Environmental Planning Strategies for Religious Cities

Ahlam Hassan Jassim Abdul Karim
Supervised by Asst. Prof. Dr. Fawaz Hamdan Aboud

The process of preserving and maintaining the environment is an important indicator in contemporary global issues, especially after the environmental deterioration that has negatively affected the quality of life of residents and public services. The importance of developing any urban strategy for any religious city lies in studying the actual reality of the city’s basic plan to determine the reality of the interaction of spatial relationships between urban land uses and the sites allocated to it that are trying to exploit them for specific time periods and spatial circumstances. Since the basic design means “a framework that deals with the units of time and place together with their variables in the form of specific time stages” (1), the design must therefore achieve the aspirations of the city and keep pace with its urban and population growth stages and be consistent with the planning objectives. Accordingly, the city plan must accommodate the spatial development indicators, especially the city of Karbala, which is still operating within the Docksides Company’s plan of 1956, through which the city expanded significantly on its southern and southeastern sides after crossing its walls, which represent the physical entity of most Islamic cities (2). The most prominent of these proposed strategies for the city are: 1. The religious factor and its impact on city planning: What the religious factor constitutes in the composition of the city is a basic factor in the rules of correct planning for this type of city, specifically the traditional city center, as it is the area most closely linked to all economic urban activities (central), so it is called the “central services area” (3). Religious use in the city of Karbala constitutes the main axis around which other uses revolve and are attracted to it. Residential and commercial use, accommodation and hotel services, as well as markets and warehouses, are all directly driven by religion. Therefore, any planning procedures that are intended to find their way to serve the city must begin with the central area, as it is the vital joint for civil activities and their spatial distribution.
2. Planning the distribution of services and their performance: Services in the city are divided into two types: the first, services directed directly to serve the residents of residential sectors or at the level of residential neighborhoods, such as infrastructure, basic and municipal services. As for the second type of services, they are productive services directed to serve economic institutions, such as road services, financial services, and others.

(1) Khalis Al-Ash’ab, The Necessary Components of Basic Design, Journal of the Iraqi Geographical Society, Baghdad, 1984, p. 177.

(2) Doxiadis, The Future of Kerbaia, Doxiadis Associates Consulting Engineer, lrap Ministry of Planning, 1958. p9.
(3) Muzaffar Al-Jabiri, A Study in the Planning of the City Center of Mosul with Emphasis on its Traditional Part, Mosul Course Symposium in Arab Heritage, University of Mosul, 1988, p. 375.