How could an urban plan establish post-war co-habitation in Aleppo? Socio-economic issues.

Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria, is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. Since its presence it has been a battlefield, for empires, for kingdoms and until that day. Its particularity was its location on a strategic trade route halfway between the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia1, and at the end of the Silk Road linked East to West.

Aleppo has been destroyed several times in history and luckily it has been rebuilt as many times as necessary. The Byzantine emperor Nicephorus Phocas burned Aleppo and the Souks in 962 but they subsequently redeveloped, flourished and expanded. Tamerlane destroyed the city in 1400, but the Mamluks rebuilt it almost immediately. A violent earthquake in 1822 destroyed two thirds of the housing, but once again Aleppo was rebuilt.

We will be interested in understanding the transformations of town planning during the major periods, and we will analyze the different social and economic strategies. The aim of this analysis will try to answer the following problem: “How could an urban plan establish post-war co-habitation” especially since Aleppo was once again the victim of an atrocious war in 2011?

Key words: Aleppo, socio-economic segregation, war / post-war, urban development, re- construction.

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