In 1988, the Greater Amman Comprehensive Development Plan called for construction of the new satellite city of Abu Nuseir. Constructed by the National Housing Corporation, the city consists of 3667 dwelling units in apartment blocks and single-family homes surrounding open spaces bordered by walkways, stairs and breezeways. Priority of purchase was given to middle-income government employees, for whom the project was primarily designed.(1) This bold planning action occurred in the midst of an era of modernization in which planning debates in Jordan, and elsewhere in the world, had shifted from debates about hygiene and the utopian ideals of the garden city, to those of the nature of the modern city, public services, and the role of the state as an agent of social transformation.(2) This paper argues that the newly established arm of the state in Amman, the Greater Municipality, designed and located the Abu Nuseir public housing project in such a way as to dismantle established forms of traditional communities to create a more modern and therefore more easily governable society. Using primary and secondary data, this paper will analyze the dismantling of traditional systems of social organization (particularly those that centered around tribal affiliations) and further, explore why the construction of a housing system outside the established boundaries of kinship was imperative to ensure and maintain first, regime security, and second, the autonomy of the state, and the king by extension. In particular, the paper will rely on present-day interviews with planning officials at the Greater Amman Municipality to provide evidence of the internal failings of the 1980s bureaucratization of Amman, and how, despite decades of effort to dismantle traditional systems of social organization, tribalism remains a reckoning force in planning the city. 1. Abu-Gazzeh, Tawfiq M. 1999. “Housing Layout, Social Interaction, and the Place of Contact in Abu-Nuseir, Jordan.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 19: 47-73. 2. Rabinow, Paul, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 332.

Istanbul, Turkey continues to transform and defy characterization as local, regional and global pressures bring about different kinds of responses to the built environment (Keyder: 1999, Clark: 2012). How, then, can we distinguish what parts of the city fabric, or which buildings are legitimately “traditional?” And, which of Istanbul’s building types signify vital urban architectural traditions that might also point to being legitimate new models for positively affecting the future of the city? This paper focuses on a building type that was first a 19th century import from the West, representing modern and cosmopolitan values (Benjamin: 1999, Geist: 1983). The arcade, or “passage” in Turkey, is an infill condition consisting of many shapes and scales and whose new exteriors and interior forms changed the ancient built surround. Today, approximately twenty-one varying passage structures constructed through the middle of the 20th century still exist in the center of the Beyoğlu district, mostly along the Istiklal Avenue. Beyoğlu‘s diverse, international, modern, and welcoming traditions, provide an intriguing background to suggest new socially-motivated architectural design (Gul: 2009) (Aksoy/Enlil: 2010). Research shows that the passage spaces with their unusual interior volumes and many floors that house the unique mixture of the district’s activities, have evolved to become iconic, respected monuments that express a combination of foreign and local vernacular and symbolize a kind of authentic vernacular. Yet, due to economic and political pressures in the city, changing ownerships, and evolving touristic interests, the multiplicity and freedoms have begun to break down and the passage building is succumbing to alterations, closure and disappearance, changing the street character and city movements (Author: 2011). Therefore, a hypothetical design project was developed to focus on the passage as a catalyst for rethinking and therefore legitimizing a new architectural infill for the present and future city, All of the solutions addressed current social and cultural needs in a globalizing city and world, and all activity programs incorporated new passage spaces to signify a means to sustain public freedoms. The street was addressed by inviting people inside to be a part of new possibilities for the arts, education and activism (Author: 2015). Thus expanding social relationships and encounters and suggesting an exploration of the utility and metaphorical associations of “passage in the city” a new legitimate urban vernacular is formed with respect of the past (de Certeau: 1984, Adanali: 2011, Soja: 2000).

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.

Thanks to international marketing campaigns and the Gezi Protests in its very heart, Istanbul is now more visible than ever in the global scene. Since the 1980s, it has claimed its reputation as a global city or global city-region re-establishing itself as a regional hub for finance, logistics, tourism, and culture at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. State authorities have promoted Istanbul to attract multinational corporations while also devising policies to maintain the city’s ability to stimulate trade, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurialism. As Istanbul rose to its global city status with solid finance and service sectors, it has relocated inner-city industry to its peripheries, generating new industrial centers on its outskirts. This paper aims to shift the focus of attention from the oft-stressed centrality in studies on global cities and/or city-regions to their peripheries which themselves turned into new centers of industry. As such, the article challenges the dominant anthropomorphizing and reifying epistemologies in urban and regional studies with an idiographic case study: Gebze, a heavily industrialized city in the vicinity of Istanbul. Having received unprecedented rates of labor migrants in the last five decades and being the manufacturing location of Istanbul-based industry, Gebze has defied the notions of an ideal city under the shadow of the polished image of the globalized Istanbul. Arguing that the emergence of city-regions is a process embedded in complex social relations and conflicts around collective provision and consumption of urban services and infrastructures, the article attempts to make a case on peripheral urbanization exemplified by Gebze as the – somewhat invisible yet vital – center of Istanbul-based industry which have complicated the lives of the very producers of this city, i.e. the migrant laborers.