Rebuilding Syria’s cities will require more than new masterplans, housing projects and infrastructure investments. It will require a fundamental reconsideration of how cities function, whose knowledge shapes them and what governance models are ultimately responsible for their reconstruction.

In the inaugural episode of Urban Liwan | ليوان عمراني, LUGARIT’s co-founder Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj joins architect and urbanist Massa al-Moselly from the Asas Initiative to examine the relationship between spatial justice, community-led reconstruction and the future of urban planning in Syria. Their conversation challenges the conventional image of the city as a single physical entity that can be redesigned from above. Cities are instead understood as complex and evolving systems of communities, livelihoods, institutions, social relationships and competing priorities.

The discussion explores why technically adequate solutions, even supposedly participatory process, do not necessarily produce equitable or sustainable outcomes. Relocating residents to formally planned housing may provide better buildings while separating people from employment, informal economies, mutual-support networks and the accumulated social capital and trust that enables households to manage risk. Likewise, large reconstruction projects may increase property values for some residents and attract investment while making it harder for existing communities to remain in place.

This raises an important distinction between supply-side interventions, which provide housing or serviced land directly, and demand-side measures that strengthen people’s ability to develop their own solutions through finance, tenure security, technical support or incremental upgrading.  An excessive focus on producing new units as the only solution for housing shortages can overlook the resources households and communities already mobilize—and may reach fewer people, more slowly and at greater cost. It can also be a major driver of inflation and market distortions. 

Against this background, Hallaj argues for a different conception of urban planning. The planner’s role is not simply to prescribe ideal spatial arrangements, but to understand how people already navigate their cities, and mediate among unequal interests and help communities improve the solutions they are developing for themselves. This requires moving beyond token consultation towards genuine participation in which local actors influence priorities, resources and decisions.

At the heart of the conversation is a pragmatic proposition: reconstruction should recognise and strengthen the resources people already possess. Land and property are not merely financial assets. They also embody livelihoods, relationships, memories, rights and belonging. They are at the core of place making as a mechanism for survival in informal areas. Protecting these dimensions is essential to ensuring spatial justice, if Syria’s reconstruction is to support recovery, strengthen social cohesion and enable communities to shape their own futures.