Conservation planning, urban change and social life in Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan-Iraq

This thesis examines how significant redevelopment of the historic centre of Sulaimaniyah in Kurdistan-Iraq has impacted on the social life of established residents. A key starting point for the thesis is concern that the city has weak frameworks for managing rapid urban change. The impacts are being felt in terms of displacement of residents, but changes to historic buildings have implications for patterns of everyday social life, belonging and identity. The thesis documents the changing character of Sulaimaniyah, exploring patterns of change and their implications for everyday life and lived experience in the city. Detailed interviews with residents are used to explore those experiential impacts, focusing particularly on individuals and groups who are negatively affected by change. Central to that experience is the embedded nature of everyday spiritual experience that is embedded in the cultural built environment. The thesis makes a distinctive contribution in a number of ways. First, it offers a rare and important example of research on Kurdish cities (and cultural built heritage in the global Middle East). Second, researching those contexts highlights forms of lived experience that are not always addressed in conceptions of cultural built heritage based on ‘western’ experience. Third, the thesis provides further evidence of the importance of cultural built heritage in protecting the living space and ontological security of vulnerable residents.