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Damascus: A Geographical Field Note*

Thanks to Google Earth and other geovisualization programs, anyone with access to computers and high-speed Internet connections can view urban scenes in a way our forebears could only dream of, with a sometimes illusory sensation of knowing all there is to know about life down below because it can be "seen" in computerized rendering: an unmatched perspective on the workings of cities. The satellite image, however, is a veneer, a pattern, a protective shield that covers strata such as social forces or economic tectonics. To crack the veneer and peer inside, the geographer must investigate and corroborate from the ground, employing the gently oblique-angled perspective of the observer on foot. The value of being on the ground with a traditional terrestrial perspective awaits its renaissance. I made this discovery on a research trip to Damascus in the summer of 2005. I sought population data from the 2004 Syrian census, and I also wanted to explore housing conditions and investigate the role of GIS in the governance of Damascus and its municipalities. Very little has been written about control of geospatial data in authoritarian states (for general discussions, see Coleman 2004; Coaffee 2005). By extension, I was on a mission to test an approach to ground-based research that consists of interpretation in the field, analysis of statistical data, and use of remotely sensed information. Like other rapidly growing cities in the developing world, Damascus is a city of contrasts: minarets and satellite dishes; stone hovels tumbling down bleached white hills; souks and cafes; churches and Soviet-style apartment blocks. Damascus is a destination of Saudi shoppers, Hezbollah guerrillas, and Iraqi refugees--all under the ever-present watch of Syrian security personnel (Figures 1 and 2). [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] [FIGURE 2 OMITTED] As an urban and population geographer, I am interested in both pattern and process in metropolitan settings. Through my work as a census technical advisor, I have seen firsthand the ability of GIS--or, more broadly, geospatial technology--to improve urban governance in the case of Amman, Jordan, a wired city that exemplifies postmodern Arab identity. King Hussein's legacy of highway flyovers and unveiled women--not to mention seamless intelligence surveillance--marks the relative stability of the kingdom in what Jordanians know too well as a "bad neighborhood" regionally. The question of Syria's recent interest in GIS, and the irony of its apparent success given the closed nature of the Syrian government, stands in opposition to the culture of sharing embodied by Jack Dangermond's Environmental Systems Research Institute, in which networks of computers and skilled practitioners carry the day with intraorganizational communication and problem solving. I was continually astonished while in greater Damascus, meeting with the local GIS consulting company, the Syrian Central Bureau of Statistics, and the Ministry of Local Administration and Environment. Syrians were solving some of their urban-related problems using technology that was barely accessible to them (due to an ongoing U.S.-led embargo), working in obscurity to address issues surrounding the stressed urban environment. Much of the government work relating to geospatial technology in Damascus is done in secret by an agency called the General Establishments Survey, which owns all data layers but about which little is known (Mott MacDonald 2003). Much of what I gleaned about geospatial development in Syria came through conversations with consultants affiliated with one or more of the private companies operating in Damascus. Out of respect for their continued success in obtaining government work in an official culture that repeatedly crosses the line from bureaucratic paranoia into vindictive retribution, I have changed their names and obscured their affiliations. THE ENIGMA OF ARRIVAL Geospatial technology and governance change in the Middle East were not foremost in my mind as my airplane descended into Damascus. …