Zaatari Lecture

Al Zaatari Planning and place-making in a Syrian refugee camp

Landscape History & Theory

November 2nd 2016

Overview ´ A look at the status of

refugees today

´ See how people carry their ideas of place and landscape with them

´ Recognize the creation of personal and cultural spaces within Zaatari – a Syrian refugee camp

Displacement today

´ Today – more than 65 million people have been forcefully displaced from their homes

´ Approximately 24 people are added to this figure every minute (~34,000 people per day)

Climate change and refugees

´ With climate and hydrological change, along with associated environmental pressures, hundreds of millions of people may be compelled to relocate in the coming decades, if not sooner

The “Trauma of Exile”

“The unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home” – Edward Said (2000)

This trauma may last decades, and span across generations

Exile and Place Attachment

While strong emotional bonds to one’s home may be a positive force (security, safety, continuity, wellbeing)…

… the physical separation from that place may lead to trauma, and a breakdown of social institutions

So What Happens Next?

´ There are three potential outcomes that refugees may face long-term:

1.  Return to their country of origin

2.  Hope for resettlement

3.  End up somewhere in-between

So What Happens Next?

´ There are three potential outcomes that refugees may face long-term:

1.  Return to their country of origin

2.  Hope for resettlement

3.  End up somewhere in-between

Refugee Camps

“Temporary Settlement”

´ Although intended to be short-term, the average stay in a refugee camp is thought to be 17 years

Refugee Camps ´ Temporary spaces created “between war and city” ´ Approximately 1/3 of all refugees today are in a

refugee camp of some kind (either planned or self-settled)

´ While as a proportion this number is decreasing – due to more refugees migrating to cities – the planning and management of camps still presents huge challenges for humanitarian organizations and host governments

Syrian Refugee Camps ´ Millions of Syrians have settled

in camps in neighboring Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Greece, and beyond

´  The largest of these camps is called Zaatari and is located outside Jordan’s capital city, Amman ´  It is now considered the

fourth largest city in the country

“…the re-emplacement of diaspora peoples who have managed to transnationalize local place-making by importing the cultural landscape, vernacular architecture, biotic baggage, and cognitive mapping traditions of their point-of-origin communities.

They have crossed borders but brought their epistemologies of place. They have used these knowledge systems to re-inhabit a transnational location by means of mimicry, the re-enactment of the diversity of species and forms and of the open spaces of conviviality that define their home places.”

- Devon Peña, Plenary Address at the 2006 “Place Matters” Conference

We should not see refugees as mere passive victims. They are agents in their own lives, their communities, and in their new environment

Refugees are actively engaged in the process of “(re)locating place and (re)building place in and around new spaces” (Jean, 2015)