Marota and Basilia: Reparation and the Limits of Fairness

Mazen Ezzi

Legislative Decree No. 66 of 2012 was issued as a tool for rezoning large areas of unlicensed and informal housing in Damascus. Over more than a decade, however, it has become one of Syria’s most sensitive property and housing issues. The problem is no longer confined to an urban plan or an administrative delay, but lies in a lengthy process that changed the very form of the right itself: from direct ownership of a property to zoning shares, from an existing home to a promise of alternative housing, and from property available for everyday use to a right requiring proof, valuation, allocation, financing and years of waiting. Decree No. 66 has thus become a test of how rights are produced within a reconstruction project before it is a test of the ability to construct buildings, roads and infrastructure. 

After the fall of the Assad regime, the issue returned to the forefront from a new angle. Marota City and Basilia City were no longer suspended projects that could be treated as two vacant areas. They had become an established legal, urban and financial reality. Zoning shares had been created and rights traded; buyers, contractors and companies had become involved; and construction work had begun on some plots. Meanwhile, alternative housing remained stalled, rent allowances had lost their value, and the cases of some beneficiaries remained suspended because of absence, displacement, or security and legal annotations. The Damascus Governorate thus faced a twofold problem: a project that would be difficult to dismantle without creating new disputes, and social and rights-related harm that could not be overcome simply by continuing implementation. 

A package of measures announced by Damascus Governorate on 5 May 2026 reveals the direction of the official approach at this stage. The governorate did not move towards suspending the decree or legally reformulating it, but towards correcting some of its consequences from within its existing structure. The measures included increasing rent allowances, reopening the cases of those previously excluded, increasing the floor areas allocated to holders of zoning shares, financing alternative housing towers and reducing their cost for beneficiaries. In this sense, reparation was introduced as a mechanism for making completion of the project possible after acknowledging some of the harm accumulated during previous years of implementation. 

The crisis surrounding Decree No. 66 lies in the mechanisms that turned urban planning into a lengthy process of redefining property, housing and the ability to negotiate. Ownership remained legally recognised, but was converted into shares held in common and subjected to committees, valuations, allocations, companies or auctions. Alternative housing remained a right provided for certain groups, but became conditional on proof, residence, the ability to finance it and waiting for implementation. As the governorate needed to convert project assets into cash to finance infrastructure and alternative housing, the relationship between rights, planning and investment became far more complex than a simple compensation formula. 

The limits of correction are therefore determined by the ability to address harm that arose from within the project’s own mechanisms, rather than merely from subsequent errors in implementation. Increasing the rent allowance or restoring certain excluded rights may reduce part of the loss, but these measures are not sufficient to address valuation, the rights holders’ share, the representation of those affected, transparency concerning resources and contracts, and the fate of small shareholders and alternative housing beneficiaries. The judicial prosecution of some representatives of those affected adds yet another dimension to the issue, because it links reparation not only to payments and decisions, but also to the space available for objection, organisation, and negotiation.

The issue, therefore, lies in the reparation package’s capacity to evolve from a partial settlement that allows Marota and Basilia to be completed into an entry point for redefining the relationship between zoning and rights. This can be examined on three interconnected levels: the shift in the official approach from reviewing the decree to correcting its consequences; the legal and urban mechanisms that transformed property and housing into shares and deferred entitlements; and the limits of a possible settlement within a project that has already become established but still lacks the confidence of a significant number of rights holders. 

From Reviewing the Decree to Correcting Its Consequences 

The statement issued by Damascus Governorate on 5 May 2026 marked a decisive moment in the official handling of Decree No. 66 after months of uncertainty. The issue had returned to the forefront following the fall of the Assad regime and growing objections from rights holders in the Marota City and Basilia City areas. The project’s future appeared open to several possibilities: a legal review, amendments to implementation mechanisms, referral to the People’s Assembly, or a broader suspension until a new formula could be reached. The package announced by the governorate, however, revealed a different direction, based on addressing accumulated harm from within the existing zoning framework rather than suspending it or rebuilding it from the beginning. 

This shift began to take shape gradually in autumn 2025. On 20 October 2025, the Governor of Damascus announced the suspension of work in Basilia City amid growing criticism of how the decree had been implemented under the Assad regime and complaints concerning the valuation of rights, alternative housing, rent allowances, and the exclusion of certain owners and beneficiaries for security or administrative reasons. Subsequently, on 4 December 2025, the General Secretariat of the Presidency issued Decision No. 14, establishing a special committee to review the stages of implementation of Decree No. 66, verify the representation of rights, examine grievances, and submit proposals and recommendations concerning the project. The committee included representatives of the Ministry of Local Administration and Environment, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Public Works and Housing, Damascus Governorate, Damascus Cham Holding, which is owned by the governorate and authorised to manage its assets, the Bar Association and the Engineers’ Syndicate, as well as a real estate appraisal expert and 2 experts representing owners in the 2 zoned real estate areas. 

At the time, the establishment of the committee created the impression that the matter had moved beyond being an administrative issue confined to the Damascus Governorate and the Decree No. 66 Implementation Directorate, and had become the subject of a broader review within the transitional administration’s institutions. It also reflected an implicit acknowledgement that the problems accumulated around Marota and Basilia had gone beyond technical or administrative errors and affected the very structure of the relationship between rights holders and the bodies managing the project. The demands of those affected expanded from improving compensation conditions to reconsidering their representation on committees, valuation, allocation, and trading mechanisms, and the fate of alternative housing, which had become one of the most sensitive aspects of the issue because of delays and rising costs.

Yet the measures introduced in May 2026 shifted the discussion from reviewing the process to correcting its consequences. The governorate focused on specific grievance cases, restoring rights that had been suspended or excluded, improving rent allowances, increasing the floor areas allocated to beneficiaries, financing alternative housing, and reducing the cost of its implementation for those entitled to it.

The governorate’s reparations package reflects a clear attempt to rebuild a less confrontational relationship with rights holders by acknowledging some of the harm caused by the previous implementation of the decree, particularly the harm connected to delays, the exclusion of certain beneficiaries, and the erosion of rent allowances amid the currency collapse. In this sense, the package has practical importance for beneficiaries who waited many years to receive alternative housing, a reasonable rent allowance, or confirmation of rights that had remained suspended.

The package itself also reveals the limits of the official approach. The governorate did not propose a comprehensive review of the foundations of property valuation, the method used to calculate zoning-share entitlements, the financial and administrative relationship between the Decree No. 66 Implementation Directorate and Damascus Cham Holding, or the investment contracts concluded in previous years. Nor did it provide a clear framework for rights holders to participate in decision-making outside the grievance and objection committees and the technical and legal processes under its supervision. The measures therefore remained closer to correcting specific problems within the project than to reopening the entire system that governed the production of rights and the distribution of burdens and returns within it. 

The governorate bases this approach on a practical argument that is difficult to ignore. More than a decade after Decree No. 66 was issued, parts of the project, particularly in Marota City, have become an established urban and investment reality involving new rights and overlapping legal positions: original owners, subscribers to alternative housing, buyers of zoning shares, contractors, companies, and investors who entered into agreements with Damascus Cham Holding or with the owners of zoning plots. Parts of the infrastructure have also been completed, and construction has begun on many plots, while other parts remain suspended or stalled. In this situation, completely reversing the project would carry high legal and financial costs because it could itself open a new series of disputes over contracts, traded shares, allocated plots and rights created after the rezoning process. 

The Damascus Governorate thus appears to be attempting to balance two conflicting demands. On the one hand, it needs to acknowledge the harm suffered by rights holders, particularly those who were previously deprived of alternative housing, compensation, or confirmation of ownership for security reasons, or because of absence, displacement, or the loss of documents. On the other hand, there is an evident desire to preserve the project’s continuity as an advanced planning and urban framework that would be difficult to dismantle without considerable legal and financial costs.

This approach explains the tension that followed the announcement of the package. From the governorate’s perspective, the new measures represent an acknowledgement of harm and a practical step towards fairness without sacrificing what has already been achieved in urban development or creating new legal disorder. But from the perspective of some of those affected, improving the rent allowance, increasing floor areas, or restoring certain excluded rights is not sufficient to address the deeper problem concerning valuation, representation, the owners’ share of returns, and the governorate’s role as both an administrative and financial partner in the project.

The measures announced in May 2026 reveal an attempt to re-establish the project under new conditions by reducing the social and financial cost of the harm accumulated in previous years. The success of this approach, however, will depend on its ability to move beyond partial settlements towards a more transparent treatment of valuation, alternative housing, investment contracts and the representation of rights holders. The problem facing Marota and Basilia today concerns not only how to complete a stalled zoning project, but also how to turn its completion into a process that restores confidence in the protection of rights rather than reproducing the doubts that have surrounded the decree’s implementation from the beginning. 

The Legal and Urban Framework: From Direct Rights to Zoning Shares and Alternative Housing 

Decree No. 66 of 2012 is based on a clear zoning concept: rezoning large areas of unlicensed and informal housing within Damascus and converting them into 2 zoned real estate areas under new urban plans. The first area included parts of Mazzeh and Kafr Sousseh and later became known as Marota City. The second covered areas south of the Southern Ring Road in Mazzeh, Kafr Sousseh, Qanawat Basatin, Darayya and Qadam and later became known as Basilia City. At the time, the decree was presented as a legal tool for developing areas suffering from inadequate services and widespread unlicensed construction, while providing for the rights of property owners and eligible occupants according to their respective legal positions. 

Under this framework, a rights holder does not retain their previous property in its existing form, nor do they directly receive a specific replacement property. The decree converts ownership within the zoned area into joint ownership among rights holders, with each person’s share determined according to the estimated value of their property or real right before the re-zoning. The right is thus transformed from ownership of specific land, a building, or a dwelling into a share in the zoning plots designated for construction once the plan is completed.

The process begins with the inventory and description of properties. Real estate schedules are prepared, existing properties are inspected, and buildings, structures, trees, crops, occupants and claimed rights are recorded. At this stage, owners and other rights holders must submit their documents or declare their rights, while disputes and objections are referred to the Dispute Resolution Committee. Rights holders do not all enter the share-allocation stage from equal positions: a person with clear documents and legal representation is in a stronger position than someone who is absent, displaced or whose right is disputed. 

This is followed by the valuation stage. Rights are calculated not solely according to the property’s area, but on the basis of an estimated value that takes into account its location, condition, type of ownership, zoning status and any buildings or real rights attached to it. The new zoning plots are then valued after the plan has been prepared, and their value is compared with that of the original rights within the area. On the basis of this comparison, each rights holder’s share in the common property is calculated and converted into zoning shares in the plots allocated to rights holders. 

Receiving zoning shares, however, does not mean owning a specific plot or being able to build immediately. A zoning share is an undivided interest within the project, and converting it into an actual benefit requires further steps: pooling enough shares to obtain the allocation of a plot, forming or joining a joint-stock company with other owners, or selling the shares or plot at auction when pooling or partnership is impossible. Differences between rights holders become evident at this stage. A person with a large share can negotiate, obtain an allocation or enter into a partnership from a stronger position, whereas someone with a small share is more likely to sell or accept arrangements whose conditions they cannot control. 

This mechanism explains a significant part of the objections to Decree No. 66. Property remained legally recognised, but it was no longer a direct relationship with property that could be used. It became a share-based right that passed through committees, valuations, schedules, allocations, companies, and auctions. The longer the period between the valuation of the original right and the conversion of the share into housing or income, the wider the gap became between legal recognition of the right and the actual ability to benefit from it. This was particularly the case for small shareholders, absent owners, displaced people and those whose cases were obstructed by missing documents or legal or security annotations.

This distinction leads to the second pillar of the decree’s structure: alternative housing. While owners of licensed properties and holders of recognised real rights receive zoning shares in residential plots designated for construction, other groups do not enter the same process. Instead, they are directed towards subscribing to paid alternative housing. These groups include, in particular, owners of unlicensed dwellings, those who owned agricultural land within the zoned area and constructed residential or commercial property on it, and certain occupants of state-owned property where the Damascus Governorate has a surplus of alternative housing.

This distinction is essential to understanding Decree No. 66 and how it differs from other zoning or expropriation tools that ignored the circumstances of people living in informal and unlicensed settlements. Zoning shares compensate for recognised ownership or real rights, whereas alternative housing is a process intended for groups who lost a dwelling or occupancy under specific conditions. Those eligible for alternative housing receive temporary rent allowances until delivery, but alternative housing itself is not provided free of charge. It is a home to which the beneficiary subscribes and for which they pay the cost in accordance with instalments and conditions determined by the relevant public authorities. Despite its importance as recognition of the circumstances of residents of unlicensed and informal settlements, alternative housing thus became one of the most sensitive aspects of the decree as implementation was delayed and the value of rent allowances declined.

Over time, alternative housing shifted from a social guarantee into an additional source of tension. Construction of the housing towers was delayed for many years, and thousands of beneficiaries remained outside their homes, relying on rent allowances that lost their real value as the Syrian pound collapsed and housing prices in Damascus soared. Subscription, allocation, and instalment costs also became more burdensome for beneficiaries, particularly after years of displacement, falling income, or unemployment. The problem was no longer limited to the date of delivery, but extended to the beneficiaries’ own ability to finance the alternative housing intended to compensate them for the loss of their original homes.

Decision No. 112 of 2015, issued by the Minister of Housing to regulate eligibility for alternative housing, further complicated the matter because it did not link eligibility merely to the existence of a dwelling within the planning area, but to a series of evidentiary requirements. Occupants had to prove that they had actually lived in the property from the date Decree No. 66 was issued until the moment of evacuation, establish their legal status as occupants or owners, and provide the documents required for their case to be included in the beneficiary schedules. Alternative housing thus became linked to the loss of a home as well as the ability to prove that loss through a precise administrative process. This condition clashed with the realities of war, security persecution, displacement, and leaving the country. Many people had left their homes before the official evacuation, lost their documents, or were unable to appoint someone to follow up on their cases. The continuous-residence requirement consequently changed from an administrative control measure into a reason for excluding some of those affected.

This is where the importance of the new measures introduced by Damascus Governorate lies. Reopening the cases of beneficiaries previously excluded from alternative housing or rent allowances means, in practice, that the governorate acknowledges that previous implementation mechanisms deprived people who would otherwise have qualified were it not for residence requirements, missing documents, or security and legal annotations. Increasing rent allowances, financing new alternative housing blocks, allowing costs to be paid in instalments, and reducing the proportion of implementation costs charged to beneficiaries also shifts the issue from simple recognition of entitlement to actual access to housing. Beneficiaries must contend not only with allocation but also with the price per square metre, the instalment period, payments required at allocation or delivery, and the location of the towers in relation to the areas from which they were displaced. Resolving the alternative housing issue cannot be measured solely by the number of reopened cases, but by the ability of these measures to transform entitlement from an administrative record and temporary rent allowance into housing that can actually be financed and taken possession of. 

The mechanisms of zoning shares and alternative housing reveal that the problem with Decree No. 66 is not limited to the concept of urban planning itself. Rezoning unlicensed and informal areas and providing roads, infrastructure, and public spaces can offer an opportunity to improve the city. Converting overlapping ownership interests into joint ownership and then zoning shares may also be a legal means of distributing rights within a project that could not be implemented while preserving the previous property structure unchanged. These mechanisms, however, do not automatically produce fairness. They transform a right from a direct relationship with property or a home into a process of valuation, allocation, accumulation, instalments, and time spent waiting.

A legally recognised right may have limited practical value if its owner cannot use it to obtain a plot, form or join a company, generate a return, or secure alternative housing they can afford. Rights holders are therefore not equal within the same mechanism. Those with substantial shares, clear documents and financial means are better positioned to benefit from the rezoning process, while small shareholders, absentee owners, displaced people and alternative housing beneficiaries face a longer and more costly process that depends more heavily on decisions made by committees and administrative authorities. 

In this sense, the crisis surrounding Decree No. 66 is as much a crisis in the management of rights as it is a legal or urban planning crisis. The project combined a broad zoning objective with a complex implementation system in which powers overlap among Damascus Governorate, the Decree No. 66 Implementation Directorate, Damascus Cham Holding, and the Inventory and Description, Real Estate Appraisal, Distribution and Dispute Resolution committees. As implementation dragged on, transparency remained absent and rights holders’ representation in reviewing figures and decisions remained weak, the zoning mechanism itself increasingly became a source of unfairness, even where property rights or entitlements remained recognised in principle. 

The new measures announced by Damascus Governorate on 5 May 2026 cannot be assessed solely from the perspective of direct compensation. Increasing rent allowances, expanding the floor areas allocated to rights holders, financing alternative housing and reopening certain cases all reduce part of the harm. On their own, however, these steps are insufficient to transform a right within the project from a share, record or promise of alternative housing into a practical benefit that its holder can use and defend. Without a clearer review of valuation, allocation, instalment and representation mechanisms, the package will remain an important correction within the process rather than a complete redefinition of its rules of fairness. 

Reparation and the Limits of Settlement 

The package of measures announced on 5 May 2026 redefined the focus of the dispute surrounding Marota and Basilia. After months of discussion about the possibility of reviewing, suspending or altering the course of Decree No. 66, Damascus Governorate chose to address the issue from within the project itself. It reopened grievance cases, increased rent allowances, reconsidered some previous exclusions, proposed new financing for alternative housing, and increased the floor areas allocated to holders of zoning shares. Through these steps, the governorate made reparation part of the process of completing the existing project rather than an entry point for suspending or re-establishing it. 

This approach gave the package a dual character. On the one hand, it acknowledges that the previous implementation caused real harm. Beneficiaries were deprived of alternative housing or rent allowances, rights remained suspended because of security or legal annotations, allowances lost their value, and alternative housing was delayed for years. On the other hand, the correction process remained within the same administrative and financial structure that had managed the project: the Damascus Governorate, the Decree No. 66 Implementation Directorate, the technical, legal and financial committees, and Damascus Cham Holding. Objections following the package thus shifted from the value of compensation alone to the identity of the authority calculating the harm, determining how it should be remedied and supervising implementation of the solution.

Representation consequently emerges as a fundamental mechanism in the dispute rather than a procedural detail. The governorate says that the committees formed after the statement of 5 May 2026 are responsible for receiving objections, addressing annotations, amending certain plans, confirming rights and paying entitlements. Some of those affected, however, demand that negotiations take place through committees elected or authorised by rights holders themselves rather than through administrative bodies formed by the decision-making authority. The difference between the two approaches is substantial. Grievance committees receive individual cases under predetermined rules, whereas committees representing affected communities seek to review the rules themselves, from valuation and shares to alternative housing, returns and implementation mechanisms. 

The disagreement over representation is linked to Damascus Governorate’s position within the project. The governorate is a central administrative, financial and executive party rather than an external arbitrator between rights holders and investors. It manages the rezoning, represents the zoned real estate area as a legal person, owns Damascus Cham Holding, and simultaneously needs resources to complete infrastructure and alternative housing and to pay rent allowances. This overlap does not in itself invalidate every corrective measure, but it requires a higher level of transparency because the authority announcing reparation is also the authority managing the project’s resources and determining how they are spent. 

The discussion thus moves beyond compensation to the project’s financing structure as established by Decree No. 66 itself. The project is not based solely on distributing plots among rights holders; it also provides for plots and resources to be set aside for the administrative and executive authority to cover rezoning costs, develop infrastructure, and finance alternative housing and rent allowances. The governorate invokes this mechanism to justify converting certain plots into cash and investing the project’s resources, arguing that the returns are intended for roads, parks, services, alternative housing and rent allowances rather than being distributed to owners as a direct cash share. Those affected, however, argue that these returns originally resulted from rezoning land that had owners, occupants and residents, and that excluding them from the discussion confines reparation to specific payments and individual cases while leaving the greater property value outside the review. 

For this reason, the disagreement goes beyond the announced figures to the way in which they are produced. For example, the governorate says that share-based rights holders in Marota have an average share of approximately 98 percent of the area of their properties before rezoning. This percentage is difficult to accept at face value, however, because it does not align with the decree’s mechanism, which converts rights into jointly owned shares and distributes zoning plots through a value-based rather than a direct area-based relationship. The governorate also does not explain how the figure was calculated. The 98 percent share thus appears closer to a defensive figure in the governorate’s public narrative than to sufficient data for measuring the owners’ share or the fairness of the distribution.

Community statements, by contrast, approach the matter from a different perspective by demanding that the owners’ share in Marota City be increased from 17 percent to 25 percent. Like the governorate’s 98 percent figure, this percentage also requires clarification regarding its method of calculation. It nevertheless reveals a shift in the objection from the floor area allocated as compensation to the owners’ share of the project, its value and the returns produced by rezoning. The dispute does not concern merely the difference between 2 figures, but a conflict between 2 methods of measuring the right: an official approach that focuses on the floor areas allocated to rights holders, and a community approach that links fairness to the owners’ share of the new property value generated by the project. In both cases, the basis of calculation remains insufficiently explained, particularly in view of deductions, the governorate’s share, the new property value and the mechanisms used to finance the project from its own resources. The dispute becomes even more sensitive because part of the project’s value and resources is used, according to the logic of the decree and the governorate, to finance infrastructure, alternative housing and rent allowances rather than being allocated as shares to rights holders. 

The history of implementation further complicates the settlement. Harm accumulated over time rather than occurring at a single moment that could be compensated through an administrative decision. Alternative housing was delayed, the value of rent allowances collapsed, the value of shares changed, buyers, contractors and companies became involved, and some rights holders were forced to sell their shares or rights under the pressure of need, absence or prolonged waiting. Addressing these losses therefore requires more than reopening certain cases or improving some allowances. Some rights remained valid on paper but changed in practice as a result of time, market conditions, and necessity.

At the same time, the continuing demand for the complete repeal of Decree No. 66 presents significant practical complications. The project has moved beyond the stage of a plan on paper. In previous years, tradable shares, allocated plots, contracts, sales, purchases, construction work, and obligations involving contractors, companies and investors have all come into existence. Even the discourse demanding repeal of the decree must therefore distinguish between abolishing the old legal framework and dealing with the rights, contracts and legal positions created after it. The actual centre of the dispute has shifted towards a choice between continuation subject to a thorough review and administrative continuation limited to correcting some of the outcomes. 

The shift of the dispute into the judicial sphere has further weakened confidence. The detention of certain prominent figures associated with the movement representing those affected, followed by their release while prosecution remained ongoing, placed the act of objecting in more sensitive territory. Irrespective of the outcome of the case, its political and rights implications are clear: building a stable settlement becomes more difficult when those affected believe that criticism of the governorate’s decisions or questioning its figures may turn into a criminal case. An issue involving housing, property and compensation requires a safe space for objection, organisation and negotiation rather than a relationship in which the promise of fairness is mixed with fear of prosecution. 

In this sense, reparation tests the way in which the dispute itself is managed, not merely the governorate’s ability to pay higher allowances or reopen additional cases. Genuine correction requires clear mechanisms for representing rights holders, publishing essential figures, explaining how shares are calculated, reviewing the cost of alternative housing, disclosing the project’s resources and how they are spent, and protecting small shareholders and those harmed by absence, displacement or missing documents. In the absence of these elements, the reparation package may reduce some of the harm but will remain limited in its ability to rebuild confidence in the process that produced it. 

The required settlement therefore appears broader than the May package, although the package represents an important entry point. Completing Marota and Basilia requires a process that avoids 2 inadequate options: a complete suspension that ignores the rights, contracts and legal positions created in previous years, or rapid implementation that turns reparation into a cover for continuing under the same conditions. The more balanced approach is conditional continuation: recognising the new rights that have arisen while simultaneously reopening the issues of valuation, representation, returns, alternative housing, contracts and the protection of the most vulnerable groups within the project. Only then can reparation become more than a delayed administrative settlement and develop into a mechanism for redefining the relationship between rights holders and the authority managing the rezoning process. 

Conclusion: Between Completing the Project and Rebuilding Confidence 

The course of Decree No. 66 in the post-Assad era reveals that the dispute surrounding Marota and Basilia has moved beyond the binary choice of continuation or repeal. The project has created a reality that cannot be ignored and harm that cannot be reduced to implementation delays or inadequate compensation. The reparation package announced on 5 May 2026 therefore represents an important step, but one limited by the logic from which it emerged. It operates within the project rather than outside it, addresses specific cases rather than reopening the entire valuation, distribution and financing system, and places the governorate in the position of the corrective authority even though the governorate itself remains an administrative, financial and executive party to the project. This overlap means that reparation requires more than the payment of allowances or the financing of residential towers. It requires clarification of how shares are calculated, disclosure of how funds are spent, review of the cost of alternative housing, and genuine representation of rights holders in overseeing decisions that determine their future. 

The central problem is evident in the distance between legal recognition of a right and the practical ability to benefit from it. A zoning share may remain a suspended right if its owner is unable to obtain an allocation, enter into a partnership or secure financing. Alternative housing may remain merely a promise if it cannot be delivered or paid for in installments under conditions the beneficiary can afford. An objection may lose its effectiveness if it remains confined to administrative committees or becomes threatened by judicial proceedings. At these points, justice shifts from being a matter of legal texts and decisions to one of the actual ability to secure housing, negotiate, seek review and receive a tangible benefit from the right. 

The next phase will determine the position of Decree No. 66 within the broader transitional period. If the reparation package is used as a tool to calm objections and complete the project under the same conditions, Marota and Basilia will remain an example of reconstruction that generates substantial property value without restoring balance between the project and the original rights holders. If, however, the package becomes an entry point for a deeper review of valuation, representation, financing, and alternative housing mechanisms, the issue could become a different kind of model: a project that does not merely correct some of its losses, but redefines the relationship between residents, property, and the city after years of imposed zoning, war, and delay.

In this sense, the next phase should not be assessed solely by the number of towers constructed or the speed with which infrastructure is completed. The more important standard is the project’s ability to transform rights from shares, records and deferred promises into actual protection for their owners. Only then can reparation move beyond being a delayed settlement and become part of rebuilding confidence between rights holders and the authority managing the rezoning process.