Immunity of cities: A strategy in sustainable urban development (assessing a plan of reconstructing old Mosul-case study)

Urban areas face increasing threats from many sources; the most prominent are environmental, economic, society, policy, and other unexpected changes in its urban elements, which may threaten its stability, development, and growth trends. These threats need more attention from the designing, planning, and administration of cities to cope with the challenges and enhance the validity of urban areas to survive, adapt and grow. The research examines the concept of cities’ immunity adopting it as a norm for the evaluation and continuous success of cities when addressing catastrophes. It is a vast term adopted by cities that face shocks and pressures. Its principle is resilience and enhancement aiming at developing and achieving sustainable growth and survival. The natural and acquired immunity, together with the mechanisms to gain immunity and response to adapt at different levels, depend on the specificity of each city and the related chances and challenges, reaching an immune product characterized by creativity, innovation, continuity, and acceptance. The research followed an analytical and descriptive approach on two levels: introducing the theoretical level, The concept of immunity, urban immunity, and impregnable cities, arriving at a comprehensive theoretical framework for the concept of urban immunity, and the role that concept levels play in enhancing the immunity of cities, where the research assumes that "the immunity of cities increases with the increase in the achievement of administrative, morphological, infrastructure, environmental, economic and social levels." The practical level includes an evaluation of the reconstruction plan for the old city of Mosul. Many international institutions and organizations worked on this plan to reconstruct the city after the military operations and the numerous disasters that the city witnessed. The objective of analyzing the reconstruction plan is to explain the implementation of immunity, arriving at the essential conclusions; The reconstruction process is participation at different levels, competition, and development to enhance the resilience of the old city of Mosul. Thus, the study recommends directing the reconstruction operations in all its stages towards urban sustainability, based on the vision of the war as an opportunity for urban and architectural advancement and redressing past mistakes.