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Built heritage and urban spatial configuration: the case of Herat, Afghanistan

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Abstract

Many historic Middle East cities are undergoing social and spatial transformations, and, in many cases, their vernacular built heritage is being transformed or even demolished. This is a challenge for urban planning policies aiming at preserving cities' cultural identities. Monitoring and controlling these processes of urban change and their impacts require new approaches and methodologies to deal with their systemic nature. This paper explores a configurational approach focusing on the spatial locations of traditional houses in the Islamic Middle East city of Herat, Afghanistan. The traditional houses are constructed with local materials and identified with domical vault roofs. They are located in both preserved historic areas and outside. The objective is to develop a spatial analysis linking the street grid hierarchy to the locations of these traditional housing typologies. We question: does the level of accessibility and centrality of a location affect the housing typological substitution? The methodology adopts urban modeling and two types of indicators: configurational (accessibility and centrality models) and typological (traditional and modern houses). Data for both indicators come from 2017 satellite imagery. Results indicate that areas maintaining traditional houses are, on average, less accessible and central than those with modern houses. Lower accessibility and centrality have been translated into heritage preservation inside historic districts. In urban fringes, we also identified the presence of traditional housing typologies resulting from low-income families seeking cheaper construction in lower accessible and less central locations. The results confirm our hypothesis, showing that street grid hierarchy plays a crucial role in shaping the process of renovation/preservation of the built heritage.

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Fig. 1

Source: authors (based on satellite image 2017, processed in ArcGIS)

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Source: authors

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Source: authors

Fig. 4

Source: authors, based on satellite image 2017, processed in ArcGIS

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Source: authors (processed in ArcGIS and Medidas Urbanas)

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Source: authors (processed in ArcGIS and Medidas Urbanas)

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Source: authors, processed in ArcGIS

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Source: authors

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Funding

This research was supported by CAPES-Brazil, in the form of a scholarship to Sayed Abdul Basir Samimi as Visiting Professor at PROPUR-UFRGS in the PRINT-UFRGS Program. Process number: 88887.508093/2020–00.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Urban and Regional Planning (PROPUR), Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil

    Sayed Abdul Basir Samimi & Clarice Maraschin

  2. The University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan

    Sayed Abdul Basir Samimi

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  1. Sayed Abdul Basir Samimi
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  2. Clarice Maraschin
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Correspondence to Sayed Abdul Basir Samimi.

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Research done while Dr. Samimi was a Visiting Professor at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil.

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Samimi, S., Maraschin, C. Built heritage and urban spatial configuration: the case of Herat, Afghanistan. GeoJournal 88, 2101–2120 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-022-10738-w

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