Islamic cities yesterday, today & tomorrow

Abstract

Today the cities of the Islamic world are in a mess. Their urban environment, their physical form, their architecture are not only uninspiring but also represent a veritable cultural chaos and even social disintegration. Our growing cities face the same sinister aspects of modern technology that engulf the industrialized West's urban centers. 18 Yet only Yesterday (a few hundred years ago) Islamic urban centers were in equilibrium with their surroundings and their architecture was the greatest of all art forms. It was the practical physical expression of the Islamic sciences. Our buildings, our cities and their physical forms were in harmony with nature and the environment, never in contradiction to it, like most of today's "Modern" urban forms whose bland repetition is based on their false pretenses of internationality.