Recovering Beirut, the result of a workshop organised by the Center for International Studies at MIT on urban planning and socio-economic reconstruction in post-war Lebanon, brings together established professors, young scholars, architects, town planners and entrepreneurs to explore the problems of and prospects for urban planning and to consider visions and strategies for the reconstruction of Lebanon after sixteen years of civil war. This fascinating volume, which opens with an introduction by the eminent scholar Richard Sennett, engages in multi-layered discussion of the problems of spatial, socio-economic and cultural rehabilitation of a fractured social order in the throes of post-war reconstruction. It contains 82 illustrations underlining the impact of the study.

By Robert Sailba.

This book calls for re-conceptualising urban recovery by exploring the intersection of reconstruction and displacement in volatile contexts in the Global South. It explores the spatial, social, artistic, and political conditions that promote urban recovery. Reconstruction and displacement have often been studied independently as two different processes of physical recovery and human migration towards safety and shelter. It is hoped that by intersecting or even bridging reconstruction with displacement we can cross-fertilize and exploit both discourses to reach a greater understanding of the notion of urban recovery as a holistic and multi-layered process. This book brings multidisciplinary perspectives into conversation with each other to look beyond the conflict-related displacement and reconstruction and into the greater processes of crises and recovery. It uses empirical research to examine how trauma, crisis, and recovery overlap, coexist, collide and redefine each other. The core exploration of this edited collection is to understand how the oppositional framing of destruction versus reconstruction and place-making versus displacement can be disrupted; how displacement is spatialized; and how reconstruction is extended to the displaced people rebuilding their lives, environments, and memories in new locations. In the process, displacement is framed as agency, the displaced as social capital, post-conflict urban environments as archives, and reconstructions as socio-spatial practices. With local and international insights from scholars across disciplines, this book will appeal to academics and students of urban studies, architecture, and social sciences, as well as those involved in the process of urban recovery.

Once the cosmopolitan center of the Middle East, Beirut was devastated by the civil war that ran from 1975 to 1991, which dislocated many residents, disrupted normal municipal functions, and destroyed the vibrant downtown district. The aftermath of the war was an unstable situation Sawalha considers "a postwar state of emergency," even as the state strove to restore normalcy. This ethnography centers on various groups' responses to Beirut's large, privatized urban-renewal project that unfolded during this turbulent moment. At the core of the study is the theme of remembering space. The official process of rebuilding the city as a node in the global economy collided with local day-to-day concerns, and all arguments invariably inspired narratives of what happened before and during the war. Sawalha explains how Beirutis invoked their past experiences of specific sites to vie for the power to shape those sites in the future. Rather than focus on a single site, the ethnography crosses multiple urban sites and social groups, to survey varied groups with interests in particular spaces. The book contextualizes these spatial conflicts within the discourses of the city's historical accounts and the much-debated concept of heritage, voiced in academic writing, politics, and journalism. In the afterword, Sawalha links these conflicts to the social and political crises of early twenty-first-century Beirut.

The Bourj in central Beirut is one of the world's oldest and most vibrant public squares. Named after the mediaeval lookout tower that once soared above the city's imposing ramparts, the square has also been known as Place des Canons (after a Russian artillery build-up in 1773) and Martyrs' Square (after the Ottoman execution of nationalists in 1916). As an open museum of civilizations, it resonates with influences from ancient Phoenician to colonial, post-colonial and, as of late, postmodern elements. Over the centuries it has come to embody pluralism and tolerance. During the Lebanese civil war (1975-90), this ebullient entertainment district, transport hub and melting-pot of cultures was ruptured by the notorious Green Line, which split the city into belligerent warring factions. Fractious infighting and punishing Israeli air raids compounded the damage, turning the Bourj into a no-man's-land. In the wake of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri's assassination (14 February 2005), the Bourj witnessed extraordinary scenes of popular, multi-faith and cross-generational protest. Once again, Samir Khalaf argues, the heart of Beirut was poised to re-invent itself as an open space in which diverse groups can celebrate their differences without indifference to the other. By revisiting earlier episodes in the Bourj's numerous transformations of its collective identity, Khalaf explores prospects for neutralizing the disheartening symptoms of reawakened religiosity and commodified consumerism. 'A timely and informative study on Beirut's pre-eminent patch of public space.' The Daily Star 'Khalaf has arguably contributed more fine studies on the history and sociology of modern Lebanon than has any other scholar alive.' Foreign Affairs 'A spirited guide to Beirut's (re)development, lively in style, rich in illustration and perceptive in analysis.' Frederick Anscombe, Birkbeck College, University of London

Presents a geographical/spatial approach to Beirut seeking to understand how the city is imagined in fiction. This book focuses on the urban/rural divide, the city through panoramic views and pedestrian acts, the city as sexualised and gendered, and the city as a palimpsest. It provides a thorough overview of Beirut in the modern Arabic novel.

Notably, studies on the Arabic novel tend to focus on canonical writers, like the Egyptian novelist and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006), and leave out or just mention en passant the work of others. This book is not concerned with the ways in which the Arabic novel breaks away from or reproduces Mahfouz’s approach and techniques, but focuses instead on the way in which the authors in question engage with the phenomena of nationalism, feminism, post- and neo-colonialism, civil war, and social change in the Arab world using an urban scenario as their privileged point of observation. The Arabic city is privileged as a focal point because it is the space where the struggles over issues of nation-building, gender, religion, and class, as well as the patriarchal, colonialist, Zionist, and sectarian violence linked to these issues, manifest themselves most evidently. To this end, From Damascus to Beirut: Contested Cities in Arab Writing brings together four novels published between 1969 and 1989, which have never been approached from this perspective nor put in this kind of dialogue before. Ulfat Idilbi’s Damascus, Ghassan Kanafani’s Haifa, Ahlam Mosteghanemi’s Constantine, and Elias Khoury’s Beirut are social and historical products, and, as such, as Henri Lefebvre maintains, are deeply rooted in politics and affected by ideology. The cities discussed here, in fact, display the ebbs and flows of political and social life in their respective countries and in the Arab world in general. Each city stands at a crucial point in the history of the Arab world, and the way in which they are represented by their respective authors sets the stage for, and sometimes even foreshadows, an upcoming defeat or disappointment. Albeit for different reasons, Damascus, Haifa, Constantine and Beirut are all expressions of failures either on national, political, social, or economic levels. Paradoxically, however, they are also the repositories of their people’s hopes and aspirations, as well as of their disappointments. Analysing these novels as such, this book will be of particular interest to postcolonial readers and, more importantly, to English-speaking readers who are interested in the study of modern Arabic literature. Its close textual analysis offers the reader new tools not only for understanding themes and narrative techniques pertaining to the Arabic novel, but also the contemporary political, cultural and social issues that produced them.