URBAN TRANSFORMATIONS From restricted random aggregation to designed cultural intent in Middle Eastern cities

Abstract

It is difficult to describe Middle Eastern settlements due to several geographical, physical, functional, cultural, and temporal factors. Despite this, it seems apparent that spatio-formal processes characterise their emergent urban pattern in the same way as other cities of the world (Hillier, 1996; Major, 2018). The paper examines the spatial structure of Metropolitan Doha, Qatar. It argues the ‘deformed wheel’ spatial structure, initially emerging as a (first law) consequence of restricted random aggregation based on simple rules of adjacency and permeability, at some point transforms into design replication of a (third law) spatial strategy based on cultural intent (Hillier, 1989). The paper analyses Doha neighborhoods and notional plan models to illustrate the implications of this spatial strategy described as hierarchal separation by linear integration. It concludes this spatio-formal process represents a distillation of Hillier and Hanson’s (1984) ‘deformed wheel’ spatial structure in its purest form.