Erbil’s Urban Transformation: Green Infrastructure and Innovation in a Medium-Sized City Facing Global Challenges

Urban Farm DB summary

This paper examines Erbil, capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, as a case of medium-sized-city urban transformation, using planning documentation, project descriptions and spatial development interpretation to ask whether green infrastructure elements such as Sami Abdulrahman Park and the Orbital Green Belt Project function only as environmental enhancement or also as instruments of spatial governance within Erbil's updated master-planning framework, which introduces growth boundaries, zoning reforms, density regulation and environmental overlays amid pressure on peri-urban agricultural land from two decades of demographic and spatial expansion.