Saving Beirut: heritage and the city

New Dimensions of Identity Politics: Contested Memories in History Museums of the 20th Century

“…The impulses and intentions behind diving into the concept of translocality as part of our collective otherwising (see Macdonald, this volume) were informed by current discussions on mobility and migration, as well as my own research and practice, both within and outside museum and heritage contexts (Puzon 2016;. Although translocality is not necessarily a widely used concept by museum and heritage scholars and practitioners -and is a relatively new approach -it seems to fit into the ongoing debates.…”

Claiming a role for controversies in the framing of local heritage values

“…The first heritage category is related to the Lebanese national identity, whereas the second category is built upon communitarian identities that vary from the street scale through the neighborhood to the city scale. This communitarian identity seems to compete with the national identity, as locals see it as more representative of their city image and identity (Salem, 2011;Ginzarly & Teller, 2018), because agreeing to a definition of a national heritage that could unite the fragmented Lebanese society has been unsuccessful (Sawalha, 2011;Puzon, 2017). As a result, local actors react by rescaling governance arenas from the national and city scales to the urban and neighborhood scales, to establish a collaborative arena at the city level that challenges established heritage discourses and practices.…”

“…This strategy has led to the demolition of many traditional buildings with historic heritage value. In another Lebanese city, Beirut, Puzon (2017) (Nahas, 2001). In 1972, two Mamluk commercial streets, the coppersmith and shoe-maker markets, were demolished to make way for two major transportation arteries.…”

The politics of conservation planning: A comparative study of urban heritage making in the Global North and the Global South

“…We also wished to look at country specific cities with interesting policy characteristics or planning challenges in the implementation of heritage policy. To this end we chose Paris as a city rich in heritage with quite rigid regulations (Cornu, 2003); London as a city with a significant housing crisis often attributed to restrictive planning; (see Cheshire & Hilber, 2008;Cheshire & Dericks, 2014;Hilber, 2015) , Milan as a city with stringent regulations yet recent development trends (Savini & Aalbers, 2016); Rio de Janeiro as a city where rapid urbanisation has led to the destruction of parts of the historic core of the city (Simon & Braathen, 2019), and Beirut a city where postwar reconstruction has done more damage to the historic core than did the war (Puzon, 2019).…”