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Mohamed Atta as urban planner, and more from the Middle East
The NYT has an interesting article on urban planning developments in Aleppo, Syria (the largest city in the Levant – bigger than Beirut, Tel Aviv, Damascus, and Amman!), which includes this section about the history of planning in the Middle East, with a development-as-preservation lesson at the end: The role of postwar urban planning in the rise of fundamentalism is well documented. In the 1950s and ’60s nationalist governments in countries like Egypt, Syria and Iraq typically viewed the congested alleys and cramped interiors of historic centers not as exotic destinations for tourists but as evidence of a backward culture to be erased. Planners carved broad avenues through dense cities, much as Haussmann had before them in Paris. Families that had lived a compartmentalized existence — with men often segregated from women in two- or three-story courtyard houses — were forced into high-rises with little privacy, while the wealthy fled for villas in newly created suburbs. But while preservationists may have scorned Modernist housing blocks, they were often just as insensitive to the plight of local residents who got in their way. Even as they worked to restore architectural monuments in the Muslim world, they could be disdainful of the dense urban fabric that surrounded these sites. Neighborhoods were sometimes bulldozed to clear space around landmarks so they would be more accessible to tourists. Agencies like Unesco often steered governments toward a Western-style approach to preservation. Traditionally a family might have built onto a house to accommodate a newly married son, for instance, adding a floor or a shop out front. But those kinds of changes were often prohibited under preservation rules. I’m also pleased to see that Aleppo won’t be razing its slums: And the city’s mayor, Maan Chibli, said that he recently asked GTZ to help plan for […]
