Housing Rehabilitation in Historic Urban Settlements in the Arab region: Building Resilience and Capturing Values

This event will present and showcase the main results and takeaways from a regional workshop jointly organized by the Islamic Development Bank, UN-Habitat, UNESCO and the Ministry of National Planning, Urban Development, Housing and City Policy from the Government of Morocco that took place in November 2023 in Marrakech, Morocco.
Faced with myriad challenges, many historic urban centers have remained operational, sustained by adaptive livelihood strategies that rely on mutual social aid and the complementarity of pastoral and agricultural resources. While some, like the Medina of Fez, were founded as far back as the 8th century, others, such as the Kasbah of Taourirt, were built no earlier than the 19th century. Yet, behind the fortified walls, operated a social organization that tested and reinvented spatial practices over the years, turning these settlements into continuously adaptive living spaces rather than open-air museums frozen in time for the consumption of tourists.
Today, historic urban centers across the Arab region are plagued by many problems, making the preservation of the most significant constituent of their urban fabrics, housing units, a pressing issue.
Among the challenges they face are:
1) Some countries like Iraq, Yemen, and Syria have experienced significant damage to their urban cultural heritage over the last decade, resulting in the destruction of many housing units.
2) Housing units are often the lowest priority in historic center regeneration projects, which tend to prioritize monuments, infrastructure, and public and commercial programs.
3) Historic centers have become less attractive to locals, with many housing units standing abandoned or inhabited by low-income groups unable to maintain them. Some
are squatted by illegal occupants or sold off to foreigners who use them as secondary residences or transform them into luxury hotels, creating enclaves that exclude the
majority of local inhabitants.
4) Numerous inheritors and family conflicts often freeze rehabilitation efforts for housing units, and the lack of policies and laws to access this housing stock worsens this situation.
How can we prevent historic urban centers from losing their main architectural typology, which constitutes their urban fabric, housing, to either of these two fates: abandonment and rapid deterioration or tourism gentrification? Additionally, how should we address historic urban settlements that already have deteriorated or have become extremely gentrified?