Homs Begins Implementing Boulevard Project Amid Objections

The Al-Nasr Boulevard project, the first major urban project to be launched since the fall of the Assad regime, was announced on August 12, during an official conference in Homs attended by the Governor of Homs, Abdulrahman al-Aama, and the Chairman of the Board of the Omran Company for Development and Real Estate Investment, Rifai Al-Hamada. The governorate presented the project as part of a series of initiatives to reconstruct damaged areas of the city.

The project is planned on land stretching between the Al-Qarabis neighbourhood and the surrounding orchards, reaching the areas of the dyehouses, the central wholesale market (Souq Al-Hal), and Al-Nasr Park. It includes the construction of around 4,500 modern housing units, commercial and investment facilities, a central market, and a public park covering approximately 350,000 square metres with green and water features and playgrounds. The governorate set a seven-year implementation period and promoted the project as a step towards rebuilding the city, stimulating investment, and providing around 15,000 direct and indirect job opportunities.

However, three days after the official announcement, dozens of residents held a demonstration raising banners rejecting the project and demanding its immediate suspension.

Al-Qarabis is one of Homs’ old popular districts, containing traditional Arab-style homes. It was inhabited by low- and middle-income residents, particularly labourers, small-scale craftsmen, traders associated with the wholesale market and the dyehouses, and farmers working in the surrounding orchards. During the war years, the neighbourhood witnessed anti-Assad popular mobilisation and fell under the control of opposition factions, resulting in shelling and destruction of homes and infrastructure, which forced most of its residents to flee. After the Assad regime’s fall, some displaced families gradually returned, but the area still suffers from severe damage, with semi-abandoned zones and compromised services.

Residents’ objections centred on fears that their homes and shops (which are still subject to legal disputes due to a 1990s expropriation for a public park that was never built) would be demolished. The expropriation was carried out under a decision issued by the Homs Governorate to implement the “People’s Park” project, based on the provisions of Syrian Expropriation Law No. 20 of 1983, which allows the state to seize property for public benefit in exchange for fair compensation. According to residents’ testimonies, the compensation amounts approved at the time were meagre and unfair compared to the real value of the land, leading many to refuse to accept them or to pursue legal disputes. This left the land contested until today. The land expropriated for the “People’s Park” was limited to Al-Qarabis and the surrounding orchards.

Protesters demanded that the governorate lift the freeze on property transactions in Al-Qarabis, meaning the removal of the expropriation annotation from their Land Registry entries. They also demanded the suspension of any preparatory works on the land subject to the old expropriation. Under pressure from these protests, the Omran Development and Real Estate Investment Company announced on August 17 that Al-Qarabis would be completely excluded from the Al-Nasr Boulevard project’s boundaries.

Lawyer Anas Salim told The Syria Report that the old expropriation decisions, as administrative decisions, can be appealed before the administrative court, even though the law gives public authorities the right to expropriate only for public benefit. Mr Salim said that including Al-Qarabis within the Al-Nasr Boulevard project opens the door to challenging the legality of the original expropriation itself, especially if the purpose for which the properties were seized has changed. Once the expropriation decree is issued and compensation is paid, state ownership becomes absolute, and the former owner cannot claim new compensation unless it is legally proven that the original purpose of expropriation was not fulfilled, he added.

Excavation works for Al-Nasr Boulevard began in October on the edges of the wholesale market and the dyehouses, as well as near Nizar Qabbani Street and the Mimas area. These neighbourhoods are formally zoned, with licensed buildings inhabited by traders, workers, and craftsmen linked to the wholesale market and the dyehouses. These areas were not part of the old expropriation, and no new expropriation decision has been issued for them, raising many questions about the feasibility of implementing such a project before resolving property ownership issues in the area.

The Syria Report contacted the media office of the Homs Governorate and Omran company but had not received a response at the time of writing. It remains unclear whether there was a decision to expropriate the lands included in the Al-Nasr Boulevard project, how it was issued, and what compensation mechanisms and rights-preservation measures were foreseen for residents whose homes and shops fall within the implementation area.

Local activists said that although the project has been presented as the start of a new reconstruction phase in Homs, it does not reflect the city’s most pressing urban priorities. Activist Khaled Abu Salah noted that the governorate promoted the project as part of its reconstruction plan, but the reality on the ground shows a focus on a strip of orchards and land adjacent to Al-Nasr Park — areas expropriated since the 1990s without fair compensation to their owners. Abu Salah said that launching a project of this scale in the city centre ignores the existence of at least 13 destroyed neighbourhoods that still lack regulatory plans and real rehabilitation, such as Baba Amr, Khalidiya, Bayada, Juret Al-Shayah, Deir Baalbeh, and large parts of the Old City.

The project seems to carry an investment- and beautification-oriented character more than it reflects an actual response to Homs’ urgent reconstruction needs. Reintroducing these lands for investment after a decades-long freeze, without legal or social resolution of old ownership issues or consideration for owners who lost their documents during the war, reinforces concerns that reconstruction will simply recycle previous expropriation policies instead of correcting them. Local sources added that the principles of urban justice require beginning with the areas suffering the most damage, whereas the current project reflects the priorities of capital more than the needs of affected residents.

Community involvement in the project came late and lacked meaningful participation. The agreement with the implementing company was announced during an official investment conference, and billboards appeared in Homs’ streets before details were explained to residents or any public discussion of the plan was opened. Activist Abu Salah said that residents were merely informed about the project rather than involved in shaping it or discussing its impact on their property. No town-hall meetings, participatory workshops, or even surveys of property owners in the implementation area were held. He said that the governorate’s later response to the Al-Qarabis residents’ protests shows that the community was not a partner in the planning process but was only addressed after implementation measures had already begun.

Abu Salah also criticised the way the governorate presented the project’s details to the public, which consisted only of official statements focusing on positive aspects such as the number of housing units, job opportunities, and green spaces, while avoiding publication of fundamental documents including memoranda of understanding, signed contracts, and the criteria for selecting partners or beneficiaries. He said this pattern of opacity is common in reconstruction projects across Syria, where authorities promote projects as signs of returning life without revealing the legal and financial conditions governing them, raising widespread concerns among property owners about compensation standards and which parties will benefit from the project’s implementation.

Abu Salah argued that the lack of clarity in planning and implementation mechanisms threatens the concept of the “right to the city,” which assumes that residents should know the principles guiding the management of their city’s resources and decisions affecting the future of their neighbourhoods and properties. He noted that transforming the orchards adjacent to Al-Nasr Park into an investment zone may sever the historical link between Homs’ residents and this agricultural expanse, which has long formed part of the city’s identity and served as a livelihood source for dozens of families who owned and cultivated the land, as well as agricultural labourers who relied on it as a daily income.

Homs residents said that these farmers and property owners have now dispersed: some remain in Homs and face the risk of losing their land, some have moved to other neighbourhoods within the city, and others have left Syria entirely in search of alternative employment, turning the orchards from a productive landscape into a pending property dispute.