Erbil: An Unfulfilled Dream of Urban Modernity
Abstract
The capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, Erbil (Hawler in Kurdish), with its 1.5 million residents, plus a large number of Syrian refugees and displaced persons from the nearby Mosul region, have been going through a development boom since 2003, a date that marks the end of Saddam Hussein’s regime. It forms a concentric zone agglomeration centered around a citadel recently designated a World Heritage Site (2014). This rapid expansion was interrupted in 2014 by the decrease in oil prices and the offensive by Islamic State/Daesh at the doorstep of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).