Objective of study: Urban development processes in Damascus and the structure of informal security regimes

Presentation of problem: The urbanization of Damascus has been mostly supported by an expansion of informal settlements, which was affected by processes of marginalization such as insecure employment and income conditions, limited basic social services, insecure property and poverty.

Main central goals: The study basically deals with two aspects. Firstly the study studies various processes of informal urban development in Damascus.  Secondly, the study will explore possibilities of the city planning under the conditions of informality and explore what are the structures of the informal security regimes in Damascus, how can they be maintained? (Informality as agency)! This includes substantially the emergence and development of informal settlement, the structure of the informal urban labor, the practice of social networks and informal social security.

Research in each of the previous four fields could result in a large number of sub-objectives such as: 1)The recent debates on the urban informal sector, 2) The discussion of informal security regimes, and 3) The structural change of urban security regimes.