Territorial Configuration of the Dead Cities in Northern Syria

An urban organism or a settlement network is ‘sustainable’ if its configuration is linked to its territorial structure. It is therefore difficult to propose possible new urban configurations – including those linked to rural or urban agricultural areas – without taking into account an analysis of their relationship with the territorial structure. It is hard to define a territorial or urban layout as an abstract paradigm to be applied wherever needed, without taking into account ‘self-sufficient’ models related to spatial structures having their own ‘vocation’ and ‘individual characteristic’. It is hard to believe that such new urban or settlement configurations could be ‘sustainable’ if they needs an enormous amount of infrastructure, energy and maintenance costs. A ‘sustainable system' (expecially in non-core areas) should be instead related to a ‘homogeneous region’, whose features are compatible with urban or settlement network we want to plan, as well as to the ‘vocation’ of their own environment. To avoid the ‘Dubai model’ we need paradigms for settlement development, which are closely linked to the potential of the area in which it is located. To this end, we need to analyse ‘virtuous’ and ‘sustainable’ examples in various historical-regional contexts. This research leads us to regain not only ‘metropolitan’ but also ‘regional’ models: systems of medium/small settlements as parts of larger networks, located close to regional and international hubs where the agrarian structure plays a significant role in defining the landscape morphology, and which demonstrate the integration of work-places and dwellings. We can find such networks of small rural settlements in different geographical contexts. Among these, a case study is particularly interesting: the so-called ‘Dead Cities’ in the Limestone Massif of Northern Syria. Here the territorial model is a valley-bottom agricultural system in which the medium-large sized trade centres (such as Ma'arrat an Nu'man, Idlib, and Aleppo) are the ‘nodes’ (hubs) of the Syrian land-use system, and the ‘poles’ (peripheral hubs) for the Limestone Massif settlements. This system represents a 'paradigm' of possible sustainable 'new urban configurations' for non core agricultural and handicrafts areas, places for ‘sustainable supply chains’ based on traditional ‘material culture’, and hub for new industrial bio-based productions. If new regional models will be designed according to this close relationship between urban fabric, ‘productive gardens’, and manufacture places they would define a complex landscape, no longer characterized by the division between industrial and public areas, but where green infrastructures could become new hubs for the territorial development. Indeed, before war started, projects on the ‘Dead Cities’ were focused on the development of archaeological parks, and their integration with the tourist circuits as ‘frozen’ vestiges of ancient times. This paper, instead, was a preliminar study for the landscape development of the region, aimed to repropose this environmental system as a paradigm for the territorial recovery of the area. The final goal was to turn 'Dead Cities' into 'Living Cities', and to devise projects for new urban configurations following their paradigm.