Issues and Morphological Dialectics of Baghdad City: Toward an Intellectual Framework for a Research Map Design

One of the goals of this paper is to outline the significant problems in the historical urban structure and marginal areas of Baghdad. It is hypothesized these challenges could affect other aspects, such as urban life, urban development, and sustainability. However, before addressing these impacts, it is essential to define the framework of the study to determine a feasible scope, which will guide the development of a research process map (RPM). The paper highlights two urban issues in Baghdad—elementary and ancillary—whereby the historical pattern of the city is perceived as an asset, while the value of the entire urban pattern is compared with that of individual memorials. Based on these two issues, the paper identifies a research problem and applies four critical questions to address it. The study adopted a case study strategy and a mixed-method approach to identify and monitor key urban problems affecting the context. Moreover, variables of the urban parameters were defined, and ethnographical analysis was performed to develop the RPM. The study concludes that four interfaces contribute significantly to the issues and morphological dialectics of Baghdad City, namely, human–edge interface, link–node interface, edge–edge interface, and human–human interface. These interfaces signify the interrelatedness between various attributes of the physical setting and the people within it.