Morphology of quarters in traditional Arab Islamic city: A case of the traditional city of Damascus

Abstract

Studies on the quarters of traditional Arab Islamic cities have stressed the idea of an urban structure that corresponds to social groupings and to a collection of local regions or even of “inchoate” neighborhood units. This spatial model has often provided the rationale for the intervention in these cities and in the design of new housing layouts. This study aims to examine this issue through syntactic measures and observations to describe and analyze the structure and morphology of quarters through connectivity and visibility analysis of pedestrian movement through space syntax. Whether the structure of these cities presents a global whole in contrast to the assumptions of physical subareas of social groupings is discussed. The city of Damascus is used as a model of analysis in which the urban morphology of quarters is described and characterized. This study reports several findings that are potentially relevant to the understanding of traditional laws that relate the physical layout of quarters to the social structure and their local subareas to the global whole that dominate and unify the parts. On this basis, the design approach in these cities may be better understood.