The Reconstruction Between Urban Planning Policies and Cultures: Beirut-Based Reflections

This text is a translation of : Verdeil, Eric. 2012. « La reconstruction entre politiques et cultures urbanistiques. Réflexions à partir de l’exemple de Beyrouth ». Majalat al-mi‘mar al ‘arabi (Journal of Arab Architecture), # 4-5: 175 89. It was first presented during the conference Waad: The uniqueness of experience. Workshop on the reconstruction of the Southern suburb of Beirut after the Israeli aggression in 2006, 12-13 June 2012. Since this translated version has not been revised by the author, might be sometimes unclear. Please refer to the French version as the reference version.International audienceUrban reconstructions are times when political struggles are very visible. But such projects also have a very strong technical dimension. The purpose of this article is to articulate both dimensions of such town planning interventions, by elaborating a framework of analysis based on two axes composed of several criteria. The first axis refers to reconstruction politics and the second one to the cultures of planning. This framework is then applied to Lebanese planning. Four episodes of reconstruction in Beirut are analysed: the projects of 1977 and 1982-83, the Solidere project (beginning 1991) and, more in depth, Waad project in the Southern suburb of Beirut after the 2006 war. Regarding these projects as a series unravels the characteristics of each one of them and help identify the distinctive features of the Southern suburb operation. These are : the spatial choices made (rebuilding alike), the quick pace of rebuilding, the endogeneous financing (without market) and the culture of planning, which is both local and partisan, of municipal kind, as developed by Hizbollah