Remaking Beirut: Contesting Memory, Space, and the Urban Imaginary of Lebanese Youth

Abstract

Throughout the centuries Beirut has had an endless capacity for reinvention and transformation, a consequence of migration, conquest, trade, and internal conflict. The last three decades have witnessed the city center's violent self-destruction, its commercial resurrection, and most recently its national contestation, as oppositional political forces have sought to mobilize mass demonstrations and occupy strategic space. While research has been directed to the transformative processes and the principal actors involved, little attention has been given to how the next generation of Lebanese are negotiating Beirut's rehabilitation. This article seeks to address this lacuna, by exploring how postwar youth remember, imagine, and spatially encounter their city. How does Beirut's rebuilt urban landscape, with its remnants of war, sites of displacement, and transformed environs, affect and inform identity, social interaction, and perceptions of the past? Drawing on Henri Lefebvre's analysis of the social construction of space (perceived, conceived, and lived) and probing the inherent tensions within postwar youths' encounters with history, memory, and heritage, the article presents a dynamic and complex urban imaginary of Beirut. An examination of key urban sites (Solidère's Down Town) and significant temporal moments (Independence Intifada) reveals three recurring tensions evident in Lebanese youth's engagement with their city: dislocation and liberation, spectacle and participant, pluralism and fracture. This article seeks to encourage wider discussion on the nature of postwar recovery and the construction of rehabilitated public space, amidst the backdrop of global consumerism and heritage campaigns.

Untitled

“…In the case of accounts documenting the experiences of young people living in post-war Beirut, it is evident that memory is an important issue (e.g. Larkin, 2010). First, young people have to come to terms with personal and familial experiences of war and conflict within the private sphere.…”

“…Yet what exactly constitutes as youth scepticism? Some scholars have pointed towards a continual sense of communal mistrust amongst different religious groups-what Yassin refers to as "co-existence without empathy" (Yassin, 2012;Larkin 2010). Indeed, while the forging of these confessional differences might occur at state level through the personal status law, the materialisation of this form of social stratification is often do so through youth social groups, cultural associations and charities (Labaki,1988).…”

Urban planning approaches in divided cities

“…This project is on-going and it promises social recovery through economic renewal (Fricke, 2005). An ultra-modern global cityscape is being created by futuristic urban landscaping (Larkin, 2010) and this process is under great critique (see, for example, Khalaf and Khoury, 1993;Makdisi, 1997;Gavin and Maluf, 1996).…”

“…• Discontinuity from historical bonds challenges Beirut's cultural and historical memory (Larkin, 2010;Fricke, 2005). …”

“…Throughout the early 90s, Solidere systematically cleared the war damaged urban fabric, creating a tabula rasa at the heart of the city (Larkin, 2010;Nasr, 1996). Makdisi (1997) suggests that by 1993, as much as 80% of all the structures in the downtown were damaged beyond repair, yet only a third of this destruction was war-inflicted.…”