“Nothing Has Changed”: Social Continuity and the Gentrification of the Old City of Damascus

In this article, I explore how discourses on the urban–rural binary that has long defined social hierarchies in Damascus informed the gentrification of the Old City of Damascus. Gentrification was facilitated by economic policies that favored a market economy, and took the form of converting traditional couryard houses into restaurants and hotels. Moreover, it led to the displacement of long-term residents and the influx of new social users to the historic city center. I demonstrate how gentrification was widely accepted in Damascus because it was cast as saving the Shami (Damascene) city from rural migrants, a variation of the urban–rural binary theme under new economic conditions; even long-term residents did not tend to decry the displacement of families who had rural backgrounds. By examining this process in Haret Hananya, I illustrate how long-term residents were unfazed by the demographic transformations in their neighborhood, as property owners saw an increase in home values and renters saw new opportunities under amended rental laws. Though gentrification also created new distinctions among long-term residents, by privileging property owners over renters, both groups welcomed the improvements in their neighborhoods not only for the services that came with new venues, but also for the new respectability that their neighborhoods gained. This respectability allowed many long-term residents to attain some measure of social standing from living in the Old City, after many decades of disparagement. I conclude that though gentrification transformed neighborhoods, it maintained the traditional social hierarchy along urban and rural lines, even as these categories came to take on new meanings under new economic conditions.