Throughout the monarchical period in Iraq (1932-1958), the Assyrian population faced many challenges, including rural poverty and political marginalization. Their struggles were evident to both the Iraqi government and their British advisors, yet throughout the years prior to 1945 their solution centered on violent repression rather than any real economic development. Many Assyrians served the British Government as RAF Levies as a way to gain financial security and personal safety, mostly serving as guards at airfields across Iraq. As the British began to pare down their commitments in Iraq following the Second World War, many officials in the Foreign Office began to advocate for economic relief for the Assyrians in the form of new housing in Baghdad. This paper will examine the new wave of housing and urban development during the early 1950’s, when Iraq experienced a burst of petroleum-driven development. The case example used here is the Daura/Dora housing project, useful for qualities that separate it from other planned projects as well as its position within the vision of a new expanding Baghdad urban space. This project was spurred on by the British, yet required the cooperation and leadership of the Iraqi government as well as members of the Assyrian community. Non-state entities such as international corporations and the Church of England also involved themselves in this project. I argue that the Daura project is just one example of the many intersections of often competing and contradictory visions in Iraqi development that resulted in a formative yet imperfect Iraqi nationalism. While the overall scope of the project was fairly small and limited to only members of a certain population group, it highlights a number of important issues. These include the role of the central government in urban development, particularly new suburban neighborhoods in more rural western Baghdad. Also, it illustrates the efforts to utilize development as an incorporative mechanism in creating national and urban cohesion. The Daura project became part of an overall push to expand Baghdad along and across the Tigris River, which would later include the large petro-industrial complex east of the housing project as well as Gropius’s new Baghdad University just across the river. This paper utilizes documents compiled by the Foreign Office and the Church of England. These materials show the varied motivations of the many participants involved in the project, as well as the underlying tension over Assyrian identity within an Iraqi nation-state.