🌿 Reimagining Gaza: A Sustainable Vision by the Mediterranean
- mborsett
- Jul 22
- 4 min read
Written by M. Borsetti @MBA architects
The Gaza Strip is often in the news for the wrong reasons — conflict, overcrowding, and humanitarian crisis. But what if we paused for a moment and imagined a different Gaza? A Gaza that heals, rebuilds, and flourishes by embracing the future — not in concrete and smoke, but in green roofs, bike lanes, and clean air?
This is exactly what a new sustainable coastal development project sets out to envision: a bold and hopeful reimagination of Gaza, beginning from its southern tip near Rafah, where the Mediterranean Sea kisses the land and the horizon still holds promise.
🏙️ A Vision of Low Buildings and High Hopes
This isn’t a fantasy of glittering skyscrapers — it’s a grounded, resilient masterplan of low-rise, environmentally friendly buildings, powered by solar energy, surrounded by greenery, and connected by pedestrian and bike paths. The goal: restore dignity and functionality in a place long denied both.
Neighborhoods are designed with modularity, allowing homes to grow with families. Public spaces are shaded and breathable. Every drop of rainwater is collected. Every sunbeam is converted into clean energy.
💧 Living with the Landscape, Not Against It
Water is one of Gaza’s scarcest and most fragile resources. That’s why this project integrates coastal wetlands, solar-powered desalination, and green buffer zones to create a city that works with nature instead of against it. The aim is not just survival — but long-term self-sufficiency.
🧱 From Blueprint to Battlefield: The Crisis in Reality
As hopeful as this vision is, it exists in painful contrast to the current war-torn reality of Gaza in 2025.
According to the United Nations and humanitarian organizations, over 87% of Gaza is now either under Israeli military control, active evacuation orders, or declared no-go zones. The southern city of Rafah, once seen as a potential launchpad for reconstruction, has been largely depopulated, cut off by the newly imposed Morag Corridor and overwhelmed by internally displaced persons (IDPs).
The Philadelphi Route, a buffer zone along the Egyptian border, has effectively become a wall of isolation. And areas such as Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, are currently under intense aerial and ground assault. Entire neighborhoods, hospitals, and UN shelters have been hit, as humanitarian aid struggles to reach over 2 million people crammed into diminishing pockets of supposed “safe zones.”
In this grim reality, there is no stable ground on which to build — yet the need for a blueprint has never been more urgent.
🔥 Urban Destruction on a Massive Scale
Recent images and satellite data reveal unprecedented destruction across the Gaza Strip:
Northern Gaza (Gaza City, Jabalia): Entire neighborhoods turned into fields of rubble — no roofs, no roads, no infrastructure remain.
Rafah, once a last refuge, now lies in ruins, bombed even after people fled there.
Hospitals, schools, residential areas — all targeted and rendered inoperable.
UN data suggests that over 60–70% of Gaza’s buildings are damaged or completely destroyed. More than 245,000 homes have been obliterated. The volume of debris may exceed 50 million tons.
🌍 Gaza as a Global Model — or Warning?
This project was never just about Gaza. It is about how we imagine rebuilding in the face of collapse — with compassion, ecology, and long-term thinking. If Gaza can be reimagined, anywhere can.
But the sobering truth is: ideas alone do not make safe places. Peace, dignity, and access must come first.
Without them, sustainable design risks becoming just another utopia sketched in the sand.
✏️ Final Thought
As war redraws Gaza’s map daily with corridors, checkpoints, and ruins, this project offers a counter-map — a vision of life, not death. A reminder that even in the most devastated places, architecture can still carry the language of healing, of belonging, and of future.
Let’s not wait until the last stone is turned. Let’s start imagining the Gaza we all deserve , now !
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