ABSTRACT
As part of the Aleppo Urban Development Project, a joint undertaking by the Aleppo municipality and German Technical Cooperation (GIZ), 1 this chapter discusses the spatial strategy of the project (Figure 9.1) that aimed at articulating a long-term vision for sustainable development at a city scale. The study, carried out by the firm Uberbau, 2 acknowledged the existing dynamics shaping the city as the base for defining future spatial qualities and for steering urban development. It proposed the reorganization of the existing spatial structure based on Aleppo’s socio-economic and environmental potentials in order to ground the future strategy in the reality of the city. The work resulted in a final report, the urban spatial component of the Aleppo City Development Strategy (CDS) that was delivered in February 2010 (Saad and Stellmach 2010). A major contribution of this German–Syrian cooperative effort was transparency in decision-making and a flexible strategic approach—as opposed to another masterplan—in order to target a dominant culture of over-regulation that had proven to be non-operational given the overwhelming informality of Aleppo’s growth.
