Our Reflections
-
06.11.2020
Our Reflections
Beirut’s Blasted Neighborhoods: Between Recovery Efforts and Real Estate Interests
Reactions to the explosion of the Port of Beirut have sounded the alarm of permanent displacement, and fingers are already pointing to predatory real-estate developments that could accelerate the process. On September 30, parliament passed measures that it claims will halt the land grabbing of properties owned by residents affected by the blast. But what is fundamentally missing from this seemingly caring narrative is the history of large waves of evictions over many decades in districts such as Geitawi, Mar Mikhael, or Gemmayzeh. Rather than an interruption or a new turn in the occupation of the neighborhoods forming these districts, we argue that the blast should be seen as a disruption that will intensify the effects of the already-in-place mechanisms, pushing away a larger number of those who have worked or lived in the neighborhoods surrounding the port.
-
02.12.2020
Our Reflections
Why Socio-Spatial Practices Matter to Urban Recovery
The blast on August 4, 2020, in the port area of Beirut devastated lives and livelihoods and disrupted vibrant socio-spatial practices that used to unfold in many shared spaces within neighborhoods by the port. While Beirut is a dense city with high levels of urbanization and scant open public spaces that are poorly designed and ill managed, the city still boasts a rich and vibrant public life, albeit one that is dwindling slowly.
-
06.10.20
Our Reflections
Post-Disaster Karantina: Towards a People-Centered Heritage-Led Recovery
In the aftermath of violent acts of rupture, cities endure erasures of place and memory and disruptions to socio-economic and cultural practices. Mending emotional, spiritual, and socio-cultural connections becomes critical for any process of recovery — with cultural heritage, that includes sites of social significance and shared memories — serving as a catalyst for a successful recovery process. In this sense, cultural recovery operates beyond the limited definition of heritage tied to the physical and historical and goes beyond the urgent recovery process that is people-centered, heritage-led, and place-specific to address post-disaster basic needs. Crucially, it attends to socio-spatial practices that are part of the intangible heritage, and rebuilds, over the long-term, undermined cultural practices, social ties, and economic networks. Such industrial neighborhoods and informal settlements as Karantina, characterized by a deep social, cultural, and economic history, are therefore as deserving as any other neighborhood of a recovery process that is people-centered, heritage-led, and place-specific.
-
15.08.2020
Our Reflections
A People-Centered Recovery
Looking forward, the emergency is for restoring any element of normalcy in the districts and empowering neighborhood dwellers’ return. This will be imperative for the city to reignite life and avoid seeing more of its quarters hijacked by real estate interests, as feared by many of the residents I was able to talk to.
-
10.08.2020
Our Reflections
The Beirut Blast: A Week On
As we write this short reflection, the Beirut Port’s August 4, 2020 explosion still runs deep shockwaves through every one of us. We are just beginning to absorb the unmeasurable losses that have fallen on our city and its people. Some 2,700 tons of Ammonium Nitrate were callously stored in a port hangar, in close vicinities of residential neighborhoods, for six years. It happened with the full knowledge of successive port authorities, customs’ officials, and many other public officials (and unofficials). They detonated as if to announce the resounding end of an era: Lebanon’s post-civil war corrupt order could not have gone down peacefully. Almost a week later, the city is mourning its dead, young and old, while most rescue teams are discontinuing their efforts to locate the remaining missing people.
-
06.07.2020
Our Reflections
The Beirut Urban Lab: Adding an Anchor to the Ecosystem of Urban Change
We launch the website of the Beirut Urban Lab at a time when everything around us is in peril. Thirty years after the presumed end of the civil war, Lebanon is drowning under the overlapping weights of a global health pandemic, a severe financial crisis, and the devastating failure to put in place a just and viable national recovery. Indeed, things are on the verge of total collapse. Even urban life, the stage of our actions and the substance of our research, appears unsettled. Images of apocalyptically empty streets and ghost towns are certain to inform the future collective memories of these times. Still, they are interrupted by outbursts of protests, as people in Beirut and elsewhere reaffirm their demands to live in dignity and justice, and to be free of discrimination.