Joint Urban Design Workshop Aleppo "The Edge of the Old Town – Integration of the Historic Town into the Inner City" 2010
Case study area: Bab Al Faraj in the north-western edge of the medieval city of Aleppo
21st September - 2nd October, 2010
In 2004 we organized the first urban design workshop with participants from Damascus and Cottbus. Since that time we extended and strengthened our academic cooperation with the Middle East step by step. The Joint Urban Design Workshop Aleppo in 2010 was the 5th workshop in our cooperation network with participants from the University of Aleppo, the University of Baghdad, the American University of Beirut, the University of Cairo / Giza and the University of Technology Cottbus.
The most important aspect of the workshop and our further activities for the academic exchange program is the multilateral dialogue concerning important urban design challenges in our cities. This dialogue was very intensive. Next to lectures and presentations followed by discussions, the dialogue was mostly based on the practical work in working groups. The aim was to elaborate a common development concept for the partly destroyed and mostly neglected area of Bab Al Faraj in the north-western edge of the medieval city of Aleppo. The experiences of the Aleppo workshop underlines our idea that the best intercultural dialogue is working together. Based on that we hope to continue with our cooperation activities and to strengthen the exchange of the participating universities. The goal of the group is to establish common master study courses entitled "Vitalization of inner city districts". With this we hope to establish a sustainable structures for a continuing exchange between our universities and countries.