I am inviting paper proposals for my session, “Two Webs: Oil, Repair, and the History of Urban Design in North Africa and the Middle East,” at the 4th Symposium on Urban Design History and Theory, held under the theme “Beyond Repair” at The University of Sheffield in September 2027.
Cold War urbanisation in North Africa and the Middle East has been written as two separate histories: one of oil, infrastructure and modernisation, the other of heritage, conservation and repair. This session argues they are one history, and that urban design is where they meet.
As nationalisations and the price shocks of the 1970s moved unprecedented revenue into state hands, a web of extraction turned petroleum wealth into company towns, arterial roads, tourist coastlines and ministerial districts. Alongside it ran a web of care: historic centres rehabilitated, bazaars reopened, courtyard and mud-brick construction defended, craftsmen trained. It presented itself as resistance to petro-modernisation, yet it was drawn by the same hands, through bilateral aid, UNESCO missions, development banks, consultancy firms, exhibitions and schools of architecture.
The session asks which actors moved between extraction, planning and conservation; how international expertise redefined what counted as repair; and when conservation became an instrument of development rather than its critique. Papers from across North Africa and the Middle East are welcome.
The question returns today, as the region confronts energy transition and recovers these practices as low-carbon models.
Abstracts are due 18 December 2026.
Call for papers and submission:
https://sudht.org/call-for-papers/
#SUDHT2027 #BeyondRepair #UniversityOfSheffield #UrbanDesignHistory #OilUrbanism #ArchitecturalHistory #HeritageConservation #EnergyTransition
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