1Although, according to Childe, "the concept of city is notoriously hard to define," (1) an insight into its complexity may be gained from the following description by Mumford, a description approaching a comprehensive definition: "The city in its complete sense... is a geographic plexus, an economic organization, an institutional process, a theatre of social action and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity" (2). From this definition emerge, at once, the many problems natural, social, aesthetic attendant upon urban settlement. To be as nearly comprehensive in form as possible, urban settlement must seek to bring the concrete, man-made forms into dynamic equilibrium with the contemporary social forms. How to polarize the many forces at play so that, for all the scale ranges of the city, its sensuous and visual attributes are maximized, is the purpose of planning. Involved in this collective process is an equation of constantly changing coordinates.

2This dynamic equation is but rarely satisfactorily reconciled because, often, antagonistic human forces in here in its variables to upset a rational balance. Human organization is not rational and human inertia, through custom, introduces many lags which collaborate to impede an attainment of balance, even when the will to such attainment exists. Such factors are reflected, in time, by the variety and quantity of urban forms, and by the diversity of unbalance evident in urban form. Reflecting man's condition, urban form is a true index of his civilization and culture. Without relating people, period and place simultaneously, urban form may be a meaningless physical shell, an abstract quantity of construction. Lacking the dimensions of period and place, comparative urban forms lead to futile diagnostic endeavors, at best of mere academic interest.

3The period is today; the people still largely agrarian; the place, or more correctly the places, cities in the Arab World, although the discussion may appropriately apply to Western European cities, to primate cities (as Asiatic capitals) of industrially-retarded countries and to newly forming cities anywhere, for the architectural subtleties of urban formation universally obey pragmatic, visual and sensuous demands inherent in man's multi-dimensional, plastic aesthetic judgement. In comparative references to former urban forms, thus, the comparison to contemporary equivalents must be multi-dimensional

4What is universally influential in urban formation irrespective of people, period and place, is land. However, although "land... is given," (3) according to Falloon, "it may seem rather strange that land which appears to be so obvious should have been the subject of so much contention. Still, we find that around land, its nature and characteristics have raged some of history's bitterest controversies. Land has, throughout the ages, furnished science and economics with many of the most baffling problems." (4)

5Different means of land settlement, disposal or parcellation may be found in periods and places. For example, "To say that the history of land planning in the United States is based upon a square is probably an over-simplification of fact. However, the square has been a most important factor in influencing subdivision development”(5) The persisting, ubiquitous checkerboard plan in center urban areas illustrates how a geometric division of land can, to a large degree, influence urban form. Subsequent land disposals around central urban areas have wrapped varying strata of formation around the grid kernel.

6Although trans-urban land is not directly involved in this study, its condition, especially in proximity to urban areas, cannot be ignored. Not only is it often a prelude the visual conditions within the city, but, forming the approaches or gateways to the city, it must be considered an integral part of the form of the city. Many elements responsible for "uglifying the landscape" (6) wherein the city is set, are to be found in the land embraced by the urban zone of influence. R. G. Stapledon stated on broadly:

7The culture of a nation by general consent, would... be regarded as its greatest heritage but a heritage equally worthy of being cherished is the land surface which a nation occupies. The culture to a large extent must have been influenced by the character of the land surface, and in any event culture and land surface are interwoven and interact in countless directions difficult to unravel. (7).

8This obviously calls for serious concern with the condition of the circumambient land in relation to the city and its subjection to a studied hierarchy of related organized, zoned systems (8).

9Intra-social conflicts arise out of the modes of land disposition, just as varying modes of land ownership juxtapositions arise out of varying social polarities. Furthermore, inter-social conflicts over land and limb have, in the past, necessitated defensive measures. Defense against primitive warfare was relatively simple by the device of the walled enclosure. The walled city is a classic in urban history. Emperor Hwangte's Great Wall of China (258 B.C.) demonstrates the extent to which defense against depredation may model the regional landscape, Defensive countermeasures reached a high pitch of geometric exercise during the Renaissance, so that urban form was, dominantly, crystallized by factors antidotal to attack.

10Historical chronicles are replete with description as the following:

11In 1398 Timur conquered northern India and occupied Delhi, and in the following year returned to his cap Samarkand, from where he set out for Aleppo slaughtering every man, woman and child on his way. Once Aleppo had been sacked, he headed for Jerusalem enroute for Egypt, but was forced turn back by a plague of locals which deprived his horses of their grazing. Next, he took Damascus and then Baghdad; the heads of the inhabitants of each captured city were piled in pyramids before the gates (9).

12It is no wonder then that protective walls, in the last five thousand years of urban settlement, (10) and up to the discovery of gunpowder and the cannon, should have become visible determinants of urban formation.

13In his Essay on Cosmology, Whitehead has expressed a relationship of applicable meaning and connotation to the planner. He stated that:

14There is no society in isolation. Every society must be considered with its background of a wider environment of actual entities, which also contribute their objectifications to which members of the society must conform. Thus, the given contributions of the environment must at least be permissive of the self-sustenance of the society. Also, in proportion to its importance, this background must contribute those general characters which the more special character of the society presupposes for its members. But this means that the environment, together with the society in question, must form a larger society in respect to some more general characters than those defining the society from which we started. Thus, we arrive at the principle that every society requires a social background, of which it is itself a part. In reference to any given society the world of actual entities is to be conceived as forming a background in layers of social order, the defining characteristics becoming wider and more general as we widen the background. Of course, the remote actualities of the background have their own specific characteristics of various types of social order. But such specific characteristics have become irrelevant for the society in question by reason of the inhibitions and attenuations introduced by discordance, that is to say, by disorder (11)

15Because of the widening scope and intensity of interrelationships, the concern of the planner is not diminished vis-à-vis the individual, small-scale, intimate relationships; rather, it is augmented, though rendered far more complex, by the elastic range of relationships. An over-emphasis on the mechanics of complexity and its solutions, if it sidetracks the unitary generative causes of complexity, would vitiate the attempts at adjustments created by the intercausal, intimate bases which, additively, cause the enlarging complexity. Thus, the planner's domain-microcosm to macrocosm must become wider and more intense. If larger units of planning transcend conventional bounds, this does not obviate the microcosmic approach. However, to hold that this approach determines the macrocosmic synthesis ignores the simultaneous causality of the inter-relatedness of the two, necessitated by the dynamics of the environment. The approach can be easily slanted one way or the other, but the results are as far apart as totalitarianism and democracy. The balance in hard to strike correctly due to the many facilitative-antagonistic situations in a society in which "the members can only exist by reason of the laws which dominate the society, and the laws only come into being by reason of the analogous characters of the members of the society" (12).

16Today, for an urban form to be viable, it must be predicated on a multi-series of inter-relationships. While situations of deviance from the doctrine of the simultaneity of inter-relatedness may avail, such situations must be viewed as aberrations deserving correction.

17Urban form, in this context, can be envisaged only in the total setting of the ramifying actions of man on the earth's surface. This, broadly, is the setting of the distant urban scene. The outline of evolving urban forms can be sketched only in the light of perceptible trends already causing urban metamorphosis. All else, being prophecy, cannot be seriously entertained.

18To gain insight into urban form, the elements and forces that model urban formation must always be isolated and analyzed. Then the factors that polarize urban formation into patterns of formation must be studied. Only then is it possible to judge such patterns in terms of forms, form is visually communicative in many ways and may appeal, aesthetically, in various intensities. Urban forms must always be analyzed in consort with the forces that model them, before it can be concluded whether, with given forces, desired resulting forms can be positively contrived by conscious planning and design. Physical results may be judged against metaphysical backgrounds, for the city, as a place of communal living, unlike the pieces of which it is composed, must be judged by how it is modeled to serve this collective living. Pinnacles of physical grandeur in urbanism may be the abysses of social depredation, while pinnacles of social grandeur may be inexpressible by concomitant physical expression. The task of humanity is to aim at both pinnacles.

19It is clear that the primary physical key in urban formation is the sheer scale and compactness (horizontally and vertically) of such formation on the locus of settlement. The permissible range is wide; but the actual condition along this continuum is a broad, but core determinant in the resulting visual prospects of the city. The quiet, lackadaisical hamlet and the notoriously noisy and hectic. megalopolis are extremes of settlement whose characteristics may appeal to those inclined to favor extremes. Therefore, lest it be wondered in this era of “Flight from the city, flight to the suburbs” and, more recently, “Flight from the suburbs to exurbia,” what the urban philosophy of this study is, it is guided by the conviction that, since "In all ages and areas, from ancient Egypt to modern America, the highest development of human mentality, initiative and achievement has been in urban communities,"(13) there is no reason to indicate that this is no longer true. The fact that the form of urban communities must necessarily change, has been construed by anti-urban writers as the death knoll of the city. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Rather, the understandable spell that the agrestic environment exercises on such writers has served to complicate, instead of elucidating, the urban-rural polarity, a decision about which lies, not in the surrender of one to. the other but, rather, in such a transmutation as sketched by Ebenezer Howard. A Sabine Farm or a Rousseauistic environment may be “individually” satisfying, but it seems clear that not physical aloofness, but physical propinquity in settlement is capable of meeting the demands of communal achievement. This is not a matter of whether an opera or ballet company is supportable or not, but rather, the increasingly sophisticated demands of a technocratic tending society require a modicum of centralized fixity in space. That regenerate transmutations may take on many physical forms is obvious.

20Throughout history, many social forms have been advocated. Too, many urban forms have been engineered.. Today, many social forms are being advocated. That they are highly tinged with political connotations reflects the plurality of urban forms possible for political connotations, like types of urban settlement, run the gamut from the extreme liberal to the extreme conservative. That many developing countries seem to be developing new political orders, premised on a life-economy target or on political in-betweens, makes them important testing grounds for evolving urban forms. The Arab World is an important political, social and economic part of the Third World", deserving attention as to how it will develop. Signs to come in urban formation are already clearly discernible and disturbing. Applying a statement by Ross from another context to the urban sphere, it will approximate the truth of the urban situation at present: "If we can ultimately do everywhere what is now being done with success somewhere, the world will be remade" (14). This is a challenge of far-reaching significance. The urban environment must exist for every individual, rather that consist of some insular habitable areas for some. For some, urban habitation has probably reached the acme of living commensurate with contemporary potentials. The conclusion that the urban habitation must be appropriate for all, if realized, will herald a new dawn in urban formation. The problems of the Arab city are only beginning to receive political action. The capacity of the Arab World is phenomenal; the prospects of a new dawn coming in the Arab World is supportable by both evidence and potential. But Arabs must work hard to harness the great development in store harmoniously and humanely.

21How to attain that degree of urban agglomeration conducive to political, intellectual and industrial achievement, without allowing it to reach inordinate proportions, acting in human inconvenience, neurosis, “anomie” and unnecessary economic loss, and how to guide the shape of this agglomeration, so that it will be visually expressive in form, is not easily, or simply, answerable. However, a clear to the new urban direction and a diagnosis of its weakness, is inherent in the statement that:

22During the last century the planners, driven by the pressing community calamities of the Industrial Revolution, have turned away from the city beautiful toward planning for health, for safety, for decongestion and for ordinary private amenity. They have rightly forsaken the facade when they have seen the misery behind the facade. But, in so doing, they have often forsaken the ideal of the whole city: when they sear talk of civic beauty, they are no longer thinking of the unity of the community. (15)

23It is easy to realize that when form is a generic term encompassing many forms. Although often used in the singular, it is hard to conceive of many related urban formations that may be easily, and geometrically, describable. Urban form is a product of many modeling forces so that it is, perhaps, more accurate to keep in mind this plurality of urban forms, and to think of urban formation a blending, or amalgamation, of forms whose cementation is achievable by various means.

24It may be validly questioned that since aesthete judgement and the sensing of beauty of form are difficult ascertain. The search for beauty in urban form must be tempered by the element of subjectivity inherent in aesthete evaluation. Since this is true, no overly subjective judgments about forms can be detailed here. Rather, an analysis of the forces behind forms, then analyses of the visual implications of these forms will be attempted. To state that some forms are beautiful and others ugly would be easy it was possible to establish unequivocal universals or canons of beauty. The terms beautiful or ugly will, therefore, only sparingly used when other words fail to register when is commonly understood by them.

25But beauty must be sought in urban formation. Otherwise, since urban formations and forms are de facto results of settlement, there will only remain functional modelers to serve as the spines of urban settlement. And function guides, especially in urban formation, are no guaranteed beauty. Dubious in architecture the dictum, form follow function, is even more dubious if applied to urban formation.

26My contention is that for beauty to avail in Arab urban formation, it must be consciously sought because under the mundane pressures of settlement, it is elusive. This is important, not merely for visual sensing per se, but for its inter-relation to psychic experience as well "Somewhere in the process of upbringing, in the environment we have made for ourselves, there exists a corrodes influence, which dissolves the unity of our social consciousness, and by that action prevents the development of aesthetic consciousness" (16).

27Urban form reflects civilization; it also reflects culture where it exists. Where it does not exist, perhaps because unlike civilization, culture is abstract and perceptual rather than material and tangible, its absence may be due to complex civilization which dulls its sensitive manifestations. Could it be that a purification of the environment, removing the corroding influences therein, will ameliorate the prospects of social and aesthetic consciousness? The environment of man is fast becoming predominantly urban. It has been argued that man-made environment is as good or bad as man himself. While this is largely true, the is hope in the hypothesis that if the environment is improved, this improvement will have a positive, salutory effect on man. If this is true, urban form perforce takes on an urgent role, especially in view of Neutra's observation: "the fact that a man does not realize the harmfulness of a product or a design-element in his surroundings does not mean that it is harmless" (17). This is perhaps because, according to Wiener:

28Man is immersed in a world which he perceives through his sense organs. Information that he receives is cordinated through his brain and nervous system after the proper process of storage, collation and selection, it emerges through effector organs, generally his muscles. These in turn act on the external world, and also react on the central nervous system through receptor organs, such as the end organs of kinesthesia; and the information received by the kinesthesia organs is combined with his already accumulated store of information to influence future action (18).

29This means that the storage of ugly impressions can be quite involuntary of a person's will. That it can involuntarily influence future actions is still more ominous. It is a known fact that a person can become acclimatized to an ugly environment. Dulled, his aesthetic faculties will cease to recognize ugliness. Read believes that "the artistic activity might be described as a crystallization from the amorphous realm of feeling, of forms that are significant or symbolic". Could this artistic activity be deleteriously affected by an absence of significant and symbolic forms? Ubiquitous as forms on the urban scene are, their involuntary influence on the individual's store of information cannot be minimized. Prall has stated:

30When the places in the world are not merely within a radius of thirty three hours but immediately to be reached by light-wave transportation or perfected instruments of distance vision; when all the problems connected with having the fare to pay for these instantaneous journeys are completely solved; when there are no more wars or national rivalries or passports or customs regulations to complicate the overcoming of natural barriers by the raising of artificial ones; when men have full knowledge of their bodily mechanisms and their health or the cure for death and when, alive, they shall have found out how to live together in society: when all this is accomplished if we are not to sit down and wish for the return of our practical difficulties to give us occupation, or for death to relieve our boredom, aesthetic matters will have to be taken seriously (20).

31But aesthetic matters of the urban scene need not await the advent of Prall's Utopia; undesirable as many features of the contemporary Arab city are, there is encouragement in the rates of urban metamorphosis which enable the recasting of the city in molds and forms that have salutary aesthetic impact on its beholders. The initiators of the City Beautiful movement sought to capture the imagination of the spectator by big schemes born of bold dreams. Their proposals, different from contemporary aims, did capture the imagination and arouse the enthusiasm of the multitudes. Could not Arab planners today similarly animate the Arab masses enthusiasm by a City Marvelous movement attuned to the dynamics of the age challenging, if not defying, the Arabs?

32In putting this book together, I particularly had in mind the sharing of my thoughts and experiences of the past decade or so relating to Arab city and region, with my colleagues the architects, engineers, planners and administrators of the Arab World. History will judge us severely if we do not collaborate -in concerted, scientific fashion- to make of Arab city and region places fit for habitation by the Arab masses. We have great potentials awaiting proper deployment and development. The balanced building of city and region, the harmonious articulation of building and building groupments, the evolution of a significant type of contemporary Arab architecture, the judicious husbanding of our land and the sagacious safeguarding of our natural and economic resources for the betterment of the Arab lot, are all affairs of deep import that should fire and tax our imaginations, as well as inducing us to be held responsible for the manner settlements and habitations for the Arab masses will flower and unfold in the difficult era ahead.

33This introduction is a background aimed at supplying some unity to the work engaged in this book, the material from which it is composed having been written in different places at different times during the past seven or eight years, especially around the period 1960-1962. The material consisting of articles, reports, papers to international and Arab congresses and conferences, etc. has been grouped and arranged in such a manner as to deal with the vital subject of Arab city and region comprehensively and in as unified a manner as the themes permitted. All this material has been published in English and or Arabic in over thirty English and Arabic language newspapers, magazines, journals, books and so on.

34This material, though hurriedly written, has been written because of my deep faith inspired by the order and beauty fit for Arab city and region. Sound and comprehensive city and regional planning can bring the Arab World untold advantages, as it has brought to certain parts of the world. The Arab World has immeasurably lost as a result of the prevailing deep-rooted apathy and fatalism about grassroots issues in civic, city and regional affairs.

35The era of plan lessness in city and region is fast vanishing from the social and economic frontiers of thought in the advancing countries of the world where order, economy, frugality, planning, wisdom, science and administration are increasingly resorted to in the conduct and management of man's affairs. It is time, perhaps, for the Arab World to so order its urban and regional affairs in such ways that future generations will indict more mercifully than the present physical shape of things will give them a right to indict. It is with a view that the Arab World will refrain from depleting its intrinsic potentials and assets in city and region that these articles have been written.

36Every Arab country possesses uniqueness’s and, as such, is endowed with potentialities in natural assets, historic culture and an intelligent people. But for a people to produce a good society, they must work unified towards a goal rather than at cross purposes. Planning is one medium by which a nation grows intelligently to express the growing aspirations of its people.

37Especially at a time when money is increasingly becoming sanctified; when the sense of responsibility is scoffed at; when an honest man is dubbed all sorts of deprecatory names; yes, at a time when many doctors have become merchants, many engineers and architects, contractors: when many educators have become neutral towards principle and students boorish; when many lawyers have become panderers of injustice and journalists scandal-mongers; yes, at a time like this when surface Instead of substance counts, it is time for us to think, reassess, reappraise and begin to make amends.

38Because of heartening reactions that some of these articles have received from ordinary people, ordinary architects and engineers, as well as from some of the world's top experts and educators in the orphan-field of city and regional planning during the time they appeared (and, often, recurrently), this effort has been made to make them available to interested readers in this book. I have made the special effort to make the book ready for the 11th. Congress of "The Federation of Arab Engineers" meeting in March 1969, in Kuwait for the first time.

39Although there are many signs in many quarters of the Arab World that a hopeful awakening to the importance and necessity of contemporary comprehensive city and regional planning, still not one single Institute or University in this area offers deep and comprehensive instruction in this vital field; still the number of municipalities that employ experienced and qualified city planners on their staff number perhaps six or seven; and the public still does not distinguish between sound planning and paper planning. As long as such voids remain unfilled, dangers lurk in the path of Arab City and Regional growth.

40My hope is that this book in its present form-will act as a further spur in the Arab awakening to the importance of the institutionalization of comprehensive city and regional planning, practice and education in the same way the fragments of writings of which the book is constituted have served by arousing the desired awakening slowly, patiently, imperceptibly but surely.

41The reader is kindly asked to remember that this book has been written in different periods and places under different circumstances. It really started when the editor of the Lebanese English language newspaper "The Daily Star" casually asked me to write an article about Beirut. The article “Why Beirut’s Urban Suicide” must have started something like a chain reaction of writing: first, single articles, then longer papers, official reports, critiques and so on.

42This book is, thus, the mere bringing together, slightly ordered fashion, a disparate "volume" of writing about aspects Arab city and regional planning, all of which having been previously published in English, a considerable amount in Arabic and some in French, in the Arab magazines, journals, periodicals but, more in the daily press. (21)

43Dr. Saba George Shiber, AIP, IFHP, AIURA. Kuwait, December 12, 1967.

44Note of editor: This excerpt was originally published in “Recent Arab City Growth. Being Primarily an Arranged Selection of the Writer’s Articles Appearing in the Kuwaiti and Lebanese Press during 1959-1967.” Published by Kuwait, Kuwait Government Printing Press (1968). pp. 831.

1. V. Gordon Childe, The Urban Revolution", The Town Planning Review, Vol. XXI, No. 1, April 1950, p. 3.
2. Lewis Mumford. The Culture of Cities, p. 480.
3. Ibid., p. 327.
4. Wilbur J. Falloon, Appraisal Fundamentals and Appraisal Terms", Selected Readings in Real Estate Appraisal, p
5. Max S. Wehrly, "High Points in the Development of Land Planning," American Builder, Vol. 76, No. 8, August 194 p. 233.
6. Eliel Saarinen, The City, p. 172.
7. Quoted in Edward H. Graham, Natural Principles of Land Use, p. 89.
8. See Gerhard Rosenberg," The Pattern of a Civilized Countryside". The Town Planning Review, Vol. XXIII, No. 1 Ap 1952, pp. 61-65.
9. J.F.C. Fuller, The Decisive Battles of the Western World, p. 501 (italics added)
10. Mohenjo-dare and Harrappa in India were not walled: English post-Roman towns, and, with few exceptions, early com settlements in the United States were not walled. Max Weber has pointed to the unwalled forge-scale settlements of Japa Quoted on Arthur Korn, History Builds the Town, p. 2 (italics added).
11. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 125 (italics added).
12. Ibid., p. 126.
13. William B. Murro, "City", Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 3, p. 474.
14. Edward Alworth Rost, quoted in Harold S, Buttenheim, "The Forces That Move Men", National Municipal Revie Vol. XLII, No. 5, May 1953, p. 223.
15. Percival Goodman and Paul Goodman, Communitas, p. 132 (italics added)
16. Herbert Read, Icon and Idea, p. 138.
17. Richard Neutro, Survival Through Design, p. 84.
18. Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Hamas Beings, p. 17 (italics added).
19. Read, op. cit., p. 18.
20. D. W. Prall, Aesthetic Judgment, p. 1.
21. The following is a partial list of the main Arab newspapers, magazines, Journals, etc.in which the ports of the material in this book have appeared over the past six to seven years.