City Debates 2022 Abstracts

Keynote Panel: “Planning and Design Practices in European Cities, What Pathways for Tomorrow?” The panel presents the rich professional experience in urban planning and design practice of Ms.  Ariella Masboungi, architect and urban planner, holder of the French Grand Prix de l’Urbanisme in 2016. She directed the “projet urbain” national program for the ministry in charge of Urbanism and worked across complex settings in Europe and beyond. She reflected on her practice in several books, including Le plaisir de l’urbanisme (2016) and La ville pas chiante (2021).

Panel 1: “A Framework for Urban Recovery” will feature presentations by the Beirut Urban Lab’s four co-directors who will examine: (i) how planning can be (re)conceived and practiced in contexts of dysfunctional states and compounded crises (Mona Fawaz); (ii) how professionals can contribute to elaborating integrated recovery approaches and methods in such an environment (Howayda Al-Harithy); (iii) how institutional configurations assemble differently according to political-economy geometries impacting variably urban governance (Mona Harb); and (iv) how mapping and visualization tools can be mobilized productively to influence these processes (Ahmad Gharbieh).

Panel 2: “Producing Knowledge Platforms” will present the knowledge platforms BUL has been producing, in response to the ongoing urban crises the city has been experiencing for the past three decades, namely: (i) wars, conflicts and disasters that destroy cities, regions and towns, and territorialize the built environment;  (ii) the financialization of land that direly impacts affordable housing, urban heritage, public and open space, and the social value of land; (iii) dysfunctional urban governance led by a network of oligarchs, sectarian and corporate interests that hollow-out public institutions and capture rent from public resources for their own benefits. The panel will feature the base platform which established the Lab: the Beirut Built Environment Database (BBED), and the more recent Beirut Urban Observatory (BUO), which is producing a number of urban indicators and initiatives to monitor the process of post-blast recovery—in addition to other platforms. This is a group presentation featuring the work of several BUL researchers: Hayfaa Abou Ibrahim, Luna Dayekh, Antoine Kallab, Soha Mneimneh, Leyla El-Sayed Hussein, Isabela Serhan, and Abir Zaatari.

Panel 3: “Planning and Design Practice through ‘Micro-Urbanism’” will focus on how BUL and other stakeholders have been practicing planning in the context of the Port Blast recovery, through small-scale projects initiatives, experimenting with a micro-urbanism approach. It will discuss the advocacy for the establishment of a Planning Unit in the Governorate of Beirut that would be tasked with elaborating collaboratively an integrated urban strategy for the neighborhoods affected by the blast, starting from the pilot project of al-Masar al-Akhdar which is a proposed green path on the trajectory of the frozen project of the Fouad Boutros highway. It will also present the citizen-science and city development strategy combined approach that led to BUL’s elaboration and implementation of an open space network in Karantina. This is also a group presentation featuring the work of several BUL researchers and affiliates: Mariam Bazzi, Mahmoud Bou Kanaan, Abir Cheaitli, Habib Debs, Ali Ghaddar, Lynn Hamdar, Dana Mazraani, and Batoul Yassine.