Urban Sustainable Regeneration of Samarra City

Abstract

There are three distinguished decades of the urban characteristics of Samarra City: The first one is the Abbasid decade (836-892 AD), as the Islamic Capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, with a hard-geometric pattern of planning, on a site running along the left riverbank of the Tigris River, of about 41 km length to 3-4.5 km width. After the engineering crisis of the city infrastructure, due to which it had been abandoned as the capital for the Abbasid caliphate, all the citizens have moved back to original capital, Baghdad, except the neighborhood of the Imam Ali Al-Hadi and Hasan al-Askari, regenerating a small, circular, organic pattern city, growing up to the Othman decade, lasted until the beginning of the 20th century. The third one is the Modern decade, during the second half of 20th century to date, formulating a rectangular shape of 2km width, penetrating the archeological area, perpendicular to the river, because of the archeological obstacles along it. Thus, the research problem has become at first, the prevention of the city urban redevelopment along the river left riverbank, prohibiting the use of any of this sides as an urban sustainable factor. Second, the variation of the current city urban density according to the distance from the river, because the master plan has been expanded to about 8 km faraway the river, with no infrastructure, so that there is no life at the ends. This research aims to redirect the urban regeneration expansion along the river, by the revival of the archeological geometric plans, as an urban sustainable regeneration.