'The spring of hope, the winter of despair' 1: An unfinished narrative of Mediterranean cities

Planning Perspectives

Volumn 27, Issue 3, 2012, Pages 417-437

  Hardy, Dennis ^a  

^a Australian Institute of Business   (Australia)

Author keywords

Alexandria; Mediterranean; Tripoli; Tunis; Urban change; Urban development

Indexed keywords

CIVILIZATION; PLANNING HISTORY; POLITICAL CHANGE; SOCIAL CHANGE; URBAN DEVELOPMENT; URBAN HISTORY; URBAN PLANNING;

ALEXANDRIA [EGYPT]; EGYPT; LIBYAN ARAB JAMAHIRIYA; TRIPOLI; TUNISIA;

EID: 84862521821     PISSN: 02665433     EISSN: 14664518     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2012.681137     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. Adapted from the timeless introduction in Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859). Although the book was about London and Paris around the time of the French Revolution there is an enduring resonance in the sense of contrasts described: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way (Book the First, p. 1, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/98/98-h/98-h.htm)
2. Fulke Greville (English poet, writer and politician), Caelica, 1633, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 318.
3. One example of an artists' colony is Estaque (formerly a separate settlement but now on the western edge of Marseille), towards the turn of the nineteenth century. The mother of the impressionist, Paul Cèzanne, lived there and the artist's enthusiasm for the landscape attracted other experimentalists like Renoir and, later, Braque and Dufy.
4. A fascinating and informative source of Byron's travels in the region is Fiona MacCarthy, Byron: Life and Legend (London: Murray, 2002).
5. This distorted view of the East, known as Orientalism, is considered in E.W. Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003). First published by Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. Said's view has itself been widely contested.
6. MacCarthy, Byron, 114.
7. Paul Theroux, in the course of his own travels round the Mediterranean, made a point of visiting some of the many writers who have made the Mediterranean their home and, if they were no longer alive, making pilgrimages to places portrayed in their books.
8. See Paul Theroux, The Pillars of Hercules: A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean (London: Penguin, 1996). First published by Hamish Hamilton, 1995.
9. See, for instance, the Blue Plan report, State of the Environment and Development in the Mediterranean 2009, Sophia Antipolis, France. For a helpful context, see Benoit, G. and Comeau, A., eds., A Sustainable Future for the Mediterranean (London: Earthscan, 2005).
10. The most illustrative example of this is Marseille, where, particularly in the Euroméditerranée project, there is a concerted effort by the authorities to attract corporate headquarters to the rejuvenated docklands site.
11. Most metropolitan areas claim to have structure plans in place but it is clear that planners can do little to stem or even guide the overwhelming volume and rate of growth. This is as true of Alicante in the west as it is of Alexandria in the east.
12. There is a striking contrast between rates of population growth in southern Europe, not so long ago rapidly growing but now relatively stable, and the countries of North Africa and the Levant where population totals are everywhere rising faster than new opportunities for employment. Reliable statistics on unemployment are hard to come by but figures in the region of 30% of young people without jobs in Egypt and 46% in Algeria are not uncommon.
13. see, for instance, Lydia Khalil, 'Youthquake in the Middle East', The Australian Literary Review, April 6, 2011, 3-4.
14. At the time of writing, the situation in Syria remains unresolved, with Government and protesters still locked in conflict.
15. P. Matvejević, Mediterranean: A Cultural Landscape (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 10. First published by Grafički Zavod Hrvatske, Zagreb, 1987.
16. A short but sympathetic treatment of the Minoan civilization, before its sudden demise, is provided in J.J. Norwich, The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (London: Chatto and Windus, 2006).
17. The exceptional Baroque architecture is to be found on the original site of the city, on the former island of Ortygia (for long connected to the mainland with bridges).
18. Fernand Braudel, the pre-eminent Mediterranean scholar, whose research focus was on the sixteenth century, has argued that there was an inverse relationship between the occurrence of warfare and outbreaks of piracy, with the latter flourishing at times when national hostilities were fewer. See Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 865. First published in France, Librairie: Armand Colin, 1966, 865.
19. See, for instance, Z Oldenbourg, The Crusades (London: Phoenix, 2001). First published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966.
20. As late as the twentieth century, under the banner of 'Greater Greece', Greek troops invaded Anatolia. They were driven back and the whole Greek population that had lived there for centuries was forced to leave. In the following year, 1923, modern Turkey was formed.
21. As an example, modern Trieste was known in Roman times as Tergeste. It was passed over in favour of Aquilea, although the latter waned while Trieste later prospered to become the main Italian city east of Venice.
22. See, for instance, M. Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950 (London: Harper, 2004).
23. See, for instance, G. Milton, Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance (London: Sceptre, 2008).
24. R. Kapuściński, Travels with Herodotus (London: Penguin, 2008), 81.
25. E.M. Forster, Alexandria: A History and a Guide and Pharos and Pharillon (London: André Deutch, 2004), 19. The Guide was first published in 1922, and Pharos in 1923.
26. J. Pollard and H. Reid, The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: Birthplace of the Modern World (New York: Penguin, 2007). First published by Viking Penguin, 2006, 24.
27. Amongst the many good references on the early development of Alexandria are the following: Forster, Alexandria.
28. Pollard and Reid, Rise and Fall of Alexandria.
29. M. Haag, Alexandria: City of Memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).
30. Forster, Alexandria, 29.
31. Pollard and Reid, Rise and Fall of Alexandria, xiv.
32. The first-hand observation was by Scipio's Greek tutor, Polybius (c.200-118 BCE): At the sight of the city utterly perishing amidst the flames Scipio burst into tears, and stood long reflecting on the inevitable change which awaits cities, nations, and dynasties, one and all, as it does every one of us men. (Polybius, Book XXXIX, The Histories, www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/polybius-punic3.asp).
33. Rose Macaulay, Pleasure of Ruins (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), 6. The original edition was published in 1953.
34. N. Smart, The World's Religions: Old Traditions and Modern Transformations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 277.
35. A. Wheatcroft, Infidels: A History of the Conflict between Christendom and Islam (London: Penguin, 2004), 198. First published by Viking, 2003.
36. The Arab general, Amr, in Pollard and Reid, Rise and Fall of Alexandria, 54.
37. Norwich, Middle Sea, 205.
38. Ibid., 204.
39. The term, 'Tunis the white' was reputedly coined by the Greek historian, Diodorus of Sicily, in the first century BC.
40. Lewis Wingfield, Under the Palms in Algeria and Tunis, 2 vols. (Elibron Classics, 2005), vol. 1, 239. First published in London by Hurst and Blackett, 1868.
41. C.G. Segre, Fourth Shore: The Italian Colonization of Libya (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 109.
42. M.L. Todd, Tripoli the Mysterious (Tripoli: Dar Al Fergiani, 1994). First published in 1912 (publishing house unknown).
43. The same cathedral, however, would later become a mosque, with the crescent replacing the cross on the towering dome.
44. Bechir Kenzari, 'Lake Tunis, or the Concept of the Third Centre', in The Evolving Arab City: Tradition, Modernity & Urban Development, ed. Y. Elsheshtawy (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), 114-33.
45. Two useful accounts of how the city spread beyond the original core are to be found in F. Vigier, Housing in Tunis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 1987).
46. J.S. Woodford, The City of Tunis: Evolution of an Urban System (Outwell, UK: MiddleEast & North African Studies Press, 1990).
47. Kenzari, 'Lake Tunis', 114-33.
48. J.-Y. Empereur, Alexandria: Past, Present and Future (London: Thames and Hudson, 2002), 120. First published in France by Gallimard, 2001.
49. Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet (London: Faber and Faber, 2005), 'Balthazar', 314. First published in 1962.
50. Hassan Abdel-Salam, 'The Historical Evolution and Present Morphology of Alexandria', Planning Perspectives 10, no. 2 (1995): 173-98.
51. R.B. St. John, Libya: From Colony to Independence (Oxford: Oneworld, 2008), 139.
52. The Village, in St. John, Libya, 135.
53. www.leonwohlhagewernik.de/fileadmin/downloads/english/Press_Release_Tripolis_e.pdf.
54. Theroux, Pillars of Hercules, 478.
55. Kenzari, 'Lake Tunis', 125.
56. Ewan Anderson, 'A Geopolitical Fracture Zone', in Geography, Environment and Development in the Mediterranean, eds. R. King, P. De Mas, and J.M. Beck (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001), 18-27.