The Master Plan of 1977-78
The IAURIF Master Plan
The 1991 Master Plan
Projects Adrift
A Cultural Crisis: From the Ottoman City to the Wahabi City?
Endnotes

Three major reconstruction plans for Beirut have been put forward to this day: the master plan of 1977-78 involving the old city center; the master plan of 1986 covering the entire metropolitan region of Beirut (MRB); and the master plan of 1991, again covering exclusively reconstruction in the old city center.

It is worth noting that during the entire war in Lebanon, fighting virtually did not cease in Beirut. While other parts of the country were affected by fighting, in general, it was for relatively shorter periods of time. Although destruction was more significant in parts of the mountains, and more recurrent in South Lebanon, relatively speaking it was both more continuous and regular in the Beirut area.

The old city center and the demarcation line between East and West Beirut were the most severely damaged areas of the capital. At the same time, however, on the periphery of Beirut new development, equal if not greater in size than that of the area destroyed, took place. This led to a shift in the city’s center of gravity to the outskirts. The sociological pattern integrating Beirut’s public spaces at the center was seriously undermined by the rise of single-community ghettos in the suburbs. The city was divided into several unconnected islands, and neutral spaces were either annexed to these islands or destroyed. Local public bodies, too, were either attached to these territories, dismantled and deprived of their resources, or divided, thus limiting their efficiency. The population was increasingly marginalized by the war, isolated in its domestic spaces, and was an economic crisis lasting longer than the era of the militias; although the latter disappeared, the economic and social legacy they left behind remained.

If the objective of reconstruction is to transcend the Lebanese war, then it must reverse the profound sociological changes caused by the war at the level of services, public transportation, road networks, and cultural and economic activities. Reconstruction does not simply imply rebuilding, but also includes social processes; it implies well-planned management of technical networks, not just an ability to pay unlimited amounts of money, it is a process taking into account time, and is not merely a transformation of space. [1] Reconstruction must act to regenerate urban society, serving as an example for society as a whole.

We will raise the following questions in this essay:

• How did each master plan for reconstruction deal with Beirut public spaces and their regeneration? How were the integrative roles of these spaces developed? How did the city’s different parts communicate? What memory of the city was preserved?
• Who was to fund each master plan for reconstruction? How were the city’s inhabitants to take part in reconstruction? How did the public debate on reconstruction take place?
• How well was the public interest preserved? Did it have priority over the interests of individual communities? What was the relation between public and private interest, between public and private property?

These three sets of questions are of a different type: The first deals with the long-term functions of the public spaces to be developed. The second examines whether the reconstruction process will effectively create or re-create a middle class or not. The third deals with the impact of reconstruction of all or part of the city, on the whole of society.

The Master Plan of 1977-78

The Master Plan of 1977-78 was prepared after the 1975-76 conflict, which mainly destroyed Beirut’s old city center. At that time, the militias’ war machines were not really constituted, let alone institutionalized, and alternative centers to the old city were not well-established. Although store-owners, whose places of business had been destroyed in the old section of Beirut, opened new stores illegally in other neighborhoods, this was a somewhat precarious venture as shown by the experience of the souq in Raousheh: as soon as calm returned, merchants were forced by the authorities to return to their original shops, or at least to vacate their new locations. If, on the other hand, the new stores were legal, the resulting decline in profit rates due to the reopening of the old city center, shifted activity back there. More important still, the city center was considered a symbol of coexistence between Lebanon’s various communities. As a result, it was only natural that it became the focal point for reconstruction in the 1977-78 master plan.

The plan, prepared by the Urbanism Workshop of Paris (Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme), was completed by Mitri Nammar, the governor (muhafiz) of Beirut, and several urban architects under the aegis of the Directorate Generale of Urbanism (Direction Générale de l’Urbanisme). Gradually, the plan was adopted by the Beirut municipality and the government, and was the first legally approved plan for the reconstruction of Beirut. [2]

Influenced by urban “culturalist” models, [3] French architects in charge of the project offered a minimalist vision of reconstruction, preserving the traditional style of the area to be rebuilt, while favoring solutions to pre-war problems which made access to the city center difficult. The intervention of planners was reduced to a minimum, and was limited to public transportation and road networks. From an architectural standpoint, this intervention varied enormously according to the areas, and focused more on regenerating public spaces than intervening in private property.

The road network of the city center was reorganized in such a way as to allow access to the maximum number of people during the day (average speed did not exceed 10 kms/hour during the prewar period). [4] The plan’s first novelty was an underground road going from east to west and bordering the coastline. Although highly expensive, the construction of this road would nevertheless have spared expenditures on other infrastructures, and would have offered a solution to the problem of traffic jams. Two additional roads from south to north and backing up the Fouad Shihab flyover were to complete the first. This system was intended to organize transportation more efficiently. The plan also promoted public transportation.

The underground road permitted a direct link between the city and the sea and preserved the ecological boundary between the two. A promenade was to be opened to the public, and small squares were to be dispersed throughout the old city. To highlight the different monuments downtown, the plan sought to surround them with small gardens.

As to the rehabilitation of buildings, the plan divided the city center into seven different sectors, each requiring different types of intervention. The nature of these interventions was meticulously delineated by sector, and any change affecting the height of buildings, their style, and their surroundings was controlled. The essential thrust of the plan was made clear in the fact that 75% of the buildings were to be returned to their previous state in an effort to safeguard the cultural memory of the city. Thus, the traditional souqs, grouped into two big islands west of Martyrs Square, and the Tawileh, Ayyass, and Jamil souqs were to be rebuilt exactly as they had been.

On the other hand, more significant intervention was intended on the sea front in the sector of the Normandy and Phoenicia hotels. A marina was planned, and the height of any resort or hotel surrounding it was not to be above sixteen meters. The built-up area, comprising buildings and leisure installations, was not to exceed 0.5% of the total area of the sector (in contrast to 2.8% in their pre-war city center). The area of the port, however, was to be built up with office buildings, and represented the most significant urbanization effort in the sector.

The Wadi Abu Jemil sector was reorganized by means of a new road which cut through the sector, liup Clémenceastreet to Bab Edriss. A pedestrian area, underground parking lots, and a possible subway station were to surround Bab Edriss, while the buildings along the new road were to be restored. In addition, the plan called for converting the areas of Ghalghul, where buildings were heavily damaged, and Saifi, the old red light sector, into leisure and commercial centers. In terms of architectural style and function, the intervention in Ghalghul was conceived of as an extension of the Banks Street, while Saifi was linked to Martyrs Square.

The main criticism, which was leveled at the project was that the different religious monuments were to be highlighted by small squares and gardens surrounding them. The religious endowments or waqfs, to whom these grounds belong, would have preferred to use them for commercial purposes. As a whole, however, this plan could be described as gradualist and basically conservative on the cultural level, although it left a wide margin for individual initiative. A few minor and limited interventions were anticipated through the regrouping of property and the creation of two real estate companies in the Ghalghul and Saifi areas. Thus, the plan met the need for limited public intervention, although certain individuals believed at the time that even this minimal intervention was excessive. The plan did, however, rely on public authorities to arbitrate matters and build up infrastructures.

The aggravation of the destruction of the old city due to the effects of weather and neglect, the weakening of a national political consensus, and the exhaustion of small private actors made the implementation of this plan quite difficult; as a result, it became necessary to update it. Nevertheless, no new plan for the old city center was conceived before the 1990’s, even if some minor planning, which never came to fruition, was attempted.

The IAURIF Master Plan of 1986

The 1986 plan for the entire Metropolitan Region of Beirut (MRB) was prepared by a joint French-Lebanese working group upon the request of the Lebanese authorities. Drawn up in 1983, it was only completed and presented to the public in 1986. The plan was characterized by a search for a political consensus. Its objectives were:

• The affirmation of centrality.




• The restructuring of urban space by building new centers.




• The development of public transportation.




• The safeguarding and preservation of natural sites.

The Institute for Planning and urbanism of Ile-de-France (Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de l’Ile-de-France or IAURIF), which participated in the preparation of the plan, faced a situation somewhat different than that faced by those who prepared the earlier 1977-78 plan. After ten years or so of war, it seemed only logical in reconstructing Beirut to take into account the extent of the destruction outside the area of the old city center, and the transformation brought about by urban expansion on the periphery of the capital. Thus, the IAURIF plan covered not just the old city, but the whole MRB from Khaldeh south of the capital, to Dbayyeh north of it.

In an effort to overcome the fragmentation of Beirut, the master plan sought to restructure the city and integrate it with its various suburbs. In this respect, it was not, strictly speaking, a reconstruction plan. At the time the plan was prepared, only 40,000 of the 300,000 apartments in the MRB were damaged or considered too dangerous to live in because of proximity to a demarcation line. The plan principally proposed a reorganization of traffic networks and the restructuring of the central system, leaving most of the reconstruction to private initiative once peace had returned. The objective was simply to manage the exceptional growth of the suburbs by organizing a return to the center of Beirut.

In the pre-war period, all links through Beirut between the north and the south of Lebanon went through the city center by means of the coastal road. The IAURIF plan sought to ease congestion in the city and its center by planning for roads away from the coast which would pass through the interior, close to the boundary between the capital and the foothills of Mount Lebanon. The proposed main road was to be supplemented by other means of access to the city by the coast, whether through public transportation or even a revived railway. The town’s center of gravity was consequently to be shifted towards the periphery, while maintaining its point d’appui in the pre-war city center.

Thus a major effort was made to open up Beirut’s suburbs, namely the southern suburbs. The new changes in the city’s urban makeup were taken into consideration, while maintaining the strategic equilibrium of the metropolitan region. There were other concerns as well: green spaces were to be preserved, favoring an ecological equilibrium, and thus many valleys close to the capital were to be declared natural reserves; ridges, however, were given over to urbanization.

The IAURIF plan aimed to reconcile the urban impact of the war in Beirut with a return to the pre-war situation existing in the city. The plan assumed that a return to centrality in Beirut which existed prior to the war was, from now on, hindered by the existence of new centers on its periphery. The master plan proposed that a return to the old center had to take into account urban expansion and the necessary reduction of the new centers. In fact, behind this reasoning there was another, more political, objective, since these centers were the product of new social and political relationships engendered by the war.

The plan’s objective was to transform the new centers on the periphery by creating or maintaining four sub-centers interrelated and linked with the main city center. The intention was to transform these new centers into nodes of specialized and overlapping networks which would complement rather than compete with one other. This objective would have been difficult to implement; nevertheless, it is precisely this which made the 1986 master plan credible, since it sought to modify the traffic and transportation networks created by the post-war city.

Although the new centers to be transformed by the master plan seemed to have been chosen rationally, in reality they were selected to reflect a confessional equilibrium: Nahr al-Mott and Hazmiyeh are located in the predominantly Christian eastern areas around Beirut, while Laylaki and Khaldeh are located in the predominantly Muslim western areas. More specifically, the first two areas are largely Maronite, while the latter two are mostly populated by Druze and Shi`a, respectively. If three of the centers are located on important communication roads, this cannot be said of Laylaki. In addition, the justification for selecting these centers as communication nodes is not convincing, since other, equally adequate, centers exist along the same lines if communication further away.

The technical arguments in the IAURIF plan were quite strong. At the same time, it is worth noting what these arguments avoided: namely that what was presented as the decision of the planners was in fact an acceptance of transformations brought about by the war. This was positive in itself, but the political and institutional context of the plan was still deeply affected by the situation and attitudes of the 1980s. In the plan, Beirut implicitly remained a city split into two distinct parts. This explained, in a way, why the reconstruction of the old city center was left open, and was not updated. It also explained why the plan did not touch on the demarcation line nor the coastal road as zones having central functions. If the plan was unable to arrive at a solution regarding the transformation of these spaces, this was probably because its authors were deeply influenced by the thinking of the time.

Despite its technical merit, the IAURIF plan was lost in the political discourse, and became outdated due to changes on the political scene. Although the plan suffered from its excessive reliance on attitudes prevalent in the 1980s, and did not sufficiently take into consideration future changes, other aspects of the plan are worthremembering because they werimplicitly directed against the political powers of the time. Thus the fact that the plan stressed private intervention as a means to facilitate integration should not be under-estimated, but rather should be considered a reason for updating the plan.