Program on Research, Advocacy & Public Policy-Making in the Arab World

Partisan Urban Governance Restricts Access to Public Space

As well as their many ecological, environmental, and cultural advantages, green urban public spaces are the inalienable right of every citizen.

Dating back 350 years, Beirut’s unique 330,000 m² park is part of the historical Horsh Al-Sanawbar that once measured more than 1,250,000 m². Today the park is concealed from the lives of many Beiruti residents and visitors. Less than 20% is open to the public—with restrictions on practices—whilst over 80% is fenced off with barbed wire and can only be accessed by special permission from the Administrator of Beirut.

Read Policy Memo: English, Arabic (coming soon)
Watch Panel Discussion: English

If you are a critical urbanist, practitioner or researcher, and you believe in political engagement and alternative discourse, join fellow critical urbanists at the 2011 TINAG festival platform. DISCURSIVE FORMATIONS has participated in the 2010 TINAG festival and presented a critical reading of public space in Beirut, based on the work At the Edge of the City.

THIS IS NOT A GATEWAY (TINAG) FESTIVAL 2011

OPEN CALL FOR PROPOSALS (DEADLINE: 05 MAY 2011)

You are invited! Submissions are sought from a lived knowledge/experience perspective, as well as from the widest range of disciplines. Details

“At the Edge of the City” encompasses so many different types of contributions that it can be tough to swallow as a whole. The best, such as linguist Fouad Asfour’s ruminations on the park in “Re: No Choice,” are thoughtful and enjoyable to read.
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One clear thread that runs through the collection is a sense of frustration and outrage at the closure of two-thirds of the park to all but a select group of citizens. This part of the park contains most of the Horsh’s green space, and is accessible only by those with a permit from the mayor’s office.

The Daily Star is the first to review the book, besides featuring it. Special thanks to Jim Quilty in this regard. You can enjoy Slemrod’s review at “Stories about the empty park.”

Read the full article in the Los Angeles Times at “Beirut’s lone public park isn’t” and in The Washington Post at “In Beirut, trying to make a public park open to the public.”

Enjoy & Advocate

Recently in LAU Magazine, Kristen Hope Burchill’s article “Redefining Beirut’s Cityscape” featured At the Edge of the City amidst new projects where “a new generation of ethical designers and architects are challenging conventions.”

Yet a new generation of Lebanese, particularly those with an eye for art, are finding it more difficult to romanticize Lebanon’s paradoxical identity.
An emerging group of architects and graphic designers are mixing their aesthetic imperatives with a critical assessment of Beirut’s ongoing “postwar” reconstruction.

You can read the full article by Burchill on LAU’s ISSUU page.

Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Public Space Enthusiasts,

DISCURSIVE FORMATIONS book At the Edge of the City will be featured during the 2^nd edition of the Festival of Lebanese Art Books (FoLAB). The festival is organized by RectoVerso from 16 to 20 November 2010 at the UNESCO Palace; the opening ceremony is under the patronage of Dr. Tarek Mitri, Minister of Information.

FoLAB will feature over 800 titles of Lebanese art books, and At the Edge of the City will have a signing session on Wednesday 17 November at 7:00 PM. I hope you can join us and enjoy the festival, especially those who didn’t have a look at our work on Beirut’s public space.

Dear All,

Following up on my earlier post, I will present At the Edge of the City at This Is Not A Gateway {TINAG} 3^rd Annual Festival on Saturday 23^rd October at 5:00-6:00 pm, Hanbury Hall (E1), London.

The talk is titled “The grass is never greener except on the other side!” It focuses on reading park closure as a function of constructing landscape representations at city and country levels; the park is loaded with meanings of post-war reconciliation, and the space of everyday public life is dismissed.
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Festival Programme (PDF)

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Participants’ Page

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Festival Schedule

I look forward to interact with you at the festival (if you happen to be in London), and I end by an invitation from Deepa Naik and Trenton Oldfield:

And lastly, we hope to see you at the launch evening is on Thursday 21 October, 7:15pm. We are fortunate to have some delicious ‘Wines from Spain’, music & video clips from Mr Frisbee, special projections by Larisa Balzic, and of course the opening of your exhibitions and films. It will be a nice chance for fellow festival-goers and festival-participants to meet one another before the 3 days of events – one of the most important ‘outcomes’ of the festival has been the new working/friendship/romantic relationships that have been established as a result of the three days together.

In a recent blog post on new additions to their library, Social Media Exchange (SMEX) commented the following about At the Edge of the City:

This beautiful, contemplative collection of essays, photographs, information graphics, and even a poster and a DVD movie related to Beirut’s largest (almost 330,000 square meters) but mostly inaccessible green space, Horsh Al-Sanawbar. Not just a longing for what a Beirut park could be, the book is a call to action.” The SMEX Team a Beirut-based organization specializing in new media training, translation, and creation for civil society groups in Lebanon and the region.

You can drop by to check out what SMEX have, borrow a book, or read at their space.

A piece of Bilal Khbeiz’s “Beirut has become her sea. So, let’s plant the sea!” from “At the Edge of the City” appeared in the blog post-traumaticurbanism.com edited by Adrian Lahoud.

Adrian Lahoud (UTS) has edited a special issue of Architectural Design on Post-traumatic Urbanism with Charles Rice and Anthony Burke. It includes contributions from Slavoj Zizek, Andrew Benjamin, Eyal Weizman, Brian Massumi, Tony Chakar, Mark Fisher, Todd Reisz and Michael Chertoff.

AD Post-traumatic Urbanism on Amazon