Introduction

The Middle East, defined here as extending from Morocco to Iran and Turkey to Sudan, lies at the crossroads of three continents — Africa, Asia and Europe. With the largest reserves of petroleum in the world it ranks as one of the most important world regions — an importance well beyond its physical size or scale of population. Whereas the urban experience is a relatively recent phenomenon in many regions of the world, cities and city life have been an element of Middle Eastern society for millennia. What Gordon Childe has called the ‘urban revolution’ began here in the fourth millennium BC, and cities then became characteristic of successive civilisations in the Middle East, each leaving its mark on urban structures. Today the Middle East is one of the most highly urbanised regions in the Third World, with some 44 per cent living in towns, and rapid urban growth and rapid rates of urbanisation are dominant elements in the complex process of modernisation and change affecting Middle Eastern society. Already there are at least a dozen Middle Eastern cities with over one million inhabitants, and Cairo, with a population of some nine millions, is now a major world metropolitan region. Present trends suggest that by the year 2000 at least half the region’s population will live in towns and cities.