Beirut Built Environment Database (BBED): New Data Released (2018-2024)
The Beirut Urban Lab is publishing an updated version of the Beirut Built Environment Database in August 2025. This release integrates findings from three datasets that recorded i) recent building developments (March to August 2022, February to April 2024), ii) vacancy rates (2023), and iii) household sources of energy across a representative sample in the city (2023).
This release follows the initial platform launch in 2021, when the basemap and first surveys were disseminated.
About the Beirut Built Environment Database
The Beirut Built Environment Database (BBED) is an online, geo-referenced, GIS-based platform developed by the Beirut Urban Lab at the American University of Beirut. The platform brings together a collection of maps, documents, and indicators compiled through repeated surveys that monitor changing spatial (e.g., vacancy, floors, apartment attributes) and environmental characteristics (e.g., water, greenery, infrastructure lines) in Beirut (Lebanon).
Aside from providing a shared base of information for Beirut city, the database serves as the grounds for ongoing theorization of urban transformation such as the rising rates of vacancy, forced evictions, developers’ trajectories, energy, environmental justice, and more aspects of the actually existing financialization of land and its impacts on everyday life.
The Beirut Urban Lab aims to provide an easy-to-share, free to download platform as a strategy to foster a better understanding of the unfolding urbanization, instigate more research about unfolding urban transformations, and generate collaborations, partnerships with researchers, professionals, public actors, and activists.
What’s New?
The 2025 layers reflect powerfully the effects of the multi-crises that have plagued Lebanon, including its housing and construction sectors. Three main findings emerge:
First, building activity in Beirut declined sharply in recent years. Between 2019 and 2023, only 85 building permits were filed at the Order of Engineers and Architects, compared to 876 permits during the peak period of 2006 and 2010. Of the 85 permits filed between 2019 and 2024, only 10 projects (11%) had actually been initiated by the time of the survey in 2024, and none had been completed at the time. In stark contrast, in the preceding period of 4 years (2014-2018), 343 building permits had been filed, of which 171 (50%) had seen their construction initiated at the time of the 2018 survey, and 43 were fully completed. These numbers show a dramatic slowdown in building activity.
Third, vacancy rates are alarmingly high and rising among newly developed buildings. In 2023, the survey recorded a vacancy rate of 43% in the population of 208 buildings completed between 2019 and 2022 (1,955 units), meaning that almost half the recently developed housing stock is unused. In comparison, 32% of the 6,792 units completed five years prior (between 2015 and 2018) were found to be vacant in the 2018 survey.
Energy
The platform’s new energy layers reflect the hybridity of arrangements through which Beirut’s residents devise and collect sources of energy to respond to dire needs. In addition, by mapping all private providers, their spatial inscriptions, and subscriptions models, the research shows informal modes of service provision to exacerbate existing urban inequalities. Readers can find more information in the story map.
License and Crediting
The layers published on this platform are made available under the Open Database License (ODbL). Please attribute uses of all layers except the basemap by citing it as such: "The Beirut Built Environment Database, by the Beirut Urban Lab (American University of Beirut) and attribute uses of the basemap by citing: "The Beirut Built Environment Database, by the Beirut Urban Lab (American University of Beirut) and Lebanon's National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS)".