Students: Mei Chih Chang, Roger Lienert
Location: Damascus
Date: October, 2009
Type: Research project, student work

Background
Damascus is an oasis city. It was founded more than three millennia ago on the foot of the Qasyun Mountain range where the Barada River feeds into an oasis and offers a favorable microclimate. It is these conditions that have allowed for a settlement to be established in ancient times, initially based predominantly on agricultural activities. As an oasis, it later came to serve important functions in the region of today’s “Middle East” as for example being one of the main stops and resting points on the pilgrim routes towards Mecca. Today, the Barada River has mostly been canalized or is being led through subterranean ducts, and whatever is still visible resembles a little rivulet, hardly hinting to the important role the river played in the formation of this metropolis.

Themes
The relationship between city and nature has transformed considerably in the last years. While during most of the twentieth century city and nature represented each other’s antithesis with the city being the man-made object par excellence and nature the environment where man had not yet left its mark, this binary logic has shifted recently. There is by now a common understanding of the city offering different kinds of ‘natural’ environments and of what is usually considered to be nature as something very often actually being man-made or under heavy influence of cultivation. Damascus as a contemporary oasis city offers maybe ideal conditions to study the possible range of conditions and ‘cohabitations’ of urban and ‘natural’ environments.

Project
What is a contemporary oasis city? Does the geographical location still shape the development of the city and is the natural condition still being taken into consideration? What is the idea of green spaces in the city? Can one perceive a changing distribution of spaces of ‘urban nature’ in different neighborhoods of the city? There are plans to (re-) plant or reforest the Qasyun Mountains. What kind of planning models exist and what kind of fauna and flora is imagined to develop there? How would the skyline of Damascus change with a wooded mountain range as its backdrop?
What is the role of agriculture today in the city of Damascus? Is it still practiced? How does the city merge into the countryside? Is there a clear divide where the city ends and the rural landscape begins? What is the limit of Damascene’s urban environment? Do pockets of agriculture exist within the urban fabric? How close to the city center? What kind of agriculture is being practiced in the city today? Who is engaged in it? What is the economy of urban agriculture?