Since 1960's the phenomenon of urban social segregation has been
developed in Sana'a city in three consecutive zones. These are the
indigenous, transitional and spontaneous zones. The architecture of the
indigenous zone was not used as a means to express wealth and status of
the inhabitants. The trend in the transitional zone was ‘softly segregated'.
To examine the new direction of social segregation between bottom
squatted settlements and top gated communities in the fringe "spontaneous
zones" of Sana'a city, this study adopted an investigatory approach and
utilised multiple qualitative methods.
Evidence in this paper reveals that social segregation between the well-off
in gated communities and concentrated poverty in squatted settlements is
blurred in the peripheral zone of the case study city.