The Reconstructions of Beirut

Beirut has successively been seen as the icon of the war-destroyed city, the paradigmatic case of “urbicide” and then as the symbol of a city rebirth through the reconstruction of its city center, praised in real estate journals and sold as a booming touristic destination to natives of the Arabo-Persian Gulf. Both images place Beirut as a city out of compare, out of norm, defining it as a unique and extraordinary city. Such exceptionality should nevertheless be challenged. On one hand, the city as a field for local and global wars – and its consequent reconstructions – is a fate that Lebanon’s capital city has shared with Jerusalem, Baghdad, Hama (and almost Aleppo), Mogadishu, Sarajevo, Mostar, Belfast, among many others in the late 20 century. The war-torn city is an extreme case, considered from the point of view of urban violence as well as from that of urban planning. Urban violence and planning must then be analyzed as conscious tools for reshaping urban societies and nations in the hands of various political actors at the local, regional or global scale. The city has to be re-placed within political, socio-demographic and economic turmoil in its gradation and in the steps onwards and backwards from peace to war. Reconstruction then has to be considered as a series of moments in a political balance of power. On the other hand, in certain ways, urban policies related to reconstruction differ only in degree (rather than in kind) from planning and projects intended to transform the city in more common frameworks. Instances can be found in the general attitude of contempt by many planners for the ancient urban fabric and its inhabitants, be it in the name of the modernization of the city, the affirmation of the state or the necessary adaptation to economic globalization.