SUSTAINABLE CITY 2000, Urban Regeneration & Sustainability
April 25-27, 2000, Rio de Janeiro, BRAZIL

By: Samia Rab, Ph.D.

Despite its legendary invincibility, and its location in a high valley running north-south of the central mountainous region of Yemen, SanaŽa has undergone several political, economic, urban and social transformations during the unaccounted years of its existence. In the seventeenth century and again from 1872 to 1918 the Turks occupied it, adding a second walled area further to the west of the original walled city. A gateway, Bab-al Sabah, simultaneously linked and separated the walls of the indigenous settlement and those of the newly enclosed area.

This paper critically examines the relationship between the old (eastern/indigenous) and the new (western/Turkish) sectors of SanaŽa. It argues that the distinct nature of these two developments had initially embodied the difference between the life styles of the "rulers" and the "ruled". This separation of settlements and people reflects that the foreign elite resisted the idea of assimilating with the local population, which they could have done by simply expanding the existing walls of the old city. More than just a class conflict, this separation shows the vulnerable sentiment of the foreign rulers when encountering a (legendary) cohesive community. The urban interventions of the last three decades have not been physically the most destructive ones in the city's history. But their effects threaten a unique urban encounter between two distinct forms of settlements that has traditionally fostered a variety of architectural scales, grains and densities, as well as of life styles in SanaŽa.

This paper illustrates that the transformations introduced in SanaŽa's urban form during and after the civil war of 1962, perceived the dichotomous relationship between the eastern and the western walled cities as a problem to be solved. Rather than retaining the diverse environmental qualities sustained within the two urban areas, the city walls that separated the eastern and the western sectors were torn down to encourage the development of a comprehensive and homogeneous metropolis. The disparity between the eastern and the western walled cities was respectively interpreted as the difference between the "traditional" versus the "modern"; the "inefficient" versus the "efficient"; the "old" versus the "new"; the "less-developed" versus the "developed". These predominantly twentieth century values informed the implementation of the Master Plan in the 1970s that disregarded the old (eastern) city and focused on the modernization of the western areas. The deteriorated condition of the old city of SanaŽa generated international concern. In 1986, it was included in the World Heritage List and UNESCO, on the request of the newly united Government of Yemen, initiated an International Campaign for the Preservation of the old city of SanaŽa. A critical examination of the Preservation Campaign reveals that retaining the distinct environmental qualities of the eastern and western walled cities requires a re-evaluation of the modern administrative structure and urban policies that attempt to guide the integrated development of the entire city within a single planning domain. Architects, planners, and city officials need to develop de-centralized approaches to the design and management of cities if these unique patterns of urban development are to continue into the future.