The 4th issue of Urban Syria shall serve to inform in more detail on an urban development project which has been going on rather unnoticed in Syria but widely disseminated internationally for the last two years.

The city of Aleppo supported by the Cities Alliance in Washington, USA, and the German Technical Cooperation Program on Sustainable Urban Development in Syria has launched a process to elaborate a City Development Strategy (CDS) for Aleppo - Madinatuna, Our City. To clarify on the term CDS: A CDS is a document showing and analysing the current situation of a city and the desired development goals over a period of time – in the case of Aleppo the goals will cover a period until 2025 and make urban development an overarching theme independent of changes in the setting of the city’s city council in the years to come. For the Aleppo CDS, seven focal areas were defined. They are analyzed in depth and serve as a basis to generate sustainable, long-term benefits for Aleppo’s residents. Two of These issues – economy and physical development and are discussed in the newsletter in greater detail. This CDS serves manifold purposes and has
a number of characteristics which make it very distinctive from previous planning processes in Syria. It complies with the recommendations for sustainable urban development recently published by the Ministry of Local Administration
in the Memorandum on Sustainable Urban Development in Syria: Under point 12 the recommendations advise: “To modernise the current legal framework on urban planning ... with a bias on the development of sustainable urban areas; this requires the revision of current master planning practices in order to reach more flexible and needs-oriented
urban plans in line with realistic local strategic visions and a clear implementation schedule.” It serves as a reference basis to adapt Aleppo’s Master Plan to criteria of urban sustainability. It also serves as a first example to launch a participatory oriented planning exercise for one of the metropolitan areas in Syria. And last but not least it provides plenty of entry
points for implementation plans which generate tangible changes in the urban area and fulfil the expectations of the population that planning need to result in tangible improvements.

The CDS is being prepared by a number of voluntarily acting stakeholders and representatives of the civil society in Aleppo, the private sector and administrative units of the
governorate and the municipality. All contributors who have been working for the last months on the preliminary results which are going to be presented at the mid-term forum in Aleppo from 23- May 2010 deserve our gratitude. We have reached half way towards Aleppo’s City Development Strategy – for the year to come the other half will provide for a lot of challenges and decision making opportunities. We invite all you to continue your support and commitment to this outstanding urban development planning process.