Marota city
Marota City, in Damascus, Syria, is a new city, a pilot for upcoming post-conflict reconstruction. In a country where more than 1.7 million homes are destroyed or damaged, 6.3 million people are internally displaced and a further 5 million are out of the country. It is a reconstruction on land where more than 50 thousand people once lived, but where now new laws are being applied that formalizes dispossession and favours profiteering.
The area of the new city was home to 6733 informal units. Many of whom has lived there for generations, but often without formal documentation. Skyscrapers for the phantom wealthy in place of houses, shops and workplaces for war-weary ordinary citizens. It’s a grim warning of the current ‘reconstruction’ agenda.
Syrbanism explains comprehensively the concept, the process and the consequences of Marota City in Damascus; and questions its ability to be a socially just project.
This video is prepared for The Lemkin Reunion, 5th Annual Meeting that took place at the Shattuck Center, School of Public Policy SPP, Central European University CEU in Budapest on March 19 – 20, 2019.
The meeting aimed under the theme of Reconstruction in Syria to answer questions such as What will reconstruction under the current conditions serve? Under what conditions can reconstruction in Syria be equitable?