conducting military operations to restore thepower of the Syrian regime on the entire country. Butwhat are the costs of the 7 years longing conflict,which started as a popular uprising resulting in a bru-tal civil war? To which extent are the national andinternational actors part of Syria’s future reconstruc-tion?
LEVELS OF DESTRUCTION DURING THE CONFLICTIn the period between 2012 - 2018 the Syrian civil warcaused widespread and extended levels of physicaland humanitarian destruction throughout Syria. Arecent World Bank study summarizes the major chal-lenges regarding the physical destruction, economiclosses, and social fragmentation (Batrawi 2018:2-3):
• 7% of housing stock destroyed and 20% damaged;
• 50% of health infrastructure is damaged and 16%destroyed;
• huge economic losses as for example GDP loss of63 % between 2011 - 2016 while the country needs around 200 Billion $ for reconstruction funding;
• a decline of business activities - not only withinurban areas but especially within the important agri-cultural sector caused by the lack of supply of electric-ity, fuel;• mass unemployment: 75% of Syrian workforce notofficially employed; 60% of Syrians live in "extreme"poverty, while prices for basic goods, food, suppliesincreased heavily over the past years;
• 31% of the Syrian population are registered asrefugees outside of Syria and estimations conclude thesame number of people is displaced within the coun-try.
These points represent a great challenge and it is notclear how fast the reconstruction process can returnlive to normal, even though the regime is back in con-trol of large areas and even though the conflict cameto an end in most regions of Syria at the end of 2018.
CURRENT EFFORTS OF RECONSTRUCTIONSo far reconstruction efforts are limited, and the coun-try is within its own Zero Hour. Still the process ofshaping Syria’s future has already started behind thepublic scenes. Exemplary of this process is the“Damascus International Fair”, which was held in2017 to serve as a platform for national and interna-tional actors who will be directly and indirectlyinvolved in the planning and reconstruction process ofSyria. Countries loyal to the regime as Russia, Iran,China, and others were primarily invited, while Russiawas hosted as the prime partner for future reconstruc-tion. Even before this conference since 2016 recon-struction deals between Russia and Syria have beenmade worth approximately 850 Million Euros in fund-ing. Currently, the Syrian regime is independent ofconsultation or funding by the EU or US. The onlynotable UN agency involved in the process is UN-Habitat (Batrawi 2018:7-9).
Parallel to funding efforts the Syrian govern-ment approached the reconstruction on a legislativelevel with implementing a new law called „decree 66”,allowing the government to evict land and buildings of
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oldits residents despite ownership rights. This lays the
foundation for the removal of damaged buildings andinfrastructure to create the opportunity of renewal andreconstruction, disregarding inhabitants needs andwills. The removed residents are paid a relatively smallmonthly compensation for their losses but still have noright of objection. The decree 66 is for now only legal-ly binding in the Damascus Governatorate, but itcould be used as a blueprint for other places andcommunities, where the redevelopment of entire quar-ters and districts should happen without the need ofdealing with existing unharmed buildings (Batrawi2018:7-8).
RECONSTRUCTION BUT FOR WHOM?The reconstruction of Syria’s destroyed cities is notonly essential to achieving recovery of the Syrian soci-ety; it is a useful tool in the regime’s hand as wellbecause it secures its dominance over the country andprevents any potential unrest. It was argued by Swiss-Syrian activist Joseph Daher that the regime’s recon-struction strategy comprises two main goals, whichcould be summarized as (Osseiran 2017): a) increas-ing the economic and political ties to influentialwealthy Syrian families, in order to strengthen theregime’s supporter base b) re-shaping the social struc-ture in former opposition-held areas, in order to pre-vent future uprising. To accomplish that, al-Assad rein-forced the regime’s known policy of ‘divide and reign’.
A key issue for the regime is financing thereconstruction process since its monetary reserveshave vanished and its debt levels have increased forthe continuation of the war. The new projects dependheavily on private sector investment as well as foreignfinancial credit aid. To move privatization of publicassets forward, the regime created in 2015/2016 aneconomic scheme based on the model of Public-Private-Partnership (PPP). Joseph Daher argues thatthe legal basis has been created- through severalpresidential decrees such as Decree 19 of May 2015-that allowed governmental and administrative bodiesto create private investment companies. Afterward,Law No. 5 which is known as the Public-PrivatePartnership Law was implemented in January 2016 toenable private companies to co-own and managepublic assets (Osseiran 2017). These two steps creat-ed the ‘legal foundation’ for a long-lasting relation-ship between the Syrian regime and the influentialaffiliated-businessmen and their profiting companies.
Privatization and real estate profits becamefundamental aspects of the post-war in Syria. The al-Assad regime made sure through its national urbanpolicies to polish its economic image and to demon-strate that the development projects are still evolvingdespite the ongoing war. In tracking patterns of theaftermath destruction during the conflict, one couldconclude that the regime targeted certain parts of thecountry not only because they were in the opposition-held areas, but for achieving certain high-end projectsonce the war is concluded, as its opponents arestripped from their land rights and are replaced by itsloyal supporters.
THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE BABA AMRNEIGHBORHOOD IN HOMSAs a case in point is the former rebellious Sunni resi-dential neighborhood of Baba Amr in the city of Homswhich was razed to the ground due to constantshelling by the regime between 2012-13. While the
neighborhood didn’t pose any military value to theregime, the examination of the destruction patternsrevealed that they were somehow compatible with a2010 redevelopment initiative called ‘Homs Dream’which was supposed to be realized in the central dis-tricts of the city, including Baba Amr area to replace itshigh-density population with skyscrapers and shop-ping malls (The Syria Institute and Pax 2017:18-19).
The project was rejected by most Homs’s res-idents because it evidently didn’t include any Alawite-populated neighborhoods and was then thought of asa strategic-cover used by the Syrian regime to changethe city demographically (Solomon 2017; Wimmen2016). These plans aimed to (The Syria Institute andPax 2017:49): “redistribution of the population tostrengthen the economic and physical control of thecity by the pro-government Alawite community.”
‘Homs Dream’ project was led by then city-mayor Iyad Ghazal and comprised since 2009 demo-lition, land seizures and forced evictions of residents.The project was abandoned prior to 2011 because oflocal opposition but had paved the way for anotherproject in 2014 formulated by the new governor Talalal-Barazi to reconstruct Baba Amr in accordance withthe pre-war plans. With that being said: “the conflicthas given the government the opportunity and meansto implement, accelerate, and expand pre-war demo-graphic changes goals” (The Syria Institute and Pax2017:49).
Like its preceding project, the new calls forthe construction of luxurious high-rise towers andshopping malls replacing the destroyed poor neigh-borhoods and displacing their former residents whichcan never afford to return. Yazigi states that:“Whenever there have been these expropriation pro-jects in Syria, compensation has been extremely low. Itis a very clear dispossession of these people”, he con-tinues saying: “this is a transfer of public assets, tax-free, to private companies — and it will be a big boostto regime cronies” (Quoted in Solomon 2017)
Notably, Homs’s new governor, al-Barazi is aregime-affiliated businessman who owns several pri-vate companies and new established real-estate onesdesignated especially for post-war reconstruction inpartnership with Bashar al-Assad and Rami Makhlouf(Naame Shaam 2015:33)
While plans and funds are being developedand organized by both domestic and foreign donors,Baba Amr remains a ghost town and its originalinhabitants are not allowed back. The fate of BabaAmr and many other ‘opposition’ neighborhoods with-in Homs is in the hands of the Syrian regime whoapparently won’t tolerate their ‘betrayal’ and supportfor the opposition, which can be clearly detectedthrough the new redevelopment projects which aim toexpel the old population and replace it with a new oneof his supporters and ethnic sect.
INTERNAL RECONSTRUCTION AND RESETTLEMENTPOLICY: LAW 10Since the beginning of the war, the Syrian governmentpassed many laws that restrict the displaced popula-tion from claiming what was once theirs: propertyrights, business statuses and so on. The Syrian regimepassed in April 2018 a new Law No. 10 concerningthe reconstruction and reorganizing of destroyedareas throughout the country. According to this law,people need to prove their ownership of property byappearing in person with the legal documents within
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30 days. This law has been widely criticized as it con-tributes to the refugees’ crisis: many Syrians whooppose al-Assad have fled the country and may neverreturn home as they will face detention, and thereforewill lose their properties claim for good (Fisk 2018).
This confiscation of property by the Syrianregime is highly debatable: it serves as a tool in the al-Assad’s hands to write a new social order in the areaswhich rebelled against him by appointing a high per-centage of them for his supporters. This can be detect-ed in the suburbs of Damascus where seized proper-ties were given to the Iranian militias and their fami-lies, in a clear demonstration of the regime’s strategy:rewriting Syria’s future using planned demo-graphicchange (Haugbolle 2018).
Human Rights Watch warned that law No. 10(Human Rights Watch 29/052018): “poised to con-fiscate and redevelop residents’ property without dueprocess or compensation,” as “The proceduralrequirements in the law coupled with the political con-text in which it operates create significant potential forabuse and discriminatory treatment of displaced resi-dents and residents from areas previously held by anti-government groups. In addition, several of the Syrianlocal land registries have been destroyed during theconflict, and only 50 percent of Syrian land was offi-cially registered even before the war.”
THE ROAD TO RECONSTRUCTIONSyria has entered a new phase of conflict immediatelyafter the city of Aleppo was recaptured by the regimeand its allies in late 2016. While nowadays most ofSyria’s major cities are under the government’s controland its Russian and Iranian partners, northern Syria isstill partly being controlled by the SDF and its U.S.American allies.
True that Russia and Iran are the regime’sbiggest supporters, it is important to draw attentionaround the different agendas of these two countriesand the means they are employing to reach theirgoals. While Iran is fully committed to achieving a vic-tory for the Syrian regime that would assure its geopo-litical security, Russia seems to be more interested inshaping Syria’s political and economic future (Stratfor04/01/2017).
Having secured its presence in the region,and invested a considerable amount of funds in mili-tary, financial and diplomatic support to the Syriangovernment, Russia is looking to recover its capitalsand securing the permanence of the al-Assad regime,through a manifold plan for reconstructing the country.With an estimated $400 billion dollar needed for thereconstruction process, Russia is arguably invitingother countries such as the U.S.A., EU member statesand China to contribute with funds as well as creatingthe future image of Syria (Stratfor 21/08/2018).
It should be noted that the Russia advocacyfor reconstruction is not exclusively aiding in stabilizingthe country, nor making profits but more about boost-ing Russia’s indispensable position in the Middle Eastand deciding Syria’s future in front of the Westernworld.
Moscow negotiated the returning of theSyrian refugees as part of its plan to convince both theEU countries and the United States in its reconstructionplan, however, both have expressed unwillingness toworking directly with the Syrian regime and its head al-Assad.
THE ROLE OF THE UNITED NATIONS IN THERECONSTRUCTION PROCESSAs the war boils down to an end, Russia and the Syrianregime are pleading for international funds to recon-struct the cities destroyed over seven years of war. Theattention of the regime and the international commu-nity is focused on reconstructing the devastated city ofAleppo which was divided between the governmentand the rebel forces since late 2012 and ended upunder the al-Assad regime’s control four years later.Being Syria’s economic capital before the war,Aleppo’s reconstruction is of high significancebecause it determines the way many engaged powersare being balanced in a post-conflict Syria. Reportshave revealed that the United Nations have signed offa deal with the al-Assad regime to rebuild Aleppo. TheUN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) collaborated with theSyrian Ministry of Local Administration andEnvironment for planning the reconstruction phase(Beals 2017).
The rebuilding and repopulating plans arebiased as the priorities of the reconstruction are thehistoric old city and the regime-held areas. The dis-placed population from Eastern Aleppo that fledbefore the falling of the city to al-Assad forces, is notconsidered and not even allowed back in the city. Thereconstruction process of East Aleppo started as theSyrian government released a plan which reveals 15areas that are considered priorities for populationreturn. Soon after, the UN carried out an assessmentof security and refugees’ needs in those areas andmapped over 8 ‘Shelter Clusters’ in coordination withthe al-Assad’s plan. The rebuilding resources werefocused on three areas as part of a “multi-sector” pilotproject (Beals 2017). The process might seem promis-ing to many, but it is important to note that some of theeight neighborhoods identified as priorities in both theregime’s and the UN’s plans are not located inEastern Aleppo but in the Western part of the citywhich remained under the al-Assad’s control through-out the conflict.
The aftermath of the conflict is not limited tothe physical loss of properties within the old or theEastern side of the city but includes the damage doneto up to 30.000 property records which weredestroyed entirely during the war. Without theserecords, residents of those areas will not be able toprove their rights and ownership and will be facingpermanent displacement consequently (Beals 2017).
UNHCR announced in its Shelter monthlypublication-September 2017, as part of its SyriaHumanitarian Response Plan, the initiation of ahumanitarian program named as Rebuild SyriaReconstruction Program (RSRP) in coordination withRebuild and Relief International (RRI) which is aGerman-based NGO operating in partnership withUNHCR, German Humanitarian assistance, UN-Habitat and many more to protect the rights ofrefugees from both Iraq and Syria (UNHCR 2017).
PRI started its mission in Syria and particularlyin Aleppo in June 2017, the German NGO claims tobe neutral and not siding by the al-Assad regime as itssole motive is to help the displaced Syrians. But itstransparency has been suspected because it is carryingout its work on the Syrian soil with the Syria Trust forDevelopment (STD) and its founder Asma al-Assad.
In late 2014 UN agencies like UNDP andUNHCR expressed interest in rehabilitating and re-constructing some destroyed neighborhoods within the
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oldcity of Homs, Syria’s third largest city. Their efforts were
supported by donor states and were carried out inpartnership with the Syrian government. The selectionof the neighborhoods and the nature of the projectswere directed by the Syrian authorities and raisedmany ethical concerns regarding the transparency ofthese agencies and how the Syrian regime was manip-ulating them to fulfill its plans in depriving its oppo-nents of their rights in the city. None of the displacedpopulation has been consulted regarding their prop-erties and their rights were completely ignored duringthe execution of the plans (The Syria Institute and Pax2017).
CONCLUSIONAfter years of oppression and social injustice, theSyrian people revolted in 2011 against the rulingregime of Bashar al-Assad, who succeeded his father.They both kept the country suppressed for more thanfour decades. With no end in sight, al-Assad reign waskept intact by the support of the close allies Russia,Iran, and the Lebanese Hezbollah. The foreign inter-ference within the conflict in Syria reached a new leveland the current Russian and Iranian troops on theground could be considered an occupational force,keeping the regime’s governmental and socio-eco-nomic structures stable.
The Syrian regime and its allies have alreadyformulated conditions and laws which the reconstruc-tion projects should fall under, those terms when real-ized would have a huge impact on Syria’s future: theywould assure the total supremacy of the al-Assad’sfamily over the country; prop up the regime with finan-cial stocks to recover its war losses and generate mil-lions in profits; contribute to the pre-war plans ofdemographic change and displacement; and wouldput Syria’s capital in the hand of a network of regime-affiliated businessmen and other emerging warlords.
The proposed reconstruction project in thecity of Homs is considered a blueprint to be imple-mented in other cities, especially in Aleppo where theopposition forces achieved some remarkable victories.The regime is indeed using reconstruction to inflict apenalty on those who opposed it: either by implement-ing new laws or even following old plans, the future ofSyria’s cities does not seem to be so bright.
The Syrian conflict is far from over and onlygetting more complex as time passes, it is true thatmilitary battles came to an end in many regions withinthe country – but the crisis is just taking another turnregarding the future economic, social and healthinfrastructure, that desperately needs to be rebuilt notonly for the population within Syria but regarding themillions of Syrian refugees outside the country as well.
The international community which portraysits involvement to be merely humanitarian has failedto find common ground for a political solution or toprovide the Syrian people with a perspective of a bet-ter democratic Syria. The same patterns of the corrupt-ed and shadowy governmental style of the al-Assadregime, which lead to the uprising in 2011 are justbeing repeated. Not only have these patterns emergedwithin the reconstruction processes of the Syrian citiesthat are being led by prominent regime members, butin the relief missions of different U.N. agencies, whoseclose financial ties to the regime have been revealedby several international reports as well.
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Author(s):
Nura IboldResearch Associate at the Brandenburg University ofTechnology Cottbus-Senftenberg, GermanyEmail: [email protected]
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Introduction
The Syrian conflict is entering its eighth year. With nofund for reconstruction in the horizon, coupled with thelack of any peace deal, the Syrian government hasbeen designing neoliberal reconstruction policies thattend to be socially unjust, economically exclusive andpolitically driven. The recently issued legislativereforms imply a clear shift of the state’s role as nolonger the sole provider. The state becomes an eco-nomic-driven actor which aims at achieving profit inpartnership with a biased private sector. With theabsence of fair participatory processes or freedom ofexpression, coupled with the uncertainty the countrystill experiences, this shift would probably do moreharm than good for Syria’s citizens and cities.
Damascus and Urban InjusticeDamascus is spread across 10,500 hectares of landand as of 2014, was home to a population of 1.75million with an additional 2.85 million living inGreater Damascus (CBS, 2005; OCHA, 2014).Damascus accommodates people of Arabic, Kurdish,Assyrian, Circassian, and Armenian ethnicities andhas welcomed waves of internally displaced Syriansand other refugees from regional conflicts (Slim andTrombetta, 2014). In such a diverse context, pairedwith a rapid population growth, urbanization and ruralexodus, and inadequate planning tools in variousforms of contestation and division across its differenturban geographies have emerged (Ahsan, 1984).Socially speaking, class disparities, religious prejudiceand ethnicity have been drivers of further polarisation(Ahsan, 1984; IRFR, 2011). Spatially speaking, 40%of the population lives in informal settlements referredto as ‘zones of collective contraventions’ where landtenure and/or building regulations violate Damascus’
master plan (GoS, 2010; Clerc, 2014). Additionally,Damascus has peri-urban areas, close suburbs thatare neither within the urban realm of governance norwithin the rural one. This refers to Greater Damascus.
Like most Syrian cities, Damascus has experi-enced varied dimensions of socio-economic fragmen-tation and social injustice, which in turn, have sparkeddifferent manifestations of urban contestation (Slimand Trombetta, 2014). Stemming from Soja’s (2010)concept of the inevitable correlation between spatialand social justice, exploring the trajectory of injusticein Damascus requires an in-depth investigation of howinjustices are socially embedded in spaces, and howinjustice produces division that [re]produces furtherinjustice (Soja, 2000; Marcuse, 2009; Gaffikin andMorrissey, 2011). Mapping these injustices in todayDamascus from the perspective of binary oppositionsembedded in space, however, is profoundly determin-istic in nature, particularly considering that Soja(2010) critiques how binary categorisations oversim-plify the overriding complexity within the urban condi-tions. Therefore, investigating urban injustices withinDamascus’s current construction projects in a contextof uncertainty attempts to reveal in which context thesebinaries are produced, and acknowledge the differ-ences and disparities even within each side.
Throughout its modern trajectory, Damascushas experienced many political shifts which haveplayed major roles in changing the production ofmulti-layered injustice. It can be argued that the afore-mentioned socio-spatial fragmentation has beenmostly reflected through multi-layered dimensions,including, but not limited to, irrational distinctionamong inhabitants, periphery-core dichotomy, andexclusionary treatments of informality through oppres-sive planning policies. Such dimensions have collec-tively emphasised the socio-economic fragmentation
Nour Harastani, Edwar Hanna AbstractWith no fund in the horizon for large-scale reconstruction in Syria due to the absence of any political deal, the Syriangovernment has been designing and implementing neoliberal reconstruction policies that are socially unjust, econom-ically exclusive and politically driven. The focus of this paper is on the latest urban policies that have been set regarding reconstruction since 2011, suchas Decree 66/2012 and Law 10/2018. It also looks at the extent these legislations are negatively affecting Syrian cit-izens and cities. The paper explores the impact of the current reconstruction policies on the Syrian citizens starting fromremoving people from their home without adequately compensate them, dispossessing people of property rights,advancing the agenda of external ‘developers’ and in many other ways showcasing the mentality of leveraging urbanreconstruction as a powerful political tool in the conflict.
Keywords: Reconstruction policy, Conflict, Displacement, Law 10, Decree 66, Syria, Damascus, Marota City, Informalsettlements.
THE LATERAL CONFLICT OF URBAN PLANNING INDAMASCUS.
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which was one major cause in sparking the currentconflict.
Informality and [Re]construction Mazzeh today is a mixed-use quarter in the westernpart of Damascus. It contains diverse typologiesincluding high-income villas, middle-income residen-tial buildings and low-income informal settlements,military social housing and cooperative housingschemes. Mazzeh accommodates most internationalorganizations, embassies, ministries, and one of thepresidential palaces. This gives the quarter a strategicstanding in Damascus. In Ecochard’s Master Plan,Mazzeh was designed as the central area ofDamascus, while the informal settlements in southeastMazzeh were categorised as an ‘internal agrarianzone’ (Wifstrand and Jia, 2009; Verdeil, 2012). Therapid urbanisation of Damascus over the last decadesalong with massive rural-urban migration put greatpressure on housing in the city. The desirable locationof Mazzeh has increased the number of informal set-tlements on agrarian land due to shortage of afford-able housing. Within Mazzeh there is one particularinformal neighbourhood called Al-Razi. Al-Razi con-tains 6733 informal units in four main neighbour-hoods: Al-Ikhlas, Al-Moustafa, Al-Farouk and Al-Basatin. The informal areas span close to 215hectares, with 55% of the land being used for informalsettlements and 45% for agrarian purposes(Harastani, 2016).
The Damascus Governorate developed amaster plan 2009- 2012 (Clerc V. 2014). The plandealt with informal settlements in Damascus by defin-ing whether such settlements should be reconstructedor upgraded. This master plan has been put on holdbecause of the conflict situation. On September 18,2012, Decree 66 was issued by the government to ini-tiate the first and the second implementation phases ofreconstruction in the so- called ‘post-conflict recon-struction’. This decree defines two zones with collec-tively 1094 hectares in southern Damascus:
Zone (1): The first implementation zone (214 hectare):Al Razi neighbourhood.
Zone (2): The second implementing zone (880hectare): Kafersouseh, Al-Qadam and Daraya.(Fi1)
Damascus Governorate has adhered to the decree 66and developed the master plan (Fi3). This new masterplan was published in October 2012 and hasincreased the percentage of informal settlements onthe list to be demolished from 40% to 60% (as com-pared to the previous master plan) (Clerc V. 2014).The government worked tirelessly on circulatingdecree 66 through media channels, radio, and thenational newsletter. The project concentrates on thereconstruction of Al-Razi through urban schemes thatcontain residential towers, business offices, modernschools, and other such modern facilities. Officiallythis plan is meant to achieve social justice along withperformance efficiency and financial returns, Themain principles have been claimed by the DamasceneGovernor in a series of TV interviews: “Three mainprinciples have been fundamentally taken intoaccount in this project : social Justice; the high per-formance of implementation; and financial returns forDamascus governorate which allow sustaining ser-vices provision and initiating new projects” (Hanna,2018).
Fig 2: Al-Razi Master Plan. Source: DamascusGovernorate
The so-called ‘Post Conflict Reconstruction’ project isgeo-strategic in nature, and contains a politicalmotive led by powerful actors. A senior security officialin the government proudly declared that “partialdemolitions of pro-rebel neighbourhoods in andaround Damascus are a key element of an ambitiouscounterinsurgency plan now unfolding” (Dagher S.2012:8). Having said this, the master plan of thereconstruction process is apparently being used as anexcuse to embark on further deconstruction, in orderto make political and financial interests taking advan-tage of the current conflict.
Afterwards, the Damascus Governorate start-ed a documentation process according to the Articles5-8 from decree 66 to convert the informal units’ area
Figure 2. Al-Razi Master Plan. Source: DamascusGovernorate.
Figure 1. The first and the second implementation phasesof reconstruction defined by the Decree 66. Source:Damascus Governorate
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into a share scheme1 to define owners’ rights in therehousing schemes. However, this process is sensitiveand challenging for both inhabitants and the gover-norate since only inhabitants with verified land tenurewill be compensated in the rehousing schemes. Twomain problematic issues emerged in this case: the firstconcerns how property value would be fairly convertedinto a share scheme, while the second questions theeligibility of inhabitants to access this scheme and whois choosing the criteria.
Eligibility Criteria: Tool of ExclusionDecree 66 defies what was stated earlier in a previousdecree enacted in 19752, that any cemented informalunit has the right to compensation regardless of theownership status. The previous decree preserved thetenure security which has since, completely vanished.Decree 66 classifies the inhabitants in terms of theirland tenure and designates them to one of four cate-gories (Fi3). The table (1) shows that only legal tenantsand owners of the informal units who built on theirland have the right to the rehousing scheme whilepeople who don’t own the land or only have agrarianland are not entitled to be compensated.
The table (1) shows inhabitants’ rights to the rehousingschemes regarding their land tenure according toArticles 43-44 from Decree No.66. Source: Hanna,2016.
Additionally, the government limited compen-sation schemes to people who have been living in theirhouses during the documentation process, and whoremain until the destruction process takes place. Byarbitrarily limiting who is included, the government isable to exclude inhabitants who have fled their housesdue to the shelling and attacks (Al-Sabban B. 2015).Moreover, the rent compensation given by the govern-ment would not enable an average resident to affordeven a small apartment in the adjacent areas, espe-cially as Damascus has been experiencing a severehousing crisis due to the number of people internallydisplaced by the conflict. In many interviews, inhabi-tants raised concerns that the annual amount for rentwould only suffice to cover a maximum of six months,and this is only possible in suburbs located far outsidethe city centre. Despite their concerns, nothing haschanged although such discriminatory compensationin this kind of project is remarkably undervalued andis largely considered to be unfair (Clerc V. 2014).
The problem of decree 66 is that it deals with
informality as if this was the problem without address-ing the systemic political shortcomings that led to itsoccurrence. Along with the shortage of affordablehousing, access to land tenure was a big issue in wit-nessing the phenomena of informality in Damascus(Wifstrand & Jia 2009; Verdeil E. 2012). Therefore,designing a scheme that classifies the inhabitantsbased on their land status, is an exclusionary processby nature.
Decree 66 also ignores the complexity ofinformal settlements where the informal unit is not onlyused as house, but also to provide income generationand economic opportunities (Fi4). Instead, the neolib-eral reconstruction scheme adapted by Decree 66deals with the land as an absolute cadastral map,ignoring the previous socio-economic dimension ofthe informal neighbourhood.
b. Property Redistribution: Tool of EvictionThe politics of property in informal settlements is notlimited to fixed individual ownership, it includes familyproperty, communal and even undefined property.Thus, centralising the value of property over other fac-tors, particularly in the context of informal settlements,excludes people who don’t have official, or state-rec-ognized evidence of ownership (Blomley N. 2004,Fawaz M. 2014). This is what happened in Al-Razisince the designed schemes challenge the politics ofthe informal units, their right to exist, and residents’right to the unit in the first place. The schemes alsoignore the land’s area and the inhabitants’ income.
The share scheme of decree 66 has alsoplayed a factor rendering the reconstruction project inan exclusionary way that used the claims of prosper-ous economic interests to justify a systematic processof eviction and gentrification. The share schemedefines the conversion rate as [1] qasba3 values[2,381,940] share4. According to this, informal unitswill be compensated based on their house area that isconverted into shares. The residential towers in thenew master plan contain three types of apartmentscategorised by surface, namely 70, 90, or 120 squaremeters. The smallest apartment -at 70 square metersaccording to the government’s rate- costs about
Figure 3. The different categories of land tenure proposedby Decree no.66 ©Syrbanism
Figure 4. The different dimensions of an informal plot to itsinhabitant, and how its value would be marginalized andlost in the process of Decree no.66 ©Syrbanism
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[7,000,000] of shares. Damascus’s governor hasdeclared that 25% of the informal units’ inhabitantshave less than [1,000,000] shares (Al-Sabban B.2015). This means that 25% of Al-Razi inhabitantshave two options, either to buy 6 times the shares ofwhat they have in order to afford the smallest apart-ment, or to sell their shares and move out of the area.The share scheme, although presented in a sociallyjust plan of reconstruction is in fact being implement-ed as a masked tool of eviction and gentrification.
Moreover, due to cruel inflation in the country(Slim H, and Trombetta L. 2014), the qasba priceshave increased about 10 times in the last few years(Table 2). This is what the governor of Damascuscalled the invaluable financial returns for owners as aprosperous aspect of the project (Al-Sabban B. 2015).However, since most of Al-Razi people cannot affordthis, the claimed prosperity aspect, can be argued,has worsened the possibility of buying shares and leftevacuation as the only viable option for most of Al-Razi’s remaining inhabitants.This table (2) shows the increase in qasba prices in Al-Razi over the last ten years. Source: Author based onTV interview with Besher Al-Sabban, the governor ofDamascus in 21-August-2015 (Hanna, 2016)
Having said this, it appears that the govern-ment has developed a neoliberal reconstructionscheme that deals with the project as an absolutecadastral map, ignoring the socio-economic dimen-sions of the previous neighbourhood. Through thisneoliberal reconstruction scheme, the government isconducting exclusionary projects that will be used as atool to maintain injustice. As a result, more and morepeople will be left homeless, and also the morphologyof the space will be altered into a place devoid of itshistory, increasing the polarity of social classification,and reinforcing contestation and division within thecity.
National-scale reconstruction Recently, in April 2018, the Syrian government issuedLaw no.10 that allows “regeneration master plans” forany area in Syria when only a feasibility study of thearea is provided by the local administration unit andapproved by the Ministry of Local Administration. TheLaw no.10 was issued based on Law no.107/2011
and Decree no.66/2012. While the former focuses onlocal governance and its definitions in Syria, the latterdeals with the reconstruction of informal settlements inspecific areas in Western Damascus. Law no.10 there-fore is meant to endorse local governance in recon-struction processes in both formal and informal set-tings. Yet, it still centralises all decisions in the hand oflocal administration units, which don’t have capaci-ties, experiences or resources for these large-scaleprojects.
The scheme introduced in the Law no.10 issimilar to the Decree no.66 which transforms the fixedownership status of inhabitants -if existed- into sharesin a collective ownership of the selected area.Shareholders can get rehousing or compensation, byeither registering for an apportioned plot, joining ajoint company, selling the shares voluntarily or in apublic auction via specific procedures that are compli-cated, non-participatory and not fair in essence (Fi6)5.At national level, the Law no.10 deals with informalsettlements as formal, and thus creates the possibilityof displacement of a large number of informal resi-dents due to the limited value of shares in informal set-tlements in comparison to formal settings. On top ofthat, the law states that citizens relinquish 20% of thevalue of their properties in favour of the local author-ities, under the pretext of providing services in return,which makes people’s chances of getting rehousing inthe new schemes lower.
According to Law no.10, the local adminis-tration unit (LAU) decides whether their area needs tobe reconstructed or not, supervises the inhabitants’registration process to choose an apportioned plot inthe selected area and chooses the plot itself on theirbehalf. The LAU can also decide on behalf of the peo-ple according to their shares value on what optionsthey should go for. Under specific circumstances theycan also put the shares into a public auction. The lawcentralises all decisions in the hands of local adminis-tration units, without any consideration for the incapa-bility of the LAUs in dealing with large scale projects interms of resources, staff or even experience.Corruption and clientelism play a major role in theway of which the units are selected and elected by tak-ing into account their affiliations and the role theyoffered during the conflict. This will affect people’srights and participation in the context of uncertaintywhich Syria experiences at the moment.
Two problematic clauses have been includedin the Law no.10 which challenge Syrian urban identity
Figure 6. The different options proposed by Law no.10 toshareholder to get compensation of their ownership©Syrbanism
Figure 5. The variation of scale ©Syrbanism
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and the right of all Syrians to participate. The formeris clearly evident where the law states that selecting thetargeted area depends only on the economicturnovers of the projects neglecting all the social andcultural aspects that are integral to these [ancient]Syrian cities and not taking into account the complex-ity and the difficulty of the process which exceeds theaverage citizen capacity. The private sector has theonly major role in shaping the new identity andmonopolising the market.
The second concern comes from the circum-stance of having more than 6 million refugees outsidethe country. According to the law’s procedure, theyare unable to claim their property due to the lack ofaccess to their documents, or the impossibility to pro-vide a proof of ownership or even certify their proofs.Besides having this as property rights issue, it alsoleads to total exclusion and isolation for the Syriandiaspora to any reconstruction projects that might takea place sooner or later.
Unlike Decree 66, Law 10 could be appliedin any Syrian city, town or even neighbourhood,whether it has been destroyed during the conflict ornot. These places did not lose only houses, facilities orinfrastructure but also lost their inhabitants who havememories and stories of their areas. Those inhabitantswho had to flee the country seeking refuge have alsothe right to participate in shaping their cities andreclaiming their memories. Any just reconstructionagenda should definitely consider rebuilding the mem-ories which shape the city’s identity rather than justrebuilding houses and infrastructure. Most of therefugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) todayare aware of the condition of their property - whetherit is damaged, destroyed, or occupied by others.However, the presence of the new legislative frame ofreconstruction does not make them confident to returnhome or even take efforts to claim ownership due toraising doubts about being able to.
The Challenges of Law 10The danger to heritage and cultureLaw 10 neglects all the social and cultural aspects thatare integral to the Syrian cities by stating the targetedarea of reconstruction depends only on the economicturnovers of the projects in this area.
The challenge of lack of accessMost refugees and IDPs are aware of about the con-dition of their property - whether it is damaged,destroyed, or occupied by others. Based on the survey,this does not make them confident to return home oreven think efforts to claim ownership after they haveestablished a new life in their host countries as they donot have any access to their property.
The challenge of timeIt takes a long time to process cases which discouragerefugees and IDPs to proceed with the process.6Large-scale HLP restitution program funding is veryproblematic for a recovering country in which com-pensating people or rehousing them would be chal-lenging.
The challenge of evidenceLaw 10 has specific procedures related to claimingownership of a property which are exclusionary andnot feasible for more than 5.5 million refugees living
abroad. Although it is difficult to regenerate ownershipevidence for people who lost it during the conflict, it isstill doable for people who have their property regis-tered in the Land cadastre in Syria. Yet, only a few areprocessed if HLP rights were held under customary,tribal, or other form of informal tenure7 but withoutthe collective pressure needed to secure tenure.Refugees and IDPs can have a significant amount ofvalid evidence, but this evidence is under threat of loseor neglect over time during resettlement due to thelack of awareness of its r value as evidence. Prolongedresettlement causes the losing of informal or unrecog-nised evidence which could help the people in theirclaims – such as intimate knowledge, photos, storiesfrom elderly people and neighbours. All this evidencedisappears during the long time of healing. Therefore,evidence collection should definitely start before it islost.
The challenge of local government administrationLaw 10 centralises all decisions in the hands of localadministration units, which don’t have the capacity,experience or resources for these large-scale projects.The latest reconstruction Law 10/2018 focuses ondecentralised reconstruction projects on the nationallevel following the framework of Decree 107/2011that defines the local administration law. This decreeoutlines the definitions and goals of administrativeunits as governorates, cities, towns and municipalities,with each unit having an elected local council. Thetasks of these local councils cover the areas of urbanplanning, industry, agriculture, trade, education,tourism, transport, services, and so forth. In a way, itpaves the way to promote decentralisation, to enablelocal councils to execute development plans, toincrease financial revenues for local councils, toimprove society at the local level and facilitate servicesfor citizens8. The implication of this decree is thatowners with property outside of where they are regis-tered (civil registration) have no right to be part of thelocal administration unit decision-making processesabout their properties and the neighbourhood recon-struction plans where their property is located. Thesevoters in some areas compose less than 10% of inhab-itants and are the only ones who can vote and havetheir interests represented and grievances heard. Conclusion
The Syrian conflict has resulted in more than 5.5 mil-lion people leaving the country, and 6.3 million peo-ple being internally displaced (OCHA 2017). With thecontext now changing from displacement to ‘recon-struction’, although the conflict continues, the mil-lions of Syrians who fled their homes are now con-fronted with legal threats to the ownership of thesehomes.
The new urban policies and laws deal with thecountry as an absolute cadastral map, ignoring thesocio-economic dimension of Syrian cities, and result-ing in people being further isolated and dispossessed.Eviction and gentrification will be widely present dueto the economic fragility of the inhabitants, as they willnot be able to cope with these processes. Later, in theabsence of a just relocation and compensation pro-cess, the voice of local residents will be replaced bythe interests of private sector, and most of the inhabi-tants might tend to relocate themselves, which maylikely lead to developing new informal settlements andintroducing a new urban conflict to the Syrian cities.
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End Notes:
1 . A share scheme is the right to buy a certainnumber of shares at a fixed price, sometime in thefuture, within a company. In the case of Al-Razi, itindicates converting the unit’s area into shares2 . in 1975 a presidential decree stated that any“informal buildings built of cement with a door anda window and covered with a reinforced concreteroof could not be destroyed without offering adwelling in compensation” (Clerc V. 2011:4). Thisdecree was an important legal document thatplayed a role in the physical identity of Informalsettlements in Syria. And it had an influence inincreasing the urban violation with a trust in theland tenure insured by this law (Harastani N.2016).3 . Local measurement unit used in Syria and val-ues 23.75 square meter. 12 One share values oneSyrian Pound.4 . One share equals one Syrian Pound.5 . for more information about Law no.10 pleasesee also Syrbanism infographic video explaining itunder: https://www.syrbanism.com/2nd-project6 . Art. Unruh et al: A Digital Advance for Housing,Land and Property Restitution, 20177 . Ibid8 . Syrian Law Journal, The New Urban RenewalLaw in Syria, 2018
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Authors
Nour Harastani Architect, Researcher & Syrbanism Co-founder Berlin, GermanyEmail: [email protected]
Edwar Hanna Architect, Urbanist, & Syrbanism Co-founder Vienna, [email protected]
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INTRODUCTION
obtrusions in the well being of a home, a neighbour-hood, or an urban setting do not only affect the phys-ical environment but also the human attachment tothese spaces. obtrusions could happen in differentways, degrees and with different temporal dynamics.wars and conflicts could lead to a devastating impacton urban areas, a situation termed as “urbicide” or“violence against the city”. even more devastating iswhen one’s home is destroyed. this act is called“domicide”. urbicide and domicide are also related to“memoricide”, or destruction of memories and cultur-al treasures. thus, the terms domicide, urbicide andmemoricide (the three “cides”) are not only associatedwith one’s home, surrounding environment, but alsowith other values like memory and dwelling.
indirect enforcement of home abandonmentis not less harmful. though actual physical destructiondoes not happen but can lead to the decay of houseswhen left vacant for lengthy periods. this could alsolead to prolonged suffering of the owners, and a slowversion of domicide, memoricide and urbicide. thishappens when conflicts use geopolitics to control the
weaker. power in this sense is practiced in differentways to indirectly affect the lived space of the people.this is evident in Jerusalem where israel has used itspower to inflict a new geopolitical setting that has,directly and indirectly, affected the human and spatialdynamics of palestinian life.
with the aim to discuss the contradictory atti-tudes of maintaining dwelling through flourishing orthrough destruction, the questions that this article poseare: how could an imposed geopolitical setting lead toa different version of the three “cides”? and how couldself-inflicted destruction manifest a dynamic of sur-vival? could such destruction be a tool to dwell?
several urban areas that are located alongand outside the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem,face various combinations of the three “cides”. manyisraeli policies force palestinians with Jerusalem resi-dent id cards to shift their lives in order to maintaintheir legal residential status in the city. examples ofsuch areas include beit iksa, beit Hanina al balad, birnabala, Qalandia, al-ram, dahiyat al-bareed,Hizma, anata, az’ayim, ezariyeh, abu deis,assawahreh ash sharqiya, and asheikh saed. theseareas either represent village cores or outskirts of thecity. the article selected the case of dahiyat al-
Yara Saifi, Maha Samman AbstractUrbicide, domicide and memoricide are terms associated with destruction, whether of the tangible or intangible humanand spatial capital. This paper discusses how, as a result of the Israeli imposed geopolitical map in Jerusalem, anotherface of these three “cides” is experienced. The Dahiyat al-Bareed neighbourhood, built in 1958, demarcated outsidethe municipal boundaries after 1967 and outside the Separation Wall boundaries after 2002, is used as a case study.The study illustrates how both the political conflict and the produced geopolitical map have indirectly forced the inhab-itants of Dahiyat al-Bareed to abandon their homes. They need to reside in apartments within the municipal boundariesof Jerusalem to maintain their legal status in the city. This produced a gradual process of domicide, memoricide andeventually, slow urbicide in the Dahiyat al-Bareed neighbourhood. The three “-cide” attack is tackled by the ownersas a survival dynamic. This is done by deliberately accentuating neglect and decay of the built structures to camouflagethe owners’ sporadic presence and to affirm the abandonment dynamic. The study discusses the dynamics of the urban battle-ground in three ways: By reading trails through architectureand the measures Palestinians use to hold on to their homes, by observing and analysing the deliberate changes onthe buildings and gardens designed to expose abandonment and withering, and through interviews with the ownersof the houses. The purposeful withering and decay of spaces within the neighbourhood produces a state-of-being tornbetween the past place of dwelling and the new place of residence. This perpetuates a continuous dual conflict whichinflicts a chronic trauma within the experience and memories of their homes as they tackle the memoricide dynamic.The study shows that the tensious choice of practicing a sense of dwelling beholds lengthy suffering inflicted by politicalinjustice.
Keywords: Jerusalem housing, urbicide, domicide, memoricide, urban abandonment, urban battle field.
HOUSING IN JERUSALEM: FROM A FLOURISHINGHOPE TO SLOW “URBICIDE”
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bareed, which shares the essence of the three “cides”.the difference however, is that this area developed asthe first housing cooperative outskirt and thereforemanifests a particular communal attachment to theplace.
the case of dahiyat al-bareed will show how anotherface of the three “cides” is manifested. despite thenon actual physical destruction carried out by anotherhuman agency directly, an imposed geopolitical con-dition could force the inhabitants to abandon theirhouses. the inhabitants’ reaction to the built environ-ment and their memories are practiced as a survivaldynamic. the people who witnessed the flourishing oftheir neighbourhood earlier, are forced to leave theirhouses in dahiyat al-bareed. they seek residencewithin the imposed boundaries defined by themunicipality of Jerusalem to maintain their legal sta-tus. owners are utilising measures to make their hous-es appear abandoned. the fact that they are involvedin such an act, makes them unwillingly part of the pro-duction of the three “cides”; domicide, memoricideand urbicide. such dynamic shall be explainedthrough understanding the geopolitical context and byreading through the architectural trails the tactics thatreflect the inhabitants’ abandonment and interactionwith their houses.
accordingly, the wider context of this article relatespolitics and its impact on architecture, and its mainobjectives are:
• to contribute to the discussion about the theory of“urbicide” but within the context of ongoing politicalconflict that provides a certain geopolitical setting.• to document the architectural characteristics of thehouses with significant architectural values and sufferfrom a certain geopolitical setting. • to trace and analyse the deliberate changes on thebuildings and gardens implemented by the owners todepict abandonment and withering.
the paper argues that a kind of slow urbicide, domi-cide, and memoricide in the neighbourhood ofdahiyat al-bareed is practiced, which is not less harm-ful than the actual destruction of the homes. that issince domicide and urbicide resulting from direct warsmay destroy the built environment in a quick and sud-den manner, and appear purposefully as direct tar-gets. Yet, slow “cides”, take place on a slower and lesssudden manner and may not appear as a result ofanother force or human agent. on the contrary, peo-ple’s abandoning their homes or altering them toshow abandonment causes withering. this is as aresult of an imposed geopolitical force, which mayappear less sudden and less related to the act of vio-lence during wars. to elaborate further on the question of how animposed geopolitical setting lead to another face ofthe three “cides”, the following sub questions areposed:
• why are people forced to change their place of liv-ing?• do the original houses reveal traces of being inhab-ited?• if the people altered their houses, what did theyalter?
• to what extent did they alter the original buildingsand why?• what are the stories that owners have in relation tothese alterations?
while direct domicide actually happens in certainareas in Jerusalem due to complications in having abuilding permit, the above specific questions areposed due to the specific geopolitical map that differ-entiates between areas in Jerusalem, where houses insome areas are still intact but exposed to a differentface of the three “cides”.
THE THREE “CIDES”although home is a noun which entails a place, abuilding and architecture, it is also associated withacts, practices and experiences of the everyday life.gaston bachelard in The Poetics of Space (bachelard,1969), defines home from a philosophical and poeti-cal sense, where his understanding of home cannot beseparated from the human soul. He explains how ahome is associated with the thoughts, memories,experiences and dreams that emerge in our souls inan unconscious manner. it enables daydreaming thatcan create a poetic image that only home can protect;something that history, geography and psychology areincapable of.
Home is also a place of dwelling and attach-ment. martin Heidegger saw that places happenthrough use and experience. dwelling according tohim in Building, Dwelling, Thinking is associated withcreating “a space within which something comes intoits own and flourishes” (Heidegger, 1971:154). in psy-chological approaches, scholars relate the dynamicsbetween home and dwelling through attachment.place attachment is joined with place identity;Hernandez (Hernandez et al, 2007) sees that bothattachment to a place and place identity are overlap-ping terms. that is, attachment to a place forms thecharacter of the individual and identity. the more theattachment takes place, the more people will identifythemselves with respect to that place – city, nationality(giuliani, 2003). attachment to place and identity hasa complex relationship with the environment. it isdeveloped within the conscious and unconsciousbeliefs, ideas, feelings, values and goals (proshansky,1978). a house becomes a home as a result of a longterm transformation effort to reflect an individual or agroup identity (moore, 2000). therefore, the experi-ence of home is a subjective phenomenon with quali-ties and values that cannot be easily quantified,although it has a physical structure. furthermore, ahome is associated with occupant’s memories, identi-ty, sentiments and other quantitative and qualitativevalues. it also holds an architectural value and comeswithin a certain geographical and political setting.
since “home” entails multilayered levels ofdynamics whether as an architectural building, or aplace of living and attachment or as part of an urbancontext, a threat to any of these levels could affect thesense of dwelling. this threat is intensified in contextsof conflicts, wars or natural disasters. while the expe-rience of a home and dwelling happens slowly it canbe disturbed quickly (brown and perkins, 1992).disturbance can vary in its scale and degree, from thedestruction of an individual home (domicide) or wholeurban area (urbicide).
the term domicide, rooted from the worddomus (home in latin) and homicide, which means a
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deliberate destruction of a person’s home by humanagency, has its affect on both the individual and familyscale. the term was coined by proteus in 1988 andlater by proteus and smith in 2001, defined as “theplanned, deliberate destruction of someone’s home,causing suffering to the dweller”. the conditions ofdomicide according to the authors can differ. the“extreme domicide” or destruction can be a result ofwar or political conflicts. the “everyday domicide” canhappen as a result of a legal situation where “com-mon good” can be a reason for home destruction, likebuilding new roads or expansion of airports.regardless of the differences, their traumatic impactand the consequences on the human beings are muchlinked to the meaning of home, the place of attach-ment and dwelling.
the other term urbicide is the violent destruc-tion of cities and their character. it was introduced bymichael moorock in 1963, in reference to rapidurbanization in the u.s cities that led to increased vio-lence and destruction. its early beginning was referredto as “killing of cities” through planning, policy anddevelopment decisions. However, urbicide can takeplace in different forms; deliberate and direct or unin-tentional and indirect. deliberate destruction denotescomplete physical destruction of urban areas selec-tively, like public buildings with symbolic values thatrepresent the identity of the city, its people and theircollective memory. the cause may be violent duringwars or could be for ethnic cleansing (see mike davis,2006). indirect destruction on the other hand, is lessvisible physically, like laws, actions and control whichmay eventually lead to the destruction of cities(coward, 2004; graham, 2004).
similarly, bogdan bogdanovic (1995) androbert bevan (2006) introduced different dimensionsof violence against the urban environment and archi-tecture during wars. the concept of “urbicide” is usedby bogdanovic as a continuation of genocide after thewars in former Yugoslavia. His definition of“urbicide” is related to the destruction of houses inorder to destroy people. according to him, having het-erogeneous and multicultural cities might stop thistype of violence during wars. on the other hand,bevan shows that cultural artefacts are destroyed inorder to reject the presence of the enemy in the place,where violence towards monumental buildings isrational and politically motivated iconoclasm in differ-ent parts of the world.
as for “memoricide”, it is a term coined bythe croatian doctor and historian mirko d. grmek in1991 which refers to systematic eradication of culturalmonuments associated with a specific ethnic or reli-gious group. it was also referred to after the attack onthe national library during the sarajevo siege in april1992. memoricide is the wilful destruction of a van-quished people’s memory and cultural treasures(civallero, 2007). it is therefore associated with thedestruction of intangible values that one holds througha period of dwelling and identity building in a place.
consequently, urbicide, domicide and mem-oricide are terms associated with destruction, whetherof the tangible or intangible human and spatial capi-tal. the violence whether human or natural associatedto the destruction, could lead to forced movementand/or displacement of people. in conflict zones andduring wars, urbicide and memoricide becomeinevitable. the destruction of the architectural charac-ter of the building affects its aesthetics, the lived space
of the people and their dwelling dynamic. in Jerusalem, the effect of the three “cides” is
taking place in many areas and in different ways.destruction of houses is due to israeli issued demoli-tion orders. these are issued when building permitsare not available. palestinians are obligated to buildon some of their lands without permits because attain-ing a building permit requires a very complicated,long-term and expensive process. such complicationsare imposed through urban planning policies, lawsand regulations to decrease the palestinian presencein Jerusalem. urbicide also takes place when a wholecommunity is expelled from one place to another likethe bedouin communities in Jerusalem. on another level, destruction due to the three “cides”is taking place in Jerusalem without real physical termsor evidence of direct violence. in this case, the three“cides” could have a total effect on the built environ-ment through being direct and indirect at the sametime:
1- directly, the geopolitical maps imposed by theisraeli municipality in Jerusalem affect the decision ofthe owners to change their place of living.2- indirectly, people willingly choose self inflicteddestruction of their houses as a tool of survival whilstpreserve the act of dwelling, without the municipalitydirectly implementing the destruction itself.
GEOPOLITICAL MAP OF JERUSALEMthe geopolitical map in Jerusalem imposes itself uponthe option of place of living and place of dwelling ofpalestinians (whether by choice or forced) and affectstheir political and legal status. living outside themunicipal boundaries of Jerusalem could lead tofalling into legal traps designed to eject Jerusalemitesfrom the city. this geopolitical map was developedgradually by the israeli power to control the palestinianpopulation of Jerusalem.
at the heart of the center of east Jerusalem, isthe walled old city. it is surrounded by different arabvillages. during the late 18th and early 19th centuriespeople started migrating outside the wall to meet withthe modern living standards. new neighbourhoodswere built at the outer circles of the villages’ core sur-rounding the old city. towards the east, the village ofabu deis and ezariyeh (bethany) as well as ras al-amood neighbourhood were growing from rural tosemi-urban areas. towards the north-east, the majorneighbourhoods of wadi al-Joz, suwaneh around themount of olives area later expanded to includeaz’ayim and the village of issawiyah. on the mainroad towards ramallah in the north, beit Hanina andshu’fat villages extended towards dahiyat al-bareed,al-ram village, bir nabala and Qalandia.
in 1948, Jerusalem was divided along a stripof a buffer zone referred to as the “green line”. thewestern part was under israeli rule and the eastern waspalestinian under Jordanian administration until theyear 1967. that year and following a war, israel occu-pied the eastern part of the city and the west bank.while Jerusalem became physically re-connected,palestinians and israelis lead separate lives in the city.israel created a new municipal boundary of the cityafter the war.
the demarcation included as much un-builtland with less palestinians inside the new municipalboundaries of Jerusalem, and thus came under thecontrol of the israeli municipal administration. those
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outside these boundaries were governed by an israelimilitary government under the rule of the so calledisraeli civil administration (ica), established right afterthe war in June 1967 and commanded by a militarygovernor. this structure has its own laws (essentiallymilitary orders), its own military courts and detentioncenters designed for controlling the palestinians inthese areas. this system still controls the west bankdespite the presence of the palestinian authority. incontrast, israeli settlers in the west bank are governedby israeli civilian government institutions, laws andcourts. therefore, the new demarcation of the munic-ipal boundaries of the city determined whether thepalestinians became under israeli civilian rule or mili-tary rule which practiced flagrant violations of humanrights according to international law.
during the Jordanian rule, the city bound-aries included less areas in comparison to the israelimunicipal boundaries, however, residents of allJerusalem, whether the municipal or district bound-aries were ruled by the same laws. the new israelidemarcation meant that some of the Jerusalem areassuch as dahiyat al-bareed and bir nabala becameunder israeli military rule and outside the israeliJerusalem municipal jurisdiction.
following the oslo agreement1 in 1993, thepalestinian authority was established and it adminis-tered some of the areas in the west bank. eastJerusalem, however, stayed under full israeli adminis-tration pending final status negotiations which did notculminate. most of its suburbs were excluded and sep-arated through the closure policy which was imple-mented after 1993. the closure entailed checkpointsat the entrances of the city to control movement andto prevent access to non-resident palestinians of eastJerusalem into the city. people who did not hold aJerusalem identity card were not allowed to enter themunicipal boundaries of the city except when grantedspecial permits. this was also exacerbated after 2002with the building of the separation wall which evenexcluded some areas that were part of the municipalboundaries.
people holding Jerusalem identity cards, i.e.considered residents of Jerusalem, were obliged to livewithin the municipal boundaries according to the
“center of life” policy, which the israeli ministry ofinterior began implementing in 1995. this policyenforced only on palestinians (and not israelis)required from palestinians holding Jerusalem identitycards to live within the new defined municipal bordersin order to maintain their legal status in the country(Jefferis, 2012). till today, they still have to providedocumented proof that their “center of life” is withinthe israeli municipal boundaries of Jerusalem.inadequate or no proof of living within these borders(like residence tax forms, water and electricity bills,public health insurance), might lead to revocation oftheir residencies by the israeli authorities through theministry of interior, leaving them without legal status.
palestinians living without a residency, meansthat they live without official identities, cannot haveaccess to travel documents, and become illegal resi-dents. they will not be admitted or allowed to enterJerusalem, and would not get social welfare includinghealth insurance and other social allowances. thisessentially means that they fall out of the legal system;are deprived of any legal status, and have no alterna-tive but to lead a life without any legal administration(latendresse, 1995; bimkom, 2014; mansour, 2018;tabar, 2010).
to maintain their legal status, palestinians liv-ing in the suburbs of Jerusalem are indirectly forced toabandon their original homes2 and to reside withinthe defined boundaries imposed by the Jerusalemmunicipality. some people have not abandoned theiroriginal homes completely in the hope of returningone day. the division of Jerusalem areas has led todifferent problems, mainly:
• Hardship of movement between the neighbour-hoods, where by-pass roads created longer routes withmanned checkpoints.• fragmentation of the neighbourhoods of eastJerusalem. • isolation of palestinians in east Jerusalem from oth-ers in the west bank.• overcrowding of east Jerusalem which created highpalestinian population density and a persistent hous-ing shortage.
land for palestinians to build on, has been limited tofavor israeli settlements and a small amount of build-ing permits is allowed. this resulted in building withoutpermits and becoming exposed to demolition ordersand direct destruction of homes (Kaminker, 1997;ocHaopt, 2012; margalit, 2014).
people who hold Jerusalem residency and livein the neighbourhoods of Jerusalem such as ezariyeh(bethany), abu deis, dahiyat al-bareed, bir nabalaand others, face financial burden to pay for rentals asthey abandon their houses to adhere to the “center oflife” policy. the prices are high due to the limited num-ber of houses within the municipal boundaries.
within these geopolitical circumstances, theabandoned houses in the neighbourhoods ofJerusalem slowly face the “urbicide” dynamic.However, people of these areas reject surrendering tothis result. they have rebuilt their dwelling dynamic ina way different from the conventional.
THE CASE OF DAHIYAT AL- BAREEDthe dahiyat al-bareed neighbourhood, to the north ofJerusalem, was built in 1958 during the Jordanianrule in east Jerusalem, as the first cooperative by the
Figure 1. A map showing the municipal boundaries andthe green line.
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employees of the post office. a group of Jerusalemites(40 at the time) who were employees in the centralpost office (phone and mail central) came togetherand decided to buy lands in the northern areas aroundJerusalem and form a cooperation. this is where thename dahiyat al-bareed comes from, in arabic“dahiya” means suburb and “bareed” means the postoffice. their aim was, like the other residents of the oldcity, to move into houses that met the new living stan-dards, which the old houses could no longer cater for.the owners of dahiyat al-bareed perceived the housesin the old city as being old. smaller nuclear familieslived in small rooms within a larger house thatbelonged to the same extended family. service rooms(kitchens, toilets) were shared, and could not accom-modate their increasing number. moving outside theold city, purchasing and building new properties werealso seen as means of investment. at the time, carsand motor vehicles, and public transportation werebecoming available and could accommodate theirmovement.
the lands were bought individually from thevillage of beit Hanina, and al-ram. they were at aclose proximity to each other, and the roads networkwas paved through the cooperation money between1961 and 1962. saeb al-nashashibi, the manager ofthe post office at the time, was appointed as the headof the cooperation and mediated most of the landspurchase. payments were made in monthly install-ments borrowed from different banks and sources3.this helped employees with limited incomes to buyland there.
the cooperation owned a bus that wouldtransport residents from the neighbourhood into thecity center. a second bus was bought ten years laterand was outsourced. stories were even told that theresidents during a full moon on a summer night wouldtake the bus together and go for entertainment to thedead sea in the Jordan Valley4. the neighbourhoodhad a water installment from the main source inramallah and electricity from Jerusalem. previously,sanitary issues were solved through digging a largeditch in the ground similar to today’s septic tank at thehouses’ back garden. sanitary infrastructure was onlyintroduced later in 1983. many planted berry oreucalyptus trees next to the ditch. these trees helpedin absorbing the sanitary and limited its overflow. thehouses are intact till the day, and are affected from thepolitical context in different ways.
to examine the houses of the neighbourhood, thebelow methodology was followed:
• Visiting houses that allowed entry and interview. • outlining the typologies and architectural character-istics of the houses at the time they were built.• interviewing and recording the stories of the ownerswho have witnessed the construction of the neighbour-hood. this allowed understanding the socio-econom-ical context at the time. • recording alterations done on purpose on mainfaçades and front gardens. reading the architectural trails through the alterationsrevealed the approach of the owners towards theirhouses.
ARCHITECTURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THEHOUSES IN DAHIYAT AL- BAREEDthe houses in dahiyat al-bareed were not built withthe help of architects, therefore original plans couldnot be obtained. the people were not obliged to fol-low a certain building style, and buildings were notarranged in rows or followed a certain defined form.
after israel occupied the rest of the city in1967, most residents turned to architects to draw theexisting houses and applied for registration in theisraeli civil administration (ica) fearing from futurepenalties. the houses were mostly of one floor; andwhen topography allowed, a basement floor could befound. through the visits of the houses, it was notedthat although the floor plans of the houses are not thesame, they represent a common typology with slightchanges. the common characteristics are (see figure2 & 3):
• the house centralizes the land and is surroundedwith a low concrete wall which encloses a large gar-den planted with olive and citrus trees.• the structural system of the houses is based on postsand beams of reinforced concrete. • a semi open balcony (referred to as veranda) at theentrance leads to two different doors: one for visitorsthat opens to the formal living room (referred to assalon, a french word to give it more formality) andone for the residents that opens to the central hall. • a central hall (referred to as liwan) is a commontransitional space into different functions and rooms. itis larger in dimension than a corridor, and is used asa daily living room. the liwan was typically inspiredfrom the courtyards in the old city, but roofed. • the liwan would still have a door that opened to theformal living room from the inside. • bedrooms, kitchen and toilets are accessed from theliwan.• most houses have an average of two spacious bed-rooms, one for the parents and one for children.• Kitchens did not have cupboards until the 1970’s;they had only a stone counter top. storing shelveswere covered with curtains. Kitchens had traditionalstoves (referred to as wajaa), which are chimneys builtwith cement to funnel out evaporating steam from thecooking. also, fridges were not available in everyhouse and people bought ice blocks to cool foodwhen necessary. • walls and floors of toilets were tiled. tubs wereintroduced, and toilet closets changed from the squat-type (referred to as arabic toilet) to the seat-typedepending on the owner’s preference. sometimes,both types of bathrooms can be found. • some houses have other balconies at the back, cov-ered from top and open on the sides. some familiescovered balconies with glass depending on the orien-tation. south facing balconies are used as a livingroom in winter, while west oriented balconies are usedat night in summer. • windows and doors are made from iron attached toglass with special glue. many are replaced with alu-minum frames today.• floors were tiled with simple tiles lacking ornamen-tation, terrazzo tiles were widely spread. • buildings had flat roofs and could be approachedthrough a staircase. • buildings were all covered with irregular stone(toubzeh). at the ti me, (ashlar) flat stone was expen-sive and formed in situ, which limited its usage on cer-
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tain areas facing the street. socially, the neighbourhood replicated the
life in the old city, where people lived in specificstreets and housh5. other relatives and close familieswho did not work in the post office bought land pri-vately and built following the similar trend and typolo-gies described above. interestingly, people were givenaddress numbers according to the sequence theycame in to build and live in the neighbourhood.
donations were collected from differentplaces and a private school was built called “al-ummeh college”. it was open to people from all overthe area in the early 1960’s as it had dormitories forstudents to stay during the week. the cooperativeowned a market and club to meet the needs of the res-idents; the club would host different activities such ascinema shows every few weeks. later donations fromthe residents were collected and a mosque was built.
the residents became attached to the neigh-bourhood, and they gradually developed a relation ofdwelling with the house. the buildings became theirhome in the full sense of the word: a place of dwelling,a place of attachment and part of their identity.
the neighbourhood kept growing over timeand new houses were introduced. many houses hadmore floors added in the 1980’s and 1990’s. as theneighbourhood grew, it expanded towards al-ram vil-lage in the north and beit Hanina to the south. duringthat time the neighbourhood represented the middleupper classes and was desired by many tenants andinvestors. House-values increased and demographyincreased as well.
DAHIYAT AL-BAREED AND THE IMPOSED GEOPO-LITICAL MAPdahiyat al-bareed became one of the neighbour-hoods critically affected by the geopolitical dynamics.the neighbourhood was demarcated outside themunicipal boundaries after 1967 and outside theseparation wall boundaries after 2002. this affectedthe residents of the neighbourhood who holdJerusalem identity cards. the imposed geopoliticalmap has indirectly forced the inhabitants of dahiyatal-bareed to abandon their homes. they seek rentedapartments or buy new houses within the municipal
boundaries of Jerusalem to maintain legal status asJerusalem residents. also, dahiyat al-bareed becamemore isolated due its close proximity to the checkpointof Qalandia - the main checkpoint in the northern partof Jerusalem. the checkpoint creates heavy traffic bythe cars trying to pass between the two major cities,Jerusalem and ramallah, thus creating daily delays.due to all this, a drop in the real estate valueoccurred, and dahiyat al-bareed became a lessdesired neighbourhood.
the dahiyat al-bareed neighbourhoodbecame more and more isolated and almost leftabandoned. However, the owners sustain a sporadicpresence but rationally maintain the abandonmentappearance of the houses. the owners adopt tech-niques reminiscent of destruction and withering tomake them look abandoned in case of inspections bythe israeli authorities. the alterations implementedhave taken place forcefully in order to appear aban-doned, whilst its residents still maintain it from theinside. others are left for natural decay, and becomea target for thieves.
Houses were visited, and the emerging alter-ations were examined and analyzed with respect to thebuilding’s exterior appearances including facades,openings, walls, trees, signs and symbols. eight inter-views were prearranged with people of the generationwho had witnessed migrating from the old city to thedahiyat al-bareed and could remember the stages ofits growth. they were asked about the inspectedapproaches of the abandonment dynamic and thereasons behind them. pictures of the purposeful alter-ations were not allowed. However, a main façadesketch was done according to the existing situation ofthe building and then interviewees pointed to the alter-ations implemented after the imposed “center of life”policy. the examined alterations are purposefully andrationally done to achieve the abandoned state of thebuildings. the repeated alterations in most of thehouses revealed interesting approaches by the people.these were categorized according to their similaritiesin approach and in accordance to their architecturalelements within the building as walls, gardens, open-ings, car parking, maintenance and signs and sym-bols:
Figure 3. A sketch elevation of a typical house in Dahiyatal-Bareed.
Figure 2. A sketch plan of a typical house in Dahiyat al-Bareed.
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1- walls• garden walls are raised to a height that interiorscould not be seen, although this trend is reminiscentof mansions with gardens for privacy, interestingly themajority of the walls were raised after the new “centerof life” policy emerged.
the relatively lower garden walls surrounding thebuildings allowed for more social relationships in thepast between the neighbours. as indicated by one ofthe interviewees: “neighbours would sit during thesummer afternoons in the garden till late hours, it wassafe. privacy was not an issue since all residents kneweach other, we lived as a large family”. today, peoplefear to be exposed to the outside, also since manyhouses are abandoned it feels dark and unsafe. suchsocial relationships are now lost from the neighbour-hood, and houses exist physically without souls.
2-vgardens • some gardens are left purposely unmaintained, andwild plants grow among the trees and grass. • some do not collect the fruits and leave them fallnaturally and appear unattained. • laundry hanging in the garden is avoided at dis-tances close to view, which can indicate that someoneinhabits the house.
gardens in many houses were a source of food supplyto many families, like olives, vegetables and fruits.some existing trees were old and huge but due to thelack of maintenance, some are dying. although, largevacant lands are available, people are not plantingnew ones as one of the interviewees said: “new treesmean new life, a new planted tree will show thatsomeone is living in the house, i cannot afford to beexposed, i would rather buy my fruits ready”. anotherneighbours referred to the issue of not planting newtrees to the need of water to nurture these trees. billsthat show usage of high amount of water could beused as a proof against people- as living in the houseand are consuming.
3- openings• shutters and curtains are closed at openingsexposed to the streets. people use side or back win-dows for ventilation. in one case the front window wascovered completely with concrete blocks.• some houses are decaying and feature broken win-dow glass and destroyed walls. some are not restoredon purpose.
the houses in dahiyat al-bareed represented modernbuilding standards for the people who chose to leavetheir traditional houses in the old city at the time.one of these standards was the use of large openings(unlike the old city) like windows and balconieswhere the construction techniques of curtain wallsallowed for. Having to keep the windows closedreminded some neighbours of their old houses whenthey were children, however in a negative way.according to one of the interviewees “the house is nowvery dark due to the continuously closed shutter, thereis not enough sunlight or air for ventilation, we sufferfrom more mold and humidity that smells like our oldhouse when i was a child, i do not like it and it is costlyto maintain every time”.
4- car parking • car-parking spaces are created and closed so thatpeople are not identified by the car number plates.
when people moved into their neighbourhood in thepast, cars were not much available and not everyhousehold owned one, therefore, car parking was notconsidered in most of the original designs. However,the availability and need of cars changed in time, andnow every household owns a car in dahiyat al-bareedif not many. this created a problem for the people asthey seek ways to hide their cars from the street inorder not to be detected by the number plates. suchproblem was solved by sweeping away gardens toallow for cars to park. according to an interviewee,creating a place for the cars to park meant cutting oldtrees that his parents planted in the past, and he couldnot save it. this brought tears to his eyes when heexplained.
5- maintenance • some of the fences, balustrades and garden gatesare purposefully left unpainted after the decay of theolder paint.• using front garden light fixtures are avoided. but,when street lights are broken, people immediatelyhave fixtures, to avoid dark streets where strangerscould not be quickly identified.
maintenance is associated with living and flourishingto the people in dahiyat al-bareed, something theybelieve is taken away from them in order to sustaintheir existence in the city.
6- signs and symbols • signs that carry family names and doorbells areremoved. doors are not opened except with pre-arranged appointments by phone.
this is considered the most direct way to depict theirexistence in their houses and ownership. to a strangervisiting the house, entry is not easy as garden walls donot allow anyone without a key to enter or knock ondoors. it also helps one to see the neighbourhood asoutdated and old.
these images bring frustration to many of theresidents who are reminded of the decay of theirneighbourhood they have built together on every visit.to some of them, these images and the whole politicalsituation is a reason they are facing depression. notmaintaining their houses is considered a survival tac-tic. they are aware of the fact that lack of mainte-nance would eventually lead into decay of the originalfeatures of the houses, yet they purposely chose tolose these features rather than lose their rights in thecity.
physical domicide entails demolishing ofbuildings and inflicts tremendous suffering from theloss of a home. Yet the houses can be rebuilt to rep-resent new beginnings. the dahiyat al-bareed casehowever, with people having to maintain the status ofthe houses as abandoned property to prove they arenot living there anymore, has imposed a prolongedsuffering. the purposeful withering and decay ofspaces within the neighbourhood has produced anextended un-dwelling process, and a state of beingtorn between the past place of dwelling and the newplace of residence. this process inflicts social and psy-
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chological trauma upon the owners and their families- no less impactful than the actual destruction of thehouse itself. people in Jerusalem have learnt to findways and adapt to new emerging situations imposedon them politically, however at a high expense.Houses in dahiyat al-bareed still carry traces of theauthentic living conditions of the people in Jerusalemand an architectural value that is no less importantthan in other historic sites in the city.
being forcefully obliged to move into otherareas and continue to maintain their older housesshows that people are still attached to their houses.they correspond to their dwelling and memories of theplace, with the hope to be able to return like any otherdisplaced persons. this is the only adapting tool thatcan help sustain their relation to their original homes.
CONCLUSION: THE OTHER FACE OF THE THREE“CIDES”studies show that within the span of time, displacedpeople tend to adapt to their new place of residence(bogac, 2009, Hurol and farivarsadri, 2012). in thecase of dahiyat al-bareed, though, after fifteen yearsthe owners are still not adapting to their other place ofresidence. this could be regarded as the second dis-placement as they forcefully fled their houses in thewar of 1967 and left their homes, but were able tocome back to them again. because they do not wantto live the tragedy of the 1967 war again, they stillmaintain the relation with their homes. in dahiyat al-bareed, many people could choose to let their housesfor rent, which could generate some income, howeverthe owners do not do that. this is done on purposesince many believe that once the house is rented thenforgetting becomes easier for them and their families.one interviewee has even mentioned that: “if i do notforget then my children will eventually do. therefore, ihave to make them visit every week”. the hope ofreturn for these people might not be limited to the firstgeneration only but to their following generations aswell. people who have made the alterations to theirhouses and gardens suggest that once a political solu-tion is reached, they can go back to their old neigh-bourhood and their old memories.
the relation of the three “cides” carried bythe people, is interrelated with a dynamic of “to beand not to be” in the house at the same time. thisuncertain situation that has lasted and still ongoing formore than fifteen years, drains the owners of thesehouses. the more it continues, the more this neigh-bourhood is facing an “urbicide” without actualdestruction of the buildings by a direct force or bull-dozer or tank. the act of the owners’ temporarilydwelling in their homes, in the form of maintaining theabandonment dynamic, is a stressful situation causinglong-term suffering to the people and homes. theattachment relation between the people and the spaceis still maintained, but the building is slowly witheringand thus “domiciding”. this attachment is maintainedbecause people are still allowed to visit their houses.
Yet, facing the trauma of abandoning them,causing constant “memoricide” in a prolonged andcontinuous manner. although most theories wouldshow cases of intentional destruction by one forceagainst the other, the case shows the degree that peo-ple can perform in order to protect their sense ofdwelling and memories through deliberate selfdestruction of one’s home. all through the fifteenyears, every visit to their homes in dahiyat al-bareed
denotes a constant hardship, since it entails witnessingself-destruction of their own home. this is enduredbecause people continue to carry their hopes ofreturn.
displaced people around the world, live inthe hope of return regardless to the fact that their pastlife cannot be revived when returning, yet they contin-ue to live with that hope. like the palestinian refugeesin lebanon and syria who continue to carry the keys oftheir homes as a symbol of not forgetting and persist-ing to return, though they know that their houses oreven neighbourhoods do not exist anymore. inpalestine the political situation keeps on producingmore different cases of displacement. dahiyat al-bareed is a case of displaced people in their ownhome. it shows that the imposed geopolitical mapproduces a gradual process of domicide, memoricideand eventually slow urbicide. the three “-cide” attack,is tackled by the owners, as a survival dynamic, bydeliberately accentuating neglect and decay of thebuilt structures to camouflage the owners’ sporadicpresence to affirm the abandonment dynamic. theresult is an aesthetic canvas depicting a geopoliticalurban battle-ground, rather than what at first sight beregarded as a dying neighbourhood. this could beregarded as a reinvention of the sense of home. theowners of the building of dahiyat al-bareed deal withthe situation as a temporary kind of a dwelling dynam-ic, until the time comes to go back and live there,whether for them or for the coming generation.
this also implies how injustice is multilayered.with conflicting internal dynamics to maintain theirright to dwell, the people of dahyat al-bareed areforced to select the hard choice of destruction ratherthan flourishing of their houses. this is unjust, becauseit maintains a kind of dwelling that contains a lot ofsuffering within. also, not being able to see the endof the tunnel, the continuation of the uncertainty of thesituation is another aspect of injustice that causes a lotof suffering and sorrow. this uncertainty is not onlytemporal but could have a prolonged impact thatdoes not only affect the current generation, but thesuccessive generation or even beyond.
although this injustice continues and the peo-ple face this contradictory way of dealing withdwelling, the case shows that the idea of resistancethrough destruction is the only possible way to dwell,and preserve the memories. to preserve the legal sta-tus in the city, destruction is the ultimate tool, wherepeople are ready to do anything to survive. they shallnot give up on their homes!
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Author(s):
Yara Saifi,Al Quds University, [email protected]
Maha Samman,Al Quds University, [email protected]
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INTRODUCTION
Components of the built environment, especiallydwellings, have a tremendous effect on both physicaland psychological vigor of inhabitants. This is moreoften witnessed in marginalized communities lackingformal stability. The United Nations HighCommissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) 2018 statisticsshow that around 68.5 million individuals face dis-placement worldwide, marking the highest record ofdisplacement ever. As a result, a person is being dis-placed every two seconds while 21 people are asylum-seekers every minute (UNHCR 2018). Due to theevents of the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948,between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages weresacked and over 750,000 people (85% of the popu-lation) were displaced or expelled from their originalresidences in historical Palestine (Feldman I. 2014).Besides losing their homes, the refugees lost theirsense of livelihood (Al-Khatib I. and Tabakhna H.2006) and gained the feeling of threat for their lives.Most refugees moved to neighbouring countries(Jordan, Syria, Lebanon) or to other parts of Palestine(now known as West Bank and Gaza Strip) that werenot targeted at that time. Palestinian refugees werescattered throughout 58 camps within these areas andwere prevented from returning to their homes orreclaiming their property (Feldman I. 2014). The
United Nations Relief and Works Agency forPalestinian Refugees (UNRWA) defines refugees aspeople whose normal place of residence was Palestineduring the period of 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948(UNRWA 2017). These people moved into encamp-ments after they temporarily sheltered under trees withthe expectation of returning to their homes within daysor weeks at most.
Now, 70 years have passed while refugeeshave been waiting for the issue to be resolved. Theirlives have been shaped by the living conditions of thecamps because feeling is the basis of recognition.Sensory stimulation is required to understand theworld and human experiences of it by providing rawmaterials for the brain to organize and interpret(Kopec D. 2006). When feelings are translated intoawareness and interpreted in the mind it is called sen-sory perception. As a result, sensation and perceptionare two distinct steps in the course of acquiring infor-mation and understanding the environment. Thisresearch focuses on the perceptual experience of thebuilt environment of Palestinian refugee camps usingfive different sensory receptors as part of the sensoryawareness system. In order to explore the living condi-tions and resident perceptions, the sensory sliding toolwas used to observe and measure interactionsbetween refugees and the camp environment. Due tothe fact that the built environment of all the Palestinian
Shahd Adnan M. Qzeih, Rafooneh Mokhtarshahi Sani
AbstractWars and conflicts have caused millions of people to seek asylum outside their homelands and the issue of refugeecamps has become a pressing subject in international policy discussions. Conflicts continue to escalate in differentparts of the world, especially in Middle Eastern countries. In 1948, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict forced displacementof many Palestinian people. The resulting camps have developed into cluster camp shelters of three to four stories inthe West Bank, Gaza, and other regions around historical Palestine; some are perceived to be like gated communities.Being self-sufficient environments, refugee camps have rarely been approached from the perspective of urban psychol-ogy. This research deals with sensory perceptual analysis of Balata, the largest refugee camp in the West Bank ofPalestinian Territories. Balata is situated in Nablus and has raised four generations of refugees since its establishment.In order to explore the spatial characteristics of such specific environmental experiences, the research adopted a mixed-method approach – systematically evaluating the related literature on sensory perceptual spaces and applying contentanalysis methods. The study modified the sensory slider tool of Malnar and Vodvarka according to the frameworkmatrix based on the content analysis. Moreover, the case study analysis consisted of observation of the chosen areaand 30 in-depth interviews with refugees who were forced out of their homes and settled in the camp as well as somewho were born in the camp. The research results show that investigating what camp residents perceive of the five sensescan capture meaningful sensory perceptual experiences and can generate a holistic mental image of the refugeecamp. Particularly, perceptions of the built environment reflect the difficulty of life experiences. The study concludes thatthe characteristics of camps in this seventy-year-old conflict environment may not be found in other parts of the world.
Keywords: Sensory Perception, Sense of Space, Sensory Slider, Refugee Camps, Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
SENSORY PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE IN BALATAREFUGEE CAMP
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camps are very similar in all their characteristics andrarely highlighted, the challenge in this paper is toshed light on the everyday living experience ofPalestinian refugees via the residents of Balata.
BALATA CAMP AS CASE STUDYBalata refugee camp, which is the biggest camp is theWest Bank of Palestinian Authority, was chosen as thecase study. The 252-acre camp (UN 2006) was estab-lished one kilometer from the eastern part of Nablus(Dabbagh M. 1965) in 1950. Over the years thecamp has grown to more than 460 acres. Statisticsfrom the UNRWA in 2017 show that around 23,600people now inhabit the shelters of the Balata refugeecamp (UNRWA 2017) and have access to limitedfacilities and public services provided by Nablusmunicipality (Figure 1).
The camp is composed of compact residen-tial units arranged in long rows separated by narrowalleys. There is one main street in the camp alongwhich there are shops and a mosque. Despite theseresidential, commercial, and religious facilities, thecamp lacks the public services and municipal facilitiesavailable in the city; it relies on the city of Nablus formany of its needs (Mansour K. 1996). From the exist-ing montage, one neighbourhood (Figure 2) insideBalata was specifically selected for this study becauseall the current residents came from the same city in1948.
STAGES OF CAMP’S ENVIRONMENTAL DEVELOP-MENTDue to the issues affecting Palestinian Refugees, theUnited Nations established the UN Relief and WorksAgency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) in 1949.UNRWA defined refugees as people whose normalplace of residence was Palestine during the period of1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948 (UNRWA 2017). Themain purpose was to provide refugees with employ-ment, health care, and social and educational services(Halabi Z. 2004). The UNRWA responded to theneeds of 750,000 Palestinian refugees by providingfood and building a brick room for every family. Afamily’s room did not include kitchen or toilet facilitiesbut there were communal toilets distributed through-
out the camp and communal water sources were pro-vided (Al-Khatib I. and Tabakhna H. 2006). Electricservices were not made available. From the onset, liv-ing conditions were difficult and the health conditionswere poor.
Palestinian refugee camps developed in fourmain stages (Figure 4). The first stage (1948-1955)involved setting up the tents provided to the refugeesin their respective asylums by the relief organizationsoperating in the hosting areas. Following that stagecame the stage (1955-1975) when the UNRWAlaunched the shelter-building program which aimed toreplace the tents with small huts or rooms made out ofhollow concrete blocks and metal sheet roofing(Shihada Y. 1978). The third stage (1975-1995) wasa period of horizontal expansion prompted by naturalgrowth of families. Gradually, as time passed and theirhopes for a near-future solution faded away, theinhabitants started to add kitchens, additional rooms,
Figure 3. Development Stages Chart of the PalestinianRefugee Camps -first two pictures released in 2013 byUNRWA (UNRWA Archives/AFP), third is retrieved fromReuters in Jerusalem Post, 2016.
Figure 2. Balata refugee camp Aerial photo showing theselected neighbourhood of Balata.
Figure 1. Balata Refugee Camp Location in Relevance toNablus.
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and toilets to their own living units. Refugees tried todefine lines of quasi-ownership by constructing wallson the edges of their assigned shelter zones. Thosewalls also increased the privacy of the shelters. Theexpansions infringed on the size of roads, openspaces, and alleys between the houses. The final stage(1995-present) features vertical expansion.
In more recent times, camps are witnessed tohave lively main streets intersected by a variety of sidestreets and all filled with crowds. A variety of smallworkshops were also opened to meet the needs of res-idents. Some refugees became professionals, so a fewdoctors and lawyers opened offices inside the camps.The self-sufficient camps act like complex clustereddistricts inside their host cities. As the camps evolvedthrough these stages, the refugees also evolved newperceptions of their surroundings.
BODY AND THE SENSES: SENSORY PERCEPTIONOF SPACESense of space is a philosophical domain of thoughtthat merges social and perceptual experiences inorder to make holistic sense out of the spaces utilized.Merleau-Ponty’s (1962) contribution to the philosoph-ical matter, phenomenology of perception, placed thehuman body at the center of the perceptual process.Perception, as argued by Denton (1992), is a combi-nation of senses, feelings, thoughts, ideas, and theo-ries. According to Rapaport (1977), perception is theawareness of the senses forming human-environmen-tal relations. Myers (1989) also declared perception tobe “awareness” of the surrounding world formulatedby the data supplied from the sensory organs. As aresult, perception is the method used to attain dataabout the surrounding environment through actionsand interactions between sensory organs and thehuman brain (Myers J. 1989). Morris (2004) investi-gated ‘the sense of space’ and showed how it formsthe basis of all social and perceptual experiences.Human beings’ sense of space ultimately draws atten-tion to the relationships people have with the placesthey inhabit (Morris D. 2004).
Tuan (1977) suggested that experience is thesubstance extracted from reflex behavioral learningabout the reality of space through the body and thesenses. The individuality of perception is affected byexperiences gained since birth. Humans interpret real-ities based on their background knowledge of andinvolvement with the encompassing surroundings(Tuan Y. 1977; Rock I. 1975; Denton C. 1992). Theinterpretation and organization of this process leads toa perception that aids in recognizing a certain envi-ronment (Fantino E. and Reynolds G. 1975).Christopher Alexander (1977) believed that the rela-tionship between humans and dwelling places forms arepetitive rhythm of events, or patterns. Such patternsform the spatial experiences of space and the ele-ments of space form the patterns that affect the indi-viduality of spatial perceptual matter. A meaningfulpattern is created through the process of perceivingvarious sensory impressions (Jafar M. 2004; Morris C.1979). Furthermore, feelings formulated towardsarchitectural objects are highly influenced by the senseof sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing (Holgate A.1992). When reflecting on feelings about or themeaning of a place, people are able to recall differentthings associated with the space based on their differ-ent situations (AISadaty A. 2018).
Environmental responses are formed by bio-logical adaptations, creating emotional positive ornegative reactions like aggression, pain, anger, admi-ration, and love (Denton C. 1992). These sensationsform the alphabet of perceptional language (Holl S. etal. 1994), provoking a direct sense of amusement,aversion, or even nourishing erstwhile experiences(Holgate A. 1992).
VISUAL PERCEPTIONThe visual sense has been agreed to be one of themost important senses. The sense of sight is a key toolused by both humans and animals to interpret theirphysical environs (Gibson J. 2014). The eye isaccountable for creating a discriminative pattern ofstimuli, picking out groups of visual objects from thesurroundings with quick glances called saccades. Theeye peruses the patterns and tries to classify them in a‘coherent’ order which can be further processed(Denton C. 1992). The visual information is arrangedinto patterns that reflect previous experience and cul-tural identity (Hiller B. and Hanson J. 1989). The builtenvironment, which is an architectural production, isperceived visually as a set of forms according toFrancis Ching (1996). These forms have specific prop-erties such as size, color, position, orientation, andvisual inertia. These properties are classified under twofamilies: visual properties which include size, color,and texture; and relational properties including posi-tion, orientation, and visual inertia. This study focuseson the first family of Ching’s (1996) classifications.
ACOUSTIC PERCEPTIONThe acoustic system functions when motion or vibra-tion emanates from an object and forms pressurewaves. In this natural physical manner of objects,sound is created, and it is audible (Atkinson R. et al.2003). Perception of space through the auditory sys-tem depends on the ears which are shaped in a waythat plays a meaningful role in regulating and filteringsounds. Similarly, in architecture, auditory spatialawareness was defined by Burngart et al. (2014) asthe ability of capable listeners to analyze and interpretthe spatial properties of sound sources in multi-faceted auditory scenes. Listeners must maintainstrong awareness of spatial properties to identify andsort out subtle changes while responding to them.
Sounds in architecture are able to increasethe intensity of perception. ‘Soundscape” is a termintroduced in architecture as the sound combinationof a given environment which allows full comprehen-sion of the space (Schafer R. 1993). Physically, envi-ronmental perception is linked with the way thathuman ears deliver the sounds to the sensory precep-tors. Finally, Panos (2010) stressed the fact that linkingsounds to the environment involves human memoryand narratives.
HAPTIC PERCEPTIONOur skin functions as a barrier between what is outsidein the world and what is inside the body. The ability toperceive through the haptic system (touch sensations)provides our brain with an information steam aboutthe environment. Sensations of temperature and haz-ardous situations such as pain and pressure are partof the haptic senses (Gibson J. 1966). As Pallasmaa(1994) noted, the haptic system is highly effective inprocessing the material characteristics of both surfacesand objects. The whole body is involved in the touch-
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sensual system. A strong case was made by Platokeeping the sense of touch from being attached to onespecific physical organ. According to him, touch islinked to different kinds of sensations including pain,pleasure, and many other perceptual qualities relatedto the haptic sense such as cool and warm (Taylor E.1928).
CHEMICAL PERCEPTION: SMELL (OLFACTION) &TASTE (GUSTATION) SENSESThe important point about the chemical senses forhumans is that they are dominated by audiovisualstimuli. This is not only reflected in brain capacitydevoted to the chemical sense but also in the express-ible stimuli experience (Wilson R. 1998; BossomaierR. 2012). The neural pathways for olfaction and gus-tation are completely separate. Gastronomy relies onthe tongue receptors; however, the taste sense is inten-sified by the collaborative effort of the olfactory sense.The chemical senses often work together to stimulatedifferent combinations of odor and taste receptors(Dunning D. 2018).
The sense of smell is critical to human exis-tence (Fraic G. 2010) human beings intend by instictto use it in sustaining their lives. Only the sense ofsmell unconsciously links us to other sense memoriessuch as a segment of a tune or a glimpse of a once-familiar scene (Wyburn G. 2007). In the case of smell,the brain is able to retrieve the memory attached to theplace experience (Fraic G. 2010). Moreover, whenbuilding up an image of a space, the nose creates adeeper, sharper, and more distinguishable image thanthe eye can (Pallasmaa J. 1994). Olfactory perceptionalso depends on environmental factors such as theweather or the surrounding atmosphere of the indoorand outdoor spaces.
In architecture, Goldstein and Brockmole (2016) studyidentified four basic tastes or gustatory qualities: salty,sweet, sour, and bitter. Unlike other senses, taste hasreceived little attention in sense explorations. It formedthe weakest part of Pallasmaa’s investigation (1994)since he believed that it had little to do with the archi-tectural experience. He believed that taste had tooperate with material that can unconsciously stimulatethe tongue and make the mouth recall certain tastes(Pallasmaa J. 1994). The gastronomy of a space isconnected with spaces that have relevance to the tastesensory experience such as markets and groceries(Zaredar A. 2015). Compared with the sense of smelland the auditory sense, taste also recalls and createsa feeling in one’s memory.
EXPLORING MEANINGFUL SENSORY EXPERIENCESIN BALATA In order to shape a meaningful sensory experience, aframework with two major parts was composed afterclosely looking at the work of Malnar and Vodvarka(2004). Titled Sensory Design, their book aims to“explore the nature of our sensory response to thespatial constructs that people invest with meaning”(Malnar J. and Vodvarka F. 2004). More importantly,James Gibson (1966) took the five classical sensesand developed them into active inclusive systems. Heintensely wanted to know how people perceived theenvironment with a different approach (Gibson J.1966). According to Pallasmaa (1994), Gibsonreplaced the senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, andtouch with visual, auditory, taste-smell, haptic, and
basic-orienting systems. For this research, the sensorysliding tool proposed by Malnar and Vodvarka wasadopted and adjusted based on the word matrix(Table 1) which was developed following the literaturereview of the five classical senses.
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSISThe sliding tool used “ordinal measuring scale” thatallocates the values as variables that are relative andrank with respect to one another in data set (KoveraM. 2010). The measuring scale is used to figure outthe intensity between contradicting qualities of sensorysystems where -2 is the lowest intensity, -1 indicateslow intensity, 0 is neutral, 1 is the high intensity and 2is the highest intensity. To carry out the researchinquiry, one specific neighbourhood of Balata campwas identified as having refugees who all came fromsame origin city in 1948: Jaffa City in historicalPalestine. The case was assessed through observationand one-to-one interviews with thirty refugees whowere divided into two groups: half were born in home-lands before 1948 and moved to the camp, and halfwere born in asylum. Respondents in both groupscompleted the sensory slider questionnaire based onpersonal experience of living in the camp. Quotes ofrespondents provided in this article are numbered in
Table 1. Theoretical framework.
Figure 4. Quotes of respondents provided in the article inreference to their shelters in Balata
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reference to (Figure 4) showing each narrators’ shelterunit in the selected neighborhood of Balata, while(Table: 2) represents the sensory slider results fromboth observations and in-depth interviews performedin Balata.
Observations on Visual Perception The space of the camp is limited. Construction usuallytakes the form of two straight, parallel lines. Each linecontains a number of adjacent houses, or, in the caseof shelters, shared walls separate the plots of familiesfrom each other. Refugees built one room after anoth-er until most of the plotted space was occupied andthe passages between shelters were turned into narrowalleys of 40 to 70 cm wide. The sensory observationpointer is at the maximum level of negative intensity.Camp shelters which are built from a fundamentalbuilding material (concrete) are said to evoke cold-ness. The color assessment of concrete definitely shift-ed the sensory bar toward cold. As a matter of fact, thereason behind this lies in the original grey color of rawconcrete that, when perceived, visually contributes tothe feeling of being chilled (Lisa W. et al. 2013). In linewith this, the absence of direct sunlight penetrating thenarrow alleys results in a dark, dense built environ-ment and contributes to those alleys being cold inalmost all witnessed cases. The façades of the exteriorshelters are mostly finished with rough concrete plasterwhile some other façades are plastered and paintedwith a range of neutral colors. For this reason, exteriorwalls often impose the sensation of choppy, rough sur-faces. In that case, the visual texture bar of the sensoryslider in (Table 2) slides almost one point towards thescratchy side.
Refugees’ Visual PerceptionThe interviewees expressed that the outdoor spaces inthe camps had become very narrow. Cars used toenter easily but because people expanded their hous-es horizontally, passageways became restricted topedestrian use only. According to Narrator 15 (Figure4): “Camp construction is so random and some alleysare so narrow to the extent that it is very difficult toinsert a can of gas or to transfer sick people to hospi-tals or dead people to the cemetery and in some casesare very dark and do not provide ventilation.” Themajority of interviewees agreed that the size of publicspaces in the camp were small, while others said thatthe spaces fit their needs. Thus, the narrator’s pointerof the sensory tool shows a deviation of one pointtoward the smaller category. The expansion of sheltersis regarded by the interviewees as forming dark, coldcorridors devoid of all colors except grey. The concretecolor is said to provoke depression and coldness, andsuggest non-existence of life. (Figure 5) Consequently,the sensory slider bar shifts toward negative intensityclarifying the degree of color coldness that the envi-ronment has according to refugees.
As for visual texture, because the camp wasbuilt in an adjoining, random, and analogical manner,a vast number of refugees characterized it as ascratchy environment which bent the slider towards thehighest intensity of texture )Table 2(. Furthermore, themain reason behind the negative perception of theexterior walls is because they lay as remnants of Israelimilitary attacks which left some of the exterior wallsdilapidated and worn. These markings on the wallsremind refugees of their suffering, pain, and sorrow.
Observations on Auditory Perception In the alleys of the refugee camp, “You will overhearconversations, music, and televisions playing insidehomes as you pass by. When a stranger arrives, wordgets around fast. Along with the community, comes astrong sense of social control” (Martinez 2016).Children who have no public spaces for play inside thecamp end up playing hide and seek in the dark alleys
Table 2. Sensory Slider tool ( ) Observation Pointer,( )Interviews Pointer
Figure 5. Narrow alley in the camp.
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(Figure 6) In the camp, women often launch window-to-window conversations. While some other familiessit in front of their shelters to relax in the summer whilegossiping or practicing a variety of activities.Furthermore, street vendors in camps compose theirown rhymes. Those sounds when perceived are said toevoke enthusiasm and activity. In addition, it indicatesan environment of youthful energy. As a result the sen-sory slider bar (Table 2) shifts to represent a noisierenvironment
Refugees’ Auditory PerceptionRefugees explained that the camp’s alleys are used asplaces where they practice some of their casual rou-tines. Strong relationships built between the refugeesallows them to share their time and attend daily gath-erings in the narrow alleys of the camp. Narrator 8(Figure 4) expressed the degree of noise disturbancein the camp environment indicating some of the mainman-made sources of noise: the sounds of childrenplaying in the narrow spaces between houses, thesounds of street vendors, the voices of people practic-ing various activities in the alley, even the sounds oftelevisions projecting from adjacent shelters. Someother sources of noise are caused by natural sourcessuch as the sound of pouring rain on metallic-sheetroofs. With refugees agreeing that their environmentsare noisy, the slider bar pointer (Table 2) reached thelowest rate of an overly noisy environment
Observations on Haptic Perception Abu-Loughd (1987) expressed touch experience in therefugee camp: “Step off the few main streets, andyou’ll find yourself in a maze of dark alleys. Stretchyour arms out: you can touch the buildings on bothsides’. Tactile experience in refugee camps is high-lighted by the rough texture of concrete which is con-sidered to be the main component of the buildingtypology of the refugee camp. The degree of rough-
ness reflects on the sensory slider bar which turns topoint out the highest level of roughness on the textureslider bar. Concrete material provides the observerwith a sense of coldness, meanwhile when evaluatedvia the tactile sense, it guides the perceiver towardsreal impression expressed as ‘tactile warmth’ whichmeasures material temperature indicating the materi-al’s ability to transmit warmth. Despite the visualimpression illustrated. Concrete is one of the materialsthat transmit coldness in winter and hotness in sum-mer. Even more, concrete when stroked produceswarmth. However, there are several transmitters ofcold in the refugee camp environment; among thosefor example steel which is used in a heavy manner inthe camp environment for stairs and hand rails mount-ing to upper floors. Due to the above-mentioned cir-cumstances, the chart illustrating the haptic tempera-ture indicates a moderate situation between coldnessand overheating.
As part of the haptic measuring system, thepain pointer shifts one degree towards sore. The builtenvironment of the refugee camp has witnessed differ-ent kinds of violence including several attacks by theIsraeli military that left walls perforated with bulletholes and building in ruins after bombing them withheavy guns. For the same reason and at the samerate, the pressure pointer on the sensory slider indi-cates a stressful haptic environment (Table 2). Thecamp is regarded as a violent environment constantlysubjected to attacks and intrusions by the Israeli mili-tary. In addition, the rigid materials that were used inerecting the shelters in the camp add to the negativeperceptions.
Refugees’ Haptic PerceptionThrough the interviews, the refugees explained that therough walls of the refugee camp are made of coarseand harsh bricks that are usually non-plastered orroughly plastered. They illustrate the gruff environmentof the camp. Narrator 10 (Figure 4) mentioned howpeople try to avoid interaction with those harsh fabrics,although it is difficult to do so because the narrowalleys force individuals to squeeze past the unfinishedwalls (Figure 6) Few shelter houses are plastered whilerare walls of shelter entrances are covered with tiles.The sensory slider tool pointer moves a degree towardroughness.
Temperatures in the exterior spaces of therefugee camp are tricky as refugees explained. On hotsummer days, the shelters are highly sun absorbentand the alleys are a bit cooler than the interiors but stillhot due to the transmission of warmth through con-crete walls. In winter, the alleys become cold, humidareas as a result of water retension and they some-times perform as wind intensifiers that increase thefeeling of coldness. Narrator 27 (Figure 4) mentionedthat in winter the walls transmit coldness to the hands,while steel rails usually feel frosty. According to theanalysis of the interviews, the temperature slider bar(Table 2) shows overheating one interval towards hightemperature.
These aforementioned walls of the sheltersare harmful. They, along with broken manholes, gut-ters, and nails inserted through walls injure andscratch people. Asphalt isn’t used in paving campalleys, instead smooth concrete is used. This causespeople to slip and fall. Narrator 2 (Figure 4) expressedthat the built environment is harmful, causing frequentinjuries to the refugees. Their pointers in (Table 2) indi-
Figure 6. Children playing in the alley of the camp.
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cate high pressure and stress. The stressful conditionsaffect the entire living environment of the refugees.
Observations on Olfactory Perception Infrastructure problems are some of the major crisis inPalestinian refugee camps. Shelters, when established,had no planned, organized sewage system. Later on,when the units were built up, they were not suppliedwith water or electric services, nor did they havesewage systems to handle their waste. The good andbad smelled in this environment mixed with smells ofsewage, uncollected trash in the narrow alleys of thecamp, the smell of illness that has been correlated withovercrowding, and the smell of dampness, as a resultof high humidity, in spaces shows the unhealthy envi-ronment of the camp. In contrast to the bad smells, thesmell of food and coffee in the alleys bring hints of life.Some of the refugees tried to plant some of the roofswith trees that remind them of their original houses,while other refugees planted flowerpots trying to beau-tify their surroundings. For these reasons, in (Table 2)the pointer of the olfactory sense could not shifttoward either of the extremes indicating that the envi-ronment is balanced with both offensive and pleasantsmells.
Refugees’ Olfactory Perception Camp residents suffer from the spread of waste andfood left in the alleys of the camp. Some of therefugees complained that the alleys smell badly. Inwinter, the refugees use firewood to heat themselves,however the smoke is harmful, especially in small inte-rior spaces and poorly ventilating alleys as indicatedby Narrator 12 (Figure 4). The smell of dead animalsleft in the narrow alleys prevents refugees from enter-ing and this is one of the problems that refugees reg-ularly face. On the other hand, the refugees men-tioned several pleasant smells of the wide range of
food types which are cooked in shelters on a dailybasis or for special occasions. In (Table 2) the pointerof the sensory slider representing olfactory senses shift-ed towards offensive smells . This comes as a result ofthe analysis of the interviews which signifies more neg-ativity towards the smells in the camp.
Observations on Gastronomy Perception Taste as a sensory experience in the refugee camp is adifferent experience. The perceiver is able to witnesstrading procedures of different types of food whichstimulate taste buds in the observer’s tongue. Theunfinished material of the built environment with theunfinished alley grounds made out of sand and soilfills the environment with dust that enters the lungswhile breathing. Concrete is said to be tasted; Bariciak(2005) explained that concrete tastes bitter. The graffitiand drawings on the shelter walls feature orange treesor sometimes an olive branch, inviting memory torecall tastes of the lost land which, with the coopera-tion of vision, distances observers from reality. On thesensory slider bar in (Table 2), the pointer moves onedegree towards deliciousness on the scale of gastron-omy sense.
Refugees’ Gastronomy Perception Narrator 15 (Figure 4) explained that the refugeesexpressed several tastes attached to a wide range offood that is traditionally cooked in every Palestinianhousehold. These foods include Maklouba, Maftoul,and other foods prepared in the alleys using barbe-ques. The refugees also recalled several types ofPalestinian street food that was sold by local shops:hummus, fül, and falafel. The sensory slider bar indi-cated a high propencity for deliciousness based on arich environment of food types. These fond recollec-tions were countered by refugees mentioning the sor-row they tasted for every single piece of material usedin building the camp reminded them of the bitternessof living there; therefore this perception could notreach the highest positive degree on the slider (Table2).
CONCLUSION The main focus of the literature highlighted the impor-tance of cooperation between all the senses in inte-grating the understanding of any built environment.The studied literature aided in understanding themechanisms of sensory perception as an integrateddevice operating in the human body. The extractedmatrix was used in establishing the measuring toolrecalled from the sensory slider tool by Malnar andVodvarka (2004).
The sensory perceptual experience of thecamp’s built environment illustrates and stresses thedifficulty of life lived by the refugees in the camps(Table 3). Sometimes this idea might not be clear evenfor the refugees; they might fail to identify difficultiesand bitterness perhaps because they became accus-tomed to the living environment. While the studybisects the interviewee sample into those who migrat-ed from their homelands and those who were born inasylum, the results are consistent across the twogroups.
The results in Table 3, which were corre-sponding between the observations and interviews,show that which is perceived by the senses on a dailybasis and presents the characteristics of the campenvironment. Visually, the camp has narrow and small
Figure 7. Texture of the alleys' walls.
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exterior spaces. It also lacks sufficient public openspaces for various activities. The visual sense percep-tion showed the roughness of the camp’s built environ-ment with regard to the unfinished hollow block con-crete walls that revealed the camp’s complicated pastand its uncertain future. The acoustic sense proved thebuilt environment is full of noises and very loud. Tactileperceptions exposed more than the roughness of shel-ter walls, the conditions indicate a neglected builtenvironment, unrestored since the day erected. Theenvironment exposes refugees to harm and theyexpressed dissatisfaction with the walls that surroundthem. The narrow alleys require the refugees to direct-ly engage the discomforting shelter walls, adding pres-sure to the passer-by who uses the narrow passageson a daily basis. The temperature of the camp is char-acterized as extreme; the alleys are very hot in summerand freezing cold in winter. The chemical senses wereassociated more with the intangible dimension ofspace characteristics. The olfactory sense explainedhow this environment suffers from poor sanitation,which is not well planned nor capable of handling theneeds of the population. The services are randomlylocated and the piping is exposed in many cases.However, this did not override the refugees’ awarenessof the aromas associated with food. Finally, the gas-tronomy sense revealed a lively environment filled withfavored cooking traditions. This sense also highlightedthe bitter and harsh environment of the camp.
Neither residents nor outsiders can deny thatthe camp has become a crowded urban environmentand often lacks the basic elements of a decent life.The refugees refuse to consider the camp a real homeand are likely to continue to use the term ‘shelter’ untilthe conflict is resolved and they obtain their right ofreturn to their homelands. Perhaps what exists in thisenvironment after seventy may not be found in anyother environment. Further inquiry should address theuniqueness of such environments, in addition to theabsence of individual privacy and psychological well-being
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Table 3. Graphical expression showing correspondencebetween observation and interviews results.
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Author(s):
Shahd Adnan M. Qzeih, Eastern Mediterranean University, Faculty ofArchitecture, Architecture [email protected]
Rafooneh Moktarshahi Sani, Eastern Mediterranean University, Faculty ofArchitecture, Architecture [email protected]
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INTRODUCTION
In our present-day world, which is highly urbanized,cities are the main and strategic place for violenceand conflict. The negotiation and resolution of dis-putes related to the economy, religion, gender andethnic differences are held every day in the urbanarena. Thus, when tensions turn into conflicts and con-flicts develop into violence, the urban arena becomesthe battlefield (Barceló J. et al. 2015).
Urban development can be referred to as asystem of residential expansion that defines and cre-ates cities. Urban development is implementedthrough expansion into new, uninhabited areas orregeneration of degraded areas and conflict zones(Brooks A. 2017). Cohen (2009) expressed the chal-lenge facing urban development, where local govern-mental institutions no longer have the capacity tomanage rapid and large urban growth, as well as theinability of these institutions to manage tensions orconflicts. Former differences and tensions are one ofthe greatest challenges facing official institutions,challenging them to measure their ability to maintainand protect the regime. Moreover, these forms ofchaos and violence are the result of material disputesfacing urban citizens (Strachan A. 2014). These con-flicts impact the shape of the built-environment inthose cities, as well as their future development, direct-ly and indirectly. There are many factors that lead tothe instability and destabilization of economic, socialand political systems. One of the factors that can leadto the weakness of central or national governments isthe suffering of urban areas from a severe shortage ofservices, which makes them areas of imbalance orgaps that are characterized to be unregulated and
ungovernable, as they are closely located to the cen-ters of political power (Cohen M. 2009).
GENESIS AND EVOLUTION OF THE CASE STUDYThe Gaza Strip is a narrow strip of the PalestinianTerritory that occupies the southern part of thePalestinian coast on the Mediterranean Sea and con-stitutes about 1.33% of the historic area of Palestine(Abuelaish & Olmedo, 2016). The Gaza Strip (Figure1) is located in southwestern Palestine in the form of anarrow strip in the southern part of the historic coastof Palestine. It gained its name from one of its largestcities, Gaza City, the second largest Palestinian cityafter Jerusalem (Efrat, 2006). The strip covers an areaof 360 square kilometers, a length of 41 kilometers,and a width of between 6 and 12 kilometers, bor-dered by Israel to the north and east, and theMediterranean to the west. It is also bordered by Egyptto the south-west (AlJazeera 2014). Based on the esti-mates prepared by the Palestinian Central Bureau ofStatistics for the year 2014, which were built on theresults of the 2007 Census of Population, the estimat-ed population of Palestine in the middle of 2014 wasabout 4.55 million, of whom 1.76 million were thepopulation of the Gaza Strip (PCBS 2018). Gaza City,on its own, has 400,000 inhabitants, and most of theresidents of the Gaza Strip include 1,948 refugees(Hazboun N. 1994). This sector is one of the mostdensely populated in the world, with a density of26,000 inhabitants per square kilometer (PCBS2018).
Urban development and planning in theGaza Strip has undergone many changes and devel-opments in terms of policies, characteristics, manage-ment and principles, beginning in the mid-nineteenth
Yousef J. M. Abukashif, Müge RizaAbstractWorldwide, an increasing number of cities and regions are confronted with conflict and tension. These conflicts havean impact on shaping and planning the built-environment, as well as the future development of the area. This articlefocuses on Gaza City and its development process throughout its political conflicts, with an emphasis on the last twodecades (2000-2018). The main objective is to comprehend the urban development in the case of conflict throughanalyzing the development of Gaza City, as well as questioning the determinants of urban development. This informa-tion is obtained through aerial maps, thermal maps and GIS map analysis. The findings reveal a general shortage ofhousing units and lack of safe housing locations, as most areas in Gaza City are under threat of war, as well as highprices of land due to the unavailability of unconstructed lands and high costs of construction materials. This studyargues that urban development in Gaza City was not led by planning through local authorities, rather it was shapedby conflict. This article concludes with recommendations that could be beneficial in developing lasting solutions tourban development in Gaza City
Keywords: Urban development, conflict zones, land use, GIS maps, Gaza City.
URBAN DEVELOPMENT OF CONFLICT ZONES: THECASE OF GAZA CITY.
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century (Abuelaish & Olmedo, 2016). Accordingly, theurban planning system in Palestine has becomeunique in its composition and context. The reason forthis uniqueness is that the planning practice was notunder the rule of the local authorities and that it wassubjected to many external forces that ruled thePalestinian territories for long periods of time(Abdelhamid, 2006). This poses a serious challenge tourban designers and other disciplines in the urbandevelopment of these available residential lands. Ingeneral, housing in Gaza City cannot afford muchdue to several reasons, including the unprecedentedrise in prices of urban land due to the lack of placesof urban expansion, in addition to the repeated warsbetween two conflicted sides (Asfour O. and ZourobN. 2017).
In the case of Gaza City, urban developmentis suffering many struggles. One of the most importantconcerns is the conflict taking place in the areabecause it has a strong and direct impact on allaspects of urban development. Due to this, Gaza Citysuffers from the limitation of the amount of land com-pared to the rate of population growth, which is veryhigh (Asfour O. 2017). Thus, the impact of the conflicthas extended to include other aspects, in conjunctionwith the agricultural sector, industrial sector, commer-cial sector and infrastructure of the city.
Reports from the United Nations Conferenceon Trade and Development (2015) affirmed the wors-ening of the situation in Gaza after suffering fromeight years of blockade, punctuated by three fiercewars between Israel and the Palestinians. One of thefindings of the report explained the seriousness of thecontinuation of the Israeli policy without making anysignificant changes. The situation in Gaza is at stakeand without these changes, the chance for Gaza toovercome its ordeal is very weak and as such, willbecome a place that is not fit for human life by 2020(UN 2015).
Thus, the main objective in this paper is toshed light on Gaza City’s urban development as acase study throughout the conflict taking place in thearea between 2000-2018. Further, we examine howto overcome this challenge, as this conflict environ-
ment is characterized as an overcrowded built envi-ronment. In order to do so, a mixed methodologicalapproach was used, including maps analysis, usingaerial maps and GIS maps. Moreover, in-depth obser-vations on Gaza City have been done in line with theanalysis.
METHODOLOGYThe present study involves the collection of topograph-ic sheets from a survey of Gaza City and the city mapsfrom relevant authorities in the strip. The requiredsatellite imagery for the study area was scored fromthe Ministry of Planning of the Palestinian Authoritiesthrough Geomolg for the years 2003, 2007 and2014. Maps were also picked from researchers in thefield. Processing the imagery and image interpretationfor the development of land use maps was done inArcGIS 10.1 software. Further, the obtained mapswere studied and analyzed to detect the change inurban development areas, while observations, datacollection and analysis took place in Gaza City in2018. A reflexive methodology is adopted that notonly includes a collection of empirical material fromrespondents or texts but also goes beyond these meth-ods, as the reflexive researcher relies just as much onexperiential knowledge gained from being a citizen ofthe proposed case study (Richardson, 2003).
Image PreprocessingDigital image processing was manipulated by the soft-ware used and the scenes were selected to be geomet-rically corrected, calibrated, and removed from theirdropouts. These data were stratified into ‘zones,’where land cover types within a zone have similarspectral properties. Other image enhancement tech-niques, such as histogram equalization, were also per-formed on each image for improving the quality of theimage, along with the help of the survey of Gaza topo-graphic-sheets and the city plan map, which wereobtained from Palestinian authority governorate head-quarter.
Land use and Land coverThere is no doubt that conflict has profoundly changedthe land cover in Gaza City during the past 15 years.Land is one of the most important natural resourcesand all agricultural and animal productions dependon the productivity of the land. The entire eco-systemof the land, which comprises of soil, water and plant,meets the community demand for food, energy andother needs of livelihood. In situations of conflict, landuse changes, while observations of the Earth fromspace provide objective information of the effect ofconflict on the utilization of the land. The classifiedimages provide all the information to understand theland use and land cover of the study area.
ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS
Gaza City has gone through many difficult and criticaltimes throughout its history, which has affected itsurban development both directly and indirectly.However, over the last 18 years, conflict, wars and vio-lence were considered the most critical factors thataffected the urban development of Gaza City. Thechanges that took place in the last few years were con-sidered to be the worst in the history of the city. Thisinfluence has affected all aspects of life in the city,including the residential, commercial, agricultural and
Figure 1. Gaza Strip Map showing Gaza City. Retrievedfrom BBC July, 2014, www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-2862788.
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industrial development, which has directly affected theinhabitants in different aspects, such as behavioral set-tings and geographical distribution.
The map shows (Figure 2) the land use inGaza City, which is divided into industrial lands, agri-cultural lands, market places, suspected urban expan-sion areas and other land-use patterns. The map alsoshows the industrial areas, which were allocated bythe Palestinian planners who placed them outside thecity on the eastern border areas due to multiple rea-sons. First, there was the intention to keep pollutionand noise away from the city and second, to make theindustrial zone closer to border trade crossings.However, one negativity in this place is set, which isthe proximity to clashing areas between the two con-flict sides. This has led to the significant disruption ofwork during the wars that have taken place due to theongoing conflict between the Israel and the PalestinianAuthority. The second area on the map is the agricul-tural area, which was divided by the municipality intoagricultural areas A and agricultural areas B. Most ofthese areas are located on the eastern border, withsome on the southern border of Gaza City. The pres-ence of agricultural land on the borders of Gaza haspros and cons. On the one hand, they are distancedfrom the residential areas, which helps in keepinginsects and harmful pesticides away from the popula-tion of Gaza City. On the other hand, the dangerappears to be obvious as a result of the proximity ofclashing areas located on the eastern border, causingharassment to the Palestinian farmers. In addition,these agricultural areas are closely located to the clas-sified industrial lands, which are primarily responsiblefor polluting the soil surrounding the agricultural land.Another area indicated on the map is the built-uparea, which was planned by the Municipality of Gaza,and points out existing buildings and future expansionareas. The map also highlights the proposed port areaon the shore of the Gaza Sea, which has not yet beenfully equipped due to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict butis partially used by fishermen to set up fishing boats.The map also shows the only recreation area servingthe entire city of Gaza, as Gaza’s coastal part func-tions as the main entertainment area for the city’spopulation. On the map, the fishing services area is
labeled, located close to thesea and to Gaza’s port andallocated for the aim of serv-ing the fishermen. Also on themap, are two wastewatertreatment areas, which areboth labeled. The first is locat-ed in the southern part ofGaza City, which is currentlyoperating. The second is aproposed place for the imple-mentation of the wastewatertreatment and is located in theeastern area of the city. Thereason for the delay in itsimplementation is knowingthat the city is in dire need ofits presence and its location inthe eastern region being nearclashing areas, similar to theagricultural region and indus-trial zones, which was previ-ously explained.
First Period (2000-2004)The importance of starting with this specific interval isthat it came after prosperity and peace, preceding theestablishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1996.This period launched the Al-aqsa upraising, ‘Intifada2000.’ Serious clashes and attacks had taken placebetween both conflicted sides on the edges of GazaCity, especially the eastern parts. The majority of theinhabitants on the eastern boarders had to leave theirresidence for the fear of their lives. As a result, theyhad temporally moved towards the mid-city area,seeking safety. Some western parts had suffered fromNavy attacks, which also made it dangerous to dwell.Although this period witnessed tensions between bothsides, urban development and expansion in the builtup area continued. Workers in the construction sectorhad to work in Gaza City only after they had beenworking in adjacent cities, which enabled the con-struction field to sustain progress even through strikesand blockades.
GIS map (Figure 3) shows the boundaries ofbuilt-up areas of Gaza City in 2003, which shows thenatural urban expansion of the city in four differentdirections. The larger proportion of development tookplace in the eastern and the southern region of thecity. This is due to several reasons, the most importantreason being the availability of empty land in theseregions that can be used for expansion, which havealready been classified by the municipality as futureexpansion lands. For example, these lands were usedfor expansion through the construction of the Tal El-Hawa Towers project in the southern area of GazaCity, which included services and infrastructure exten-sions. As for the northern side, the lands of expansionwere implemented in large part due to the establish-ment of the Al-Sheikh Radwan neighborhood. Thereason for the establishment of the Al-Sheikh Radwanneighborhood was to transfer the residents of the Al-Shati refugee camp to this neighborhood and then toremove the camp (Gaza Municipality 2018). However,the plan failed, as the Al-Shati refugee camp still exist-ed until recently. Another reason for the expansion thattook place in the northern area of Gaza City was theestablishment of the Al-Awda City by the Palestinian
Figure 2. The land use for Gaza city
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Authority, which is a collection of residential towers aswell as public services and open areas. Similarly, thewestern side of Gaza City does not have a large per-centage of empty land that allows it to expand signifi-cantly, but it does contain some scattered lands, whichrange from 500 square meters to 1000 squaremeters. In fact, the lack of large quantities of landexpansion in the western area of Gaza City is due totwo main reasons. Firstly, is the establishment of theAl-Shati camp for Palestinian refugees, as the campwas set up near Gaza Beach on a random basis with-out being planned in advance. Secondly, residents ofGaza City were encouraged to move from their homesin the Old City to the western part of Gaza City. Itappears that the planning was deliberate and not arandom expansion through the form of street plan-ning, which is shown on the map. The streets take theform of a network unlike the Old Town, which have anirregular shape.
Second Period (2005-2010)After the previous period of urbandevelopment after the 20 uprising,that could be characterized asalmost natural, a second phasebegan. In 2005, following theIsraeli withdrawal from Gaza City,the expansion of built-up areascontinued, but in a more difficultway than the previous period dueto several reasons. First, the warsthat were waged between theIsraelis and Palestinians started withtwo wars in 2006 and ended with awar that began in late 2008 untilthe early beginnings of 2009.These wars had direct effects onurban development and the expan-sion of built-up areas. As shown inthe heat map of the 2008-2009(Figure 4) war below, the entire cityof Gaza was under threat. Thesewars targeted all areas of GazaCity, so there is no longer an areathat is safe from danger. However,
the eastern and southeastern areas weresubjected to more violence than others dur-ing the shelling of residential, governmen-tal, educational and agricultural buildings,which were all affected, resulting in totaland partial damage. The second reason forthe difficulty of expanding and developmentis the siege that was imposed at the begin-ning of 2007, which is still present so far.This blockade is one of the most importantfactors affecting urban development due tothe enclosure of the commercial crossingsand the lack of building materials from themarkets. Despite previous difficulties, the built-up areas have increased significantlyas a result of the rapid population growth inthe limited area.
The following map (Figure 5) showsthe percentage of built-up areas in GazaCity in 2007. The map shows an increase inthe proportion of built-up areas comparedwith the previous map in 2003 despite thedifficulties mentioned earlier in this stage.Further, the map shows an increase in thebuilt-up areas in the southern regions
because these areas are somewhat far from the dan-ger, and there is some availability of empty lands. Thisstage was also characterized by the filling of scatteredland inside Gaza City, or small scattered lands onwhich separate buildings can be built inside a non-compounded system. The map also shows someexpansion towards the eastern part of Gaza City,which did not constitute a large percentage of theexpansion due to the danger of this area after thesecurity belt was imposed in the eastern region. Inaddition, the lands of this area are classified as agri-cultural. There is also another reason for the lack ofurban orientation to the east, which is the weakness ofan infrastructural network, in addition to a significantlack of services because most services are available inthe center of Gaza City. As for the northern and west-ern regions, the expansion towards these lands is timiddue to the unavailability of development lands.
Third Period (2011-2015)
Figure 3. The boundaries of built-up areas of Gaza City in 2003
Figure 4. Thermal map of the 2008-2009 war .
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Thereafter, there was a turningpoint, which was the stagebetween 2011 and 2015. Tounderstand the urban devel-opment at this stage, it is bet-ter to divide it into two phases:the first is between 2011 and2013, while the secondincludes the two years 2014and 2015. The first phase wascharacterized by an increasein urban development, asbuilding materials were pro-vided at cheap prices, in addi-tion to the availability of fueland electricity. Thus, this stageseemed as though it served asa semi-dismantling of theblockade that was imposed onGaza City. This renaissancewas due to the opening of the
borders between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, whichallowed many products that were not available toenter Gaza. This led to a significant increase in thenumber of buildings constructed, where many of thebuildings that were destroyed in previous wars werecompensated. In addition, this renaissance also led toan unprecedented development in the expansion ofbuilt-up areas. After the renaissance period, the sec-ond period began during the years of 2014 and2015, which were disastrous, as the State of Egyptclosed its borders, the siege on Gaza City returnedmore severe than it was before and was then followedby a war. In view of the thermal map shown below(Figure 6), the extent of the intensity of this war is evi-dent, as the shelling and destruction took place in allareas of Gaza City in a way that exceeded previouswars. Also, the map shows the extent of the completelydestroyed areas and the extent of the partiallydestroyed areas. This war resulted in the destruction ofentire neighborhoods, the demolition of towers andhouses, and the destruction of the city’s infrastructure.Nevertheless, one of the main results that traces effectson the urban development of Gaza City is the expan-sion of the “no-go” zone area, which restricts the
usability of the specified buffer zonebetween both sides (Figure 7).
The map below (Figure 8)shows the 2014 urban developmentin Gaza City. Furthermore, the mapshows a significant expansion of thebuilt-up area to the south of GazaCity and to the east of Gaza City inparticular. The reason for this urbanexpansion is the renaissance thattook place between 2011 and2013, which was explained previ-ously. Another reason for the expan-sion of these directions is theabsence of empty areas in the cen-ter of Gaza City, the eastern andnorthern regions, in addition torapid population growth. The mapalso shows the transformation ofsome agricultural areas into built-upareas, which are considered one ofthe most serious urban phenomena.This map is the latest map showing
Figure 7. No-go zone (Maps created by Léopold Lambert, The Funambulist, 2014).
Figure 5. The percentage of built-up areas of Gaza City in2007.
Figure 6. Thermal map of the 2014 war .
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built-up areas. After that, there was a general reces-sion in the real estate markets and urban developmentas well, as the construction movement had becomealmost suspended while new buildings became fewand scattered. Moreover, large projects have almostdisappeared.
CONCLUSION The results of the Gaza City maps analysis and condi-tions for the development of built-up areas, includingresidential, commercial, industrial, agricultural andinfrastructural development shows that identifying theproblem that the city suffers is vital and it is a priorityto fix the issue. This is because the urban developmentproblem in Gaza City is not only the destruction thatthe conflict causes, but also the lack of possibilitiesavailable to solve this problem. However, previousanalysis has shown that Gaza City does not have suf-ficient resources to cope with these challenges.Blockade of Gaza City’s land and sea borders as aresult of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a real chal-lenge facing the urban development of the city. Inaddition, the most seriousand complex problemsfacing Gaza City includethe area of the city, whichis very small, with 65 km2and the increasing popu-lation reaching a densityof 600,000 people in2015, according to theMunicipality of Gaza.Secondly, the severe short-age of natural buildingresources is also a signifi-cant issue.
The followingmap (Figure 9) shows theresults of the urban expan-sion in Gaza City by com-paring urban expansionfor the years of 2003,2007 and 2014. This mapshows the rapid pace ofurban expansion in GazaCity over a short period of
time, despite the complex conflict that the city is expe-riencing. The urban expansion situation in Gaza Cityis very dangerous, since the plan that was put intoplace by the Palestinian planners for future urbanexpansion was disrupted due to the rapid increase inurban expansion, which almost exceeded the pro-posed areas. Urban expansion began to encroach onagricultural land, as shown in the following map.Thus, urban expansion has become very difficulttowards the northern and western areas and at thecenter of Gaza City. Moreover, there is difficulty in theexpansion of the eastern region, which is consideredto be a buffer zone, in addition to its original usage asagricultural land. The only area currently available forurban expansion according to the maps is the south-ern area of Gaza City.
The results of the residential, commercial,industrial and agricultural development analysis ofGaza City showed the following. First, residentialdevelopment has shown a general shortage of hous-ing units, in addition to the lack of safe housingplaces, as all areas in Gaza City are under the threatof war. Currently, there are some investment attempts,but the attempts are very humble as a result of the col-lapse of the economy in the city, high prices of landdue to a lack of availability, and the high prices ofconstruction materials.
This research concludes that to develop anarea under conflict, the responsible authorities shouldfollow a systematic framework as follows; first, thelevel of threat in case of war should be understood bythe authorities to decide the suitable and safe loca-tions for development. Secondly, authorities shouldunderstand the built-up development history of thearea to predict the behavior of residents and to pro-pose the best solutions that suit their norms and cul-ture. Thirdly, authorities should understand the avail-able resources and the economy of the area to pro-pose possible and sustainable solutions. Finally,authorities should study the approximate expectedgrowth rate and accordingly, design a tailored devel-opment plan to save the limited resources available.
Figure 8. Urban development in Gaza City in 2014.
Figure 9. The results of the urban expansion in Gaza Cityin 2003, 2007, 2014 intervals.
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Author(s):
Yousef J. M. Abukashif , Eastern Mediterranean University, [email protected]
Müge Riza, Eastern Mediterranean University, [email protected]
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INTRODUCTION
the main aim of this paper is to discuss postwar dis-placement and re-settlement issues in Famagusta froma cultural perspective utilizing memories of currentand past inhabitants.
Varosha (Famagusta) was one of the bestknown holiday destinations in the region during the1970’s. With the 1974 intervention/invasion of theturkish army in Cyprus, Varosha was occupied(together with the rest of the Famagusta area), and itsentire population had to flee the town, for fear ofbeing massacred (asmussen J. 2008; arsoy a. 2017).after 1974, the coastal part of Varosha was closed tocivilians, and it was controlled by turkish militaryforces. since this time it has been described as aghost town (arsoy a. 2017).
in 1974 the island was divided and in its defacto state, and Famagusta was located in the north-ern part of the island. since then the northern part ofCyprus has been under turkish military control.Following the division of the island, Famagusta hasexpanded and developed towards the north, especiallywith the establishment of the eastern mediterraneanUniversity (emU) in 1979. the closed district ofVarosha, therefore, became a suburb or a ghetto(Basarir h. 2009). Before 1974, Famagusta had apopulation of 39,000 residents; the population of the
historic walled old city was 15,000 (Boğaç C. 2002).the current population of Famagusta is around41,000 in total.
after the war and the division of the islandinto the turkish north and the Greek south - turkishand Greek Cypriots were not allowed to return to theirhomes. displaced turkish Cypriots from the southernregion were settled in the northern part of the islandand displaced Greek Cypriots were settled in thesouthern part of the island. some abandoned housesin the south were rented to displaced people, such asrefugees coming from the northern areas. Peoplefrom Varosha predominantly settled in limassol, acoastal city in the south. to spark the falling tourismeconomy again, the government of the republic ofCyprus (roC), subsidised exiled Varoshian hotel own-ers in order to support them to rebuild their business-es.
the coastal area of Varosha (Kapalı maraş)has been closed to civilians since then. KatoVarosha(aşağı maraş) is partly open to civilians and housesrefugees and immigrants. at present, there are twodistinct groups in Varosha. in terms of literal definition,internal refugees, turkish Cypriots and turkish immi-grant/settlers. internal turkish Cypriot refugees weredisplaced from Pafos (south) to Kato Varosha (north).the second group, turks from turkey, immigrants (orsettlers), consisted of volunteers, a qualified work force
Aysu Arsoy, Hacer BasarirAbstractVarosha (Famagusta) was one of the richest districts, and best known holiday destination of the region during the1970’s. however, due to the war in 1974, half of Varosha was closed to residents and the other half became a bor-dered city. the demographic structure, in addition to the physical and cultural structures of the city was therefore com-pletely altered. Postwar displacement and re-settlement in Varosha is the focus of this paper. the main aim is to discuss the lifestyle in Varosha from a cultural perspective using memories from former andcurrent inhabitants. to achieve this, a set of semi-structured interviews were conducted in which two main questionswere posed during the interviews: 1) What was the lifestyle in Varosha before 1974? and 2) What was the lifestyle inVarosha after 1974? these questions were intended to shed some light on the post-war landscape of Varosha. For this purpose, researchers followed a chronological order: life before 1974; interview group a, six GreekCypriots who were former inhabitants of Varosha. life after 1974: interview group B, six turkish Cypriots who weredisplaced and settled in Varosha; and interview group C, six immigrant/settlers turks from turkey, who volunteered tomove to Cyprus and settle in Varosha. the snowball method has been used to identify former and current residents ofVarosha. the findings are based on interviews with the former, displaced and re-settled Varoshian residents. the interviews revealed how displacement affected the city and the former and current inhabitants. analysis of thefindings were categorized under three headings: 1) displacement from/to Varosha; 2) belonging and identity; 3) lifestyle and culture of each group. the categorization is used to describe how displacement affected the city and its cit-izens. in other words, this research targets to describe pre- and post-war life(styles) in Varosha.
Keywords: displacement; spoils system; Post-War settlements, Famagusta, Varosha.
POST-WAR RE-SETTLEMENTS IN VAROSHA: PARADISETO GHETTO
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of volunteers with a view to becoming resident citizensand to form and expand a nation, to actively supportthe development of the economy from agriculture tohandcraft including governmental bureaucratic andadministrative duties. turkish Cypriots, who had beenforced to abandon their homes in the southern part,were given exchange titles to their properties left in thesouth and allocated houses in Kato Varosha. theturkish immigrants or new settlers from turkey weregiven title deeds (tahsis) to (agricultural) land andhouses prior to their arrival on the island (Kurtuluş h.& Purkıs s. 2014).
HISTORY OF DISPLACEMENT IN VAROSHA (FAMA-GUSTA)Famagusta, the second biggest city in northernCyprus and formerly the third on the entire island, issituated on the north-eastern coast. the city, just likethe rest of the island, was developed mainly duringlusignan rule (1192-1489) especially after the fall ofacre in 1291. the lusignan period can be consideredas the peak period for Famagusta, as the st. nicholasCathedral was built during that period in addition toalmost 300 churches and the foundations of todays’city walls. Following the lusignans, the island wasannexed by the Venetians (1489-1571) and the citybecame the capital of the island (Gunnis, 1947). afterthe Venetians, the ottomans conquered the island andruled it for 300 years (1571-1878).
the ottomans changed the demographicstructure of the city by issuing a ‘firman’ (imperialedict) to all non-islamic civilians to move outside thewalled city to suburb: (arsoy a. 2017), the new settle-ment was called Varosha/maraş/(arsoy a. 2017;luke s. 1969).
therefore, during the ottoman period the cityexpanded outside the walls towards the south. onlyturks and Jews were allowed to reside within thewalled city and the Greeks, armenians, and othernon-islamic were forced to sell their properties andmove out from the walls, thus both the Varosha andKato Varosha districts were formed (luke s., 1965).although settling within the city walls was forbidden fornon-islamic citizens, they were permitted to haveshops in the walled town during the day but at nightthey were obliged to move outside the town (luke s.1957, dreghorn W. 1985, Başarır h. 2009).
SETTLEMENT IN VAROSHA– BRITISH PERIOD during the British Period (1878-1960), with the open-ing of the suez Canal (1869) Famagusta regained itsimportance as a port city (Başarır h. 2009). in addi-tion, the rapid development of tourism reshaped theurban environment of the city. the expansion of thecity outside the walls, towards the south, which hadalready started during the ottoman period, was accel-erated. the enlargement of the town was focused onVarosha and, therefore, new residential districts wereformed incorporating new commercial, tourist andrecreational activity areas (Başarır h. 2009).
Varosha city became a prime example ofmodernism and represented, internationally, an inde-pendent modern Cypriot identity (arsoy a. 2017;Fereos s.t. & Phokaides P. 2006). the popularity ofVarosha and the tourism business of the island grew byfive stars [seven star] hotel services, after British domi-nance and subsequently the foundation of the turkishrepublic of northern Cyprus (trnC) (arsoy a. 2017;Boğaç C. 2002). Varosha was one of the most popu-
lar tourist destinations in the middle east and europe.significant touristic investments in Varosha were subsi-dized by international organizations (arsoy a. 2017,Boğaç C. 2002).
during the British period, development wasfocused mainly on the harbour of Famagusta and thedistrict of Varosha. in 1960 Cyprus became an inde-pendent state, on the basis of a 70:30 ratio betweenthe Greek Cypriot and turkish Cypriot communities. anew administrative system was established in thewalled city and because its population consisted main-ly of turkish Cypriots, it was administered by a turkishCypriot municipality, whilst the new districts outside thewalls such as Varosha were controlled by GreekCypriot administration (Keshishian K.K. 1985).
as a result of conflicts arising between the twocommunities, the walled city became a prohibited dis-trict for the Greek Cypriot community after 1963. thiscaused a difficult situation since the harbour wasunder Greek management whilst the turks were pro-tecting the walls and manning the bastions. Between1963 and 1974, almost no development took placein terms of the built environment in the walled city(Başarır h. 2009). in contrast Varosha district contin-ued to develop at this time. architecturally Varoshaconsisted of structures conveying the characteristics ofinternational style and some British colonial buildingsthat reflected trends in contemporary architecture(Başarır h. 2009).
THE POST WAR SITUATION IN VAROSHAthe closed coastal district of Varosha (Kapalı maraş) isalmost 11 km long. the bay is full of decaying emptymultistorey hotel buildings (see figure-2). the formerConstantinos hotel, now known as the arkın PalmBeach hotel, is the only one operating in the area,which is situated near the dividing fence in the openresidential area of Varosha. the hotel shares its beachwith the fenced-off Varosha (Kapalı maraş) district.the remaining signs of the war are still clearly visiblefrom the balconies of this hotel (details of the bom-bardment and abandonment are more visible in figure3).
Photographing, video recording and any
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Figure 1.Colonial post box on the main road between (left)forbidden and (right) civilian area of (Kato) Varosha,February, 2019 (source: authors).
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other method of documenting is prohibited.therefore, “fear of being seen and apprehended”(dobraszczky P. 2014: 53) or arrested by the armedforces is a constant issue. Police and the military con-stantly patrol the closed off district. We were alsowarned by the police to not record in the forbiddenareas. Consequently civilians must ignore the citybehind the fences. You are not allowed to view it; youmust act like it does not exist. there was life in there.living in that area, and ignoring the close area hasbecome a constant practice (the description of ‘GhostCity’ makes absolute sense). Ghosts do not exist.` rom the municipal town hall you have viewsof both sides. one direction is towards the walled city(see figure 4). the yellow building next to the town hallis another bombarded structure and is now a ruin inthe city centre. the other direction from the town hallleads to the heart of Varosha, which is now forbiddenand inaccessible. You are allowed to walk, drive andpark next0 to the fences (see figure 5).
the city was famous for its orange orchardsand the wonderful perfume of the orange flowers.now the fields and orchards are filled with greenhous-es (see figure 6), or left as ruined, waste lands (see fig-ure 7).
Figure 6: Previous orange orchards are now full ofgreen houses, February, 2019 (Source: Authors).
Figure 7: Ruined empty spaces in Varosha, February,2019 (Source: Authors).
after 45 years of abandonment nature is re-claimingthe district, as plants and vegetation, such as cacti
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Figure 3. Bombarded building in Varosha, next to the arkınPalm Beach hotel (Barnet, 2014).
Figure 4.View from town hall towards the walled city,February, 2019 (source: authors).
Figure 2. View from arkın Palm Beach hotel’s balcony.the only accessible public beach and the boundarybetween the ghost town and the residential area, February,2019 (source: authors).
Figure 5.View from town hall towards the forbidden zone,February, 2019 (source: authors).
Figure 6. Previous orange orchards are now full of greenhouses, February, 2019 (source: authors).
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etc., are growing in the structures.in the area of (kato) Varosha, where settle-
ment is allowed, you can observe many empty andabandoned houses but you can also observe manyold well cared for modernist structures (see figure 13,14, 15, and 16).
METHODS OF DATA GATHERING AND ANALYSISthe main aim of this paper is to discuss postwar re-settlement issues in Varosha, from a cultural perspec-tive using memories of current and former inhabitants.due to the division/separation of the city, Famagusta,and, therefore, Varosha kept changing its demograph-ic structure. But who are they, who are living inFamagusta at present, in Varosha, and the surround-ing neighborhood? how are they, living an inheritedculture or ‘spoils system’ (ganimet culture) deviations?to achieve this aim, we are limiting our research to thepre and post 1974 period; to this end a set of semistructured interviews have been conducted with addi-tional on-site investigations being carried out in orderto provide some insights into the post-war landscapeof Famagusta.
thus the two main research questions raised by thisstudy are:
RQ1: how was the lifestyle in Varosha before 1974?RQ2: how is the lifestyle in Varosha now?
the forbidden or closed district of Varosha has been‘asleep’ for a long time; but there was life in there. inorder to understand today, we need to explore thepast. For this purpose, we have followed a chronolog-ical order: life before 1974; interview group a, GreekCypriots who were former inhabitants of Varosha. lifeafter 1974: interview group B, turkish Cypriots whowere displaced and settled in Varosha; interviewgroup C, immigrant/settlers turks from turkey whowere volunteers to move to Cyprus and who were set-tled in Varosha. the snowball method has been usedto meet/identify former and current citizens /residentsof Varosha.
Data Collection Proceduresinitially we identified someone who overlapped ourcriteria; he/she/they live(d) in Varosha, and we visitedhim/her/them at their home to conduct the interview.Following this we asked the interviewee to recommendthe next interviewee as per the snowball samplingmethod. We limited interviews to six people withineach group. in total 18 interviews were conducted.
in order to understand the lifestyle before andafter 1974 the subsequent displacement and the postwar re-settlement in Varosha, we posed the following
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Figure 8.invasion of nature. Cacti are breaking free fromfences, February, 2019 (source: authors).
Figure 7. ruined empty spaces in Varosha, February, 2019(source: authors).
Figure 9. invasion of nature, wild grass is growing on thebuilding, February, 2019 (source: authors).
Figure 10.invasion of nature, fungus infection anddried-up prickly pears on the fences, February, 2019(source: authors)..
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questions to the participants that we visited them intheir home.
in order to make our intention clear and introduce ourresearch, we asked the following warm up questions: 1) Where do you come from? 2) Where were you living before 1974?
3) how old are you? 4) how was the lifestyle in Varosha during the 70’s? 5) how is life in Varosha now?
after breaking the ice with the interviewee(s), wedirected further questions:
For group A (Greek Cypriots):11) how was the lifestyle in Varosha before 1974? 12) Where were you displaced to and settled following1974?13) What are your most vivid memories of the placeand the war?14) What do you think/feel about Varosha now?
For group B (Turkish Cypriots):11) When did you settle in Varosha?12) how did you find a house in Varosha?13) What did you know about Varosha before you set-tled there?14) What kind of furnishings and household equip-ment etc., did you find in the house?15) What are your most vivid memories of the placeand the war?16) What do you think/feel about Varosha now?
For Group C (Turks from Turkey):11) When did you settle in Varosha?12) how did you find a house in Varosha?13) What did you know about Varosha before you set-tled there?14) What kind of furnishings and household equip-ment etc. did you find in the house? 15) What do youthink/feel about Varosha now?
initially the turkish Cypriots were not very willing tocommunicate. We observed that they were very upsetand angry. they were feeling abandoned and treatedunequally by both the turkish Cypriot and the GreekCypriot authorities. therefore, if we had any politicalagenda, they were not willing to give interviews.however after the first few questions, they relaxed andthe initially short interviews extended to become 4 to 5hours long. in general, all participants were very will-ing to share their memories with us. therefore, snow-ball sampling (or chain methods) provided a success-ful network and method for this research, in respect ofthe confidentiality of the participants as well as their
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Figure 12.invasion of nature, wild grass is growing onthe asphalt, February, 2019 (source: authors).
Figure 11.invasion of nature, wild grass is growing onthe asphalt, February, 2019 (source: authors).
Figure 14. empty, wasted modernist structures in Varosha,February, 2019 (source: authors).
Figure 13. modernist structures in Varosha, February, 2019(source: authors).
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privacy. some particularly private notes have beenremoved from the main text. most of the participantswere senior adults. observations were made andnotes were taken during the interviews. no recordingdevices were used.
the following coding structure has been applied in theanalysis to refer to the interviewees: interview group a: Greek Cypriots (GC)six Greek Cypriots (GC) who were living in Varosha,(until 1974) but had to flee the town.#1 Female, 60#2 male, 67#3 male, 55#4 male 57#5 Female, 70#6 Female, 22interview group B: turkish Cypriots (tC)six turkish Cypriots (tC) who were living in the southand became refugees, and who resettled in Varoshaafter 1974.#7 Female, 60#8 Female, 58#9 Female, 62#10 male, 70#11 Female, 66#12 Female, 70interview group C: turks from turkey (tt)6 turks from turkey (tt) settlers/immigrants settled in tVarosha after 1974.#13 male, 64#14 male, 40#15 Female, 55#16 Female, 52#17 Female, 70#18 Female, 72
FINDINGS AND ANALYSISthe findings are based on interviews of former, dis-placed and re-settled Varoshian residents. the inter-view questions were listed above in the data collectiondescription section. semantically, analysis of the find-ings were categorized under three headings: 1) dis-placement from/to Varosha; 2) belonging and identi-ty; 3) life style and culture for each group. the catego-rizations are used to describe how displacementaffected the city and the citizens. in other words, this
research is aiming to examine and describe the pre-and postwar life(style) in Varosha. the findings of thisresearch reveal feelings of attachment, and belongingto Varosha. moreover, the findings represent an iden-tity [a Varoshian] construction of the post war situationin Varosha.
DISPLACEMENT Greek Cypriots argue that the northern part is occu-pied, and turkey invaded their homeland. they alsobelieve that after the war their own administrationtreated them unfairly which also created internal con-flict within the Greek Cypriot community. GreekCypriots believe that those who aligned with diKo1received better compensation for their losses and oth-ers were not treated fairly. Former Greek Cypriotinhabitants such as GC#1, GC#4 and GC#6 men-tioned (interview notes), were living a fairytale life, andthey believed that: “they were living in paradise, whichwas too good to be real”. in contrast, the older GreekCypriot generation is struggling to accept that theyounger Greek Cypriot generations are not makingenough efforts to return to Varosha (as described byGC#5 and GC#6).
the following interviewnotes provide moreinsights on the perspectives of the participants.
Greek Cypriot -GC#1“i was 17 years old, last year of school in Famagustawhen the civil war started between anti-makariosGreek Cypriots and the pro-makarios Greek Cypriots. For almost half of that year we had no school, how-ever it was not called enosis during those years.there were lots of agitations from Greek officers in thearmy- a lot of demonstrations in 1973 and probablyin 1974 until the coup took place. in 1973 i was inengland as a student. that political climate i foundvery similar to today’s situation (oil and gas problemsin the aegean). the coup was a brilliant excuse forturkey. in 1973 the UK was experiencing gas prob-lems described in the UK newspapers and we were1 The Democratic Party (DimokratikóKómma (DIKO) is a Greek-Cypriot ‘nationalist’ polit-ical party.
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Figure 16. modernist structures in the ghost City, Varosha,February, 2019 (source: authors).
Figure 15. abandoned modernist structures in Varosha,February, 2019 (source: authors)..
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very scared.”
the situation resembles very much to todays’ builduptensions and characteristics.
GC#2“i left Varosha in the 1970’s. in 1974 i was inFamagusta for holidays. a lot of bombing, we werescared. they were shooting from planes. We left, wethought we were coming back. We left to British bases,some people were sleeping in cars, some at the elec-tricity power station and fishing harbour. the onlyhotel which was nearby was the armenian hotel, manypeople stayed there. in the crowd we saw militarydressed national service members, who were my class-mates, even they didn’t, and nobody knew where togo… total chaos… even in the south part. Peoplestayed in camps i think for many months. they thoughtthey were going back. many people went to limassolfor finding jobs. only people who had family therecame to nicosia.”
turkish CypriottC#7“We were living at limassol. July 74 we didn’t leaveour house, a year later denktaş and Clerides had afamily reunification agreement then we left limassol in1975. We had/owned a bus, it was our family busi-ness. my father was a bus driver, and we possessproperties, houses in rent. it was our income. Wewere students, 4 siblings, girls studied in english andGreek at the nurse school. Between 1974-75 we werescared to leave our house, the mayor sent us a mes-sage that he can provide protection for us to driveto/from school but we thought this will make us adirect target so we were afraid and then rejected hisproposal.”
“Kalamara (Greek military) was patrolling around.they knocked on our door a couple of times, once inJuly 74; my father was in the courtyard of the houseand he was on his knees; Kalamara asked me if wehave any male in the house and they /forced us to letthem in. my father was in the courtyard of the houseand asked help to stand on his feet, they said this manis old, not a young man. We are looking for youngturkish Cypriots. they wrote/registered our names andthey went out from the house. they marked us thatday. after this incident we heard they collected youngmales in the neighborhood and drove them with thebus to their deaths. they never returned. [this isknown as ‘the missing bus incident’]. they were look-ing for turkish Cypriots as well as empty spaces/hous-es to move into. We studied at the english school,therefore my sibling and i spoke good english andGreek. i open the door and i ask what he wanted (inGreek). Kalamara said, i thought the house is empty,and then i replied, we found an empty house and set-tled, and do you want us to move again, than he saidsorry, and he moved away. he though we were GreekCypriot refugees.”
“after ‘74 we knew that we must leave. We put a tablein front of our house and we wrote the price on theitems and start selling goods from the house on thestreet. that was the money we took with us to thenorth. With the rest of the house hold, such as our bedand some other small items we loaded the bus anddrove to the north with the guidance of Un. in the
north they settled us in Famagusta, close to our family.First nights all exchanged and displaced refuges werestaying in the dorm.”
“the day after we were driving up and down to findaccommodation/,or/house to settle in and we went toVarosha. later we learnt that all our roommates knewabout Varosha but none informed or recommend us togo there. maybe competition, maybe jealousy. Whenyou found an empty house, you walked in, then youinformed the local administration to connect you tocity electric, then it became yours. We came a yearlater, and as a result, the house that we found was aleftover that the Bafidies (people from Pafos calledBafidies) did not like.
tC#11“in ‘74 July, i broke my arm. my mum needed to takeme to the hospital and she was holding me with myother hand. trying to move quickly, we needed to passthrough a small hill of covered bodies.”
turks from turkeytt#13“i came in here in 1975. after arriving in theFamagusta port by ferry, we stayed a night at thedorms. the government promised us to give a house,10 donum (1 donum=1.338 m2.) plus 2 donummore with water supplied agricultural fields, govern-ment work, and a car.”
“We didn’t find our houses at Varsoha like the turkishCypriots. the houses were distributed by lots (througha lottery). all houses had a number on it. they tookus to Varosha the day after. We found the number thati picked from the lot. the house was empty, not fur-nished, no kitchen tools, no fridge, or tV. Karakeşliler(area in Kato Varosha) was still closed in that time forsettlement. they told us to go there and get yourneeds. i went there to get tV and refrigerator. ireceived everything which was promised to us, excepta car.”
tt#17“the 9th of July 1975 we came to Cyprus, (46 yearsliving at aşağı maraş).We were living at mersin, erdemli, i had reasonableassets, lands, houses etc. my love, applied to work asimmigrant in Germany, and in that time we were notmarried so i didn’t let him go. than one day he cameand he said he applied to go to Cyprus. 3 days laterhe received the acceptance letter. it was very sudden.i said no to Germany and now i needed to accept this.than we took out valuables and the beds with us, andleft erdemli.”
“he didn’t ask my opinion about Cyprus. he appliedand we volunteered to go to Cyprus. We were firstlocated at dorms for a night than we found our housethat we picked from lots. i had a six months old baby.it was a difficult journey with the ferry. my child hadwounds all around her. Famagusta port was a veryisolated, deserted place. We called a taxi to go to thehospital first, and then to the dorms.”
“When we found our new house at Varosha, therewere people inside, cleaning the house, they were inthe wrong house. We found piles of books and news-papers on the veranda. the rest of the house was
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empty. We found a table and four chairs. many jars ofjam (macun). We threw everything away. We thoughtthe ‘gavur’ (infidels referring to Greek Cypriots) mighthave put poison in it. i was crying all the time, and toget used of living in here took me 10 years. the housewas connected to the orange field, we found someplates under the trees, until the evening all plates dis-appeared.”
“i brought my bed with me. For the other stuff peoplewere going to get it from other abandoned houses inthe neighborhood. my husband didn’t let me to go, iwas very scared to go out of the house anyway.”
BELONGING AND IDENTITYturkish Cypriots think that they are the losers in this sit-uation. they argued that Greek Cypriots didn’t want toshare the republic with them and first they were victim-ized by Greek Cypriots, and moreover the administra-tion in the north at that time was criticized as beingunfair. they said they had not received equivalentexchanges for their properties. turks from turkeyreceived everything freely and they didn’t need to workfor it, however turkish Cypriots had worked all theirlives to build a life and then they lost everything thatthey had worked for, including their loved ones. theirchildren, the younger generations, still feel that theybelong to Pafos. another serious difference betweenturkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots is the naming ofVarosha, in turkish. turkish Cypriots(tC#1 and tC#2)described the settlement as ‘Kahraman-maraş’ insteadof ‘maraş’, which is a province in turkey where manypeople migrated from Kahramanmaraş to Varosha(maraş). For turkish Cypriots where they live them-selves at Varosha, is known as maraş. however thecorner of the street where turks from turkey live is cal-led Kahramanmaraş’, as described by tC#1 andtC#2 (interview notes).
turks from turkey feel that they are ignored,or in other words victimized, and discriminated byturkish Cypriots. after 1974, no state investments weremade in Varosha. Further the turkish settlers feel thatthey were always used as a tool in elections (interviewnotes tt#13 and tt#14). ‘Who’, were the residentsof Varosha? their children identify themselves asCypriot, but they feel ashamed to mention that theyare from Varosha or Famagusta because it signifiesthat they are immigrants. having lived for 45 years inCyprus, families and their children feel that theybelong to Cyprus. they have lived longer in Cyprusthan in turkey. most of their children were born inCyprus.
Greek Cypriots believe that the biggest losersin this story are turkish Cypriots. they themselves don’tfeel safe in the north, therefore they also think andhope that turkish Cypriots don’t feel safe either. GreekCypriots and turkish Cypriots against the ‘enemy’make them feel more bounded and connected.
the following interview notes give moredetails about how participants feel about belongingand identity.turkish Cypriot
tC#7“We live in maraş(Varosha), they (turks from turkey)live in Kahraman maraş. down the street from here isKahraman maraş. nothing to do with Cyprus orCyprus culture. We have strong connections with ourneighbours, but now they built a new house somewhe-re on the outskirts of Famagusta, at engomi. i don’t
think that they have a better life there. here Varosha ismore sincere and much better.”tC#8“my children never accepted to be from Varosha orfrom Famagusta. they always called themselvesBafidies (from Pafos).”tC#9“i’m from Pafos and my children also feel to be fromPafos, even though they were born in Famagusta.”
Greek CypriotGC#5“i was very angry before, you should feel happy thatyou meet with me now. When i crossed the border andtalked to anyone who dared to talk to me, i was swear-ing at them.”
You can see her pain and sorrow with Vamik Volkan’sdefinition “narcissistic wound” (Volkan, 2017, p.16).Until she meet a turkish Cypriot who is searching hermissing family:“i was angry but for what? i am alive, my family is veryhealthy until now. Yes they/we lost our houses, belong-ings etc., but we have each other. then i calm down,i start seeing her pain, and feeling guilty that she is try-ing to communicate, she forgave, why do i not forgivetoo?”
GC#6“i call my self Famagustian, but i guess this is not acommon thing. my generation is not really open-minded.”
then she directed a question to us: “do you feelsecure, living in here [denoting the northern part]?”
GC#4“i think the heroes in this story are the turkish Cypriots.i don’t want to come to Famagusta for just sightseeing.i want to have some connections.”GC#3“i was around 15 years old in 1974 when we had toleave Famagusta… living there was` amazing, verydifferent from the rest of Cyprus, it was way ahead ofits time in many ways… i miss those days so much…every time i crossed after the gates opened i used tocry… it was affecting me too much. approximately 5years ago i bought a flat on a high rise building inderinya, where i can see Varosha. everyday, when iopen the shutters, my town is in front of me… now isee it everyday, so i am getting used to this situation. icross borders every weekend, some people say; “don’tgo and give your money to turkish Cypriots”, but idon’t care. this is my town and i love to be here. i startto enjoy it again.”
turks from turkeytt#14“i’m born here in Varosha, but i am from erzurum. ifaced serious discrimination and racism by tC’s. i’m“gaco2” for them. i worked in the southern part aswell. i always felt welcome by the Greek Cypriots. they2 One of the name Turkish Cypriots callsTurk from Turkey(http://www.yeniduzen.com/bello-turko-ve-gaco-15737h.htm) . It means a male gypsy in the dictio-nary.
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invited me to their homes, their wedding ceremonies,we ate and drink together. i never had any bad expe-riences or bad memories with Greek Cypriots. theyalways gave the best seat on their table and the bestfood that they cooked. however, i was a turk fromturkey, another “gaco” for the turkish Cypriots. in thegovernment office, turkish Cypriots don’t helps us orfinish our jobs. they always delay us or postpone itintentionally.” tt#17“We had a house and agricultural fields in turkey. ididn’t want to come to Cyprus, but after refusing to goGermany, i had to say yes to my husband request. sowe came in here. and my husband knew that i may tryto go back/ so he sold the properties in turkey withoutasking or informing me. he passed away 22 yearsago and we buried him in here at Famagusta ceme-tery. one night, i saw lights and heard fireworks likean explosive. i didn’t see fireworks before. so i thoughta war started again. and i was struggling by myselfhow to leave since my husband was buried in here.now it’s been 46 years. i get used to live in Varosha.When i go to turkey i say; ‘let me go to my home’ (inCyprus).”
LIFE STYLE AND CULTUREhotels, restaurants, cafes, especially disco’s as enter-tainment places were highlighted by the formerVaroshians. these were all places where GreekCypriots socialized in daily life before ‘74. they haddressing codes, and specially designed interiors foreach occasion. they knew about turkish Cypriots andthe Cyprus Problems “we knew in theory that there wasa [Cyprus] problem. Both Clerides and denktaş weretalking about it. somebody would solve this ‘politicalproblem’, we never discussed it. it had nothing to dowith our lives. turkish Cypriots existed as if they do notexist. We lived in our bubble. they, ‘the others’ wereon the other side” (GC#1 and GC#2, interviewnotes).
another important point is, “we don’t speak eachother languages” (GC#1 and GC#2, interviewnotes). Greek Cypriots think that turkish Cypriots knewthe Greek language more than Greek Cypriots knewthe turkish language. “still 1960 history books areused at the schools” (GC#1, interview notes).additional turkish Cypriots tried more than GreekCypriots to speak both languages. Greek Cypriotswere more ignorant on the language issue. they didn’tgive any attention from the beginning of the roC. Forinstance, the roC didn’t establish a ministry of educa-tion to develop a politics for language and culture(GC#1, interview notes). the language is one of themajor factors which keeps limiting communicationbetween the two communities.
Greek CypriotGC#1“Varosha was a ‘paradise’, everything was easy, safeand provided. Walking, bicycle, some cars… Frenchlessons, music, ballet, afternoon tea parties, it was aworld that does not exist anymore. no slim women,and it was okay, except my mother. no ideologyexcept poor-against rich people. my father was a bigdentist. Parties, dance with parents, good restaurantswith european music, tango, waltz etc., or twist, rockand roll...”
“We had a dress maker for parties! elenitza! she wasmaking all the clothes. amazing dresses, no photosleft unfortunately. We left everything behind. in 1971there were no direct telephone lines; you needed toarrange beforehand to get connected at the telephonecentral. no direct calls. But very soon when this tech-nology came, my mother was calling me all the time.it was a totally different life, different times. Peoplewere happier and more relaxed. it was a world thatdoes not exist anymore.”
GC#2“teenage parties were amazing, we used to have adark room for slow dancing. there was ‘70’s music,fun with friends, disco, beach and restaurants. myfather was merchant distributing food etc. i remembermy father had turkish friends. he was coming with 2friends from Famagusta to our warehouse. he wasallowing me to drive his car when i was around 9 or10 years old. my father let me go to the turkish ware-house around Bandabulia, municipal market atVarosha all the way from the harbour. there was anicon museum, a church, a town hall… Famagusta wastiny, no outskirts. it was all trees, but we had a waterproblem, we were buying water or Coca Cola [fol-lowed with laughter].”
“We had a tV, black and white, or color, that is notclear. We had it but it was useless. no news onlymakarios -6 months backwards… when i was 6-7years old we had no electric, no refrigerator, big iceboxes . lux lamps until i was 7.”“i was 10 in the 1955’s when electric and tap watercame. a woman was coming once a week for laundry,using ashes in our half basement. after Varosha i wentto the army but without guns! then they gave us guns–animal [hunting] guns. But we ranand went to derinya.”
turkish CypriottC#8“our house was very modern and much more sophis-ticated than this one we have in Varosha now. We hada pond in the courtyard. Can you imagine in thattime, we had solar panels for water heating systems?We also had a refrigerator, a bath tub, inlaid floors; allthe doors in the house were wood and handcraftedwith motifs.”
tC#12“in 1976 life was much safer in here. everybody kneweach other. day or night, we never worried of lockingour doors. We came together in weddings, and funer-als. We always supported each other in happy andsad events.”
“i went back to my village at the southern part.refugees from Greece are living in our house now. ispeak Greek too. i had friends before, we were work-ing together. i visited them, they were happy to seeme. i don’t go there anymore, whenever i go back tomy village i feel sick later and take days to recover.also we earn turkish liras and going there cost a lot’sof money (euro), tl versus euro is not affordable any-more.”
“When they opened the borders, the previous owner(Greek Cypriots) of this house where i live now atVarosha also came back. they brought meat with
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them. We cooked and made BBQ altogether. they vis-ited us a couple of times. they do not come any-more.”
turks from turkeytt#18“We kept our traditions. my wife is turkish Cypriot. shelearnt how to cook our local dishes. i also learned theCypriot kitchen. she cooks molehiya, kolokas, kleft-iko…”tt#15“it was always difficult to access Varosha. it is some-how away and disconnected from the city centre. Youcannot find public transportation and public spacessuch as parks cafes etc. We used to have ÇayBahçesi3, (tea gardens) however we don’t have suchplaces in here. men have Kahvehane (Coffee-shops)to go to, but nothing for women. You can’t even findany indoor wedding hall, which can be used in thewinter. so all the wedding ceremonies has to be insummer. everywhere was full of orange gardensbefore. not anymore. We used to continue practicingour life style from mersin, such as supporting eachother in funerals. now, my children call themselves,Famagustians.”
CONCLUSION
the wider perspective of the post war situation can beobserved through investigating abandoned propertiesat Varosha. after 1974, the displacement and themethod of the distribution of the properties generatedan unfair situation. this system caused confrontationbetween three community groups as well as creatinginternal conflicts.
Varosha has always been a place where eco-nomically and culturally different classes existedtogether. especially, in coastal Varosha and katoVarosha, these differences have existed in the pastand this gap is widening.
Before 1974, Varosha represented high classculture and modernism. structures at Varosha offereda quality life style, internationally connected with therest of the world. For instance some buildings such asthe Famagusta town hall, and some schools were con-structed as a result of international architectural com-petitions. however in the post war situation, life inVarosha is like living in a suburb or ghetto, where it isforbidden to even look at the closed off areas.everyday Varoshians are living right next to an aban-doned city as if it does not exist. moreover, if anyonetries to enter the ‘forbidden zone’, armed forces takethe offender to court. living next to an abandoned for-bidden city, means that Varoshians live in a potentialcrime zone. the aforementioned famous orange treesand orchards were an important part of the naturallandscape of Varosha that no longer exist. it’s allgone now and the orchards have been replaced withgreenhouses for food cultivation. an urban texture hastransformed into waste land.
REFERENCES
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Author(s):
Aysu Arsoyeastern mediterranean University, Faculty ofCommunication, department of GraphicCommunicationEmail: [email protected]
Hacer Basarireastern mediterranean University, Faculty ofarchitecture, department of architectureEmail: [email protected]
3 At Çay Bahçesi you can buy tea, coffee andsoft drink, no alcoholic drinks can be provided.
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The siege
The siege of sarajevo, which began on 6 april 1992,is the longest blockade in the history of modern war-fare. at the time, sarajevo was the capital of bosniaand hercegovina, one of the six republics of the for-mer socialist and federative republic of Yugoslavia.by 1992 the war in the former Yugoslavia waswidespread and brutal through most parts of the dis-integrating country, and the siege of sarajevo was per-haps the most public demonstration of this aggression.
indiscriminate shelling rained daily on thecity, resulting in numerous casualties and significantdestruction of the city’s fabric, including the historicprecinct of baščaršija that dated to the 15th century.barely a year into the siege, a report from the frontlineof the infamous Zuč hill stated, ‘there was almost noone here who, thus far, has not lost someone dear tothem’ (Zaimović, 1993:12). The freshly dug gravesthat pock-marked the hill were a constant reminder ofthe random nature of the assaults that killed not onlysoldiers but also the kids who came ‘to pick cherries’– and then had to be ‘buried on the spot’ (Zaimović,1993:12).
my proposition is that wartime discussionsabout the rhythms and shape of daily life in sarajevomade new connections between the city’s built fabricand its social and political life that are akin to what thecultural geographer edward soja has called
‘Thirdspace’. Thirdspace is conceived as a space of‘extraordinary openness, a place of critical exchangewhere the geographical imagination can be expandedto encompass a multiplicity of perspectives that haveheretofore been considered by the epistemologicalreferees to be incompatible, uncombinable’ (soja,1996:2). Thirdspace provides the context for the dis-cussion of war-besieged sarajevo presented here.
in Thirdspace, Journey to los angeles andother real-and-imagined places, soja calls for amore open discussion about the importance of ‘spa-tiality of human life’. arguing that our understandingof human life has been framed by ‘historicality’ and‘sociality’, soja states that the meaning and signifi-cance of space needs to be carefully integrated intothe established ‘spatial and geographical imagina-tions’ (soja, 1996:1). almost all attempts to under-stand daily life, whether focused on people or events,are commonly framed by historical or temporal con-siderations on one hand, and social or sociological onthe other: ‘every life, every event, every activity weengage in is usually unquestionably assumed to havea pertinent and revealing historical and social dimen-sion’ (soja, 1996:2). sarajevo thus presents an inter-esting case study that demonstrates a situation-specificincrease in awareness of the interconnectedness ofhistorical, social and spatial aspects in understandingthe human condition.
Dijana AlicAbstracton 6 april 1992, the european union (eu) recognised bosnia and hercegovina as a new independent state, nolonger a part of the socialist federal republic of Yugoslavia. The event marked the start of the siege of sarajevo, whichlasted nearly four years, until late february 1996. it became the longest siege in the history of modern warfare, out-lasting the leningrad enclosure by a year. during its 1425 days, more than 11,500 people were killed. The attacksleft a trail of destruction across the city, which began to transform it in ways not experienced before. This paper explores how the physical transformation of sarajevo affected the ways in which meaning and signifi-cance were assigned to its built fabric. i argue that the changes imposed by war and the daily destruction of the citychallenged long-established relationships between the built fabric and those who inhabited the city, introducing newmodes of thinking and interpreting the city. loosely placing the discussion within the framework of ‘Thirdspace’, estab-lished by urban theorist and cultural geographer edward soja, i discuss the relationship that emerged between the his-toricality, sociality and spatiality of war-torn sarajevo. whether responding to the impacts of physical destruction or dramatic social change, the nexus of time, spaceand being shows that the concept of spatiality is essential to comprehending the world and to adjusting to and resistingthe impact of extraordinary circumstances. recognising the continuation of daily life as essential to survival sheds lighton processes of renewal and change in a war-affected landscape. These shattered urban spaces also show the waysin which people make a sense of place in relation to specific socio-historical environments and political contexts.
Keywords: sarajevo, bieseged-city, Thirdspace, urbicide,
The landscape of war and The Transforma-Tions of The public sphere
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buildings as symbols: the historicality and sociality ofbaščaršija one year into the siege, in 1993, the association ofarchitects of bosnia and hercegovina (asocijacijaarhitekata das) in collaboration with sarajevo’s artand heritage institutions produced warchiTecTure(curic, et.al., 1993).1 This large project includedexhibitions, catalogues, a journal and associatedsmaller projects. The publication warchitecture:urbicide sarajevo was an exhibition catalogue thatrecorded the destruction of the city’s significant struc-tures and built fabric. printed as loose sheets, the cat-alogue recorded the destruction through each sheetincluding a site map marking the impact of shelling, ashort description of the building in question, and pho-tographs illustrating the extent of damage on the site.figure 1
warchitecture identified four historical periods in thedevelopment of the city: the oriental period, theaustro-hungarian period, the interwar period andpost–world war Two period. it was evident from thecatalogue’s site map that the oldest part of the town,baščaršija, was heavily affected by the war, withalmost all historic buildings targeted by artilleryattacks. The format of the exhibition echoed the famil-iar tradition of documenting baščaršija as an urban
entity and a place of symbolic significance. notwithstanding its relatively small size and
peripheral position in relation to the modern city ofsarajevo in the 1990s, the baščaršija precinct had anhistorical importance that underscored its significancein the daily life of sarajevans. established in the 15thcentury, it was fundamental to the origins of sarajevo.it maintained its original principles of ottoman urbandesign, the most notable of which was the divisionbetween public and private domains – the road sepa-rating the activities of the čaršija, the trade and busi-ness district, from the surrounding residential area,the mahala. The baščaršija business sector alsoaccommodated the most important civic and religiousbuildings, including the markets, Gazi husref beg’smosque (1531), the Jewish synagogue (original build-ing 1581) and the old orthodox church (1539–40). These structures coupled with the narrow, mean-dering streets gave an impression of the unique valuesof sarajevo laid deep within the old precinct. figure 2
The commercial growth of baščaršija contin-ued through the second half of the 16th century. Themost significant commercial structure established inthis period was the brusa bezistan, built in 1551 tofacilitate the importation of silk from Turkey. in the16th century, catholic merchants from dubrovnikarrived to the district, while the orthodox population
figure 1. a sheet from urbicide sarajevo catalogue/ image credit: association of architects das sabih, sarajevo.
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settled near the northern boundary of baščaršija,establishing church, with surrounding residential andcommercial dwellings, in 1539. later, sephardic Jewsarrived in baščaršija, following their expulsion fromspain, building their first synagogue at the western endof the precinct in 1580.
over the next two centuries baščaršijaretained its urban structure and the peripheral devel-opment of its various ethnic quarters. by the beginningof the 17th century, bosnia’s four religious communi-ties coexisted within the one square kilometre ofbaščaršija. over time, the symbolic value of the com-munities’ co-presence in baščaršija came to underpinthe construction and subsequent destruction of thecountry’s national narrative. although the importanceof multi-religious existence changed with different gov-ernments, the connection between the buildings andtheir respective ethnic (not only religious) communitiesremained.
Yugoslavia’s post–world war Two communistgovernment saw the precinct as a burden of the past.compelled by a marxist understanding of history as alinear path of progress, the government initially pro-posed demolishing significant parts of baščaršija,while preserving the historically important buildings asartefacts of the past. despite efforts by the institute forthe protection of natural and built heritage, estab-
lished in 1945 to halt the clearances, the collateraldamage of unclear political direction was that signifi-cant parts of the precinct were demolished (Krstić-Galeb, 1988: 478). The individual buildings affectedincluded Gazi isa-begova tekija (a lodge of a dervishorder) and a musafirhana (inn), possibly the oldeststructure of its kind in bosnia and hercegovina, builtin 1462. The tekija, in the area of bendbaša, whichwas surrounded by a graveyard that was in use until1924, was under a heritage protection order when itwas demolished in 1957.2 it was a registered monu-ment, documented and described in the literature andit had received some early funding for restoration. itsdestruction demonstrates the low regard in which her-itage was held by the socialist authorities.
Government efforts to document the heritageprecinct and identify structures worthy of preservationproceeded in parallel with the demolition. in 1949,the government called for a full report on theprecinct’s state, which would represent ‘a scientificelaboration of sarajevo’ and use historical and sociallenses together as the main framework for understand-ing the precinct (Krstić-Galeb, 1988: 477-78). in1950, a new executive body, the city committee, wasestablished, tasked with drawing on the report’s out-comes to produce a comprehensive study and histori-cal record of the precinct. among the outcomes of this
figure 2.baščaršija precinct during the socialist period, with a plan indicating the chronological development ofthe precinct: a) Gazi husref beg’s mosque; b) orthodox church; c) Jewish synagogue; d) brusa bezistan; e)rustem pasha bezistan; f) czar’s mosque; and G) Town hall. originally presented in Jsah, vol. 51, no. 1,march 1991. drawing adjusted from the map used in a. bejtić, stara sarajevska Čaršija – jučer, danas i sutra
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institutions such as the museum of sarajevo, foundedin 1949, saw its main purpose as ‘assembling, study-ing, preserving, publicising and presenting the social,economic and cultural history of sarajevo’ (museumof sarajevo, 1976:5). its ethnographic collection,comprising items of ‘domestic, craft and factory pro-duction’, was intended to illustrate the ‘material andspiritual culture of the city’ (museum of sarajevo,1976:17-21). The displays carefully integrated theinteriors and domestic items of the traditional, or‘Turkish’, house previously out of bounds to outsiders.The museum of sarajevo display included a dioramaof a muslim family in a traditional home setting, whilethe ethnological collection of the natural historymuseum (Zemaljski museum) was updated to includea similar display. carefully curated public buildingsand local history museums were transformed into sym-bols of the national past. Together they contributed toan understanding of human history as ongoing andever-evolving, effectively identifiers and spatial con-tainers for representing the bygone time.
besieged city and the emerging ‘Thirdspace’by mid-1992 most of baščaršija’s structures had beenshelled, suffering significant damage. among the mostprominent was the Town hall (Vijećnica), located onthe very eastern edge of the precinct. The buildingdated to the period of the austro-hungarian occupa-tion of bosnia (1878–1918), and was designed andbuilt between 1891 and 1896 by colonial architects.The structure originally accommodated the activities ofthe Town hall, but in the socialist period was convert-ed to house the bosnian national library. in June1992, the building and its collection of three millionitems, which included rare books, manuscripts, mapsand recordings, was set ablaze following a grenadeattack.
another war-time project was a special issueof the journal whY, titled urbicide 1992 sarajevo.unlike the exhibition catalogue, which, in the docu-menting the destruction of individual buildings,focused on the objective and measurable records, thejournal cover captured the destruction as a mosaic-like image of war-damaged monuments. depictingthe most significant city symbols – such as baščaršija’sTown hall, water fountain (sebilj), the clock (sahatkula) of Gazi husref beg’s mosque and st Joseph’schurch of marindvor as ruins – reminded the readerof war’s impact on these distinctive markers ofsarajevo, its culture and history. presented floating onthe page, the buildings were no longer connected totheir urban and social context but had become time-less and spaceless, reminding the viewer of humanand existential vulnerability. figure 3
published at the beginning of the siege, thejournal carried the defiant message of a city thatwould not surrender. The ‘declaration of the cityassembly’, held on 19 april 1992, only days after thecity was cut off from the rest of the world, stated that‘The city of sarajevo, with [its] five hundred years ofhistory of joint life in multicultural, multiconfessionaland multinational community is indiVisible’ [original
emphasis] (whY, 1992:3).3 The declaration identifiedthe specifics of the city’s spatial constraints – itsbesieged condition and cultural mix – as the determin-ing factor in the discussion of its social context.presenting the city as socially united through its timeand place offered an opportunity to heighten theimportance of understanding the spatial constraints inthe discussion of this unique human experience.
despite the journal’s effort to present the city as unit-ed, the war was a fundamental attack on its multicul-turalism. ‘who is fighting in sarajevo?’, asked frenchphilosopher bernard henri levy in an article presentedin whY: ‘on one side muslems [sic.], on the otherserbs and croats. muslem majority in power, serbianminority which separates. in one word, a civil war.fratricidal conflict’ (levy, 1992:8). ‘Yet’, levy contin-ued, ‘the city tells you the opposite when, equipped bya good anti-sniper guide, you risk to run through it’.highlighting the difficulties in superficially acceptingthe conflict as ‘civil war’, levy described the city’scomplexities both as visible and hidden:
open city synagogues and minarets. dark redand ottoman colour of the building of presi-dency and further on, beside it, green and pinkfacades of the old habzburg residencies. all inall, mixture of styles. a parallel of aestheticsand different signs which could not be wipedoff by the destruction. one-mixed – bloodedcity. a mixed city. a city which created its attrac-tion and its law out of this short age of ‘clean-liness’. sarajevo, a border city between civiliza-tion and empires. (levy, 1992:8)
positioned within this network of ‘mixture of styles’,‘blooded city’ and the reference to ‘civilisation andempire’, the monuments of sarajevo were no longerseen and described by local government and officialsbut became open to individual voices and personalinterpretations. The creative combinations of diverseperspectives, formal and informal voices and accountsof events allowed for new narratives, seemingly notpossible before, to emerge.
The absence of a presiding systems throughwhich the official meanings were defined provided aspace for lived experience to emerge. one article inwhY, titled ‘The streets of memories’, describes the
figure 3.cover of the war issue of the journal whY,1992. whY, urbicid 1992 sarajevo 1992.
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buildings of baščaršija from such a perspective. in anemotional expression of his daily experience of walk-ing the streets, the author recalls his ‘sad look’ at theislamic Theological university in the heart ofbaščaršija, which had been shelled by the ‘heartlessmen … from the surrounding hills’ (stajić, 1992:5). ina description of another historic building in theprecinct, the author recalls the early post–world warTwo period, when, in 1947, ‘[he] saw the light of theday for the first time in that very building’ and remem-bered the story his father told him about the building’sfounder, a muslim who risked his life to save hischristian neighbours. ‘unfortunately’, he concludes,‘some neighbours today from the surrounding hillsshoot at their yesterday’s neighbours’ (stajić, 1992:5).
numerous short texts, notes and editorialspublished in the daily papers presented the citizens’emotional encounters with the changing streetscapes,buildings and social life. noticing the transformationswith fear, one person described the confronting reali-sation that the street of his ‘childhood and youth’,which ‘was only a few days earlier a stage of a horriblemassacre …’ (stajić, 1992:5). with familiar places nolonger acting as markers of the city’s civil life, thestreets of sarajevo became an abstract landscapefilled with uncertainty. newly established relationshipswere put to the forefront, creating new ‘dynamicsocio-spatial dialectics’. (soja, 1996:72). dailyshelling changed the urban formation, making the cityan active agent in the discussion of daily life. in hisbook The production of space, henri lefebvre statesthat space ‘does not eliminate the other materials orresources that play a part in the socio-political arena’;rather, space becomes active ‘both as instrument andas goal, as means and as end’ (lefebvre, 1991:410-11).
both soja and lefebvre discuss the ‘trialectics’of spatiality, historicality and sociality as an ontologi-cal quest, and recognise the importance of this rela-tionship to many fields of understanding (soja,1996:71). considered in the context of sarajevo, thetripartite relationship between ‘space, time and beingin the world’ highlights the historical privilege of theconnection between the history and the social contextof the built fabric. The former communist govern-ment’s deliberate attempts to connect the ottoman-founded buildings of baščaršija to the old empireframed the complex nationalist debates on belongingand identity in bosnia and hercegovina. connectingthe buildings of baščaršija to not only their religiousgroups (muslims, orthodox christians and catholics)but also to their respective ethnic identities ofmuslims/bosnians, serbs and croats heightened theimportance of the historio-social interrelationsbetween those buildings, while also marginalising theirspatial significance. The siege attacks were aimed atthe symbolic value of the buildings, which representedestablished social and historical values. although thebuildings were long recognised as icons and as con-tainers of social relationships, the shelling renderedtheir status less significant. The indiscriminate natureof the siege, the daily barrage of artillery and theimposed focus on the city itself provided an openingfor renewed understanding of the built fabric, the sitesand the social context.
conclusionalthough always present in the tripartite relationship,historicity became less significant for sarajevans dur-ing the siege, while spatiality gained importance intheir relationships to the urban fabric. while thedestruction of sites and buildings was deeply connect-ed historical and social significance, war proved anequalising force, and physical structures were centralto the negotiating act of survival. The buildings’ phys-ical changes, destruction and adaptability to constant-ly shifting circumstances made them a part of adynamic body of the city.
The siege line redefined sarajevo’s bound-aries in the most radical of ways. The city that used tobe defined by its urban structures, landscape and his-torical and social context became a city closed off bythe frontline and drawn back onto its centre. noticingthe changing urban configurations, dževadKarahasan wrote, in ‘a portrait of the inner city’, that‘Technically closed [from] all the outside world anddisassociated from everything with its mahalas, the cityis so open in its inner being’ (Karahasan, 1992:7).The daily attacks reconfigured urban spaces in unex-pected ways and involuntarily the city became a stageand a setting for embodied action. direct experience,responsive thinking and personal interpretations of thecity as a transforming landscape replaced the signifi-cance of hierarchical space, city grids and urban sym-bols. focused on their daily needs and explorations oftheir surroundings, the citizens of besieged sarajevogave new importance to the specifics of place inunderstanding the human condition.
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aliĆ d. 2010, ‘Transformations of the oriental in thearchitectural work of Juraj neidhardt and dušanGrabrijan’, phd diss., university of new south wales,sydney.
aliĆ d., ‘mapping the war: everyday survival duringthe siege of sarajevo’, in anoma pieris (ed.),architecture on the borderline: boundary politics andbuilt space, routledge, (in print).
beJTiĆ, a. 1969, stara sarajevska Čaršija- jučer,danas i sutra, osnove i smjernice za regenaraciju,(old Town of sarajevo, Yesterday, Today andTomorrow, a development proposal), Gradski Zavodza Zaštitu i uredjenje spomenika Kulture, sarajevo.
ĆuriĆ b, deliJa n, GroZdanic i, hadZiroViĆ m,hasanbeGoViĆ n, hrelJa b, hrelJa n,KalauZoViĆ-mandic a, sadiKoViĆ a, sefiĆ d &spilJa s (eds). 1993, warchitecture: sarajevo urbi-cide, exhib. cat., association of architects das sabih,sarajevo.
museum of saraJeVo. 1976, Guide Through themuseum of the city of sarajevo, muzej gradasarajevo, sarajevo.
Karahasan d. 1992, ‘a portrait of the inner city’,whY, urbicide 1992 sarajevo.
KrsTiĆ-Galeb V. 1988, ‘culture and arts in the earlyYears of post-war development’ (Kultura i umjetnost uprvim poslijeratnim godinama), in m. Čanković,sarajevo u socijalističkoj Jugoslaviji od oslobodjenjado samoupravljanja, 1945–1950, vol. i.
lefebVre h. 1991, The production of space,blackwell, oxford, uK, and cambridge, ma.
leVY b.a. 1992, ‘mixed city at war with fanaticism’,whY, urbicid 1992 sarajevo.
soJa e.w. 1996, Thirdspace, Journeys to los angelesand other real-and-imagined places, blackwellpublishing, oxford, uK.
sTaJiĆ s. 1992, ‘The street of memories’, whY,urbicid 1992 sarajevo.
whY, urbicid 1992 sarajevo 1992. publication forhuman rights and peace, war issue.
ZaimoViĆ K. 1992, ‘walking on the iron field’ (hodpo Gvozdenoj ledini, dani na Žući), dan (daY)independent Journal, b&h information journal, no. 8,5.2., 1993.
1 The Urbicide Sarajevo exhibition was present-ed in Sarajevo in April 1993 and subsequentlytoured many European cities. For more about theexhibition and associated projects see, D. Alic,‘Mapping the war: everyday survival during thesiege of Sarajevo’, in Anoma Pieris (ed.),Architecture on the Borderline: Boundary Politics
and Built Space, Routledge Architext series, (in print).2 For a broader discussion of the role of Islamic heritage in the destruction and construction of Bosnia and Hercegovina’s national narratives see Alić D. 2010, ‘Transformations of the Oriental in the Architectural Work of Juraj Neidhardt and Dušan Grabrijan’, PhD diss., University of New South Wales, Sydney.3 Declaration by the City Assembly of Sarajevo. Sarajevo 19 April 1992 in WHY, Urbicid 1992 Sarajevo, p.3.
Author(s):
Dijana Alic UNSW Built Environment, UNSW Sidney, Australia [email protected]
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INTRODUCTION
Education has played a significant role regarding warand peace throughout the world, as reflected in thestatement: ‘civilization is in a race between educationand catastrophe’. although education should be aforce to foster peace and avoid war, it has had a sig-nificant impact in terms of ‘promoting and preparingfor war’, an influence to which teachers and schoolshave contributed significantly (Mcculloch & Brewis,2016:3). accordingly, staley highlighted how ‘war ismuch too serious a thing to be left to military men’;likewise, ‘education is much too important to be left toprofessional educators’. Education is used as a tool tospread ‘negative stereotypes’ as well as to encourageincreased violence and conflict, which is conveyedfrom generation to generation in societies affected bywar (staley, 1966:47). in particular, smith addressedhow segregated or separated schools in ‘conflict-affected countries’ are used as a tool to keep groupsisolated from one another by highlighting the ‘rela-tionship between conflict and separate schooling,based on identity factors such as language, ethnicityor religion’ (smith, 2014:117). due to the separate,
identity-based social organization of schools it is diffi-cult for education to be viewed as ‘neutral’ in conflict-affected nations such as cyprus. for over four hun-dred years, Muslim turkish and orthodox greekcypriots have lived on the same island but have main-tained separate education systems and schoolingbased on language, ethnicity and religion differences.this educational separation has been, and still is, usedto inject negative stereotypes, which have unequivo-cally deepened the conflict in cyprus.
with regard to their ‘formative role’ in com-munities, educational buildings are particularly impor-tant institutions that represent the intended ‘nationalcharacter’. schools are often the essential battle-ground between ‘conflicting languages, religious andideologies’, and serve to strengthen the formation ofnational identity. in the first decades of the twentiethcentury a wide variety of aspects of the educationalcontext were employed to represent ‘national charac-ter’ in many cypriot schools. these aspects includedthe language of instruction, the literature and historyincluded in the curriculum, the role of teachers andsimultaneously the architectural style of the schoolbuilding itself (given M.1997). as greek-cypriot
Sevil Aydınlık, Hıfsiye PulhanAbstractthe terms cyprus, conflict, crisis and war have been almost inextricably intertwined throughout the history of thisMediterranean island. the education system played an important role socially and school buildings played an impor-tant role visually first in the dissemination of nationalism when the ethno-nationalist movements within the turkish andgreek-cypriot communities increased dramatically under British colonial rule (1878-1960), and later in the dissemi-nation of internationalism in the mid-twentieth century. despite the increased conflict and nationalism, which wasreflected by neo-greek architectural elements, the striking impact of the international style turned school buildingsinto representations of the communities’ attitudes towards modernism. By the mid-1940s these attitudes towards mod-ernism also served as a latent way for communities’ identity struggles and for the sovereignty of each community toexist. after world war ii the style embodied by many school buildings conveyed science-based modern thought; mod-ernization attempts for political, economic and social reforms; and the strong commitment of the first modernist cypriotarchitects to the spirit of the time and the philosophy of the modern. under this scope, postwar school buildings incyprus are identified as unique artifacts transformed from an ‘ethnicity-based’ image into an ‘environment-based’ formthat is more associated with the modernization, decolonization and nation-building processes from which localnuances of mainstream modernism emerged. at this point the modernization process of the state, identity struggles ofthe communities and architects’ modernist attempts could be interpreted as providing a fertile ground for new socialand architectural experiments, and could answer questions about how postwar school architecture managed to avoidreference to historical, ethnic and religious identities when there was an intentional exacerbation of hostility betweenthe two ethnic communities and about school buildings predominantly followed principles of the international styleeven though both the greek and turkish-cypriot education systems were instrumental in strengthening local nation-alisms and even ethnic tensions.
Keywords: conflict, school Buildings, nationalism, Modernism, cyprus.
EDUCATION IN CONFLICT: POSTWAR SCHOOLBUILDINGS OF CYPRUS
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hanschools largely fostered the hellenic ideal, school-
teachers were used to disseminate propaganda forunion with greece (orr, 1918:121). generally, schoolentrances were embellished with ancient greek tem-ple porticos, although the same entrance definitionalso could be seen on turkish-cypriot school build-ings. on the other hand, by the mid-1940s, atatürk’sreforms in turkey were having a profound influenceon the education system and architecture of schoolbuildings within the turkish-cypriot community. due tothe function and the formative experiences that tookplace within these buildings, they constitute spacesplanned and designed to impart an important systemof values and therefore had special meaning withincommunities (Burke &grosvenor, 2008:7). as hilleconfirmed, ‘schools as educational institutions havean intrinsic didactic function’ which provides ‘uniqueopportunities for architectural expression’ (hille,2012:8). however, the architectural expression,appearance and style of school buildings underwentdramatic transformation in the beginning of the 1930swhen the ‘international style’ was first introduced.Johnson claimed that ‘international style in architec-ture is especially adapted to school buildings’, andthat the main principle of this new style was function-alism such that schools needed to be designed ‘insympathy with modern trends in scientific education’(MoMa.1932).
dissemination of the international style since1930s made a great impact worldwide after worldwar ii, and it was rapidly ‘regionalized’ all over theworld. undoubtedly, the role of school buildings asvessels for disseminating the international style duringthat period was great as is the role of school buildingsof the postwar era (1945-1960) in fostering under-standing in ongoing educational debates and theunique circumstances of that time period. the creationand emergence of new capital cities characterized bymodern idioms, which became symbols of theirnations, appeared either in the establishment of newrepublics or in decolonization processes of differentcountries during the postwar era. respectively, mod-ernization processes around the world have led to the‘gradual globalization’ of various versions of theinternational style (Khan, 1998:213). like many of itsmodern architectural ancestors in the Mediterranean,cyprus embodied the Mediterranean modern whichjuxtaposed vernacular dialogues and contested identi-ties. in that sense, cyprus school buildings designed inthe spirit of the postwar period broadly fulfilled therequirements of the modern education system andrepresented the postwar experimentations of the firstmodernist cypriot architects around the 1950s and1960s. their buildings were functional and human-scale structures that humanized and deinstitutionalizedthe learning environment by using mainly exposedconcrete and local materials. attention to environmen-tal factors played a substantial role in forming a localversion of modernism in general, and postwar schoolbuildings in particular. however, beyond being formalor stylistic expressions, postwar school buildings weresymbols as well as tools of the modernization processin which turkish and greek-cypriot communities’ cul-tural rivalry took place. until that time school buildingswith neo-greek, georgian or English-gothic archi-tectural styles had followed a traditional, historic pat-tern in the name of nationalism. yet these buildingswere more monumental than designed specifically foreducation, and it was difficult to accommodate mod-
ern educational needs in these outmoded designs. this study explored postwar school buildings
and their roles in the mid-twentieth century, which wascomplicated by identity struggles, communal integrityand equality fights, ethnic violence, conflicts and warin cyprus. the main aim was to determine how post-war school architecture managed to avoid referencesto historical, ethnic and religious identities when therewas an intentional exacerbation of hostility betweentwo ethnic communities. why did school buildingspredominantly follow principles of the internationalstyle, while both greek and turkish-cypriot educationsystems were instrumental in strengthening localnationalisms and even ethnic tensions? accordingly,this study examined postwar school buildings to illus-trate their transformation from a monumental,resplendent and nationalist image to a rational, inter-national Mediterranean modern image under theinfluence of diverse political regimes, with bothimages implicitly conveying a socio-political fusion inthe architecture of cyprus. the study starts with a briefintroduction to the ‘Early colonial Period’ (1878-1925), which coincided with the ‘interwar Era’ (1918-1939), to establish how nationalism and nationalidentity developed in cyprus. the main focus of thisstudy, however, was on school buildings designed inthe spirit of the ‘Postwar Era’, which occurred interna-tionally from 1945 to 1960. the ‘Postwar Era’ incyprus, however, included two consecutive time peri-ods: the ‘late colonial Period’ (1925-1960), whichshows the process of colonization and modernizationon the island, and the ‘Post colonial independencePeriod’ (1960-1974), which reveals the process of de-colonization, independence and division of the island.school buildings of the two consecutive periods weremostly constructed in the 1950s and 1960s accordingto principles of postwar architecture. they are, there-fore, called ‘Postwar school Buildings of cyprus’ andillustrate the local version of mainstream modernismin this study.
Educational buildings of such importance areoften targets in the midst of war or conflict, and theisland of cyprus has been the home of various con-flicts for decades. today the island maintains the divi-sion established due to the conflict of 1963, whichtook place just three years after the establishment ofthe republic of cyprus. turkish and greek cypriotsnow live in different sectors: turkish cypriots in thenorth and greek cypriots in the south. although thereis no longer active fighting on the island, people livein the wreckage of the conflict. People’s daily environ-ments include buildings destroyed or abandoned inthe fighting, which provide a strong reminder of thehorrors of the past and have the psychological conse-quence of keeping them anxious about the future ofthe island. school buildings in particular, in whichpeople developed their sense of belonging andnational attachments, represent both the severe condi-tions of war as well as memories of the ‘good olddays’.
RISE OF NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION INCYPRUSwhen the island was rented by Britain in 1878 after307 years of ottoman rule, the turkish and greek-cypriot communities experienced a radical shift.under colonial rule they were exposed to politicalideals, influences and social reforms of the modernera. cyprus finally declared independence in 1960,
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but it was during the period leading up to this decla-ration when the first indications of intercommunal con-flict between turkish and greek cypriots were visible:signs of conflict between turkish and greek cypriotsrose dramatically in the 1950s and civil war continuedintermittently until 1974, resulting in the division of theisland. constant intercommunal conflict led to theemergence and ‘development of nationalism’ on theisland (rappas a.2014). this particular manifestationof nationalism included the existing ‘regional rivalry’between the motherlands (i.e., turkey and greece) aswell as ‘cold war politics’. on one hand, greekcypriots embraced the ideology of ‘Enosis’: the desireto unite the island with greece (Joseph, 1997:39). onthe other hand the ideology of ‘taksim’ emergedamong the turkish cypriots, which focused on dividingcyprus into two separate social and political entities(lange M.2009). Based on religion, language andsocial hierarchy the British government had separatedthe colonial administration into three groups: ‘greek’,‘turkish’ and ‘other’ (rappas a.2014). under theseconditions christians and Muslims were introduced toa ‘modern education system’ in separate schools.there were two types of schools governed by separate‘boards of education’ in cyprus: ‘christian schools’(financially supported by the orthodox church) and‘Muslim schools’ (assisted mainly by ‘Evkaf’, theMoslem religious establishment and colonial adminis-tration). the British colonial administration gavealmost full control over the provision of education tothe two societies: greek-cypriot schools were infor-mally managed by the orthodox church due to itscentral cultural and political position; turkish-cypriotschools kept themselves apart from religious institu-tions in accordance with atatürk’s revolutionary mod-ernization of turkey. nevertheless, although the Britishgovernment applied separatist policies based on eth-nicity and race, they also transformed the social sys-tem from being based on religious identity to beingbased on ethnic national identity. in this regard educa-tion was used as key instrument of ‘ideological con-trol’ and ‘transformed into a vehicle for nationalism’(lange, 2009:18; latif, 2014:48; Bryant, 2004:155).
ETHNICITY-BASED IMAGES IN INTERWAR SCHOOLARCHITECTUREthe spatial layouts and architectural languages ofschools designed during the interwar era were obligedto reflect specific institutional missions: implement theeducational curriculum, establish teacher authorityand reinforce the supremacy of the colonial adminis-tration on the island. as georghiou (2013) indicated,a ‘representational style of the architecture’ ensuredemphasis on the authority of the colonial administra-tion and helped gain cypriots’ trust. therefore, ‘Britishimperial symbols’ were used together with local archi-tectural elements during the interwar period in cyprus.ozguven (2004) mentioned that this practice aimed tohighlight the British government’s ‘authoritarianimage’ in cypriot colonial architecture. striking court-yards were designed to compare the formal splendorto local circumstances as a means of capturing peo-ple’s attention. according to given, ‘the most straight-forward mechanism for representing a culture or“national character” in architecture is by historicalquotation’ (given, 1997:63). he continued that thebest way to display the autocracy and the power of thecolonial government was through the facades of pub-lic buildings, particularly schools due to their promi-
nent position in societies. in this context, the wide-spread use of ‘greek revival style’ is visible in publicbuildings built around the 1920s as a result of theoverwhelming desire for union with greece on the partof greek cypriots. as given emphasized, this style wasparticularly appropriate for greek cypriots to reflecttheir nationalist identities, which also had strong linksto their ‘glorious classical past, and most importantly,the best carriers of this national message were schoolsbuildings’ (given, 2005:408). in particular, thePancyprian gymnasium (1923) in nicosia is one ofthe most significant representatives of greek revivalstyle, designed by theodhoros fotiades, who was edu-cated in greece and applied this style widely on theisland [fig.1]. the building has a projected porch sup-ported by four ionic columns and a facade embell-ished with more details and symbols of the style (givenM.1997). yildiz also highlighted that ‘the schools setup by the greeks since the early nineteenth century,were more hellenic than any other buildings’ (yildiz,2007:203). surprisingly, one of the turkish cypriotschools, named famagusta Boys Elementary school,was designed according to the greek revival style in1926 [fig.2]. ‘Evkaf’ invited greek-cypriot architectfotiades to design this school building due to theabsence of turkish-cypriot architects on the islandduring the 1920s. according to the records, there was
figure 2.famagusta Boys’ Elementary school, 1926,famagusta Photo by sevil aydınlık
figure 1.Pancyprian gymnasium, 1923, nicosia Photo by sevil aydınlık
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no reaction against this hellenistic style from turkishcypriots, which shows that their awareness of architec-tural style based on ethnic identity was not yet devel-oped (Bilsel n. & dincyurek o.2017). yet, apart fromthese ethno-nationalistic images in the school archi-tecture ‘the English school’, constructed by architectodysseas tsangarides and the colonial Public worksdepartment (Pwd) between 1936 and 1939, demon-strated the characteristics of traditional British style incombination with local architecture, applying archedarcades and using yellow sandstone materials (Pyle P.& Phokaides P.2009) [fig.3]. overall, georghiou(2013) best encapsulated the ‘architectural style’ ofthe schools, not only by the type of education served,but also the character, meaning and objectivesexpressed.
ORIENTATION OF COMMUNITIES TOWARDSMOTHERLANDSin parallel with the strong socio-political ties, bothcommunities were intimately tied to their motherlandssuch that the modernism and modern movements inturkey and greece ultimately affected the educationsystem and architectural appearance of schools incyprus by the mid-1940s. due to the absence of high-er education in cyprus, the majority of cypriot stu-dents left the island for university education abroad,mostly in turkey and greece, which generatedstronger ‘ethnic links and national loyalties’ (Joseph,1997:41). at the same time, with the leadership ofteachers who came from the motherlands to theisland, greek cypriots were trained as orthodoxhellenes and turkish cypriots became followers of theKemalist reforms in secularized turkey (latif d.2014;Bryant r.2001). for all, this was an aspiration ratherthan an imposition (Bryant, 2004:155). Because ofdevotion to the motherlands, education policies, goalsand orientations developed independently in the twocommunities, and thus two rival ethnic groupsemerged rather than a united cypriot state (latifd.2014; doratli n.2002). consequently, educationwas further tied to the nation-building project, aimedat advancing the sovereignty of each community’sstate (hajisoteriou c. & angelides P. 2013).
in the interest of maintaining ties to the moth-erlands, cyprus remained under the influence of mod-ern turkish and greek architectural culture.undoubtedly, the role of modernist local architectseducated in the universities of turkey and greece hadtremendous influence in this cultural interaction. inrespect to modern turkish school buildings, a moderneducation system that considered the ‘changing iden-tity and public visibility of women’ gained increased
significance in turkish-cypriot schools and their for-mal language had to represent these ideals of the newregime. it was declared that schools should not bedesigned like uniforms with an official style that repre-sented the state, but that the architecture of schoolsshould reflect local expression with an internationalimage, considering environmental factors (Bozdogans.2001). as for greece, in spite of insistent attempts oftraditionalists to revive the classical architecture, mod-ern style had its most glorious time in the postwar era(skousboll K.2006). so the new architectural style,which was a combination of regional traditions andthe modern movement, was evident in residential andpublic buildings at the end of world war ii (MoussaM.2012). Modern school buildings in particular,which consisted of flexible and functional design solu-tions, climate-sensitive strategies, radical identificationbetween architectural and structural forms and theadoption of rationalist principles (ferro l.2004), hadprofound influences on modern discourse and prac-tice among greek-cypriot architects. in general, the British colonial administration had pro-foundly contributed to the development of socio-cul-tural environment in cyprus. also, they provided thenecessary ground to welcome and follow modernthought and way of life which was appreciated in themotherlands as well. People living on the island hadalready met with the western and modern entities, sothat their engagement with the developments in themotherlands was smoother and gentle. in line withthis, both cypriot communities continued, and evenfurther strengthened, their respective ‘ethnic ties andloyalties’ to turkey and greece in regards to moderneducation, culture, language, religion, and historyduring the colonial period and even after indepen-dence.
INDIPENDENT STATE AND EDUCATION IN CYPRUSwhen cyprus gained its independence from colonialrule in 1960 the new republic was established with thehope of opening an era of peace, freedom and pros-perity during which the two communities would worktogether to develop the island for their common ben-efit (georgiou s.2012). although intercommunalcooperation did not survive long and the new republicnever emerged as a nation, this era ushered modern-ization into different aspects of life and the environ-ment in cyprus. Markides et al. (cited in Papadakis,2007:24) described this modernity in cyprus as notonly a substitute for tradition, but also as a form ofeconomic development, a source of differentiation inthe physical environment, and a means of adoptinguniversal worldviews and social practices among thelocal people. in that sense the main goals of therepublic of cyprus were to create a flourishing econ-omy, increase living standards and to create a strongcultural life via a well-educated society. therefore, thenew government gave great significance to education(solsten, 1993:73) and new school buildings flour-ished throughout the island as physical manifestationsof the modern education system.
the understanding of ‘modern education’and the modern image of school buildings, which hadbeen initiated by the British colonials, were institutedby modernist turkish and greek-cypriot architectsaccording to mainstream styles in Europe and the us.spatial layouts and formal configurations wereemployed and blended with local concerns and valuesby passionate modernist architects to create the ‘other
figure 3.English school, 1939, nicosiaPhoto by costas georghiou
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modern’. the ‘other modern’ created in cyprus was infact the new appearance of elite individuals, mother-land oriented-communities and the young state; allemulating the modern contemporaries and strugglingfor identity. in this challenge architecture was a strongtool for conveying and practicing the ideologies of thestate and the communities, especially by means ofenvironment-based postwar school buildings.
ENVIRONMENT-BASED FORMS OF POSTWARSCHOOL ARCHITECTURE Environment-based postwar school buildings incyprus embraced the discourse of modernism and itsfaith in the power of design to change behaviour andimprove society. Postwar school buildings were in syncwith modern trends in scientific education anddesigned according to principles of the internationalstyle, which brought educators and architects togetherin a collaborative effort to implement the newest edu-cational methods and to create appropriate built envi-ronments in cypriot towns under the influences ofmodernization, immigration and urbanization.schools emerged from a complex interaction of tech-nical concerns, modern education methods and theimpacts of postwar expansion. Pyle and Phokaides(2009) highlighted that the construction of new publicbuildings reflected ‘an awareness of the postwarrethinking of modernism’ with the use of new materialssuch as exposed concrete and glass; climate respon-sive solutions such as structural shading devices andbrise-soleil; simple and clean volumes; and sculpturaloverhangs such as folded plate or parabolic shapes,to name a few. in addition, according to given(1997), through the end of the colonial period turkishand greek-cypriot architects educated abroad hadembraced ‘European modernism’ in their buildingsand had moved away from using ‘traditional formsand motifs’. furthermore, ozay (2005) asserted thateven though ‘local materials and traditional tech-niques’ decreased in importance, a climatic designapproach came to the fore due to the frequent use ofreinforced concrete. on the other hand, uraz et al.(2010) pointed out that modern architecture in cypruswas enriched by the moderate use of local materialssuch as yellow sandstone and river cobble withoutsacrificing the simplicity of modernity. thus, using localmaterials did not only strengthen the bond betweenbuilding and environment, but also created dynamicsurfaces and volumes with the play of light and shade,the solid-void relationship and so forth. consequently,the architectural heritage of the modern movementwas chiefly developed in postwar cyprus and markedthe transition from classical and traditional expressionto the modern and rational aesthetic. the image ofnew buildings and urban zones began to be thusshaped and developed (Michael et al. 2009:5). in thissense, the architects who carried the spirit and philos-ophy of the modern designed postwar school build-ings as a catalyst of modern education.
Prior to the independence, around the mid-1950s, the first elementary schools were erected fol-lowing the stylistic theories of rationalism. lefkoşaatatürk elementary school (1950) in nicosia and thefirst elementary school (1955) in limassol were bothdesigned by the architects rousou and Pericleous(georghiou, 2018:273). these two buildings werealmost identical in terms of massing, general planningand details. the lower parts of the buildings wereempty and the entire rectangular prism rested on the
pillars. a sense of lightness was imparted to the vol-ume by this subtraction of geometry while creating asemi-open transitional space and allowing coolingbreezes to pass in-between two-sided courtyards.Vertical circulation towers were emphasized and raisedabove the horizontal rooflines of the schools, whichcreated movement and dynamism to avoid monotonyas in many European contemporaries [fig.4]. in addi-tion, lykavitos elementary school (1957) in nicosia,designed by dimitris thymopoulos, has one of themost significant features: brise-soleil. these filteredelements were especially adapted to hot climatesbecause they prevent sunlight from entering but allowventilation inside [fig.5]. Moreover, local claddingmaterials such as yellow sandstone were commonlyused as surface texture on some parts of the facadesas a stylistic feature of the ‘other modern’ in cyprus.
due to the rapidly developing economy, tech-nicians and skilled workers were needed throughoutthe island as part of the modernization process. thus,new technical schools were built in different towns andregions to meet this urgent necessity, particularly infields such as carpentry, construction and agriculture(solsten, 1993:73). along with European-educatedcypriot architects, technical school buildings incyprus were designed by foreign architectural firms,principally from the united Kingdom. accordingly,lefke technical school and limassol technical school
figure 4.lefkoşa atatürk Elementary school, 1950,nicosia. Photo by Pio (Public information office ofcyprus archive)
figure 5.lykavitos Elementary school, 1957, nicosia.Photo by Pio
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were designed by orman and Partners, whereaslefkoşa technical school in nicosia was designed bytripe and wakeham in 1955. these three buildingsfeatured movable horizontal louvers, mostly on thesoutherly facades, for protection against the sun whileproviding a better visual connection to the outside[fig.6]. foreign firms also paid attention to the use oflocal river cobbles on the planar surfaces at theentrances of the complexes to show the elegance oftexture and the material itself. for example, lefketechnical school sits on a sloping terrain and interactswith the natural environment in the form of an artobject, levitating the volumes from the ground like asculpture from afar [fig.7].
when modernism was widespread during thefirst years of the republic and ‘the potential for bothspiritual and economic development’ was high, one ofthe most significant characteristics of school architec-ture was its unified modern style (fereos s. &Phokaides P.2006). these conspicuously avant-gardebuildings received considerable publicity and werewidely known. hence, some of the schools were pub-lished in prestigious architectural magazines at boththe national and international levels. firstly, lefkoşaturkish Boarding school for girls (1960) in nicosiawas designed by ahmet Vural Behaeddin, who wasone of the pioneering modernist architects in cyprus.it is not only a generic modern building of the period,but also a significant award-winning architecture. thisbuilding was featured in the international architecturalmagazine ‘Baumeister’ in 1964, solidifying its impor-tance in the history of modern architecture in cyprus.this building was celebrated due to its efficient designthat was sensitive to both the climate and the urbancontext. the school building represented modernthought, material and technology of the time as wellas the home of modern education, but it also servedas a hospital just after construction completed in1963. due to continuing ethnic conflict between thetwo communities, the building was used by theturkish-cypriot security forces for health and rehabili-tation purposes until 1968. in order to control theintense Mediterranean sun, vertical external shadingdevices were applied on the eastern facades, whileribbon windows were used on the western elevations[fig.8] (aydinlik et al.2016). the folded plate roof onthe front facade of the school was another remarkablefeature that enriched the building’s volume and creat-ed visual interest [fig.9]. however, the roof of themulti-purpose hall was not only an aesthetic element;it also represented Behaeddin’s modernist experiments
that attracted many followers from both communities(uraz et al.2004). secondly, Kykkos high school(1960) in nicosia, designed by the iakovos andandreas Philippou brothers, was featured in the greekarchitecture magazine ‘architektoniki’ in 1966 (fereoss. & Phokaides P.2006). in this school vertical and hor-izontal elements projected towards the outside of thestructure to act as sun-shading devices, mostly on theeastern and western facades. also, exposed concretewas a new material applied on the outer surfaces ofthe vertical circulation zones. this school complexconsisted of rectangular prisms horizontally developedto humanize and deinstitutionalize the learning envi-ronment [fig.10]. with the environment-responsiveabstract forms of school buildings designed by bothturkish and greek-cypriot architects, formal languagehad nothing to do with the ethnic identities of thearchitects or institutional representations of the com-munities. yet, the realization of such kinds of projectswith daring architectural language conveyed the cul-tural rivalry between the two communities in terms ofmodern thought, form and technology.
access to modern building materials andtechnology was severely limited during the conflictyears. since importing cement into the turkish-cypriotsector was strictly prohibited, there could be dramaticdelays in the completion of construction. this prohibi-tion was designed to impede the turkish-cypriots’ability to build defensive structures as reinforced con-crete buildings were the primary defense structuresduring the period of intercommunal violence. forexample, lefkoşa turkish lycee (1960) in nicosia,
figure 8.lefkoşa turkish Boarding school for girls,1960, nicosia. Photo by sevil aydınlık.
figure 7. lefke technical school, 1955, lefke. Photoby sevil aydınlık.
figure 6.limassol technical school, 1955, limassol.Photo by costas georghiou.
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designed by British architect alister Macdonald, wasused for defense purposes during the bi-communalclashes of 1963. Beyond being a modern and cli-mate-responsive building, facade treatments of suchbuildings also made defense more convenient. in par-ticular, glazing wall surfaces was used on the northernside of lefkoşa turkish lycee to provide an abundanceof natural light, whereas shading devices were used tocontrol the penetrative sun rays coming from southerlyand western directions [fig.11]. similarly, inPallouriotissa female gymnasium (1962) designed bydemetris thymopoulos in nicosia, inset windows andegg-crate systems, in which both vertical and horizon-tal elements were equally projected from the volume inthe southern direction, provided highly effective solarcontrol [fig.12]. this was one of the modernapproaches to shading used in many postwar schoolbuildings as well as other public institutions on theisland due to its vertical and horizontal orientationoptions. in effect, these shading systems emphasizedthe functionality of the modern international style andunexpectedly served to provide safety against attack(Pallouriotissa. 2018).
the abstract language of modern architec-ture was even traced to religious school buildings ofthe modern republic. two italian catholic schoolsknown as ‘terra santa’ in famagusta (1960) and inlimassol (1965) designed by stavros Economou, areunique cases of this modernist experiment.accordingly, horizontality and pure geometric volumesas well as the movement of distinctive parabolic eavescharacterized both schools [fig.13]. the level ofabstraction was so high that even religious symbolssuch as sculptural cross figures were brilliantly stylized[fig.14]. overall, the technical details of structural ele-ments, proportions, surface texture and material ofpure volumes created both functional aesthetics andsimplified decoration along the lines of internationalmodernism in many postwar school buildings ofcyprus.
CONCLUSIONdespite the growing ethno-nationalist conflict, archi-tecture in cyprus had its golden age from about themid-1950s to the early 1970s in the quest for mod-ernism. dissemination of the international style and itsrelevance for school buildings played an importantrole in creating learning environments, which were notpromoting or preparing for war, but encouraging adifferent sort of battle: a cultural rivalry between the
two communities. unlike the architecture of most ear-lier school buildings, postwar school buildings exploit-ed modern building materials and techniques, moderndesign ideas and approaches, modern ways of lifeand thought as well as modern methods of education.as cultural symbols postwar school buildings in cyprus
figure 12.Pallouriotissa female gymnasium, 1962,nicosia. Photo by sevil aydınlık
figure 11.lefkoşa turkish lycee, 1960, nicosia. Photoby sevil aydınlık
figure 10.Kykkos high school, 1960, nicosia. Photoby Pio.
figure 9.lefkoşa turkish Boarding school for girls,1960, nicosia . Photo by sevil aydınlık.
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represented the national character of the communityon the island—embracing and supporting modernityfor survival and existence. this argument is echoed inthe discourse and praxis of passionate, modernistcypriot architects and in state policy of the modernrepublic.
Policies of the bi-communal state contributedto the development of the economy, the increase in liv-ing standards and adoption of a modern way of life,with great emphasis on educating the cypriot commu-nities. at the same time, modernist architects broughta contemporary spirit, universal trends and develop-ments in architecture to the island. these avant-gardearchitects contributed to the contemporary image ofthe built environment with the new style, which wasboth adequate for technological developments andserved the modern way of life.
it is undeniable that the new understanding ofeducation, which was transformed with the socio-polit-ical developments of the postwar era, reshaped schoolarchitecture in cyprus. it was renewed, reshaped andreformed by modernist architectural ideas that bothreflected local traditions and the Mediterranean cli-mate and considered rational planning and scientificreasoning. in this context modernist architects wereachievement-oriented, precise and perfectionist pro-fessionals who served their communities as architectswithout political prejudices or connections. however,this uniform modern image of school buildings andmodernist attitudes of architects were not sufficient forinducing a common education system and led to thedevelopment of separate schooling of turkish andgreek cypriots under the pressure of nationalism.Paradoxically, this marked another kind of conflictbetween the education system and modern appear-ance of school buildings. on one hand an interna-tionalist movement aimed to establish a common uni-versal identity for all nations in postwar school archi-tecture, while on the other hand there was a national-ist movement aimed at intentionally exacerbating hos-tilities via segregated education.
although education is supposed to unite peo-ple, segregated schooling in cyprus became oneforce that contributed to the destruction of bi-commu-nal republican ideals. Eventually internationalism wasdefeated by nationalism, and the two ethnic commu-nities became totally separated from each other withthe division of the island in 1974. although schoolbuildings are supposed to be non-military targets,many were used for defense or military purposes with-in both communities during times of violent ethnic
conflict. consequently, school buildings such assakarya elementary school in famagusta [fig.15] werebombed, destroyed and became symbols representingthe destructiveness of war. in spite of different opin-ions, this school building should have been preservedto show ‘the wounds of war’ to next generations inboth communities.
in the post-1974 period school buildingshave maintained neither the modern system of thoughtand education nor the architectonic qualities. rather,the buildings have been continuously modified andadapted to changing circumstances and visions with-out considering the spirit of the recent past. however,a common understanding of peace-making and trust-building communicated through education could havebeen a way to heal from the conflict. as former ungeneral secretary Kofi annan affirmed ‘education is,quite simply, peace-building by another name’.therefore, school buildings as homes of such under-standings could be a tool for and symbol of peace incyprus. in addition, this process could start by revisingschoolbooks that include hostility and progress to aca-demic collaborations that produce joint curriculums,projects and programs in educational institutionsthroughout both communities. as abraham lincolnstated, ‘the philosophy of the school room in one gen-eration will be the philosophy of government in thenext’ (Boyle & Burns, 2011:17), which illustrates thepotential for school buildings in cyprus to influencethe ideologies of states and people’s beliefs in peace.
figure 14. limassol terra santa school, 1965, limassol.Photo by limassol historical archives
figure 13.famagusta terra santa school, 1960,famagusta . Photo by sevil
figure 15.sakarya Elementary school, famagustaPhoto by Kyrenia national archive .
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PylE P. & PhoKaidEs P. 2009, architecture and Modernity incyprus, Eahn newsletter: newsletter of the European architecturalhistorians network.
raPPas a. 2014, cyprus in the 1930s: British colonial rule and theroots of the cyprus conflict, iB tauris, london.
sKousBoll K. 2006, greek architecture now, studio artBookshop, athens.
sMith a. 2014, contemporary challenges for Education inconflict affected countries, Journal of international andcomparative Education. 3:1, 113-125.
solstEn E. 1993, cyprus: a country study, washington (d.c.):federal research division, library of congress, usa.
stalEy E. 1966, Education’s role in nation Building, science.153:3731, 47-49.
uraZ t. -u. & Pulhan h. & ulucay P. 2010, ahmet VuralBehaeddin Mimarlığı: Bir Modernist’in yerel açılımları, V. Kıbrıs’ta İzBırakmış Kıbrıslı türkler sempozyumu, Eastern MediterraneanPublications [in turkish].
uraZ t. -u. & Pulhan h. & ulucay P. 2004, locality ofModernism: the case of nicosia turkish girl lycee, docoMo-Mo symposium on locality of Modernism in the architecture ofturkey, MEtu, ankara.
yildiZ n. 2007, reflections of national identities in the architectureof the Public spaces of cyprus, in: daViE M. (ed.) fonctions, prac-tiques et figures des espaces publics au liban. Perspectives compar-atives dans l’aire Méditerranéenne, academie libanaise des Beaux-arts, lebanon.
Author(s):
Sevil Aydınlık, Eastern Mediterranean university, faculty ofarchitecture, department of architecture [email protected]
Hıfsiye Pulhan, Eastern Mediterranean university, faculty ofarchitecture, department of architecture [email protected]
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INTRODUCTIONWhen the Hong Kong government started the newunderground South Island Line in 2009, there was aseries of negotiations and contests around the con-struction site closed to the Admiralty Station, the firstMass Transit Railway station built on the metropolitanisland. This area accumulates an extensive collectionof post-war modern architecture designed by leadinginternational architects such as Paul Rudolf, I. M. Pei,and Norman Foster [Fig. 1]. Another issue thataddresses the project is the formation of the HongKong Park where a military campus called the VictoriaBarracks once located. The Victoria Barracks datedback to the nineteenth and twentieth-century and wastransferred by the British Forces to the Hong Konggovernment in 1979. The site is of critical importancebecause, in the official archaeological watching brief,its military heritage and underground artefacts requirefurther onsite exploration and thorough examination.It arose the public attention back to the entire post-military development, questioning its history, progress,and suffering during the transformation from a restric-tive zone into the public realm. Although heritages ofmilitary buildings have been renovated and converted,we argue that there was little awareness of preservingthe whole site regarding post-military landscape.While the public favour this redevelopment, we main-tain that it implies a disappearing heritage being con-tested by powers, which can be reflected by both earlyversions of redevelopment planning and the followingchanges in the architectural space. This paper chal-lenges the proto-concept of post-military landscapeprotection in the high-density urban area of HongKong through manners of cultural representation,urban design, and built environment, all indicative ofa culture of disappearance.
This paper approaches the question of a mil-itary landscape from the perspectives of heritage,planning and redevelopment issues. It pinpoints thecollective memories of the post-military landscape indefining contemporary urban life. In the second part,
it will examine three early zoning plans of the redevel-opment. In so doing, it discloses a vicissitude of com-promise between the needs of urbanisation, commer-cialisation, heritage protection, public leisure andentertainment. By juxtaposing a final layout of theHong Kong Park with a later architectural design onsite, the Asia Society Hong Kong Center (ASHK), itdemonstrates the unique strategies of either denyingor promoting such a disappearing military landscape.
Jing Xiao, Charlie Q. L. Xue AbstractThis research paper examines the post-military landscape of the Victoria Barracks regarding the high-density urbanismin Hong Kong from the 1970s to the 2000s. The article first interprets the concept of post-military landscape accordingto the ideology and urbanism of the then Hong Kong society. It then studies three plans of the Victoria Barracks of dif-ferent stages, showing contestations between domestic, commercial and administrative powers in controlling the mil-itary redevelopment. Several contemporary architectural projects on the site will also provide an alternative view of thetransformation according to the local economic laissez-faire policy. Its influence to the unsatisfactory heritage protec-tion leads to the disappearance and false representation of the identity of this particular military and cultural heritage.
Keywords: Post-military landscape, Built Heritage, Victoria Barracks, Hong Kong Park, laissez-faire planning
VICTORIA BARRACKS OF DISAPPEARANCE: CONTEST-ED POST-MILITARY LANDSCAPE IN HIGH-DENSITYURBAN HONG KONG
Figure 1.Admiralty Station took shape with theVictoria Barracks on the slope in the background,April 1979 (Source: BJHKC, 1980:69).
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POST-MILITARY LANDSCAPE: HERITAGE, PLANNINGAND REDEVELOPMENTThe Second World War has primarily changed thetopological formation of both the rural and urbanareas in many countries. Trenches extend along thesea coast in Northern France and remain there eventoday. Airfields spread all over the UK, covering alarge amount of grassland, fertile crop fields, andtransportation cores. Shipyards have been continuous-ly military-oriented and manufactured warships forseveral years. In the post-Cold-War period, this topol-ogy had to change. With military bases mostly closed,unnecessary costs of maintaining military infrastructuremust be reduced to give way to productive civic modesand domestic functions (Robinson, 2013). How torecover the urban fabrics and lifestyles of these militarysites becomes a dominant issue that addresses the dis-ciplines of geography politics, economics, sociology,and urban planning. The study of this recovery hasbeen claimed either as ‘new military urbanism’(Graham, 2011), or the ‘landscape of power’ bylandscapists (Crowe, 1958). On the other hand, manymilitary bases, especially in the United States, had tobe closed after the war and economic recessionbecause of a limited budget to maintain the control-ling network. They often occupy the places like centraldock bays (e.g. Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston),railway crosses, or scenic views of the landscapealong the straits (e.g. the Presidio of San Francisco).Apart from issues of heavy contamination or pollution,to make full use of these sites for domestic urbangrowth would bring economic benefits to post-industri-al cities.1
Only recently, the cultural significance of the‘military landscape’ has been widely noticed due to itsparticular built heritage once open to the public.Military geographer Rachel Woodward identifies thatthis special military features of the site could intensivelyinteract and manipulate ways of contemporary lives(Woodward, 2014:40-61). A place of the militarylandscape is always believed to associate with theprocess of different military features (Pearson,2012:115-133; Osborne, 2004), defence (Gold andRevill, 2000; Philo, 2012:1-7), or conflicts involvingsimilar activities. Domestic urban or rural space withmilitary existence can also be shaped by its morphol-ogy, while infrastructure is highly controlled andaltered according to the changing military needs(Pearson, Coates and Cole, 2010). Civilian experi-ence is subject to the over-arching manner of thisstrange process of domesticity; and the infrastructureand memories of war that still remind visitors of stressand pressure, even after the disfranchisement of con-flict and power. Military sociologist Martin Shaw main-tains that a new type of social mobility around demili-tarisation will always confront two basic principles: thesmaller professionalised and technologized forces onthe one hand, and the growing space for non-milita-rized citizenship with more individual freedom on theother (Shaw, 1991). The post-military landscape,therefore, can potentially contribute to the latter anddevelop political and cultural heritages and memoriesthat may be inherited by the civilian present as well asurban forms that are capable of regulating futureurbanisation (Bagaeen, 2006:339-352). The conse-quence is to commemoration of the sites, recreation orspectacles to visit; and their built forms on site –bunkers, trenches, dormitories, or ammunitions alike –may be felt not only by that military personnel and
their families but also by the civilians within the rangeof their power who share the memory of being oncemilitarized.
Literature of urban planning and design, onthe other hand, usually identifies the phenomenon asa partial success to the society, regarding its spatialcharacteristics, public and private intervention andplanning system. (Ponzini and Vani, 2014:56-73)However in practice, what influences more upon thecommunities surrounding closed bases is the tempo-rary loss of jobs and that they suffer initial economicdisruption. Local communities have to adapt to newlifestyles and go through long-term economic recoveryby increasing residential real estate value and diversi-fying retail sales and commercial functions.2 Besides,this kind of transformation often occurs when criticalconditions of public finance and political reconstruc-tion of citizenship are underway. Stakeholders andgovernments struggle to maximise the revenueincomes from real estate conversion through theprocess, leaving local communities attained to inade-quate living conditions and public services, sometimeseven the relocation to undeveloped suburban areas,all of which dismantle original urban patterns andsocial appreciation.
Therefore, the redevelopment of the post-mil-itary landscape often leads to urban contestation dueto mainly two reasons. First, conventional methods ofrenewal oriented by heritage and commemoration areat large incapable of dealing with this public issuefrom a critical point of view. They take indistinctivemanners to interpret and represent military heritagescomparing to other types of cultural sites. It leads to asituation that to preserve military sites into parks ismore or less identical to that of a natural preserve. Formost of the times, they require dominant interferenceby the government. Second, alternatively, the commer-cialisation of the sites during the process of outsourc-ing military facilities to public realms may seriously besubject to capitalist economies, urbanisation and dis-solving communities. It follows the logic in seekingbusiness potentials through land sales, facility renting,or government revenue. In either way, the rising expec-tation in conservation may instigate multi-level strug-gles between international tensions, social interests ofpower, and the civic maturation of self-identity.
In the postwar Hong Kong, the high-densityurban transformation of the post-military society underthe laissez-faire planning strategy only makes this eco-nomic and civic struggle even worse. Interests of pri-vate developers predominated the conversion processof all types of urban sites, also corrupting the forma-tion and application of statutory planning ordinances(Cuthbert, 1995:293-310). The government claimedto take a ‘positive non-interventionism’ in pursuit ofwealth, which led to an indiscernible extinction of pub-lic domains when public space was gradually trans-ferred into the hands of private sectors (Cuthbert andMcKinnell, 1997:295-311). In this regard, the statuto-ry plans amended since 1939 can only be referred toas guidance without legal power, and thus often over-ride by private business development. Historical con-servation and environmental protection received rareattention in official commitment until recently, and thusplaced little importance on corporate interests duringthe 1980s, the Belle Époque of Hong Kong’s urbangrowth. It was just during this years that the VictoriaBarracks, one of the military campuses on the HongKong Island, was under transformation [Fig. 2]. It
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would destine to be, as mourned by the prestige plan-ning theorist Roger Bristow, a setback in the system ofpublic participatory planning that may never recoverever since (Bristow, 1984:239). A thorough criticalreview of its historical transition, urban development,and social cohesion within the political and socialagenda of Hong Kong can tell us how the barrackstestifies the yet-to-recover urban contestation.
HONG KONG IN THE AGE OF POSTWAR BRITISHWITHDRAWALThe tension of the worldwide military withdrawal of theBritish Amy was all-encompassing in the around-1980s Hong Kong. Comparing to Singapore,Malaysia, and other typical post-colonial territories,Hong Kong formulated her idiosyncrasy in urban formand self-identity of citizenship during the rocketingprogress. The disappearance of British authority overthe island subjugated the locals into the paradox as‘space of disappearance’, for which the entire societyconfronted with two futures – capitalism of the westand the forthcoming socialism of the mainland China.Between them, cultural scholar Ackbar Abbas identi-fies popular mental insecurity that was ‘contingency,on geographic and historical accidents, shaped bytimes and circumstances beyond its control and bypragmatic accommodation to events’ (Abbas,1997:73). Subject to this particular ideological strug-gle, the rising concern about heritage without lawsand guidelines turned to be part of actions that dis-placed memory by using unclear or even false repre-sentations of identity as a way to produce new ones.The act of converting old structures quite often kepttheir real history untold or distorted. By drawing thecase in which the Victorian-style Flagstaff House in theVictoria Barracks was transformed into the ChineseTeaware Museum, Abbas argues that to make falserepresentations in the name of preservation has dis-tanced a place from its colonial context. Memoriesdisappear and re-appear as something else.
Cultural disappearance, entangled with thelaissez-faire strategy of urban planning, has significantimpacts on local historical heritage. The foundation of
the first conservation body, the Antiquities andMonuments Ordinance, was belated until 1976.Hong Kong Heritage Society was established in 1977and was disbanded later in 1983, claiming its short-lived responsibility of heritage protection (Hong KongHeritage Society, 1977:11-14). The AntiquitiesAdvisory Board, active since 1976, struggled to secure39 historical sites or architecture under the conditionof low government funding. It said that the-thenGovernor-in-Council would more likely to approve thecases located in distant areas rather than those in thecentral districts (Urban Services Department, 1979).More historic structures had been demolished ortransferred to new locations in a principle of total sani-tisation and gentrification, which quite often destroysthe original structures, appearance and function.
It is particularly true in the perspective of post-military landscape protection in Hong Kong. The con-version of the Victoria Barracks started in 1977 [Fig.3]. The early stage of its redevelopment showed bythree rounds of zoning plans envisioned the futureHong Kong Park at the centre of a high-density com-mercial district, which is a rare local case of militaryredevelopment. Indeed, the park receives overwhelm-ing positive feedbacks. This park design has multiplerelations to the architectural projects within the site.Neither the making of this park nor architecture near-by has seriously reviewed the conservation strategy ofthe historical landscape. With careful examination, thewhole process of transformation camouflaged theurban contestation. Cuthbert would have identified theVictoria Barracks as nothing but a total change,3 afeature that even still prevails the contemporaryawareness of antiquity.
THE VICTORIA BARRACKS IN CONTESTATION:THREE ZONING PLANS OF THE LATE 1970sThe conversion of the Victoria Barracks started in1977 when the British government decided to return aseries of military sites to the general public. The loca-tion of the Victoria Barracks was a piece of land at thecentre of the high-density urban area on the island,overseeing the commercial building district ofAdmiralty. The whole region underwent constant his-torical changes since the Sino-British War in 1840.When the site became part of the colonial city then
Figure 3.Site plan of the Victoria Barracks, 1976.Resource: Historical Record Office, Hong Kong.Document No. MM-0115.
Figure 2.Early development in the area of Hong KongIsland, 1845, showing the barracks in the middle.Source: Ordnance Map of Hong Kong, surveyed byLieutenant Collinson of the Royal Engineers.Reproduced with the permission of the NationalLibrary of Scotland. Document No. Map.Area.D6(101).
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known as Queenstown, the military forces choose toallocate the main headquarters on the hillside terrace,where visitors could enjoy the beautiful scenery up tothe Bowrington Area (now called Causeway Bay).Besides, the British Navy also took a share of this cen-tral land by the sea. The two military sites cut off theconnection between the towns already established atboth sides (Lo, 1992:150-154 and 163). With pass-ing decades, this urban pattern of military existencedid not entirely change. Several rounds of urban pro-posals to relocate the campus out from the site turnedout fruitless due to the negative feedback from the mil-itary forces (Bristow, 1984:37-38 and 231-242; Sayerand Evans, 1975:88). In 1957, some surplus sitesaround the Murray Barracks, Parade Ground, andDockyard were on sale. A resultant statutory plan(LH3/12) was issued in 1961; and it foresaw thelarge-scale commercial construction around the loca-tion of Admiralty, wherein the first MTR line wasannounced in 1974 to connect the Hong Kong Islandand the Kowloon City across the strait.
To explore the future of the Victoria Barracks,the then Governor-in-Council commissioned a specialteam of scholars to study the preliminary developmen-tal scheme.4 After several months, the first planningproposal was announced in June 1977 [Fig. 4]. TheVictoria Barracks Planning Committee identified atleast three aspects of development that the conversionshould maintain. Firstly and most importantly, the newdistrict should provide sufficient land plots and infra-structure for the future commercial growth. Second,the entire development should return the governmentrevenue as soon as possible by both direct (land sales)and indirect (e.g. rent rates, taxes, tourist incomes)ways. Third, if with both the first two goals accom-plished, then it was also necessary to protect and con-vert a plethora of existing buildings according to theirheritage significance (Victoria Barracks PlanningCommittee, 1977:1). According to this plan, the entiresite of the Victoria Barracks turned into four parts:high-density development of commercial and residen-tial buildings to the northeast, Supreme Court Buildingto the northwest, residences at the centre, and someother government and community facilities to the eastand west ends. It seemed that the committee expectedno high-density context in the area, as they kept themajority of the land of up to 16.8 hectares for thepublic good. Land sales would have refunded the pub-lic revenue by nearly HKD 900 million.
A large amount of natural landscape andbuilt heritage would have also survived in the plan.The Hong Kong Island was very short of land as thecoastal terrains in all directions flush into the sea with-out compromise. Therefore, the Victoria Barracks hada large area of wooded slopes that was not suitablefor any building construction except for war tunnels. Indealing with this situation, the preliminary plan sepa-rated the entire site into three terraces of differentheights. The lowest ground to the northeast wasplanned to allocate commercial/residential buildings.The middle ground belonged to semi-detached apart-ments, spreading and hiding into the beautiful land-scape. Many existing military facilities would changeinto community centres and institutions. All of thesedesign treatments would have rendered the newVictoria Barracks with the townscape of an urban vil-lage rather than the business district. Sufficient sportsfacilities and cultural institutions would have main-tained the publicity of space and serviced the daily
access and civic functions, in contrast with the com-mercial skyscrapers at the future Admiralty stationnearby.
However, feedback from the following two-month public consultancy criticised the proposal bythe committee. Participating groups included the RoyalTown Planning Institute (Hong Kong Branch), the HongKong Heritage Society, the Conservancy Associationand the Hong Kong Institute of Architects. Advisorsfrom all these groups represented the highest level ofacademic scholarship on and social concern aboutthe urban growth of Hong Kong. They contested thatthe Governor-in-Council had no right to commissionthe developmental plan of the Victoria Barracks to thehands of a “secret clan”. The whole action bypassedthe ordinary procedure of planning commission of thegovernment and therefore was illegal. Their fire pow-ers were also concentrated on the sharing mode ofpublic space, questioning and criticising the necessityof central apartments which occupied higher levels ofthe landscape. Thirdly, all groups agreed that the exist-ing military buildings should be preserved as many aspossible to integrate into a whole natural park thatsymbolically equalised the Central Park in the city ofNew York. There was an emerging ideological strug-gle and conflict in the public opinions that the VictoriaBarracks should develop into a whole public domain,rather than an internal garden of private propertiesand privileged residents.
Three months later, the special committee fin-ished the revised plan and was required to provide adetailed conversion scheme for each military buildinginvolved. It was in this new proposal that the futureHong Kong Park came to the surface of the officials’table. The new Hong Kong Park would occupy morethan 13 hectares of the area (Table 1). On the otherhand, the proposal did not picture the urban design ofthe area as intensively as the previous one. There wasonly a brief planning concept stating the diagrams ofexisting buildings, slopes, platforms, tree coverage,and future land formation. What was mainly missinghere was information like vehicular circulation, pedes-trian links, built types and density, etc. It reflected, to acertain extent, a kind of reluctance to make an inten-sive interpretation of the design which might havedrawn further criticism from the public. However, theprotection of built heritage received more attentionthan ever before. Flagstaff House and the courtyard ofthe community and swimming pool (marked as HH inFig. 5) were still of top priority regarding preservationsignificance. Southwest corner of the site would con-centrate more dormitories of soldiers that representedmany typical modernist design features. Minimalizedlandfill and excavation consolidated landscape preser-vation by keeping earth condition and topology as itonce was.
The first two rounds of the redevelopmentplanning would have placed a good level of publicityto the reborn Victoria Barracks, if not disrupted by theExecutive and Legislative Councils. The new orderfrom the officials required another individual designoffice to take part in consultancy (Executive andLegislative Council Office, 1977:16). The YunchenFreeman Ltd., an Australian architectural and planningcompany, was invited by the Urban Council and thePublic Works Department to provide an entirely newconcept over the district, and they submitted the thirdproposal (Plan No. LH 4/49) in August 1978.5
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The role that the Legislative Council took in the wholeprocedure remained unclear and problematic.Urbanist Roger Bristow then complained about theauthoritarian planning system. In his opinion, authen-tic public participation in the legislation of urban pol-icy-making was seldom witnessed (Bristow,1984:275). The third, as the final one, a proposal forthe Victoria Barracks was never seriously challengedby the same monthly public forums and discussions asthe Council took charge in for the previous plans. Theconsequence of it was that the new one was soonpassed by the government a year later, and the publicsurprisingly found that what replaced and encroachedthe original landscape was the large-scale govern-mental/commercial development in pursuit of high-density urbanisation.
The final plan for the Victoria Barracks gavean intensive study of an open space system extractedfrom Chapter Four of the Hong Kong Outline Plan(Yuncken Freeman H.K., 1980:105). It also consid-ered the detailed procedure of construction phasesaccording to the heritage quantity, topology and land-scape analysis [Fig. 6]. Under the veil of this imple-ment, commercial building area ratio was four timeslarge comparing to the previous zoning plans.Heritages were also in danger in that many blocks.Many highly recommended before had to be demol-ished and make way for the commercial developmentdue to their better locations closed to the main road.Associating with the newly reclaimed commercial ter-ritories was the expected large-scale land excavationand fill for the high rises in luxury hotels and servicedapartments. The Legislative Council did not organiseany form of public consultancy over these severe alter-ations in design, and approved merely and passed theproposal to the Architectural Office and the TownPlanning and Highway Office for further implementa-tion.
The scale of land excavation was too decisiveto spare all the landscape features of the terraces fromthe height of +20m down to ground zero. The SwireProperties acquired the land plot of nearly 20,000square meters through public auctions and planned tobuild the commercial centre – The Pacific Place I&II(BJHKC, 1982:20; 1985:30). It envisaged a cluster ofcommercial towers, including the Marriott Hotel,Conrad Hotel, and Shangri-La Hotel. The architecturaldesign was made by a local company, Wong &Ouyang, whose fame rose during its collaborationwith architect Paul Rudolf in the project of the BondCenter at Admiralty by the other side of Queensway.The massive underground podium contains twelve lev-els of shops and car parks. More than 120 caissonwalls of 2.5 meters in diameter plunged beneath thetowers and extended downward to 35 meters belowthe Supreme Court Road (AAB, 1988:8), keeping ahigh density of underground concrete constructioneven higher than European standard. The three successive zoning plans thus reflect the con-testation between heritage conservation and commer-cialised urbanisation when at times public interestsadvanced and compromised. In the case of theVictoria Barracks, the absence of statutory plans inpower due to the laissez-faire strategy led to the hid-den changes in land use back and forth in the post-military site. At last, government authorities providedan even larger share of profit in land sales for futurecommercial development. Only 10 out of 25 militarybuildings were recommended for retention and con-
servation, and most located in the west and had nodirect interference with business development. [Table2] Reflecting Abbas’ pessimism, they are space of dis-
Figure 4. First plan of the Victoria Barracks (VictoriaBarracks Planning Committee, 1977 1).
Figure 6.Site study (Yuncken Freeman H.K. 1980:22).The new commercial development area would con-nect the Admiralty station nearby through a pro-posed pedestrian bypass.
Figure 5.Land zoning plan by the selected committee(Victoria Barracks Planning Committee, 1977 2).Revised by the authors.
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appearance, questioning the authenticity of culturalrepresentations and re-appearances made in the laterarchitecture designs and heritage protections aroundthe Hong Kong Park after the 1990s.
RETROSPECTION: ON THE POST-MILITARY LAND-SCAPE AND ITS REPRESENTATION IN HIGH-DENSI-TY URBANISMIn June 1988, the Urban Council announced that theremaining ten hectares of the former Victoria Barrackswould change into a public domain known as theHong Kong Park. Two phases of redevelopment wouldcost HKD 340 million and be scheduled to completein 1991. A local private organisation in close relation-ship with the Council, the Royal Hong Kong JockeyClub (RHKJC) was willing to donate HKD 170 millionfor the first phase. Wong Tung & Partners provided ageneral layout of the future Hong Kong Park in 1985.Peter Tan & Associates in the meantime collaboratedas the landscape consultant. In spite of the claimedfancy title as “a green oasis inside concrete jungles”,one can see the original topology of the military land-scape transformed intensively. It also underpins thefuture when the Colvin House was demolished forspace to hold the entirely new architecture for theBritish Council and Consulate-General. These head-quarters designed by British architect Terry Farrell in1992 turned out to be a high quality of post-modernarchitecture, but forbid any penetrating views to thesite from the east at the new Justice Drive.
The massive bodies of the Pacific Place andthe Council separate the Victoria Barracks into twoparts, leaving an indiscernible left-over in the east. Itremained unnoticed to the public for the wholedecade of the 1990s. The rediscovery and redevelop-ment of this site were very opportunist. By then, ASHKneeded a central location for their new headquarters.(Cummer, DiStefano, and Lee, 2014:32). The advisorycommittee decided to take this large site occupied bythe GG Building and a magazine compound.Negotiations between the Council and the Hong Konggovernment and the architectural competition fol-lowed in 2001. Out from more than 200 submissions,the winning design by Tod Williams Billie TsienArchitects (TWBTA) from the U.S. provides a horizontalextension of only two and a half stories high. It tri-umphs by the low-density strategy and the commit-ment in site preservation of historical significance ofthe GG building, the explosives magazine compound,and the vegetation in-between [Fig. 7].
The architects stick at their best to the topo-logical post-military features. The main body of thecentre is lifted from the rock surface, overseeing thewhole landscaped area from high above. With onlyminor redecoration, the former GG building turnedinto office rooms, protected by newly installed curtainwalls. It accompanies a ground-level courtyard of theChinese-garden style, a fashionable restaurant, andsemi-open theatre space. The main lecture hall on thefirst level could enjoy fantastic views from both sides,especially that of a double-deck walking bypass andviewing platforms sinuating through the tropicalwoods into the distant magazine. The building calledMagazine A is now a modern exhibition space, andMagazine B a contemporary theatre. Besides, theexposed material features of artilleries, stones andbricks remain decent representations of their formalfunctions. Iron trails extending to the Magazine B arethe clear signature of military transportation, remind-
ing visitors of the intense atmosphere of wartime con-flicts.
As we are about to step into the third decadesof the 21st century, the re-urbanisation of theAdmiralty districts around the Victoria Barracks is stillon-going. HKJC joined with the University of Chicagoto build a new academic complex on the desertedBritish Army’s fortress of Mount Davis, where a gunemplacement had once been used as part of theJubilee Battery during the war. Losing the traces of thememory about the Special Branch of the counter-espi-onage force of the local police who once took it todetain both lefts- and right-wing activists, Canadianarchitect Bing Thom (1940-2016) from Vancouvertook the military base and built a sleek academic insti-tution above. Old facilities were transformed and ren-ovated as a heritage museum and open to the publicsince December 2018.
So empathetic is it to find reporter EdwardDonoghue lamenting about the fast disappearingurban features in the heart of a past Hong Kong. In anessay entitled “Goodbye Wanchai,” he documents thisold district just at the foothill of the barracks in a waythat “it seems just about ready to give up the ghost [ofmemory] and be transformed into a clone of CentralDistrict” (Donoghue, 1989:68). The transformation ofthe Victoria Barracks in the last three decades reflectsa similar power of will and endures perhaps evenmore severe urban disappearance. However, such aghost is far from being given up, as long as strugglesbetween military power, corporate interests, authoritar-ian planning and citizenship still exist and continue torequiem the historical significance of post-militarylandscape in their own ways.
Figure 7.Upper site plan; 2) Bird’s-eyes view of ASHK;3) Chantel Miller Gallery and berm; 4) Offices, for-mer GG Block. Photo courtesy by Michael Moran,ASHK, and TWBTA.
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CONCLUSIONAs a rare case of post-military landscape conservationin the contemporary high-density metropolitan areasin Hong Kong, the Victoria Barracks was a preliminaryand valuable example of military landscape transfor-mation even earlier than those counterparts in Europeand America. The result is, as Chris Chung, the thendirector of Peter Tan & Associates, said, the emerginguse of landscaping to reflect and improve the aware-ness of people to use open space as a driving force topromote life quality (AAC, 1992:32). On the otherhand, from it, we may see three interrelated logics oflocal military redevelopment. First, military existencemay not “disappear” even after the closure or reloca-tion of bases; the withdrawal of military power doesnot mean that the military consciousness would fail toregulate the perception of its physical presence [Fig.8]. Second, it draws serious contestation of powers incontrolling such redevelopment; they will challengethe legitimacy of the military landscape through plan-ning systems regarding land use, built form and alter-ation in spatial functions. Quite often commercialdevelopment may prevail on these features andencroach public interests [Fig. 9]. Third, such redevel-opment is sometimes suspicious even in the name ofmaking public space. By adding more facilities anddecorations appealing to the mass, a renewal mayprovide false representations of history and memoryand replace the original military consciousness. It isparticularly true in a post-colonial context where mem-ories of being colonised would always be the first vic-tims of nation-building. Although Hong Kong has noserious ideological confrontation due to a uniqueidentity of temporality, we still witness special memo-ries of militarisation being replaced and represented.The success of the ASHK in defying the disappearanceof military landscape relies on the full awareness ofthe architects and landscapists to the significance ofprotecting the post-military site in its original forms. Itdemonstrates that the sustainability of the post-militarylandscape can be achieved by a strategic architectural
design mainly depending on the protection of uniquetopology and authentic representation of military paststhrough collective visual elements and structure.(This paper is part of a study supported by the
Guangdong Philosophy & Humanities 13/5 PlanningFoundation, Project No. GD17CYS01, and the CityUniversity of Hong Kong, Project No. 7005135.)
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Author(s):
Jing Xiao, School of Architecture and Urban Planning, ShenzhenKey Laboratory for Urban Environmental Optimization,Shenzhen University, Chinae.mail [email protected]
Charlie Q. L. Xue, Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, CityUniversity of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
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