Legitimizing Memories and Spaces of Urban Heritage: Procedural Strategies for Active Preservation of Traditional Quarters in the Arab City

Traditional quarters represent a valuable cultural and economic asset in the contemporary city, for which conservation policies are developed. Between the urban fabric, architectural character and the human asset, traditional quarters exhibit their distinctiveness and authenticity. What is unjustifiably ignored is the fact that traditional quarters have never been frozen in time. Rather, they are a product of multi-layered additions of cultures, styles, social and economical development. In their preservation of such history, policies in the Arab Cities have largely ignored economy, industrial and spatial logic on the old quarters while focusing on style of buildings in forms of touristic attractions and images of the past. This paper investigates the tendency to modernity that shaped the traditional quarters of the Arab city and how best new buildings and new activities of historic structures are integrated into the historic core of cities in an attempt to offer new economic and social possibilities for sustainable urban fabric. Architectural practice and regulations in traditional quarters, hence, have become counter-productive and misleading, when it comes to the future of historical contexts. By locking traditional quarters in the past, limiting design options in them and restricting building functions, this paper argues, could have damaging effect on the long term survival of these quarters. Using the analysis of long-term strategies for historical sites in European cities, Asian and Middle Eastern Cities, this paper makes case for corrective actions that debate policy-makers approach for the future of historical quarters. It envisages long-term strategies for traditional quarters that are self-sufficient and act as active and self-sufficient economies rather than being static museums for touristic consumption. The paper concludes that by being part of active everyday life of society, traditional quarters can sustain their continuity and self-sufficiency.