Correlation between Land Use and the Transformation of Rural Housing Model in the Coastal Region of Syria

Abstract

The phenomenon of urban sprawl has caused radical changes in the spatial structure of cities and rural areas all around the world. Syria is among the developing countries that have experienced this phenomenon. Some of the resulted processes of urban sprawl like urbanization and counter-urbanization have had a clear impact on the land use and lifestyle in both cities and the countryside of different regions in Syria. This research focuses on the coastal region and the spatial changes that affected the nature of social life, such as the rapid growth of the population, the expansion of cities, and the new developments, which in turn have led to considerable changes in the relationship and scale of the house, garden, and landscape. The research studies the development of the rural housing model in the coastal region and its relation to the surrounding landscape. It tracks three phases of the housing unit’s development and conducts a comparative study on four villages using a questionnaire to evaluate the performance of those units. The results of this research show significant change in the relationship between rural and urban areas resulting from the new residential developments, as well as the relationship of land use and the historic plot structure and that of the garden and the house into the overall character of the landscape.

Land Use Transition and Eco-Environmental Effects in Karst Mountain Area Based on Production-Living-Ecological Space: A Case Study of Longlin Multinational Autonomous County, Southwest China

“…Global warming, carbon cycle alteration [3], ecological degradation [4], biodiversity loss [5], ecosystem health [6], and the imbalance of the sea-land water cycle [7] caused by land use transition have been under concern by scholars. The existing studies mainly have two aspects: the process studies about land use characterization [8], change prediction [9], and drivers [10], and the mechanism studies on land use national forest transition [11], regional arable land transition, and urban-rural construction land transition [12][13][14], which effects urban-rural development [15], resources [16], and ecoenvironmental impacts [17]. Specifically, the land use transition under the background of production-living-ecological space is manifested in the land, leading to function change, which is focused on the transition among the three leading functions of production-livingecological space [18,19].…”

Effects of counter-urbanization on Mediterranean rural landscapes

“…This is in contrast to the rural renaissance arising from the return to the land where the countryside is presented as a refuge for the people of the towns (Hilmi and Burbi 2016). Also, the economic dependency on agriculture and direct connection to nature results in a greater awareness of the landscape among the inhabitants living in rural places, with lifestyle contributing to the preservation of the landscape's character and identity (Khadour et al 2021).…”

“…Fuerteventura, an island of the canary archipelago (Spain), has shown a 'deruralization" transition from a local socio-ecological system based on traditional land-use practices to one based on coastal tourism (Schmitz et al 2018). Likewise, the economic growth in the coastal region of Syria has driven the diversification of rural activities, especially in the service sector, which has resulted in agricultural intensification, industrialization, and urban sprawl, and all this in turn in a rural population disconnected from rurality (Khadour et al 2021). Counter-urbanization thus entails the risk of transferring the residential and touristic growth model of the Mediterranean coast, which implies massive development and the extensive occupation of the territory, to the inland municipalities (Solana-Solana 2010).…”

“…In Turkey, public investment and policies to promote that people come back to rural areas have not been effective to reverse the effect of mass subventions to tourism and industrial facilities that together with security problems encouraged rural inhabitants to migrate to cities in the recent past (Satir and Erdogan 2016). Also, economic growth in the coastal region of Syria has driven the diversification of rural activities, especially in the service sector, agricultural intensification, urban sprawl and industrialization, which has resulted in a rural population disconnected from rurality (Khadour et al 2021). The decline in the rural population and the abandonment of lands has increased the forest areas and, thus, favoring land-sparing (Ünal et al 2019).…”

A Study on Transformation of Housing Typology and Its Environmental and Social Effects on the Living Conditions of Residents in Planned Residential Neighborhoods of Kabul City

“…The evolution and transformation of housing in Kabul, as well as in other cities in Afghanistan and abroad, have been extensively studied by scholars. The historical perspective and traditional architecture of housing were researched by Hallet 1980 [75][76][77][78]. Gaubatz Piper 1999 and Nabizada 2012 examined housing transformation from processing, pattern, and mechanism perspectives, while Bashir 2019 explored it from a reconstruction, management, and participatory perspective [79][80][81].…”