Bye bye Beirut!

What makes a beautiful city? It’s not a sandstone house with red tiled roof, its not a narrow street with quaint shops on either side, its not a piece of iron balustrade or hand crafted moldings or marble facades, none of these things make a city beautiful. These things make certain neighborhoods aesthetically pleasing to the human eye, they make a building look nice, but what makes a city beautiful is the machinery of the city, the seamless interaction between its various components. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that heritage and aesthetics are not important, not at all, but a city is neither a work of art nor a living museum, nor should we aspire to make it one or the other.

When planning a city from scratch, the first function that needs to be planned for is livability, how will the residents of this city live within this urban space, how will they interact with one another, trade with one another? Think of Beirut, it’s a city that grew haphazardly from a very small but well planned core. First, the Medieval walled city whose boundary was Burj Square to the East and Bab Edriss to the West (thus the term ‘Burj Square’ referring to a tower, likely a tower along the Medieval wall), second, the French 1930s architecture of Nijmeh Square and the streets branching from its center like so many spokes on a wheel. Hamra was a collection of small fields and simple houses. At the turn of the last century the area around AUB, Manara and Raouche was dotted with cacti and not much else. Further south towards Zarif and Sanayeh the area was undeveloped except for a few houses. So, the mess that is Beirut today is barely a hundred years old.

What is needed is a radical approach, a national redevelopment project so massive that it would involve the temporary displacement and inconveniencing of some residents who would need to be properly housed until the project is complete. What is needed are many many fresh and impartial pairs of eyes that can take a new look at the city, especially the transitional areas surrounding the down town that have seen haphazard construction since the end of the 1975-90 civil war. Cultural sensitivity would need to be the starting point, certainly, and many truly valuable historic buildings will need to be preserved, but many ‘old Beiruti homes’ would probably have to be sacrificed to widen roads, to increase public spaces, gardens, parks and public squares. Several underground parking lots would need to be built. Zoning regulations would need to be changed to limit high rises to a new and modern business district planned on a grid pattern that would replace several old Beiruti neighborhoods, thus ensuring the wheels of commerce and well lubricated.

Naturally, most Beirutis balk at this suggestion, ‘how dare I’ they would say, how dare I indeed. It's only natural to feel this way about your own village, after all is not Beirut really just a collection of small villages, from Ras Beirut, to Qoreitem, to Gemayzeh. These are not urban neighborhoods that grew out of a central plan which took into account the needs of the residents of the whole city, no, these are villages. The only vibrant down town (business district) we had before the war was the old center, Saht el Bourj, Allenby and Foch streets, Nijmeh square, and the port district, these were areas that functioned as a business district, all be it a very basic one. Since the end of the war most of these areas have either been bulldozed (Bourj Square) or restored as a walk in museum and theme park. So, the business district had to move further west towards Hamra which is far from ideal. So we come back to the same problem, some neighborhoods need to be sacrificed, but who’s will it be, which politician in his right mind would agree to such a plan? Who ever does would be hoisted up Beirut’s famous pine trees!

So, we come to a conclusion: tribal, village-based politics in a chaotic democracy is not conducive to sound urban planning. The only way open to us is to find a large tract of empty land atop some hill or mountain and build a new Capital city because the one we have is broken, its smelly and over crowded and in need of a radical solution that we cannot implement.

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