Deir E’lla – Border Town – Jordan River Valley

Fadi Masoud (MLA II)

Project Overview

This project will document a transect of one of the most contested and symbolic border river regions. Traveling down from a height of 1500m above sea level to almost 300m below along the Jordan Valley. This transect sequence highlights the underplayed link between systems of water diversion for urbanization and agriculture, and the resulting fallouts associated with it. It will inversely highlight the potential of the topographic edge of the Valley to function as both resource and infrastructure. It has been proven in the Jordan River Valley, one of the world’s most contested and symbolic transboundary border-river regions, that the most polemic and controversial aspect of water distribution is not scarcity but allocation and control. By taking the case of the town of Deir ‘Ella it becomes evident that both agriculture and urban settlement along the Jordan River in their 20th century format will increase disputation if they do not evolve and adapt to new realities. Dier ‘Ella’s existence on the site as an agricultural town dates back to the sixteenth century BCE. Today it convenes at the juncture of the massive Amman-Ghor Water carrier, along failing citrus orchards and crumbling concrete housing blocks; it is a town that has become symptomatic and representative of most of the issues concerning resource poor, mal-managed border region cities.

Project Information

There is an inherent, and often overlooked, instrumental, operative, and geopolitical role for the watershed as urban infrastructure.It is only through the scale of the watershed that externalities related to water allocation and distribution are rendered visible. It is at that scale that the Jordan Valley’s wasteful agricultural practices, non-contextual patterns of urbanization, and outdated infrastructural models become most apparent. If seen from that scope, the physiographic unit of the valley becomes a form-giving dynamic precedent for ecological reclamation, new patterns of urbanization, as well as water re-distribution and allocation across this contentious region. This project builds upon a growing literature that is pressing for a change in the Jordan Valley’s ecologically and economically unsustainable agricultural practice and inappropriate urban model. Instead it argues for contemporary and dynamic urban morphologies that are reflective of regionally-appropriate methods of habitation and growth. By building upon an existing body of research and a schematic design proposition, this investigation unravelled in more depth specific site components and challenge in regards to one town in particular. Results could eventually show this town as a catalyst at the scale of the entire Valley. If successful, it could become a model of self-sufficient urban-agricultural-ecological co-habitation gradients that potentially may neutralize geopolitical contention in this border river region

This project uncovered the underplayed link between systems of water diversion for urbanization and agriculture, and the resulting fallouts associated with it. It has been proven in the Jordan River Basin, one of the world’s most contested and symbolic transboundary border-river regions, that the most polemic and controversial aspect of water distribution is not scarcity but allocation and control. When seen as a watershed unit it becomes evident that both agriculture and urban settlement along the Jordan River in their 20th century format will increase disputation if they do not evolve and adapt to new realities.

Over the millennia this ancient, fertile region witnessed the flourishing of some of the world’s earliest civilizations.  Over the last sixty years, however, modern-engineering schemes for fresh water diversion have reduced the Jordan River to a fraction of its original flow. This reduction in the water flow is a result of increasing extraction of water from the river’s various sources by four riparian countries (Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan), which leaves the Lower Jordan with less than 100 mcm/yr., more than 1 billion cubic meters less than its original flow (Laster and Livney, 2010).  Such projects include the 110km-long Jordanian King Abdullah Canal, which supplies water for irrigation and 90 million m³ (mcm) of drinking water for Greater Amman through the Deir Alla-Amman carrier (The site of study for the Penny White). They also include the 130km-long National Water Carrier of Israel, which transfers up to 1.7 mcmof water per day from the Sea of Galilee in the north of the country to the highly populated center and arid south.

A project titled “The Red-to-Dead Canal” is currently being advanced as a solution to water shortage in the region. It proposes to carry water 300km from the Red Sea, and use the natural drop of the Valley to desalinate water and generate energy, which is then pumped 1000m above sea level to the cities of Amman and Jerusalem. The exclusive reliance on centralized “hard technical fixes” in this context and a lack of diversification of technologies produce extreme vulnerability (Tal and Rabbo, 2010).

Therefore, current discourse on water management argues for adaptive and flexible water management in relation to urbanization patterns in order to eliminate the “sharp threshold separating complete protection from disaster” (Pahl-Wostl, 2007, p. 52).

Recent research also confirms that the public perception of scarcity is entrenched in ideology myths based on technological fixes (Lipchin, 2003; de Châtel, 2007; Tal and Rabbo, 2010; Tagar, 2007; Tsaban et. al. 2004).

Centralized systems therefore pose two challenging issues: scale and distance. Firstly, large-scale engineering projects conceal the fluctuations in the climate and hence lead the public to believe that water supplies are endless. And secondly, “through the development of modern water distribution systems, the link that used to exist between the individual user and his water is severed” (de Châtel, 2007, p. 57).

The national and large scale water infrastructure projects mentioned above have balkanized architecture, infrastructure and landscape, which has effectively relegated each to its own distinct, disciplinary silo. This limited the vocabulary of urban development in this region and has confined itself to non-contextual and inappropriate methods of habitation. Their forms, placement, and materiality, detached them from any hydrological, climatic, and geo-physical system or articulation in where they might exist, As such they are completely reliant on hard, energy intensive-infrastructural technologies for their existence. For instance, proposals such as the Red-Dead Canal envisions the Jordan Valley following in the footsteps of the oil-rich Arab Peninsula, where desalination is the only regional panacea to future growth, and environmental – hydrological impacts are overshadowed by the thirst for ‘end-of-pipe’ hyper-urbanism.

This is the kind of built form that negates any understanding of place, and disregards all or any of the site’s limitation and potentials. A contemporary vision for the Jordan River Valley should be dependent on its landscape and hydrology and therefore necessitates an integrated relationship between landscape, architecture and urban design.

The Jordanian town of Deir-Alla, currently sits at the end of one of these wadis. Its existence on the site as an agricultural town dates back to the sixteenth century BCE. Today it convenes at the juncture of the massive Amman-Ghor Water carrier, along failing citrus orchards and crumbling concrete housing blocks; it is a town that has become symptomatic and representative of most of the issues concerning resource poor, mal-managed border region cities.

A site visit allowed me to document and collect more information on 4 major components that cumulatively would re-orchestrate any potential proposition or change on the site. Showing a linked relation between 1) River / ecology floodplain, 2) Agricultural practice, 3) Built-urban form / building stock, and 4) Existing water infrastructure: reservoirs, dams and channels, will be pivotal in the advancement of a future refined design proposal.

Contact Information

Baha Afaneh – Environmental Consultant – Friends of the Earth Middle East, – Amman – Jordan

Lara Zureikat – Landscape Architect, Harvard GSD Aga Khan Visiting Fellow, and Principle of the Centre for the Sustainable Built Environment (CSBE ) – Amman Jordan

Abeer Nassar – Engineer -Jordan Valley Authority – Amman, Jordan

Youssef Hassan – Engineer  Jordan Valley Authority – Amman, Jordan

Liat Margolis – Assistant Professor, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto

Alon Tal, –Professor Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology

References/bibliography

de Châtel, F. (2007). Perceptions of Water in the Middle East: The Role of Religion, Politics and Technology in Concealing the Growing Water Scarcity. In H. Shuval and H. Dweik (Eds.), Water Resources in the Middle East. Israel-Palestinian Water Issues – From Conflict to Cooperation. (pp. 53-60). Berlin: Springer.

Laster, R., Livney, D. (2010). Managing the Jordan River Basin: An Israeli Perspective. In A. Tal and A. A. Rabbo (Eds.), Water Wisdom: preparing the groundwork for cooperative and sustainable water management in the Middle East, (pp. 258-263). New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

Levy, N., Meyer, Y. (2007). Feasibility Study for Cooperation in Wastewater Treatment Plants and Landfills for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. In H. Shuval and H. Dweik (Eds.), Water Resources in the Middle East. Israel-Palestinian Water Issues – From Conflict to Cooperation. (pp. 263-272). Berlin: Springer.

Lipchin, C. (2003). Water, Agriculture and Zionism: Exploring the Interface between Policy and Ideology. In C. Lipchin, E. Pallant, D. Saranga, A. Amster (Eds.), Integrated Water Resources Management and Security in the Middle East. (pp. 251-268) Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer

Lipchin, C. (2007). A Future for the Dead Sea Basin: Water Culture among Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians. In H. Shuval and H. Dweik (Eds.), Water Resources in the Middle East. Israel-Palestinian Water Issues – From Conflict to Cooperation. (pp. 87-107). Berlin: Springer.

Masoud, F. Margolis, L. Khirfan, L. (2011) .Integrated Water-Management: Landscape Infrastructure and Urban Morphology in the Jordan River Watershed. In Conservation of Architecture Journal. The Center for the Study of Architecture in the Arab Region.

Tal, A., Rabbo, A. A., (2010). Desalination–Editor’s Summary. In A. Tal and A. A. Rabbo (Eds.), Water Wisdom: preparing the groundwork for cooperative and sustainable water management in the Middle East, (pp. 246-247). New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

Tagar, Z. (2007). Nature Agriculture and the Price of Water in Israel. Amman, Bethlehem, Tel Aviv: EcoPeace / Friend of the Earth Middle East. Retrieved January 15, 2010, from http://foeme.org/www/?module=publications&project_id=23