The Recovery of Beirut in the Aftermath of the Lebanese Civil War

2010. Conference Paper

co-authored with Camillo Boano & Andrew Wade

i-Rec Conference: Participatory Design and Appropriate Technology for Post-Disaster Reconstruction 

Based on notions outlined in the ‘contact hypothesis’ (Allport 1954) and ‘culture-distance hypothesis’ (Babiker et al. 1980), our argument contends that inter-cultural interactions are central to the recovery of culturally divided cities. We will try to offer a critical assemblage of thoughts regarding the role of urban design in its capacity to stimulate cross-cultural, pluri-social and pluri-ethnic interactions by increasing physical and mental access to public places, which we hope will validate the capacity of urban design to play a role in post civil-war reconstruction.

Viewing Beirut as a city divided across cultural boundaries, this study analyses the non-efficacy of Solidere’s reconstruction project for the Lebanese capital’s Central Business District (CBD). The systematic criticism of this case exemplifies how the practice of urban design can create new divisions in cities instead of actively participating in cultural conflict resolution. To support the capacity of the field of urban design in playing a positive role in conflicted and divided cities, we will show through theoretical assemblages how this practice could have in fact contributed to the creation of inclusive spaces where cross-cultural interactions would have been most likely to occur. In turn, as with the two aforementioned hypotheses, this typology of interaction between antagonists could have facilitated the evolution of a pluri-cultural city along the continuum towards the cosmopolitan city.