The Greater Aleppo Project: Rethinking the City and Its Surroundings

The discussion of “Greater Aleppo” – that is, the city as well as its surroundings –  has re-emerged in recent days as part of efforts to rethink urban planning there after years of war, through improving services in its suburbs and linking them economically and socially to the city centre. This approach reflects a growing recognition that the future of Aleppo’s urban recovery will not be built within its walls alone, but through a broader regional perspective that includes the countryside and surroundings. This article examines the concept of Greater Aleppo and the questions it raises about urban recovery and spatial justice.

The concept of Greater Aleppo does not entail expanding the city’s administrative boundaries or turning it into a single urban mass. Rather, it focuses on linking the city to its suburbs and surrounding hinterland through a network of services and infrastructure that make these suburbs economic and social centres in their own right. The aim is to halt the decades-long emigration from rural areas to the city, which has led to the neglect and decline of services in the countryside.

However, conditions on the ground present serious challenges to this vision, most notably the widespread destruction caused by the war, the proliferation of informal settlements, and rising population. These factors mean that any vision for Greater Aleppo depends on the city’s ability to achieve urban recovery that integrates devastated and unregulated areas into a more balanced urban fabric.

A two-day workshop recently held in Aleppo at the Shahba Hotel, which brought together experts, engineers and academics, became a forum for collecting proposals on the form of Greater Aleppo. A few key lines of thinking emerged: the need for urban sustainability, a fairer distribution of services, and the development of a long-term vision extending to 2040 and 2060.

At the workshop,  short-term proposals included expanding the Sheikh Najjar Industrial City to accommodate scattered industries and launching major projects for wastewater treatment. Longer-term visions featured more ambitious projects, such as transforming Azaz into a modern transport hub with a network of roads and a metro line linking it to Aleppo. These proposals highlight a dual approach: practical technical solutions on the one hand, and more aspirational future-oriented visions on the other.

Some urban planning experts estimate that no integrated solutions can be expected before 2040 at best, while more cautious forecasts extend to 2060. This long time horizon places the Greater Aleppo project in the category of a long-term strategic vision rather than a directly executable project. It is based on the need to re-examine all of Aleppo’s urban plans from 1898 to 2000 in order to develop a new map that incorporates the past and builds upon it.

In past decades, incorporating surrounding villages and towns into Aleppo under previous plans led to a decline in their services after they lost their own budgets and became tied to the city’s budget. Therefore, any vision for Greater Aleppo must begin with the development of the surrounding hinterland and its connection to the city through an advanced network of transport and services, which could halt migration to the centre or even encourage reverse migration.

This also involves placing the informal settlements in Aleppo, as well as the war-devastated areas, on a timetable for their regularisation and reconstruction, integrating them into the urban fabric of Greater Aleppo. Any vision for Greater Aleppo must also protect the rights of property owners, tenants, and residents of unlicensed properties in unregulated areas. However, unifying regulatory standards – such as building codes and licensing requirements – across all areas of Greater Aleppo is difficult in practice. The historic quarters of Aleppo cannot be governed by the same regulations as modern neighbourhoods. Uniform regulations would disrupt the continuity of the city, whereas a multi-tiered regulatory framework could be adopted.

Ultimately, the Greater Aleppo project remains an ambitious vision constrained by limited funding, bureaucracy and outdated laws, making it more akin to a long-term roadmap than an immediately actionable plan. The official approach to the project has yet to demonstrate whether local residents will be meaningfully included as key actors in shaping their urban future. Previous experiences have shown that a focus on redevelopment has often been accompanied by the exclusion of communities and their displacement in favour of commercial and security priorities. For this reason, any vision for Greater Aleppo must place the right to the city and spatial justice at the heart of its processes, going beyond the protection of private property to include the preservation of public spaces and collective memory. Otherwise, the project risks reproducing the same patterns of exclusion instead of becoming a pathway to fair and sustainable urban recovery.