Crisis in the Built Environment: The Case of the Muslim City

Paperback, 261 pages, over 220 illustrations including photographs and drawings, NOT ex-library. Clean interior with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. Cover is age-toned. Spine noticeably creased with faint grubby marks. -- In the traditional Muslim settlement, owners and users enjoyed maximum control over the built environment which led to maximising the best use of available space and resources. The environment was shaped through mutual agreement and time-tested conventions, with minimal intervention from authorities. A different pattern of responsibility exists in the contemporary Muslim city. Control is vested in the government, which maintains an orderly state of affairs through proliferating regulations. This has led to responsibility being dispersed amongst those sharing physical elements and urban spaces resulting in many unforeseen and often disastrous consequences. The author delineates the principles that shaped the traditional Muslim environment by investigating traditional and contemporary legal systems, the decision making process, cases of disputes among neighbours, territorial structures and conventions. Using a constructed model of responsibility (a synthesis of two concepts, the concept of claims and the concept of parties), he traces the claims of ownership, control and use and evaluates the contemporary built environment. The main argument is that without understanding mechanisms such as control, one cannot understand the built environment and thus cannot design it. The book provides some serious food for thought for scholars and those involved in implementing the national development policies in the Third World. It will also arouse the interest of the lay observer on the Muslim community life-styles past and present. -- Contents: Introduction; 1. Forms of Submission in the Traditional Environment [Dispersed Form of Submission; Unified Form of Submission (Principles of Ownership in the Traditional Environment; Revivification; Allotment; Principles of Revivification and Allotment; Incentives to Act); Permissive Form of Submission (Servitude; Leasing); Possessive Form of Submission (Appropriation; Agricultural Land); Trusteeship Form of Submission]; 2. Changes in the Traditional Forms of Submission [Ottoman Empire; Arab World]; 3. Synthesis of the Forms of Submission [Size and Remoteness of Parties; Nigh Party; Party's Initiative; Significance of the Forms of Submission]; 4. Growth and Formation of Towns [Growth of Towns (Terminology; Al-Kufah; Baghdad (Madinat as-Salam)]; 5. Freedom and Control [Neither 'Darar' nor 'Dirar'; Interpreting Damage; Freedom and Damage; Counteracting Damages; Pre-existing Damage; Right of Precedence; Users' Cunning; Autonomy of a Property]; 6. Elements of the Traditional Built Environment [Fina' (Control of the Fina'); Public Spaces (Ownership of Streets; Control of Streets; Role of the Muhtasib; Encroachments on the Street; The Street as a Medial); Hima; Dead-end Streets (Ownership; Control)]; 7. Size of Party versus Size of Property [Mechanisms of Changing Sizes; Disputes Among Members; Divisibility of Elements; Principles of Subdivision; Territorial Transformations]; 8. Consequences of the Shift of Responsibility [Contemporary Regulations; Ordered Versus Organised (Built Environment as an Ecosystem); Territories; Initiative of Responsibility; Potential of the Physical Environment; Two Case Studies; Postcriptum]; Footnotes; Bibliography [Non Arabic; Arabic]; Glossary; Index.