How Informal Settlements Began and Expanded in Urban Aleppo

Aleppo shares a trait with many other cities in the developing world: large, informal settlements on its outskirts. However, these settlements in Aleppo, as well as in most other informal settlements across Syria aren’t built with tin, but rather with the same materials used for licensed regulated construction. This means that the most important difference between informal and regulated neighbourhoods in Aleppo are the lack of engineering studies to account for structural safety. 

Informal settlements first appeared in Aleppo during the 1960s, and grew alongside the city’s expansion and population growth towards the end of the 20th century. Aside from natural population growth, migration from rural areas greatly contributed to this boom. The rural-urban migration was primarily in pursuit of the services available in the city, which were largely lacking in the countryside, such as healthcare, electricity, clean water, education and more. Furthermore, the concentration of factories, industrial and craft areas in Aleppo, along with the growth of formal institutions, attracted cheap labour from rural areas.

If the huge population growth in the city of Aleppo is a result of a lack of long-term regional planning aimed at revitalising and developing the countryside, then the explosion of informal areas is also due to a lack of long-term urban planning to accommodate this growth. Aleppo was not prepared to take in the increasing number of residents, nor could it provide the necessary housing and public services.

Informal housing emerged as a response to the housing crisis, due not only to a lack of housing supply from both the public and private sectors in Aleppo’s regulated areas, but also because of the high cost of these properties and the inability of incomers to afford them. Most of these new residents were low-income workers. Therefore, informal areas contributed to providing housing for a large proportion of these people and their number grew rapidly. In 2004, approximately 900,000 out of 2,200,000 people, or about 40 percent of Aleppo’s population, lived in these areas, according to estimates from the Central Bureau of Statistics.

Syrian laws have only exacerbated the problem. Urban Expansion Law No. 60 of 1979 confined urban expansion to unzoned and undivided areas within the approved general zoning plans for administrative units. The aim of Law No. 60 was to curb the emergence of informal settlements, regulate the real estate trade and provide zoned plots for public entities and housing associations to build on, thus supplying affordable social and cooperative housing. Law No. 60 restricted the zoning and subdivision of these areas to the administrative authority to which they belong. The expropriation, division and zoning of these areas were supposed to benefit this administrative entity and other public entities for public benefit purposes, as defined by Expropriation Law No. 20 of 1974.

Consequently, zoned residential suburbs like Hamdaniya and Hanano were established in Aleppo. Zoned, affordable, popular areas such as Ard al-Ajour and Bustan al-Qasr housing projects were also constructed. However, some of the housing associations, which were allocated plots for building in these areas, soon deviated from the projects’ objectives and began constructing luxury homes and villas beyond the means of low-income families. Moreover, the compensation to the owners of expropriated lands was unfair, and municipal councils’ disbursement of compensation to its beneficiaries was irregular.

Failure to pay the price of the expropriated land, and the delay in implementing many of the planned social housing projects, prompted the owners of many expropriated lands to divide their lands illegally and sell them to construction contractors, who then built unlicensed buildings on them, selling them cheaply to those in search of housing on the outskirts of Aleppo. Informal settlements began to expand, without taking into account the structural safety of buildings, given the absence of basic services and lack of planning studies for their subdivision. Furthermore, these areas do not adhere to the applied urban rules, legislation and systems, and buildings are constructed without following detailed zoning plans or building codes.

In 1991, the General Company for Engineering Studies (GCES), affiliated with the Ministry of Public Works and Housing, conducted the first statistical study of informal settlements in Aleppo, commissioned by the city council. These areas were documented on the general zoning plan of Aleppo and amounted to 22 districts. The GCES also prepared detailed zoning plans for five informal settlements. These were approved by the Aleppo City Council in 1994, and are as follows: Ansari Village, Masrania Road/Al-Bab, Southern expansion area, Sheikh Fares-Al Haydaria area, Sheikh Maqsoud-Ashrafieh area. None of those plans were implemented. 

On the other hand, the state saw these informal settlements as a solution to the housing crisis, exempting it from some of its primary responsibilities. Hence, the Syrian state unofficially bestowed some legitimacy on these informal areas, by allowing state institutions to provide them with minimal water, electricity, sewage networks and some municipal services, while nevertheless prohibiting the formal documentation of these buildings in Land Registry. These informal settlements in Aleppo have been serviced with the bare minimum facilities, at the expense of their residents.