The Researcher Abeer Abdelal from Al-Wataniya Private University participated in the Twenty-first N-AERUS Conference by presenting a scientific research under the title: Pockets of survival and alleys of livelihood:  Tracking local practices to sustain urban vitality in post-war cities (Homs as a case study), the conference was hosted by the Urban and Rural Planning Discipline of Khulna University, Bangladesh & Department of Sustainable Cities and Communities, University of Kassel, Germany

TRANSFORMING ROLE OF STATE IN ADDRESSING INCLUSIVE URBAN

DEVELOPMENT in the time  period between (27.10.2022 – 29.10.2022).

The conference was held under the official sponsorship of (Khulna University from Bangladesh, Kassel University from Germany, and N-AERUS) and hosted a large and diverse group of researchers of different nationalities, most of whom are lecturers at universities or members of international organizations linked to studies interested in studying the problems arising about urbanization.

 Note that the attendance was either in person within the headquarters provided by each of the collectors ( Khulna and Kassel) or through the zoom application, and the themes of the conference revolved mainly around the challenges faced by the state and city administrations within it in addressing urban development in the countries of the Global South and the participating research presented to various experiences  from different countries around the world with a focus on the problems of Third World cities.

In a related context, the themes of the conference came in the following order:

Theme 1: Beyond neoliberal urbanisms in the Global South

Theme 2: The role of the state in urban rehabilitation and transformation

Theme 3: Counter-movements to neoliberal urbanism

Theme 4: Neo-Keynesian response to the pandemic

The scientific research presented by the researcher, Abeer Abdelal from Al-Wataniya Private University, was presented during the Eighth Session of the Second Day of the conference on October 28, 2022, where the research discussed the state of the city of Homs and traced the practices of the population in the Syrian city of “Homs” during the past decade, and their efforts  To provide acceptable living conditions despite the harsh conditions of the war that Syria faced, During wartime, city dwellers rediscovered the alleys and streets in their neighborhoods and formed them as “survival spaces.” Then, in the post-war period, they reshaped sidewalks, local streets, and small squares to create “livelihood corridors,” and succeeded in creating a balanced network of spaces.  The vitality was distributed to all the inhabited neighborhoods of the city, which confirms the importance of reading these practices and benefiting from them in the studies that are prepared at the level of the city administration.

This valuable scientific research came from among a variety of research papers presented that talk about different cities and different challenges from around the world, some of which dealt with housing projects and discussed their results, and others discussed areas of dealing with neighborhoods of irregularities spread in most Third World cities and stressed the importance of participatory  community and ways of financing urban development projects and future horizons in this field.

It should be noted the importance of the conference’s findings regarding the necessity of careful intervention to solve the problems that the cities of the south suffer from, especially those related to urban disintegration within cities, unbalanced distribution of services, and weak interconnection networks between parts of the city, and that addressing the neighborhoods of irregularities in cities does not lie in evacuating the neighborhood of its residents and rebuilding it anew, but rather through a conscious  gradual intervention to improve services in the targeted area and achieve an effective link with the rest of the city.

The final statement stressed the need to consider repercussions of climate change, support the resilience of cities and communities to face the difficult challenges ahead.