ABSTRACT
Pre-industrial and pre-modern cities are often used as examples of organic development – where urban form is thought to be physically determined by geography, local materials, technology, climate, and other conditions – and where populations have responded to context through craft-based creativity and local innovation in settlement patterns. Casual observers of “organic urbanism” tend to look at these places as either haphazard and unplanned – or with a wistful nostalgia and romanticism; often categorizing or over-generalizing them as idealized urban types. In accord with the work of urban historian Lewis Mumford, Janet Abu-Lughod reinforces the message that internal rationales exist to explain their urbanism, and that human culture has had a more important impact in shaping and differentiating urban form than mere physical determinism. While not discounting the role of context response, she suggests that while Arab-Islamic cities have certainly been shaped by physical determinants, socio-cultural processes better explain the variety of urbanisms across the Middle East; where Isfahan and Fez might be as different as New York and Los Angeles.
