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Non-Constructible Parcels Within the

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of Saifi, Bachoura and Zokak El-Blat.

Thesis · July 2014

DOI: 10.13140/2.1.4700.2400

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INSTITUT D’URBANISME DE L’ALBA
Université de Balamand  

Non-constructible
 
parcels within the
 
boundaries of Municipal Beirut:
The case study of Saifi, Bachoura and Zokak El-Blat.
By David Aouad

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of:
Masters in Urban Planning

Prepared under the supervision of Dr. Christine Mady

July 2014
2
  
 
 
INSTITUT D’URBANISME DE L’ALBA
Université de Balamand

Non-constructible parcels within the boundaries of

Municipal Beirut:
The case study of Saifi, Bachoura and Zokak El-Blat
By David Aouad

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of:
Masters in Urban Planning

Prepared under the supervision of Dr. Christine Mady

July 2014

3
Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 8

ABSTRACT 9

1. INTRODUCTION 10

1.1. Context 10

1.2. Statement of the problem and significance 11

1.3. The research scope and objectives 12

2. INTERIM SPACES AND TEMPORARY USE IN THE CITY 15

2.1. Residual and interim spaces in the city 16

2.2. Defining activation components for temporary use 22

2.2.1. Drivers and Uses 22
2.2.2. The context 25
Spatial 25
Social 27
Economic 28
Cultural 30
2.2.3. Regulatory and legislative mechanisms 31
Urban strategies 32
The legal context and reforms 34
The tools for implementing temporary use on residual spaces 35
2.2.4. Actor Categories 40
Owners 40
Municipality and local public authorities 41
Users, NGO’s and activists 42

3. NON-CONSTRUCTIBLE PARCELS IN MUNICIPAL BEIRUT 44

3.1. Lebanese laws and regulations and non-constructible parcels 45
3.2. Major master-plans and non-constructible parcels 48
3.3. Current legislation in Beirut 50
The Authorities: 51
The Operations 54
4
 3.4. The context 58
Spatial 58
Social 58
Economic 59
Cultural 60

4. METHODOLOGY 61

4.1. Mapping 61
4.1.1. Data collection and analysis 61
4.1.2. Use of mapping for this study 62
4.1.3. Selection of study area 63
4.1.4. Limitations 70

4.2. Fieldwork 70
4.2.1. Preparatory work 70
4.2.2. Data collection procedures 71
4.2.3. Data entry 71
Updating maps 71
Identification of parcels 71
Limitations 72

4.3. Interviews 73
4.3.1. Interviews and ethical considerations 74
4.3.2. Development of interview questions 74
4.3.3. Advantages and limitations 74

4.4. Processing empirical data 75

4.4.1. The Input 75
4.4.2. The Processing 75
4.4.3. The Output 75

5. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF CASE STUDIES 76

5.1. Identifying the non-constructible parcels/residual spaces within the three

study areas 76

5.2. Uses 81
5.2.1. Spatial 81
Location/proximity to roads 81
Geographical distribution 85
5
 Form and scale 91
5.2.2. Socio-economic 94
5.2.3. Cultural 99

5.3. Land use 100

5.3.1. Built and non-built parcels 100
5.3.2. Types of occupancy 106

5.4. The regulatory and legislative mechanisms 110

5.4.1. Urban strategies 110
5.4.2. Urban operations 112
Relation between different categories of non-constructible parcels 112
Land consolidation and re-parceling 115
Modern land consolidation and land pooling 116
Real estate companies 116
Expropriation for the sake of public interest 118
5.4.3. Tools 119
Private-Public Partnership (PPP) 119
Permits 120
Agreements and contracts 121
Short term leases and adaptive rental policies 121
Freeing up vacant public space for temporary use 121
Providing benefits for private owners who support temporary uses 122
Strong commitment and support from local municipality to temporary project
initiators 122
Funding and sponsorship 122

5.5. Actors 124

5.5.1. Owners 124
5.5.2. Municipalities and local public authorities 124
5.5.3. Users, NGO’s and activists 124

6. RECOMMENDATIONS 126

6.1. Urban strategies 131

6.2. Urban operations 132

6.3. Temporary use programs and the tools for their implementation 136

6.4. Connectivity and mobility 138

6
7. CONCLUSION 142

REFERENCES 144

APPENDICES 152

LIST OF FIGURES 153

LIST OF TABLES 155

7
 Acknowledgments

First and foremost I offer my sincerest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Christine

Mady, who has supported me throughout my thesis with her patience and knowledge
whilst allowing me the room to work in my own way. I attribute the level of my Masters
degree to her encouragement and effort in reading my numerous revisions, which
helped make some sense out of the confusion. Without her, this thesis would not have
been completed or written.

This thesis would not have been possible without the support of many people.
Many thanks to my friends and colleagues, Philippe Bekhazi, Rouba Wehbe and Hala
Torbey without whom the subject of this thesis would have never seen the day.

And finally, thanks to my wife, parents, and numerous friends who endured this
long process with me, always offering support and love.

I dedicate this thesis to my son Roberto.

8
 Abstract

This research builds on a review of approaches towards the concept of

appropriation of urban space and leftover spaces in particular, focusing on temporary
use as a specific mode of using spaces. This research examines the specificities of
leftover spaces and the role they could play in relation to urban strategies for Municipal
Beirut. The current Lebanese urban legislation acknowledges a certain number of
parcels as non-constructible, and the reasons behind that non-constructability label
include visual clearance on street corners and intersections, management of parcel
densification to control increased built density on parcels and avoiding transferring its
odd forms into the volumetric of the buildings. To incorporate the non-constructible
parcels within the existing urban fabric and implement a strategy that will allow flexible
and innovative management of these parcels, the planning regulations would require
adjustments to the requirements and implications of a situation where programs
assigned to these parcels can contribute to better urban life. Through the collection and
the analysis of data on non-constructible parcels in the study districts of Saifi, Bachoura
and Zokak El-Blat, within Beirut Municipality, recommendations for urban strategies,
urban operations, tools and temporary use programs will be developed.

9
1. Introduction
In 2011, the United Nations projected Beirut's population at 2 million in 2015, 2.1
million in 2020 and 2.14 million in 2025 relative to 1.9 million in 2010, 1.8 million in
2005, 1.5 million in 2000, 1.27 million in 1995 and 1.29 million in 1990 (UN-Habitat,
2011). Within the context of this growing urbanization on a territory that can no longer
accommodate such growth, and the lack in open and public spaces to respond to
users’ needs, Beirut finds within its realm an urban resource that can no longer be
ignored. This research is an inquiry into non-constructible spaces, regarding their
values and potentialities for temporary use projects for the city, based on their
contribution to the public realm.

1.1. Context
As cities struggle to adapt to the conditions of the 21st century, and as changes in
society, culture, technology and the economy are driving new types of urbanism to
intriguing manifestations, today’s understanding of public spaces is shifting from the
traditional focus on squares, parks and pavements to a broader concept that
recognizes the value of less formal leftover spaces and the daily interactions that occur
in them (Bishop & Williams, 2012). It is through this manifestation and the emergence
of a more dynamic, flexible or adaptive urbanism, that the city could become more
responsive to new needs, demands and the preferences of its users.

Over the past decade, research in the field of residual spaces and temporary
uses has been very active acknowledging a phenomenon that has started since the
nineties in Berlin (Beekmans, 2009). A project by Klaus Overmeyer, and his office
Urban Catalyst emphasize the strategic importance of temporary use projects for urban
development (Overmeyer, 2007). Defying the confines of traditional urban planning by
linking residual and leftover spaces to temporary use projects, and profiting from a lack
of regulations in the German capital, led to a series of experimentations and pop-up
projects in the city (Beekmans, 2009). In 2007, Ingerborg Junge-Reyer, a senator for
Urban Development Berlin stated:

“Vacant sites and disused premises are a constraint but a prerequisite of

restructuring. They are the spaces of the future: a training ground and
experimental zone for the future. They are part of a city’s wealth” (Hjelmstad &
Øren, 2013, p. 3).
In American and European cities, such residual spaces may include spaces
below buildings, street corners, rooftops, awkward wedges between developed spaces,
squatted empty properties, redundant or oversized infrastructure and derelict land.

10
They may also include those spaces between and around buildings (Villagomez, 2010).
Tools such as the “Liegenschaftsfonds” in Berlin (Colomb, 2012) and the “Authorization
Agreement” in Leipzig (Heck & will, 2007) as well as programs such as the “Public
Plaza” program in New York (Pfeifer, 2013), the “Meanwhile London’ project in London
(Killing Architects, 2008), and the “Pop-Up Places” in Calgary (Pfeifer, 2013) have
brought forward cities’ wills to acknowledge and investigate the potential of residual
spaces.

Recent manifestations have seen light in New York with a project entitled
“Reclaiming the street related filler space”, in which Mayor Bloomberg and the city of
New York had allocated a budget of 20 Billion US dollars to develop a hardcore
resiliency strategy that doubles a community amenity (Clendaniel, 2013). Gensler, the
design firm in charge of developing this concept, proposed to use the street-related
fillers, concrete medians in the middle of the streets as well as the odd shaped traffic
medians to install green architecture, solar electricity and recycle food waste
(Clendaniel, 2013).

Mapping the potential of unused and residual spaces have also been a very
active operation in cities such as Oslo (Soldeberg, 2011) and Sweden (Wikström,
2005), where many projects have focused on identifying the potential of leftover spaces
such as underdeveloped lots, inactive public spaces and abandoned buildings.

1.2. Statement of the problem and significance

The current Lebanese urban legislation acknowledges a certain number of
parcels as non-constructible, and the reasons behind that non-constructability label
include visual clearance on street corners and intersections, management of parcel
densification to control increased built density on parcels and avoiding transferring its
odd forms into the volumetric of the buildings (El-Achkar E. , 1998). At present
municipal Beirut holds within its urban fabric a high number of residual or leftover
spaces that are labeled as non-constructible. The potential of these urban land
resources within the boundaries of Municipal Beirut are yet to be explored. These
unexploited parcels may be the result of gaps in the laws and regulation system as well
as a political and social laissez-faire by the authorities leading to consequent actions by
some citizens. Also, this urban situation in Beirut is still poorly understood and shows
that authorities are not yet aware of the potential of these resources. Acknowledging
the presence and the potential of these parcels, and learning from examples in
European and American cities, will provide some benefits for the Municipality of Beirut.

11
Consultants and interested private parties who seek to enhance the quality of life in
Municipal Beirut will also benefit from putting together strategies for urban projects that
respond to the needs of the users.

1.3. The research scope and objectives

This thesis seeks to answer the research questions: How can non-constructible
parcels within Municipal Beirut host temporary use programs that are integrated within
the urban fabric?

In order to address this question, it will be important to develop, throughout this

thesis a consistent understanding of the public and private realm in Municipal Beirut
with a focus on non-constructible parcels. This research builds on a review of
approaches towards the concept of appropriation of urban space and leftover spaces in
particular, focusing on temporary use as a specific mode of using spaces (Aral, 2009).
This research examines the specificities of leftover spaces and the role they could play
in relation to urban strategies for Municipal Beirut. Both actual use and physical
characteristics of these spaces are important, with the claim that such disregarded
urban spaces can be conceived as valuable for the city. This thesis will attempt to
explore the characteristics and potential of leftover spaces in the context of Municipal
Beirut, specifically the districts of Saifi, Bachoura and Zokak El-Blat.

To incorporate the non-constructible parcels within the existing urban fabric and
implement a strategy that will allow flexible and innovative management of these
parcels, the planning regulations would require adjustments to the requirements and
implications of a situation where programs assigned to these parcels can contribute to
better urban life. New policies and urban law proposals need to be advanced.
Stakeholders including owners, developers, authorities, activists or citizens, all need to
collaborate for the purpose of a planning approach that meets the needs of the user.

Based on the research question stated earlier, the objectives of this thesis are to:

• Identify the non-constructible parcels within one part of Municipal Beirut,

• Validate the reasons behind the current non-constructability status of these
parcels,
• Classify the non-constructible parcels by types in order to identify which can be
used in a temporary use program,
• Examine the different drivers behind new urban strategies for urban planning
and how temporary use programs emerge as a result of these strategies,
• Define a strategy for the temporary use of non- constructible parcels and
surfaces,

12
 • Propose new laws and regulations to facilitate the integration of the non-
constructible parcels in the current urban fabric,
• Set a systematic framework for further similar studies of other areas in Beirut.

Regarding the structure of the thesis, it comprises seven chapters including this
introduction. Chapter 2 of this thesis, reviews residual and interim spaces in the city
and discusses the various approaches and strategies in regards to their integration
within the urban fabric. Chapter 2 also defines the components that are necessary for
activating residual spaces and the drivers behind the implementation of temporary use
programs. Urban characteristics related to use and context will be examined. Chapter 2
further explores the regulatory and legislative mechanisms that are currently used
abroad, in order to understand the existing legal framework that manages interim
spaces. Finally, this chapter will overview the actors that play a role in managing and
implementing temporary use programs in residual spaces. These actors could be
private or public, Waqf, developers, local public authorities or other informal actors
such as users, NGO’s or activists.

Chapter 3 examines the non-constructible parcels in Beirut, the existing laws and
regulations that manage them and the spatial, socio-economic and cultural context they
are in, in an attempt to compare with literature review on international situations from
chapter 2. Chapter 4 explains the methodology used in this research including the data
collection methods, mapping and mapping criteria, selection of the case study area,
fieldwork and interviews, the analysis of the empirical work and the limitations of the
various methods used. Chapter 5 presents the analysis of the empirical data based on
the characteristics defined in Chapter 3. Also, this chapter sets the ground for future
recommendations and guidelines.

Chapter 6 proposes the application of all the leanings from previous chapters on
specific scenarios within the study districts and presents the interpretation of results
and future recommendations that are proposed regarding urban strategies, operations,
tools and temporary use programs in relation to non-constructible parcels. Actors and
involved players’ roles including the municipality will be redefined in light of
implementing the proposed approaches. Final recommendations for the
implementation of temporary use programs on non-constructible parcels in Beirut will
be also be proposed.

Chapter 7 is the conclusion, which presents a summary of the findings and

recommendation in regards to non-constructible parcels and temporary use programs.

13
The research limitations will also be reviewed and recommendations for further
research will be laid out.

14
2. Interim spaces and temporary use in the city
Temporary use refers to temporary activation of vacant or underused land or
buildings with no immediate development demand. Hence, any use of space for other
than its common use for a specific period of time is temporary use. While the term
temporary use is used when referring to the activities themselves, the term interim
refers to the spaces used on a temporary basis (Colomb, 2012). For the purpose of this
thesis, Colomb’s definitions will be adopted, and hence any residual space being
assigned a program of a temporary nature will be referred to as “interim” (Colomb,
2012, p. 135).

Before discussing the terms “interim” and temporary use, this chapter starts by
reviewing the various interpretations, meanings, uses and synonyms of the term
residual space, in order to understand the urban situation they represent as well as the
context they integrate. The Oxford English Dictionary defines residual as “amount still
remaining after part is subtracted or accounted for; a remainder”1. In an urban context
the definition of the term residual spaces is not generally specific to, or describes, one
type of urban situation. The term “residual spaces” will be used, throughout this thesis,
to designate a space without a specific function.

Rather than making an exhaustive review of the literature on the topic of residual
spaces, Section 2.1 illustrates how approaches on this subject have shifted over time,
from a mere acknowledgment of residual spaces as an urban problem to the
envisioning of these spaces as an opportunity to implement temporary uses in times of
crisis and economic downturn. Residual spaces will be reviewed in terms of scale, land
use, location and users.

Section 2.2 reviews the components required to activate the use of such spaces
in order to become “interim” spaces, and explains the drivers and uses, the context, the
regulatory process as well as the actors involved in this activation process. The
residual spaces comparison between both international cases and the Beirut, will have
for a purpose, after validation through empirical data in chapter 5, to define and classify
non-constructible parcels within Municipal Beirut as well as to develop and implement
adequate strategies for temporary use programs, with an objective of integrating them
within the urban fabric, hence answer this research’s question.

1
Concise Oxford English Dictionary: the Luxury Edition, p.1224, 2011
15
 2.1. Residual and interim spaces in the city
Rather than finding space in existing urban fabrics, cities tend to grow outwards,
leaving wasteland in the inner core of the city. What Koolhas refers to as “junkspace” in
his article with the same title (Koolhaas, 2002) are these wasteland, or more generally
the residue that mankind leaves on the planet. In many European and American cities,
the term residual space is being used to describe various urban situations such as
spaces between, spaces around, rooftops, wedges, redundant infrastructure, oversized
infrastructure, void spaces and spaces below (Villagomez, 2010).

Since the 1980’s, literature on the subject of residual spaces can be viewed as a
reflection of the evolution of contemporary society in European and American cities.
Authors such as Trancik (1986), Bauman (2001) and Koolhas (2002), in their quest to
mitigate the shortcomings of modernism’s planning, referred to the concept of residual
spaces as an undesirable urban situation leading to urban incoherence and emptiness,
others throughout their architectural works such as Winterbottom (2000), Knapfel
(2001) and Atelier Bow Wow (2002) began to acknowledge their presence as a driving
force in the urban fabric and described it in their work. The publications of Thompson
(2002), Studio Urban Catalyst (2003), Wikstrom (2005), Haydn and Temel (2006),
Philipp Oswalt, Philipp Misselwitz and Laus Overmeyer (2007) and the more recent
works of Sheridan (2008), Hou (2010) and Colomb (2012) did not only describe this
urban situation but also acknowledged them as opportunities and proposed solutions
and programs while assuming the efficiency and potential of these residual spaces in
the city.

Put aside their divergent stands on residual spaces, these authors, amongst
many others, share a common goal and that is their wills to integrate residual spaces in
the urban fabric. In trying to understand the reasons behind the emergence of these
spaces, one could only start to acknowledge the problem in an attempt to find
solutions. On the issue of lost space or the inadequate use of space that afflicts most
urban centers today, Trancik (1986) states that a) increased dependence on the
automobile, b) attitude of architects of modern movements towards open space where
designing the in-between space is ignored, c) urban-renewal and zoning policies in
architectural design that divided the city, d) dominance of private over public interests
and e) unwillingness on the part of contemporary institutions to assume responsibility
for the public urban environment, and f) changes in land use in the inner city, had an
impact on negative spaces in cities. In his critique of modernism’s planning, Trancik
(1986) highlights the source of many of today’s planning heritage that have resulted in
16
the loss of values and meanings that were traditionally associated with urban open
space, hence determine the vast amount of residual space in it.

Moreover, the radically changing economic and industrial context as well as the
shifting of employment towards new patterns has led to a number of lost spaces in the
urban core (Trancik, 1986). Citing the case studies of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Trancik
(1986) classifies these lost spaces as mainly industrial land, underutilized railroads
land, riverfront and waterfronts available for redevelopment within the city boundary. In
addressing the issue of lost space throughout his systematic examination of the crisis
of the contemporary city, yet with the purpose of highlighting its potential and its need
for redesign, Trancik (1986) was amongst the first to refer to this urban situation as
undesirable:

“Generally speaking, lost spaces are the undesirable urban areas that are in
need of redesign--anti spaces, making no positive contribution to the
surrounding or users. They are ill-defined, without measurable boundaries,
and fail to connect elements in a coherent way” (Trancik, 1986, p. 4)
However, in order to achieve integrated urban design, Trancik discusses the
opportunity for planners to add another layer to the traditional panning tools and that is
“Place Theory” (Trancik, 1986, p. 97). In the same manner as Kevin Lynch, Trancik
proposes that planners “must more than superficially explore the local history, the
feelings and needs of the populace, the traditions of craftsmanship and indigenous
materials, and the political and economic realities of the community” (Trancik, 1986, p.
114). He maintains that planners must determine what the configuration want to be
within the existing setting and in respect to the human requirements.

According to Bauman (2001), this undesirable urban situation consists of a dual

emptiness. In the context of residual spaces, he defines two facets: firstly in his
description of neglected, non-colonized and leftover spaces that seem to describe
some kind of residual space, public only in a broad sense of the word; secondly, what
Bauman refers to as empty spaces of the mental maps of different inhabitants, is a
general condition of urban space and also a precondition of residual space (Bauman,
2001). In his description of urban space, Bauman (2001, p. 24) identifies four regions
that represent “disuse”: The places with the sort of inhospitable emptiness that he finds
in the open spaces such as La Defense, Paris where its monumentality offers visitors
nowhere to rest, no place to inhabit if just for a moment and the places that are temples
of consumption and places without a place such as malls and shopping centers. These
two types of “disuse” cover significant regions of today’s public space; however,

17
Bauman (2001) finds it necessary to make a couple of additions: The Non-places that
are typically places where people spend long hours such as airports, hotels,
motorways, public transportation and Empty spaces that are places to which no
meaning is ascribed; the experience of them does not include sense making such as
leftover spaces.

“They are the waste products of architectural blue printing and the neglected
fringes of urbanist visions” (Bauman, 2001, p. 26).
Residual spaces as a result of urban sprawl and socio-economic crisis has
produced large scale unwanted and undesired architecture (Koolhaas, 2002). The
debate on this phenomenon, in the previously cited references, was more focused on
the large-scale projects that divide the city, and proposed solutions explicitly stated that
these gaps in the spatial continuity of the city should be filled with a framework of
buildings and inter-connected open-space opportunities that will generate new
investments (Trancik, 1986). In contrast, Winterbottom’s (2000) re-evaluation of
residual space, looking specifically at the Seattle neighborhood context, acknowledges
common urban spaces as residual spaces and defines them as such: the non-spaces,
the leftover spaces and the dual-uses spaces.

“Non-spaces are movement corridors that include median strips and right-of-
way along highways and roads; leftover spaces are odd geometric spaces
adjacent to intersections, setback frontages, underpasses, easements and
traffic islands; dual-uses spaces are areas that are heavily used at certain
times but largely vacant at others such as parking lots after business hours”
(Winterbottom, 2000, p. 41).
Nevertheless, some spaces that already hold a function in the urban fabric, such
as old railways, side gaps, cemeteries, and other lost spaces, are spaces with an
unleashed potential of playing a crucial role in filling the gaps, the ones of neighborly
public spaces that people can appropriate and adapt. In that sense Thompson (2002)
narrows the field to a neighborly scale and maintains that these indeterminate areas of
open space that have been often neglected have been called loose-fit places
(Thompson, 2002). These are spaces that can be multifunctional but are often
undersigned and unregulated spaces; they can be ruins, or found spaces that can be
conveniently located and offer a sense of freedom and yet safe. It is these types of
unconventional spaces that can fill those much-needed gaps. By acknowledging the
efficiency of these spaces and by trying to design them accordingly, a gap can be
bridged between unwanted and residual space and a much-needed open space. A
densely populated city can have other needs than greenery, intangible needs that only

18
residents of certain neighborhoods can define, such as empty spaces becoming
extensions of streets. However:

“Loose-fit spaces aren’t necessarily places with no rules, but rather places
where rules are continually being invented” (Thompson, 2002, p. 69).
Loose-fit spaces, according to Thompson need to be redesigned to integrate the
urban fabric, however rules for their integration need not to be fixed, they could rather
be defined by the users’ needs and may change accordingly. While Thompson
attaches land use to the loose-fit space and, Franck and Stevens (2007) discuss the
informal use of everyday space, and where the space itself becomes detached from
the function to occur in it. These spaces, according to Franck and Stevens (2007), give
the city its vitality and life, they provide opportunities for activities such as relaxation,
buying, selling, protesting and other.

So far, selected literature discussed the topic of residual spaces and the manner
in which authors view their integration to the urban fabric. From city scale to
neighborhood scale, selected authors have dealt with residual spaces as part of the
existing land use and no temporary use programs were proposed. In the following
paragraphs, the notion of temporary use as an activity assigned to a residual space will
be introduced, hence the term “interim”.

The term “Interim spaces” (Colomb, 2012, p. 135) refers to the spaces used
temporarily in a variety of ways, to grasp the open-ended sense of “in-betweenness”
(Colomb, 2012, p. 135), interventions and unexpected possibilities present in such
activities and spaces. The term “Interim” suggest a fluidity or temporality, rather than an
understanding of time measured and designated as insignificant or as located between
the real times of before development and after development (Colomb, 2012). In order
to identify these spaces, the Department for Urban Development has classified vacant
plots to five types (Colomb, 2012, p. 134): The abandoned industrial areas, the
abandoned infrastructure sites such as harbors or railways or the Tempelhof airport,
the disused buildings in the eastern part of the city, the disused cemeteries, and
roughly 1000 buildings. These vacant areas are defined by the same Department for
Urban Development as areas currently not used or cared for, on which variegated
stands of vegetation can develop (including sand beaches, other non-vegetation-filled
areas, ditches, landfills and wet areas) (Colomb, 2012).

As pioneers on the subject on temporary uses and temporary spaces in

residential areas in the context of the city of Berlin, Studio Urban Catalyst (2003) begin
19
to look at residual as “interim” spaces. They explain that these locations range from
post-industrial landscapes to vacant infrastructure, former housing settlements, disused
public service facilities, infill properties and empty retail units, offices or apartments
(Studio Urban Catalyst, 2003). Their attempt to reopen the debate on strategies and
tools of planning both inside and outside the vocabulary of conventional urban planning
has led them to define the various criteria for temporary use operations, depicting the
main typologies of temporary uses, the agents, the tactics, the programs and tools as
well as the users (Studio Urban Catalyst, 2003).

Besides their classification as per land use, Studio Urban Catalyst (2003) go on
to classify the residual spaces in terms of meaning and function in regards of the
different users’ groups: the classification includes three types: (a) the reserve or niche,
a category that hosts system refugees, dropouts and migrants, (b) the playground or
parallel universe to host part time activists and (c) the incubator to host start-ups
(Studio Urban Catalyst, 2003). As an extension of their studies part of Studio Urban
Catalyst and In “Urban Pioneers: Temporary Use and Urban Development in Berlin”,
Oswald, Philipp and Overmeyer (2007), through a series of experimentations, essays
and interviews, proposed new guidelines for shaping urban development. The idea of
temporary use which has been defined as activity in spaces currently unsuitable or
undesirable in mainstream economic cycles is of increasing strategic importance for
urban development around the world (Overmeyer, 2007). As individuals and
government agencies pioneer new prospects at disused sites that defy traditional urban
planning, interim spaces begin to emerge in Berlin. Skate parks in abandoned industrial
zones, ponies grazing alongside the former Berlin Wall, flea markets in empty
warehouses, music and fashion shows in hard-to-rent retail locations has made
radically widespread use of temporary use projects in Berlin that spread later
throughout Europe (Overmeyer, 2007).

Moreover, the idea of interim spaces becoming platforms for citizen participation
and providing an experimental opportunity for an urban platform for democratic action
and human expression (Haydn & Temel, 2006) adds another social layer to the
integration of residual spaces in the city. They encourage planners to look beyond the
city's fixed boundaries so that citizens can participate in the creation of temporary
spaces, rather than being automatons in fixed spaces that planners negotiate with
private development (Haydn & Temel, 2006).

20
 Residual spaces also play a role in suturing the city’s fabric. In Sweden, and
based on investigations on residual spaces in Fleminsberg, Wikström (2005) highlights
the symbiotic relationship that residual spaces have with the city:

“Residual spaces, buffer zones and vacant land do separate one zone of
building from the other, but they also connect the enclaves and afford
opportunities of a range of actions” (Wikström, 2005, p. 48).
This networking role that residual spaces could play is an important component in
the integration of these spaces within the urban fabric. This network could be as basic
as a walking path. Wikström (2005) further explores this option by highlighting the
informal footpaths as the most evident traces of everyday human activities. He
identifies four types: the shortcuts, the access paths that provide access to significant
places, the wandering paths and the sidewalk paths. They result in the intensification of
spaces and places by filling the gaps in the urban fabric, suturing at some points
fragmented fabric, creating on the other hand much needed functions and uses (Marti,
2009). Moreover, and in reference to Berlin’s spaces of subculture, Sheridan (2008)
defines vacant and abandoned properties as “indeterminate territories”; “any area,
space or building where the city’s normal forces of control have not shaped how we
perceive, use and occupy them” (Sheridan, 2008, p. 98). These places which are not
readily identified and included in the understanding of cities nevertheless have a
consequential, symbiotic although often under-recognized relationship to the rest of the
city (Sheridan, 2008).

The evolution of the meaning of the term residual space coincides, as we have
seen, with changes in each city’s economic, social, political and urban situation, and
along with those changes, different land uses are associated with the interpretation of
these spaces. It was explained throughout this section that there were two
distinguished approaches to residual spaces within the urban fabric; one that
acknowledged these spaces as problematic and undesirable spaces and the other that
saw in these situations an opportunity to develop temporary use programs. Both
approaches shared a common concern and that is the integration of these spaces
within the urban fabric. Integrated urban design with “Place Theory” (Trancik, 1986), re-
designing spaces that already hold a certain function in order to fill a much-needed gap
(Thompson, 2002), detaching the function from the spaces to vitalize the city (Franck &
Stevens, 2007), platforms for citizen participation (Haydn & Temel, 2006), and
networking role in suturing the city’s fabric (Wikström, 2005) are certain strategies
explained in this section in order to integrate residual spaces in the urban fabric. The

21
shift from residual to interim spaces was also discussed and tit was explained that the
classification of these spaces varied from one based on land use and another based on
user’s groups.

In order to activate those spaces and furthermore implement a given temporary

use program, there are a number of components that need to co-exist. Section 2.2 will
review these components as well as the drivers that generate the emergence of interim
spaces.

2.2. Defining activation components for temporary use

Strategies for the implementation of temporary use programs and the activation
of residual spaces require the co-existence of certain components. This section
explains at first what drives the emergence of temporary use programs in relation to
their uses and then, using specific examples of temporary use on interim spaces, it
depicts the spatial social, economical and cultural context that accompanies these
implementations, the regulatory process that legislates them as well as the actors that
are involved in them. Comparing these drivers with the Beirut case, reviewed in chapter
3, will be crucial in assessing the readiness of the city of Beirut to implement temporary
use programs on non-constructible parcels.

2.2.1. Drivers and Uses

In North American and European cities, and especially in Berlin, the natural
breeding ground for alternative urban planning and especially temporary uses,
strategies are being elaborated regarding the potential role of temporary activities in
urban areas and interim solutions to urban problems are being implemented (Bishop &
Williams, 2012). In the work of Overmeyer, Oswalt and Misselwitz (Oswalt, Overmeyer,
& Misselwitz, 2013) temporary uses in interim spaces in the city of Berlin have been the
center of attention for urban planners seeking to cash on local urbanism issues in
replacement of more classical urban planning tools (Haydn & Temel, 2006).

Behind the strategies elaborated there are various drivers. Bishop and Williams
(2012) emphasize that other than uncertainty, there are numerous drivers and
conditions for temporary urbanism such as vacancy, the revolution in the workspace,
the intensity in the use of space and new technologies. Satellite urbanization, economic
and profound demographic change in American cities like Detroit, Buffalo and
Cleveland has led to shrinkage in the population and thus vacancy in property. It may
be associated with a slump in the property market or other causes but whatever the
cause of vacant property, the availability of vacant spaces or voids appears to be

22
significant in allowing temporary activities to take hold, and flourish. Another driver to
temporary use in the United Kingdom (Bishop & Williams, 2012) has been the
continuing rise in the amount of vacant retail floor space in town centers. Similar
vacancy situation is found in the case of Berlin (Colomb, 2012) and Leipzig (Heck &
will, 2007). The low economic growth rate and the high unemployment rates of Berlin
since the mid-1990s has left the city with empty sites and wastelands that punctuate
the city’s landscape and that not only on the urban fringe but also in central areas
(Colomb, 2012). Leipzig was deserted by more than 100,000 inhabitants, which left it
with 2000 infill sites and that loss of physical and social density have generated new
patterns of urban space and its use (Heck & will, 2007). In cities like Berlin and London
pop-up shops, pop-up art, restaurants markets and temporary shops were set up as a
response to vacancy. These programs do not need a big amount of cash to set up, and
are usually run by artists and designers from different fields and more generally people
who are young and outside the wealthy circle (Bishop & Williams, 2012).

Another driver is the revolution in the workspace. With the rise of flexible working,
self-employment, virtual organizations, virtual meetings, work-life integration, greater
diversity in the workforce and more creativity and playfulness, work is becoming a
sequence of temporary projects that are diverse in range and may operate from
different bases within the city. Because of changes in working practices, new
technologies and increasingly transient and mobile urban lifestyles, more activities are
spilling onto the streets. The result is that public space has both a greater diversity and
intensity of uses. Finally the emergence of new technologies such as Wi-Fi, networks
and extremely developed communication systems, saw the development of the smart
city that is strongly impacting the use of space. People have now the freedom to work
from almost anywhere they chose.

Strategies elaborated can be user dependent, and Studio Urban Catalyst defines
the “tactics” of temporary users, i.e. the ways users use a site (Studio Urban Catalyst,
2003). Although users make little or no built changes due to small financial resources
and limited time frame, the following typologies of temporary uses were distinguished
(Studio Urban Catalyst, 2003): First the stand-in that is where temporary uses do not
have any lasting effect on the location, but only use the vacant space for the time
available; second the impulse where temporary use gives an impulse for the future
development of the site by establishing new programs at a certain location, for
example the Berlin Club WMF followed by London Media Company and the Squatting
of Kokos Factory in Helsinki; third the consolidation and that is when temporary use
23
establishes itself at a location and is transformed to a permanent use as in Berlin Club
Tresor or the Arena as a concert hall/ event location. The consolidation can also take
place at a different location (e.g. Berlin-Tempodrom, Kunstwerke, Cable Factory
Helsinki); fourth the Coexistence where temporary use continues to exist (in a smaller
size) even after establishment of a formal permanent site at the location as in the Flee
market and Yaam Club at Arena Berlin; fifth the Parasite where temporary use is
developed in dependence of existing permanent uses and takes advantage of existing
potentials and availability of space as in the Market at Berlin Ostbahnhof; sixth the
Subversion where temporary use is interrupting an existing permanent use (institution)
by squatting as a political action as the Squatting of Factory Alactel in Berlin-Neukölln
and Squatting of Universities; seventh the Pioneer where temporary use is the first
urban use of the site, establishing a way of settlement, which might become permanent
as the Building of World Expo’s which have intended to be temporary but became
permanent; last the Displacement, where permanent institution is displaced for a
limited period of time and during this time established in an improvised way as a
temporary use as the Displacement of railway-station at Berlin Ostbahnhof in the year
2000.

These user oriented tactics are very much dependent of the flexibility of the
existing regulations and the culture of the users. Their existence could influence how
regulatory reforms are made and in what direction they should be headed. In a city like
Berlin, where local authorities are leaning towards the encouragement of such
implementations in certain areas to vitalize urban life and activate the city’s economy,
such tactics are common practice. Moreover, in order to engage these strategies within
the urban context, it is interesting to note how the city of Berlin’s promotional discourse
contextualizes the spatial qualities of the temporary uses and interim spaces. By using
what is called place marketing, which is an intentional and organized process of
construction and dissemination of a discourse on a city in order to attract tourists and
investors (Colomb, 2012). The process is spatial in the sense that it:

“Seeks to mediate or construct a defined identity for a particular geographical

space, and usually makes use of spatial metaphors and of specific
architectural symbols characterizing that place in the process.” (Colomb,
2012, p. 141).
Cities such as London share the same concerns, and in an interview with urban
planner Peter Bishop on the Meanwhile London Project ( (Killing Architects, 2008), it
was noted that London’s interest in temporary projects is driven by a number of things:
it is first a response to the economic downturn and while there is an entire generation
24
who will never have a conventional career, a lot of boundaries between professions,
such as architecture and graphic design are being broken down. Moreover, the
increase in home working and mobile technology leads to a different use of space and
there is the ability to enter the market with very low capital outlay (Killing Architects,
2008).

These drivers and user dependent tactics are not only found in cities like Berlin.
More recent projects such as the High Line in New York (NYC Parks, 2013),
Meanwhile London (Killing Architects, 2008), PlaNYC (Pfeifer, 2013), and Calgary Pop-
Up Places (Pfeifer, 2013) have also developed and implemented strategies that are
user dependent and rely heavily on the same drivers explained previously. Some have
a more ambitious program, are larger in scale and require more effort in terms of
funding, collaboration and authorities’ involvements; others are easier to implement.
The following section, explains the different components that have co-existed in these
projects, along with examples from Berlin, in order to understand the elaborated
strategies for the implementation of temporary use programs on residual spaces.

2.2.2. The context

For every temporary use implementation project to be successful there needs to
be a spatial, social, cultural, economic, functional and political context conductive to the
project’s success (Killing Architects, 2008). A successful project also means the
integration of residual spaces within the urban fabric, in that sense, the identification of
the contextual parameters and their validity in the case of Beirut will be an important
factor in the transfer of information regarding the applicability of temporary use
programs and the integration of residual spaces/non-constructible parcels within the
city.

Spatial
The physical manifestation of cities features certain elements such as density,
transportation, infrastructure, parcels and the built. The examination of these elements
must acknowledge those that have the greatest impact on individual urban fabrics and
thereby on the development of the entire city. Studio Urban Catalyst (Studio Urban
Catalyst, 2003) acknowledges that urban development processes in Europe produces
time gaps. These time gaps are where the former use comes to an end whereas the
future use has not yet started. In another words time gaps are times where the urban
context is shifting from one state to another, resulting from crisis.

25
 “This spatial vacuum is a fundamental and necessary urban context in order to
allow for temporary use in cities (Studio Urban Catalyst, 2003, p. 6).
The spatial vacuum created by the time gaps could indicate to a certain degree
how receptive is a neighborhood, area or district to the implementation of temporary
use programs on residual spaces and hence encourage the elaboration of temporary
use strategies in them.

In the case of the High Line in New York (NYC Parks, 2013), an elevated freight
rail line transformed into a public park on Manhattan’s West Side, opened to
commercial rail traffic in 1930 and closed in 1980 and made irrelevant by the
dominance of commercial trucking, the time gaps factor exists and the spatial vacuum
is generated by the abandoned tracks. This vacuum gave the planners a termination
point for their story and the starting point for a sustainable design (Goldhagen, 2010).
Owned by the City of New York, and maintained and operated by Friends of the High
Line it is now an extraordinary public space for all visitors to enjoy (NYC Parks, 2013).

In London, the Meanwhile London competition was launched in late 2010. It

asked for proposals, together with rough business plans, for three sites in the Royal
Docks area of East London. The objective of the Meanwhile London project was to
create some interim spaces on an empty site, so they can draw attention to the area
and act as a marketing tool for the developer or landowner ahead of development
(Killing Architects, 2008). The spatial vacuum effect is highlighted when these sorts of
temporary use programs can also be used to start to build community in a location
even before anything else is built (Killing Architects, 2008).

On the other hand, there are some smaller scale examples such as the Public
Plaza Program in New York. In 2007 PlaNYC, a long-term plan for sustainability within
the City of New York was developed and a public plaza program was elaborated. Each
City department was given the overall goals of the plan and was asked to figure out
ways in which they could achieve them (Pfeifer, 2013). One goal of PlaNYC was to
ensure all residents lived within a 10-minute walk of quality open space. In response,
the City’s Department of Transportation (DOT) developed an application-based
program where community groups and non-profits in all five boroughs could apply to
turn a piece of underused street, such as the public right of ways (almost 25% of the
land in New York) owned by the DOT, into a public plaza (Pfeifer, 2013).

Furthermore, the City of Calgary is currently experimenting with an idea called

Pop-Up Places, a collection of temporary uses and activities to make use of vacant

26
spaces throughout the city (Pfeifer, 2013). The Victoria Park BRZ, located in an older
area on the edge of downtown Calgary, started to examine ways to activate vacant lots
in their district. Over two dozens vacant lots were sitting in a holding pattern as surface
parking and inactive construction sites (Pfeifer, 2013).

It is evident that the scale of the projects varies from one project to the other.
Large-scale residual spaces such as abandoned industrial areas, abandoned
infrastructure sites such as harbors or railways, abandoned airport, disused buildings,
and disused cemeteries or even alleyways, access paths, corners, sidewalks, median
strips have the potential to generate time gaps and spatial vacuums, hence attract the
implementation of temporary use programs. Scale plays an important role in defining
the program and the future use of the site.

Social

“Temporary colonizers of space or space pioneers are evidence of a trend to a

greater social commitment. The function that a specific space can have, more
specifically of temporary use, plays an important role in the suturing of social
fabrics” (Studio Urban Catalyst, 2003).
In that sense, the High Line project (NYC Parks, 2013) has become one of the
most popular public spaces in the city of New York. Its picturesque views are perhaps
its biggest draw along with a number of public art installations. Under the elevated park
is a temporary public plaza featuring food trucks. However, projects like the High Line
aren’t universally well received. It’s been criticized for aiding gentrification of the areas
it passes through (NYCEDC, 2014). Some New Yorkers complain about the hordes of
tourists and the declining profitability of light industrial businesses like the auto service
establishments in the area’s gasoline alley. For residents, it provides high quality open
space in a dense city that has very little.

While the High Line project is based on disused infrastructure, the Meanwhile
London project (Killing Architects, 2008) was part of a strategy to attract attention and
investment to Newham, a poor part of London, which nevertheless had significant
attractions in terms of location, transport links and the fact that the majority of
undeveloped land was in public ownership (Killing Architects, 2008). There is a clear
commitment to the local community, engaging with people and organizations in the
area. Maintaining these benefits after the projects have finished will almost certainly
require re-provision of space for community activities and small amounts of investment
to support them further (Killing Architects, 2008). It was also noted in the brief that
using empty spaces for temporary use programs would reduce antisocial behavior and
27
activates places to become more attractive for long term reuse (Development Trust
Association, 2010). However, there were some worries that temporary use will turn into
squatting, that people won’t leave at the end of the allotted time period.

While both the High Line and the Meanwhile projects are considered large-scale
interventions in the city, others such as the Public Plaza Program in New York (Pfeifer,
2013) and the Pop-Up Places Calgary (Pfeifer, 2013) have a more neighborly scale.
Both interventions emanate from an increasing interest from private actors to revitalize
the city streets and districts. Since they are small in footprint and nil in impact, both
were expected to be processed very quickly. In the Public Plaza Program for example,
in public right of way owned by the Department of Transportation, the temporary
implementation represents a minor physical change to the right of way and hence
length designs and long processes are avoided. In both projects local community
groups were involved, early in the design process, and local support and input helped
the projects rapid implementation.

Economic
In Berlin, temporary uses are independent from the market; they act as if they are
economy free enterprises. They depend on barter, social capital and the recycling of
existing value in order to evolve, and thus create an alternative economy (Studio Urban
Catalyst, 2003). In many European cities, and in order to survive and prosper,
temporary uses depend highly on governmental and public subsidies, which in return,
depend on the economic situation of the city. For example in Amsterdam, where we
find booming economies, public subsidies are flowing and temporary uses gets lot of
support from the local government. On the other hand, in stagnating cities like Berlin
and Naples, there is almost no funding for temporary use, but it is argued that once the
temporary use gets started, it will get easier for them to get public funding since they
will become active in the economy (Studio Urban Catalyst, 2003) and Berlin is just
doing that by marketing them as playground or workspaces for creative entrepreneurs,
as milieu that can attract other creative workers and consumers or as tourist’s
attractions (Colomb, 2012).

Funding was not an issue in the case of the High Line in New York (NYC Parks,
2013). In addition to overseeing maintenance, operations, and public programming for
the park, Friends of the High Line worked to raise the essential private funds to support
more than 90 percent of the park’s annual operating budget, and to advocate for the
transformation of the High Line at the rail yards, the third and final section of the

28
historic structure, which runs between West 30th and West 34th Streets (NYC Parks,
2013). Other funds came from the City, the Federal Government and the State. Betting
on interim spaces and public use on disused land can generate a positive economic
cycle. The New York Times (McGeehan, 2011) says the High Line Park brought USD 4
billion in real estate investment to lower Manhattan, and is expected to generate USD
900 million in revenues over 30 years.

“What started out as a community-based campaign to convert an eyesore into

an asset evolved into one of the most successful economic-development
projects of the mayor’s nine years in office” (McGeehan, 2011).
The High Line was also cost-effective. The first two stages, from Gansevoort
Street to W 30th Street, cost the city a modest $152 million, of which around a quarter
was financed by donations. The new park is estimated to generate $900 million over 20
years in revenue for the city (NYCEDC, 2014).

The Meanwhile London project (Killing Architects, 2008) unfortunately does not
share the same economical success. While funding was still uncertain and delays in
permits were obstructing the implementation process, councils are yet to be persuaded
to grant rate relief for non-profitable organizations (Development Trust Association,
2010). Nevertheless the aim was that temporary projects would mainly be about
changing the perception of the area and helping to attract investment, both by
generating publicity and proving the viability of the sites in question (Killing Architects,
2008).

One common thread to all these temporary projects is the economic downturn,
and the Public Plaza Program in New York is no exception to that. What started out to
be a project for a permanent plaza, and due to long design process and significant
required resources, has shifted to a temporary plaza project that would allow them to
use expense funding instead of capital funding (Pfeifer, 2013). By changing the way
they manage their resources, the city’s Department of Transportation was able to
innovate and create a design and a program that would be less expensive and quicker
to implement.

Pop-Up Places in Calgary are funded by private businesses and even more cost
effective to local authorities then the previous projects. Since the Business
Revitalization Zones and private actors have shown interest in rejuvenating disused
areas such as the vacant lots used for parking and former construction sites, city
planners have found a way to access these private vacant lots with the intention of

29
implementing temporary use programs. Change of use development permits were
delivered and incentives were given to owners in order to encourage temporary use
implementation.

Cultural
In European cities in general, and more specifically Helsinki, Amsterdam, Berlin,
Vienna and Naples, it was found that the common ground was the cultural context
(Studio Urban Catalyst, 2003). Culture has become an industry, shifting its cities from
cultural consumption to cultural production giving opportunities for innovative and
creative citizens. The availability of low-cost spaces on a temporary basis is essential
to this kind of creative entrepreneurship (Studio Urban Catalyst, 2003). It is more
striking in the case of Berlin, where it’s historical background of changes and ruptures,
the fall of the Berlin wall, the reunification of the city in 1989 and the economic downfall
after real-estate euphoria in the 1990s (Colomb, 2012), has allowed for temporary
niches to evolve. Cities with strong history in alternative movements and sub-culture,
i.e. the culture of the temporary, like Berlin and Amsterdam, tend to create lot of
temporary uses (Studio Urban Catalyst, 2003).

Moreover, the way art and culture are manifested in the city is changing, and the
use of temporary spaces for temporary activities for that purpose is a reflection of that
change (Bishop & Williams, 2012). These less formal stages provided by the city have
made art more accessible, it is not about watching a ballet anymore, but more about
the interaction between the public and the artist. The role of the audience becomes not
one of a spectator but more of a participant.

“The arts have become a consumer experience to be explored, sampled or

even discarded. The transient nature of temporary use is ideally suited to this
condition” (Bishop & Williams, 2012, p. 118)
Throughout their review of four creative cities (Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam and
Hoxton/Shoreditch in London) Bishop and Williams (2012) clearly exemplified the role
of arts and culture and the creation of “creative milieus” in the building of communities
and revitalizing neighborhoods and areas (Bishop & Williams, 2012). In the early
2000s, the Department of the Economy of the Berlin Senate began to integrate the
theme of the “creative city” in its policies and strategies (Colomb, 2012). Although
controversial at first for being reactive rather than proactive, the Department developed
strategies to encourage cultural clustering and entrepreneurship, which became key
areas for public interventions. The investigation to study how urban development and
planning policies could encourage the further growth of cultural industries continued in
30
2007, and policy makers realized that they could promote the unused sites to attract
young creative persons.

Culture is also about preservation and the High Line’s founders in New York
fought for the High Line’s preservation and transformation at a time when the historic
structure was under the threat of demolition. It’s now one of the most popular cultural
destinations for tourists in Manhattan. Since opening in 2009, the High Line has
become New York City's second most visited cultural venue, attracting some four
million visitors a year.

Section 2.2 reviewed the various drivers pushing towards the shift to temporary
use programs implementation on residual spaces. It explained, through the overview of
various projects in North American and European cities, some of the different activation
components that need to coexist in order to apply those programs. It was argued that
time gaps could indicate to a certain degree how receptive is a city, neighborhood or
district to the implementation of such programs. On a social level, interim spaces could
reduce antisocial behavior and stimulate the sense of place by introducing activities
that benefit the community while economically, even though on short-term they seem
promising, the long-term effects of these spaces remain unclear. Finally it was
explained how these strategies could help with the preservation of a heritage and
encourage sub-cultures that push for exchange of local knowledge in the city.

However, in order to complete the development of strategies for temporary use

implementations on residual spaces, two more activation components should be
studied: The regulatory and legislative mechanisms as well as the actors involved in
the development of these strategies. The following section will review the legal context,
the tools used in the application of the law as well as the actors involved.

2.2.3. Regulatory and legislative mechanisms

In Amsterdam, Helsinki, Berlin, Vienna and Naples, as well as most of the
European cities, the legal framework and regulations that regulate temporary uses
within the development of urban residual areas are short on responding to the needs of
the users (Studio Urban Catalyst, 2003). All these cities show an urgency to define new
legislation within the planning and construction law, in order to accommodate these
alternative ways of land use. This section will begin by identifying the different urban
strategies developed in order to implement temporary use programs on residual
spaces. It will then review the legal context as well as the legal reforms elaborated to

31
facilitate the implementation of these programs. Lastly this section will explain the tools
that are being used to implement temporary programs on residual spaces.

Urban strategies
Historically, temporary uses have been often unplanned, i.e. they have taken
shape outside (or preceding) the official planning process. Recently, however,
temporary uses have been increasingly incorporated into official planning processes as
phases of development (Lehtovuori & Ruoppila, 2012). Through the study of different
projects such as the NDSM in Amsterdam (Andersson, 2008), the Makasiinit in Helsinki
(Groth & Corijn, 2005), the High Line project in New York (NYC Parks, 2013), the
planting of Leipzig (Heck & will, 2007), the Meanwhile London project (Killing
Architects, 2008) and other, different urban strategies for the implementation of
temporary use projects on residual spaces were identified.

First, there are the tactical strategies where temporary use is applied as part of a
long-term vision for regeneration, and implemented with adequate resources. In this
strategy, exemplified in the NDSM project in Amsterdam, authorities follow the process
carefully, adjusting accordingly their plans and policy to developing needs (Lehtovuori
& Ruoppila, 2012). In this former shipyard that has been turned into a miniature city
developed and constructed by pioneers from the squatting movement in Amsterdam
(Andersson, 2008), authorities represented by the Municipality of Amsterdam North are
the main actors and in an attempt to control the area and catalyze new developments,
the local government funded half of the project while users funded the other half. The
vision for NDSM is a user-driven development and the end goal is that the users buy
back the city. It can therefore be seen as

“A frame in which the end-users develop their own space in the bigger social
and entrepreneurial network with the end goal of being master in their own
common house (Andersson, 2008, p. 8)”.
The High Line Project in New York falls under the same strategy, where the
Mayor of New York pilots the projects and the Government funds the project in
conjunction with other associations such as the Friends of the High Line (NYCEDC,
2014).

Another tactical strategy would be based on the idea of “best practice approach”
(Lehtovuori & Ruoppila, 2012, p. 48) where local temporary projects are taken as a
model for broader policy-making and subsequent implementation. This type of strategy
uses intermediary agent to find short and medium term uses for buildings that are

32
vacant, disused, or awaiting redevelopment. The aim would be to find artists, cultural
projects and community groups to use and maintain these buildings and to generate
activity, until they become commercially viable or are redeveloped (Lehtovuori &
Ruoppila, 2012). In this strategy, applied in the Meanwhile London Project, temporary
uses, should they succeed, could become permanent.

There are other strategies where temporary uses are applied in an event-like
manner, and where long-term vision is coupled with limited resources. These project-
based strategies, such as the Leipzig plantation project, are very important in triggering
a more sustained strategy. These event-like projects can attract potential investors and
provide resources for future projects, hence move towards a strategy of the first kind.
Finally there are the strategies, where power is kept centralized and no collaboration is
envisioned. This strategy does not distribute resources for the implementation of
temporary uses and reveal only partial understanding of potential benefits on the
authorities’ side and leave unclear the will to collaborate further (Lehtovuori & Ruoppila,
2012).

In the case of Beirut, as it will be shown in section 5.4.1, no specific urban

strategy is modeled in order to integrate non-constructible parcels and implement
temporary use programs. In the recommendation chapter, it will be important to define
a strategy that embraces a long-term vision for the regeneration of the city, through the
integration of these parcels and the implementation of temporary use programs. By
acknowledging user’s needs, finding resources and encouraging collaboration with
involved actors, the developed user oriented strategy will have better chances of
responding to the city’s needs rather than becoming a strategy for punctual
interventions.

In this section, different urban strategies for the implementation of temporary

uses on residual parcels were reviewed. Although the reviewed strategies differed in
their approaches, they all shared the same understanding of the potential of temporary
use as a catalyst for the regeneration of the city. Whether long or short-term strategies
were envisioned; resources were or were not available; leaders were local authorities
or intermediary agents; or developments were user driven pushing for collaboration or
centralized, they all shared a bottom-up strategy starting with the understanding of
user’s needs and the acknowledgment of the potential of residual spaces.

33
 Each one of these strategies develops in different legal contexts, and in order for
them to function efficiently, certain reforms need to be done, the next sub-section
examines those contexts and reforms.

The legal context and reforms

Even though legal restrictions exist, it did not stop cities like Berlin from
developing its own underground network of temporary uses, especially in the
entertainment and music field. Whether these businesses are a failure or not, depend
more on the economic and financial issues rather than the legal restrictions (Studio
Urban Catalyst, 2003). It would seem that the biggest obstacle from temporary uses
would be the conflicts between temporary uses and future development in town
planning as well as the lack of social acceptance of such uses, all items that refer to
civil law rather than construction law.

In 2001, the Liegenschaftsfonds, a private company owned by the Land of Berlin,

was created to market publicly owned sites and properties. The formal remit of the
Liegenschaftsfonds was modified to allow temporary use contracts for non-profit,
community-oriented activities on the publicly owned sites that are held in its data base,
in the absence of interest by potential buyers (Land Berlin, 2005). Moreover, in 2005, a
reform of Berlin’s building code simplified the licensing system necessary for temporary
uses. Local authorities justify their supporting of such use with arguments such as the
free maintenance of public property and the avoidance of decay and vandalism, the
contribution of temporary uses to economic development, and their contribution to
social objectives through the creation of new, publicly accessible open spaces at little
or no costs for the public purse (Colomb, 2012).

On the other hand, in the case of the Pop-Up Places in Calgary, city planners
examined how they could support such a project by using existing bylaws that already
accommodated these new uses, allowing them to proceed forward with implementation
in a quicker way (Pfeifer, 2013). They have found that the City’s existing Special
Function Use could accommodate most pop-up events.

However, legal reforms are faced with bureaucracy setbacks, in the case of
Meanwhile London, there were too many separate departments in local authorities that
must be won over to achieve the objectives of the project and legal delays are
witnessed especially when there are multiple layers of ownership (Development Trust
Association, 2010).

34
 The tools for implementing temporary use on residual spaces
Even though the policies and approaches used in each city are different, some
simple things that a city can do to assist the set-up of creative milieus are identified. In
the case of Berlin (Colomb, 2012), they can be tools such as taking head leases on
buildings, providing databases of vacant properties, encouraging the establishment of
intermediary organizations and supporting networking, marketing and promotion.

This sub-section overviews the different tools that are used in some cities today,
in order to exploit residual spaces and implement temporary use programs.

Permits
The main objective of the permit is to ensure that a project of temporary use
meets the required legal standards. While standard procedures can take time, which
means that projects need to be prepared in advance, some permits can be adapted to
meet the time frame such as the 72 Hour Urban Action in London (Killing Architects,
2008).

The Victoria Park BRZ, located in an older area on the edge of downtown
Calgary, started to examine ways to activate over two dozen vacant lots in their district
(Pfeifer, 2013). To create the park, since the original land was meant to host a tower,
the city only required the BRZ (Business Revitalization Zone) to submit a Change Of
Use Development Permit, a relatively simple process. Permits are delivered by local
authorities and more specifically municipalities; committees of experts evaluate the
proposed project and give it the go ahead. Permits are not legal reforms and in order to
issue one, involved actors need to identify beforehand the minimum modifications or
actions needed to allow a space to be used (Pfeifer, 2013). Permits, although not
considered legal reforms, could be complementary to a reform strategy, and allow for
reforms to be applied in a city. It was explained how in some cases, the Meanwhile
project for example, the bureaucratic process was an obstacle to a fast implementation
of temporary use projects. Allowing the municipal committees to act freely and
autonomously and take quick decisions could shortcut the decision making process
and reduce the timeframe of delivering a permit. In London, a 72 Hour Urban Action
plan (Pfeifer, 2013) was put together in order to plan, issue permit and implement a
project within that time frame.

Agreements and contracts

Back in 1999, and for privately owned sites, an informal innovative tool was
developed in Leipzig in order to facilitate temporary activation and planting of vacant
35
buildings: The authorization agreement (Heck & will, 2007). It is seen as a transitional
solution that holds advantages to both the city and property owners by providing new
exploitable green areas, neighborhood improvements, locational consolidations and
private follow-up investment.

“Such agreements regulate the beneficial, limited-term public use of vacant

private properties without detriment to existing building rights, and is
concluded between the municipality and private owners” (Heck & will, 2007, p.
4).
The procedures are the following: First the potential sites are shortlisted, second
the owners make their property available for a period of at least ten years and third the
municipality contributes to planning and implementation costs and finally coordinates
the realization of measures. The advantages are for both the city and the owners (Heck
& will, 2007). For the city the advantages are numerous; they can vary from
enhancement of the attractiveness of inner-city locations, to neighborhood
improvement, the creation of additional open spaces for public use, remedying the lack
of greenery and activation of vacant spaces and duty of the owner to ensure
maintenance and traffic security.

This planting initiative has developed to become a land procurement contract,

which unlike the authorization agreement with subsequent public use, focuses on
mediating and promoting volunteer activities and neighborhoods interests in the use of
the property. This process allows creating a Land Procurement network that
coordinates and facilitates the relation between administrations, urban and local actors,
owners, civic associations and other involved actors (Figure 1). The municipality, in that
case, promotes private activities by prospecting and placing sites and can even issue
grants for putting creative ideas into effect.

To summarize, it was explained that agreements, in the Leipzig case, were

drafted initially as a test to validate the proposed measures and solutions described
above. Once theses measures were validated as beneficial for the community, the
agreement became a contract that made from a specific situation in a specific location
a more general situation to be applied on larger territory.

36
 Figure 1: The Land Procurement Network_Leipzig

Source 1: Heck, Will (2007, p. 9)

Short-term leases and adaptive rental policies

Temporary uses are flourishing both in the in-between spaces (Kobel, 1999) such
as turned over commercial enterprises and pieces of land that fall into disrepair, where
there is flexibility in the rigor of the property market whereby short term leases and
adaptive rental policies can be made available by authorities, and in areas where multi-
use is feasible; Land of Berlin and the Liegenschaftsfonds reforms in Berlin as
described previously are a good example of that. Some uses are planned and formal,
some are informal, accidental, spontaneous, or even illegal (Colomb, 2012).

In 2005, design firm Rebar created the first Parking installation in San Francisco,
a small park that occupied an on-street parking space for two hours (Pfeifer, 2013). A
local loophole, which did not mandate that parking spaces could only be occupied by
vehicles, inspired the group to lease the space and use it for a more community-
focused purpose. Interestingly enough, it was argued that codes and regulations for
permanent installations shouldn’t apply to temporary projects.

While in the UK the pop-up shops phenomenon, where occasional tenants can
rent for a short period of time, on a short-term lease, a selected or given space are a

37
reduced risk and can give high-end exposure to their owners, the Meanwhile project
leases spaces for a period of one to five years.

Freeing up vacant public space for temporary use

Local authorities should be able, when need be, to free up land to allow the
implementation of temporary use projects on them. In the case where the land is
public, this should not be a difficult task for authorities, but in the case where land is
privately owned, the task becomes more delicate and incentives should be given to
owners to encourage their participation in the implementation process. It could be
translated into public-private partnership or private-private partnership. It was explained
previously how in the Leipzig case, local authorities have regulated that process
through a land procurement contract that facilitates the communication between
different actors.

In 2009, Vancouver City Council approved a planning process to make

Vancouver the greenest city in the world by 2020. It was followed by the temporary
closure of certain commercial corridors to promote the use of streets for different
community activities (Pfeifer, 2013). Commercial corridors are public property; hence
the operation did not require private owner’s participation. Building on this first
experience, Vancouver has now created a formal process for posting requests for
expressions of interest from non-profits, community associations, and residents to host
projects. However, in Calgary, the Pop-up places project required the involvement of all
private owners in order to free up the disused area and implement the temporary uses.
Incentives were given to owners and a change of use development permit was drawn
to allow implementation.

However a major setback for freeing up privately owned spaces would be finding
the owners. Before they can be approached with a proposal, they must be identified
and in some cases, such as the Meanwhile project in Newham, lack of information
regarding ownership and the unwillingness of some agents to open negotiations could
become a barrier to the implementation process (Development Trust Association,
2010).

Providing benefits for private owners who support temporary uses

While it is difficult in some cases to convince private owners of the necessity to
support temporary uses, local authorities could provide private owners with incentives
and benefits. In the Leipzig case, the advantages for the owners are numerous;
subsidized clearance of derelict sites, real property tax relief for the term of the
38
agreement, reduction of running costs and safeguarding and provision of building sites
were enough to convince private owners to participate (Heck & will, 2007). This
successful strategy, based on activating private engagement, is being continued and is
generating additional use potential and interest in existing infill sites in the city (Heck &
will, 2007).

However, despite positive developments, tight budgetary situation of local

authorities could halt the proliferation of this strategy and activating privately owned
vacant land could suffer from it. In Leipzig, the declining resources of local authorities
and the growing amount of land to be dealt with, interim spaces can no longer be
maintained at the same level and standard as in the past (Heck & will, 2007).

Funding and sponsorship

Funding sources for temporary projects can be in the form of corporate
sponsorship, advertising, donated materials, people donating their time, grants, directs
grants from municipality and self-funding from project initiators (Killing Architects,
2008). In the Meanwhile London project, the majority of the undeveloped land that was
in public ownership, was leased away free of charge for a period of five years by the
Newham Borough Council. In the case of commercial ventures, a profit-sharing
scheme was elaborated. Projects in Meanwhile London, although with some
uncertainty as shown earlier, were originally funded through a mix of self-funding,
commercial loans and community grants with the help of the project organizers.

The High Line of New York was funded by managing $112.2 million from the City,
$20.3 million from the Federal Government, $400,000 from the State while Friends of
the High Line will raise the remaining funds privately. To date Friends of the High Line
have raised $44 million (NYCEDC, 2014). In the Stuttgart 21 project, a venture that
initiated a program of workshops and programs and temporary projects to publicize the
value of cultural uses in Stuttgart (Killing Architects, 2008), the local municipality
donated 150,000 Euros for the project. Other support can come from larger institutions
such as festival or biennale, an opportunity to attract major sponsors.

Although previous examples show how sometimes smart and punctual reforms,
within a global evaluation of a city’s future development, can lead to adaptive
temporary solutions for a better quality of life, legal reforms can face bureaucratic
slowdown while funding and sponsorship are not always met. On one hand local
authorities, in order to implement their reforms must be backed up by a positive political
will, on the other hand private owners need to be convinced to free up their land and
39
support temporary use projects. Both these actions, should they co-exist, could provide
a favorable context to attract investors and sponsors.

2.2.4. Actor Categories

Planning has changed, from the beliefs that a fully rational world can be made,
forty or fifty years ago, a vision of a world of uncertainty has taken over (Bishop &
Williams, 2012). Among the new methods of city planning are approaches like
participation, public and private sectors cooperation, public-private partnerships and
the use of temporary space. While each of the actors has a specific role to play, it is
important to foster communication and connections among actors (Pfeifer, 2013). The
actors can be categorized as such: The owners, the Municipality and the local public
authorities as well as the users, NGO’s and activists.

Owners

Public and private owners

One of the major obstacles to the expansion of temporary use of spaces could be
the fear on the part of the owner that once a site has a temporary use, it will be difficult
to repossess, or that the tenant might ask for compensation (Bishop & Williams, 2012).
The owner can simply issue meanwhile leases or through intermediaries such as local
authorities taking on the lease and subletting to temporary users. A good working
relationship between the two is a must in order to create an atmosphere of trust and
promote temporary use of space.

The urban planning code in Lebanon identifies three types of ownership for non-
constructible parcels: the privately owned, the municipality owned and the publicly
owned (El-Achkar E. , 1998). It is possible for an owner to strike a personal agreement
with a tenant in order to profit from his parcel, but whenever there is a project involving
a high number of plots for the sake of the community and the neighborhood, it is
preferable to organize the owners in committees or syndicates in order to legislate the
renting process. It will be the case if developers, social entrepreneurs or urban
promoters are involved (El-Achkar E. , 1998).

While looking for opportunities to adapt the management of City-owned

resources, there must be an assessment of the existing under-utilized public resources
(Pfeifer, 2013). It should be determined if public land can be managed differently to
meet the needs of the community.

40
 Waqf2
Or religious endowment, is a specific case of land ownership in the Arab World:
They are usually lands owned by religious communities, by extended families or
charitable trust and managed by individuals assigned by the group of owners or by the
community.

Developers
Developers share the responsibility of changing the image of an area by jumping
on this opportunity. In the UK, activities that started from a temporary period were
developed incrementally and are now established as permanent destinations that have
in turn spurred a new generation of temporary uses and activities (Bishop & Williams,
2012). Developers, by coming up with innovative and daring solutions, should care
about their local environment and collaborate with the other actors to reduce the effect
of the financial crisis.

Few private sector intermediary agencies are being established in the UK, such
as creative property consultancy firms specializing in short-term use (Bishop &
Williams, 2012). These firms can help match owners with tenants, and play an
intermediary role with the local authorities in order to facilitate and promote the
process.

Municipality and local public authorities

In the UK, central government and property owners are urging local authorities to
promote flexibility and innovation in the use of pop-up shops (Bishop & Williams, 2012).
Funds are being set-up by local authorities to bring empty spaces back into use, and
their intermediary role in taking leases on privately owned vacant spaces and granting
them to local groups for community use is crucial. While these programs are ephemeral
(the pop-up spaces), the work of local authorities is necessarily on a longer timescale
in order to provide it with a regulated and efficient framework (Bishop & Williams,
2012).

In Berlin, one of the main roles of public authorities in promoting temporary uses
of space involved mediation, assistance in locating sites or the relaxation of licensing
and planning procedures (Colomb, 2012). A coordination unit was created to match site
owners with potential temporary users, and public subsidies were granted to small

2 rd
http://www.undp.org/ accessed on February 3 2014
41
organizations, which act as brokers between landowners and users in search of a
space (Colomb, 2012). The involvement of the Department of Economy of the Berlin
Senate in integrating the theme of the “creative city” in its policies and strategies, as it
was shown previously, as well as the Liegenschaftsfonds in promoting the city’s
publicly owned sites and properties. In Leipzig the Municipality was a key player in
dealing with private owners on the basis of the “Authorization Agreement” (Heck & will,
2007) drafted between both parties.

Users, NGO’s and activists

In the project Urban Catalyst: Strategies for temporary uses (2001-2003), five
different types of users were identified and will be adopted for the purpose of this
research:

• Start-ups: New businesses, inventors, patent holders

• Migrants: persons who are temporarily not integrated in stable social networks
or employment structures
• System Refugees: individuals or groups who make a deliberate choice to
withdraw into an alternative universe
• Drop-outs: homeless people, illegal immigrants
• Part-time activists: people having regular position and income in society but
wanting to enrich their lives with experiences outside the established order.

Since then, the diversity of users has exploded to integrate a more

heterogeneous nature of users such as artists, private entrepreneurs, community
groups, voluntary workers and other (Colomb, 2012) and informal actors have emerged
(Groth & Corijn, 2005).

“Urban residual spaces provide opportunities for new, transitional

reappropriations that are assumed by civil or informal actors coming from
outside the official, institutionalized domain of urban planning and urban
politics (Groth & Corijn, 2005, p. 506)”.
The involvement of these informal actors in developing a temporary use strategy
is furthermore displayed in projects such as the Calgary “Pop-Up Places project”
(Pfeifer, 2013). To ensure smooth operations with citizen initiatives, it was proposed to
resist being reactionary to citizen-led actions, educate citizens about existing bylaws,
harness the energy and creativity of citizens, find ways to accommodate citizen
initiatives, create a standardized process, and designate a central contact or
community liaison.

Moreover, NGO’s in the UK, like the Meanwhile London Project (Killing
Architects, 2008), try to work hand in hand with landlords, landowners, developers and
local authorities to boost community uses of empty spaces, they also provide step-by-
42
step guidelines to would-be users and pilot projects with citizens and non-profit groups
are implemented to gain their insight as well as increase credibility and local interest.
Any approach to everyday urbanism involves collaboration with the potential users of
the space. It is not uncommon to find public involvement in master plans. In order to
attract people’s attention and benefit from their involvement, strategies must be based
on small scale and innovative interventions (Bishop & Williams, 2012). In the case of
the New York City High Line project (NYC Parks, 2013), the non-profit foundation are
working with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation to makes sure the
High Line is maintained as an extraordinary public space for all visitors to enjoy.

In the following section, the current regulatory situation in Beirut will be reviewed
and assessed. Although the previous section showed that legal reforms and new urban
management tools proved to be efficient in creating new programs for residual spaces
in different cities, it was clear that in every project undertaken, the political context was
favorable for such implementation. It will be most critical, in the case of Beirut, to
assume that a political climate would be favorable of such developments and reforms;
otherwise no advancement in that direction would be achieved.

43
3. Non-constructible parcels in Municipal Beirut
Non-constructible parcels, in the case of Municipal Beirut, are residual spaces or
left over spaces. They are found in the shape of small vacant or built spaces in
between buildings or around corners as illustrated in Figure 2, and Figure 3 and their
current land use varies from vacant land, to parking spaces, dumpsters or even illegally
built land.

This chapter identifies the current laws and regulations that define the non-
constructability status of these parcels in Beirut, and attempts to validate the reasons
behind their existence. This chapter also reviews the pros and cons of the current
legislation, examines the current local authorities that are involved in the legislation
process, and defines the urban operations in use. Finally this chapter reviews the
spatial, social, economic and cultural context in each of the three study districts.

Figure 2: Plots 634/602 Saifi: Non-constructible parcels with various uses

Source 2: By Author (July 2013)

Figure 3: Location of Plots 634/602, Saifi district

Source 3: By author
44
 3.1. Lebanese laws and regulations and non-constructible parcels
Part of the Lebanese public law, urban planning law regulates urban operations
between the government or its representatives and land property owners. The
procedure of this urban planning law falls under the administrative law and it attempts
to regulate problems, more specifically land exploitation, that exist on the territory and
in the city (Lamy, 2010).

In Lebanon, the juridical system in terms of urban planning is regulated by the

decree-law no.69/833 and its amendments (Appendix A). This decree-law replaced the
1962 urban planning law of September 24th (Fawaz M. , 2010). According to Fawaz
(2010), the Lebanese urban planning policy operates on three levels:

• A complete urban planning policy for development on a National level, i.e. the
urban local plans and regulations such as the NPMPLT4 that aims to respond to
the various needs of citizens and takes in consideration the natural, economical
and human resources within a sustainable development framework and the
respect of heritage and the ecology;
• The urban operations on a Municipality level, i.e. the operations that the
administration used when implementing an urban plan;
• The urban authorizations on a city and village level, i.e. the construction
permits, that defines the limits, the land use, the built-up space and so on.
These regulations are part of the Lebanese construction code.

It is under these last two levels of operations that non-constructible parcels fall. In
the current Lebanese legislation, they are defined through: a) Article 5 of the decree n°
6285/54 of the Lebanese Construction Law, and b) Article 2 of the decree n° 5550/73.

First, and since 1954, with the introduction of Article 5 of the decree n° 6285/54,
Lebanon’s Construction’s Law has acknowledged and defined non-constructible
surfaces as such (El-Achkar E., 1998):

• Residue of an old road after a new alignment

• Result of land consolidation or left-over after planning

Moreover, Article 5 modified by decree n° 5550/73, does not allow construction

on narrow parts of parcels for three main reasons (El-Achkar E. , 1998):

• The intent of visual clearance on street corners and intersections

• To manage parcel densification
• To avoid transferring its odd forms into the volumetric of the buildings

3 th
Of the 9 of September 1983
4
National Physical Master Plan of the Lebanese Territory (NPMPLT) (Council for
Development and Reconstruction, 2013)
45
 Some examples of those situations resulting from Article 5 modified by decree n°
5550/73 are illustrated in Figure 4, where the parcel highlighted in black is the non-
constructible part of a parcel. There is a major difference between the non-constructible
parcels identified as per Article 5 of the decree n° 6285/54, and the ones identified as
per Article 5 modified by decree n° 5550/73. In the first, the generated non-
constructible parcels are considered as an entity with a unique parcel number, while in
the second they are part of an existing parcel and hence do not have a unique parcel
number. This disparity between both definitions will prove to be crucial in the
identification by elimination of non-constructible parcels, as further explained in the
methodology chapter.

Figure 4: Examples of non-constructible situations as per Article 5 modified

by decree n° 5550/73

Source 8: Adopted from (El-Achkar E. , 1998), pp. 33, Figure I.5

As per Article 2 of the decree n° 5550/73, Table 1 explains the minimal

dimensions and areas required in order for a parcel to be constructible.

Table 1: Dimensions and minimal areas for constructible parcels as per

Article 2 of the decree n° 5550/73

Dimensions and minimal areas for constructible parcels

Zone 1 Zone 2 Zone 3 Zone 4 Zone 5 Zone 6 Zone 7 Zone 8 Zone 9 Zone 10

Area (m2) 250 250 300 300 500 400 250

A As of Decree
Façade (m) 10 10 12 15 17 15 12
no. 2616 of
Depth (m) 10 10 12 15 17 15 12 14/09/1953 As of Decree
Non
amended by no. 4811 of
100 100 120 150 250 200 100 aedificandi
Area (m)2 Decree 24/6/1966
no.14312 of
B Façade (m) 9 9 10 10 12 12 9
21/05/1970
Depth (m) 7 7 8 8 14 8 7
A: Parcels resulting from subdivision B: Existing parcels

Source 4: Adopted from E. El-Achkar (1998, p. 32)

46
 In order to harmonize architectural treatments (El-Achkar E. , 1998) along certain
roads and to organize constructible and non-constructible parcels as well as parcel
blocks, Beirut is divided into 10 construction zones and 18 sub-zones (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Municipal Beirut zoning plan

Source5: By Author. Based on Beirut Municipality cadastral maps of 2004

Each zone has to abide, as per Decree no.6285 of 11/9/1954, to a land

occupation density and a built-up space ratio as shown in Table 2 here below.

Table 2: Land occupation density and built-up space in the ten zones as per
Decree no.6285 of 11/9/1954

Land occupation density and Built-up space in the ten zones as per Decree no.6285 of 11/9/1954

Zone 1 Zone 2 Zone 3 Zone 4 Zone 5 Zone 6 Zone 7 Zone 8 Zone 9 Zone 10

GF: As per
As per construction
A As of Decree
construction law 60% 50% 40% 50% 70%
no. 2616 of
law 1st floor and
14/09/1953 As of Decree
above: 70%
amended by 0 no. 4811 of
As per
Decree 24/6/1966
construction
no.14312 of
B law Decree 5 4 4 3,5 2,5 3
21/05/1970
no.2339 of
8/12/1971
A: Land occupation density B: Total Buitl-up space

Source 6: Adopted from E. El-Achkar (1998, p. 32)

47
 These zones define the construction regulations of the parcels within the limit of
the city. This new feature was introduced with the Decree no 5550 of 8/06/1973 and its
main purpose is to:

• Implement different regulations regarding land consolidation, i.e. areas and

minimal dimensions authorized for existing parcels and parcels resulting from
land consolidation to validate their constructability status (Table 1),
• Implement different regulations regarding land consolidation, i.e. areas and
minimal dimensions authorized for built surfaces and parcels resulting from land
consolidation,
• Validate their constructability status as explained in the first bullet.

Moreover, the decree-law 69/1983 of September 9th 1983 (Appendix A) as well

as article 27 of the regulation regarding land consolidation in 1991 (Appendix A)
stipulates that, should the existing parcel, according to the zoning regulation, is
constructible, it is possible to consolidate any neighboring parcels or residual parcels
even if, after consolidation, the minimum area of the two parcels and the minimum
dimensions are not met, since this consolidation operation enhances the parcel’s
situation. Should the existing parcel, according to the zoning regulation is non-
constructible, it is possible to consolidate any neighboring parcels or residual parcels
as long as the resulting consolidated parcel meets the conditions of minimal areas and
dimensions as shown in Table 1.

Moreover, Article 28 of the regulation regarding land consolidation in 1991

stipulates that in order to enhance the existing parcels in size and shape, it is possible
to give part of parcel who’s area exceeds the minimum area of the subdivision or re-
parceling to be consolidated to a neighboring non-constructible parcel, as long as the
resulting parcel meets the conditions of minimal areas and dimensions. All the previous
operations as well as general land consolidation and re-parceling operations require
acquiring a license prior to operations (Appendix B).

3.2. Major master-plans and non-constructible parcels

In order to understand the reasons behind the existence of these previously
identified non-constructible parcels, and since Article 5 of the decree n° 6285/54
acknowledges them as a residues of road alignments and urban planning leftovers, it is
necessary to review the major master plans Beirut was subject to throughout its history.
It will be shown that the urban fabric generated by the major road networks, proposed
since the Danger master plan, led to fragmented road infrastructure and subsequently
to the creation of residual and left-over parcels and surfaces.

48
 Since 1932, throughout the Independence in 1943 and until the Civil War (1975-
1991), planning the city has always been a major objective of the successive
governments (Verdeil, 2005). Since the scheme of Danger, Lebanese authorities have
been promoting a “rigid and traditional vision” of its urban development within the
territory (Fawaz M. , 2010). The five year Plan Danger in 1932 introduced the
integration of the suburbs in the cityscape as well as new residential districts around
the center and the creation of an industrial zone and included municipal codes and
provisions for public spaces and gardens, sanitation and infrastructure (El-Hibri, 2009).
Besides organizing the city and its neighborhoods, linking Beirut to near cities such as
Tripoli, Saida and Damascus, and reinforcing the east-west major axis, the Danger
plan aimed at making the city more hygienic, solving the zoning and circulation
problem, and embellishing the city.

Ecochard in 1943 and 1964 promoted the creation of a second city center (El-
Hibri, 2009) with different commercial, residential and industrial zones in the city and its
suburbs as well as the creation of a regional communication network for transportation.
Ecochard’s proposed master plan in 1943, brought two main ideas (Verdeil, 2005); the
first was to group the public buildings into the Quartier des Ministères that he planned,
in the axis of the Place de l’Etoile and the second to create a new city in the southwest,
in the Ouzai and Bourj el Brajneh area. He also focused on the circulation system,
which led to the creation of one turnout road, that connects the north and south of
Lebanon, lateral roads that connect the east and west of Beirut, and terminal roads that
penetrates the urban layers and link the downtown. In 1964, the second Ecochard Plan
proposed a regional road network in prevision of transit traffic between the port and the
inner land, strict regulations to occupy the territory and a new city between Bir-Hassan
and Chiyah to absorb population surplus.

More recently, the National Physical Master Plan of the Lebanese Territory in
2005 focused on the territorial organization, and set an urban framework for the
country. But the latter works on a larger scale and will not be subject to debate in this
thesis.

The application of these master plans that have led to the generation of a
multitude of residual spaces, as well as the leftover parcels from the traced
infrastructure and land consolidation operations, have enriched the urban fabric of
Municipal Beirut with a number of non-constructible parcels. The examples of

49
Bachoura (Avenue de L’Indépendance) and Corniche El-Mazraa are good testimonies
of that.

All urban planning schemes will be available in Appendix C.

3.3. Current legislation in Beirut

In addition to few amendments to articles such as land consolidation and re-
parceling regulations, most of the laws and regulations from the 1950’s to the 1980’s
are still applicable today and continue to regulate the urban development with no
integration whatsoever to the new architectural typologies and the adaptation to the
city’s new dimension (El-Achkar E. , 1998).

Moreover, the existing laws and regulations regarding non-constructible parcels

are outdated. Not only existing laws should be amended to meet today’s needs of the
city, but other laws specifying the role and the potential of these parcels, as well as
acknowledging the right authorities to manage them also must complement them. In
order to integrate these parcels within the urban fabric and implement temporary use
programs, new strategies incorporating updated laws should be elaborated. They must
be, strict enough to prevent the urban operations from getting out of control, coherent
enough to ensure, once applied simultaneously in a region, the smooth process of any
urban operation, and subject to variations, enough to be able to accompany social,
economic and political changes (El-Achkar E. , 1998).

The revision of the current legislations and regulations need to happen on two
levels: The general scale of the country and the local scale of the municipality, district
or neighborhood (Fawaz M. , 2010). The first level will be about the revision of the
strategies to be implemented, and the second level will be about the application and
the implementation of the laws. Fawaz, in that sense, states that three criteria are
necessary for the well functioning of an urban planning policy (Fawaz , 2010):

• An urban planning policy drafted by the authorities

• An urban planning management to run that policy
• Urban planning laws and regulations to organize that policy

Fawaz (2010) finds that what is lacking, is a general urban policy drafted by the
authorities (Fawaz , 2010), and that this policy has to be developed by developing
detailed laws and regulations on the level of cities, municipalities, villages, and so on,
generating statistics as well as gathering data regarding population and city patterns
and defining objectives and future directives regarding urban sprawl and potential city
expansion. This last point will be crucial in defining new strategies to integrate non-
50
constructible parcels and temporary uses since using the existing resources in terms of
non-constructible parcels and assigning a function that is beneficial for the city should
be part of the expansion process.

For Fawaz, this policy can be implemented either in an indirect manner, through
the authorities that control and manage the application of the laws and regulations by
issuing permits, re-parceling and other operations or a more direct way through direct
intervention by authorities to implement planning laws and regulations like
expropriation, landholding trust and land consolidation (Fawaz M. , 2010). This topic
will be further discussed in the Operations section below.

On the other hand, and in order to develop a new land policy, spatial, social,
economic social and cultural studies must be conducted as a basis which would be
used for understanding the current urban fabric. These new land policies will remedy
the current disorder in the real estate sector. Convincing the Authorities of the need
and urgency of this new land policy will be crucial. Finally it is needed to learn from
other countries’ experiences in the field of urban planning and more specifically
regarding the integration of residual spaces. The urban chaos that characterizes Beirut
today has not been the result of fifteen years of civil war, as one might think (Salam,
1998), it is rather the result of a series of gaps on all levels starting from the elaboration
of a strategy on a national level up to a certain laxism in the implementation of the
laws. In the current configuration of the Lebanese Authorities in charge of the urban
planning regulations, the following actors are identified:

The Authorities:
Municipal Beirut is managed by a law-decree nº 1185 adopted in 1977, and
modified in1997. The first article of this law-decree states that the municipality is a local
administration that manages within the limits of its territory the attributes that are given
to it by law. It is financially autonomous and has the power to self-manage its local
interests. Though it may seem that the municipality has a large autonomy, it is still
highly controlled by the central government, hence leaving little room of maneuver to its
administration (Localiban, 2008).

5
Of June 30th 1977
51
 Two authorities are directly involved in the urban planning regulations in
Lebanon: the Higher Council on Urban planning (HCU) and the Directorate General on
Urbanism (DGU):

The Higher Council on Urban Planning (HCUP):

Set by the law on urban planning of 24th of September 1962 (modified by law no
215 of 26th of May in 2000), the HCUP plays the role of the highest authority on urban
planning in Lebanon. It is headed by the president of the HCUP and has members from
the Ministry of Justice, Interior, Municipalities, Transportation and Public Works,
Habitat6, Environment, Archeology, CDR, Order of Engineers’ (Beirut and Tripoli), and
other experts in the field of sociology, architecture and urban planning. When
discussing issues regarding administrations, or municipalities, the HCUP has a
responsibility to call for a meeting with all representatives of administrations and
municipalities involved with the subjects on the agenda (Fawaz M. , 2004).

Article 2 of the urban law of 1983 confers the HCUP power on all affairs related
to urban planning. According to this article, the HCUP is responsible for (Fawaz M. ,
2004):

• Plans and urban/rural regulations, and area zoning

• Laws and regulations for the instauration of real estate companies,
expropriation and land consolidation
• Modification of laws, regulations and construction permit procedures,
• Modification of laws in regards to urban/rural planning and construction laws.

The Directorate General of Urbanism (DGU):

According to Fawaz (2004), the DGU is a public administration subordinate to the
Public Works and Transportation Ministry. Created in 1960, its organization and
functioning are guided by the modified decree of 21st of June 1997. The DGU has its
headquarters in Beirut, and eight offices in all Governorates (Mohafazah) and Kaza
(Qada’a) outside the capital.

The DGU has three main objectives (Fawaz M. , 2004):

• The instauration of law projects and regulations in regards to urban planning

and construction laws as well as its modifications.
• The instauration of guiding plans and schemes on the Lebanese territory

7
The Mohafez (governor) is appointed by decree of the Council of Ministers. He is
hierarchically subordinate to the Minister of the Interior (Localiban, 2008).
52
 • The preparation of studies in regards to construction permits, land
consolidation, contracting documents for municipality works and the supervision
of these works in villages that have no technical office.

Another authority, indirectly involved in the urban planning process is the Council
for Redevelopment and Reconstruction (CDR). Instituted in 1977, through decree No.
5, the CDR had the mission to prepare a reconstruction plan for Lebanon. It is a public
entity, financially and administratively autonomous, directly related to the Council of
Ministers. Its scope of work is very diversified and related closely to infrastructure
works. As for the CDR’s responsibilities, they are specified to three main tasks (Council
for Development and Reconstruction, 2013); first, complying a plan and a time
schedule for the resumption of reconstruction and of development; second,
guaranteeing the funding of projects presented and thirdly supervising the execution
and utilization of these projects by contributing to the process of rehabilitation of public
institutions.

As for urban planning, the CDR is in charge of the elaboration and

implementation of urban planning programs, as well as the implementation of a general
framework for the urban organization, to be submitted to the Council of Ministers.

The Municipality
Regarding urban planning, the decree-law no 118 of 1977 (Appendix A) confers
the municipality with the responsibility of organizing the vehicular circulation, roads and
transportation, the creation of public spaces and gardens, the implementation of water
and lighting projects, street naming as well as urban planning (Ministry of Interiors and
Municipalities, 2009).

The decree-law of 1983 restrained the Municipality’ role by giving a consultancy

role in the application of their urban policy programs. In Beirut, the Mohafez7 or
governor has the executive power and the CDR, as of 2002, replaces the DGU in terms
of operational urbanism (Lamy, 2010). The inefficiency of the actual urban planning
services of the city of Beirut has made the “Association Internationale des Maires
Francophones” (AIMF)8, as of 2008, to rehabilitate a symbolic urban space in the

7
The Mohafez (governor) is appointed by decree of the Council of Ministers. He is
hierarchically subordinate to the Minister of the Interior (Localiban, 2008).
8
The AIMF aims to unite mayors and responsible actors of cities where French language
is an official one and to make the voice of their local collectivities heard. It also contributes to
spreading its know-how in terms of municipal management (Localiban, 2008).
53
framework of a project (Localiban, 2008). The project’s aim was to rehabilitate urban
planners in Beirut. This project has yet to see the light but it is interesting to mention
that the main objectives of this initiative was to allow the Beirut Municipality:

• To reaffirm its will to control and manage the evolution of its city;
• To write new laws and regulations;
• To familiarize itself with the new methods and techniques of municipal actions
regarding urban planning;
• And to reinforce the capacities of the body of works of the building industry.

The Operations
This sub-section will start by reviewing the common urban operations that are
applied within the Lebanese territory and will compare that to the new and improved
urban operations developed recently in European countries.

Land Consolidation and land re-parceling or reallocation

The most commonly used urban operation within the Lebanese urban planning
regulations is Land Consolidation and land re-parceling or reallocation. It is currently
managed by the decree-law of 1983 and its amendments (1985). Public
administrations, local municipalities and owners (at least two thirds of the owners of the
surface to be consolidated) can separately ask for land consolidation in order to
respond to one of the following objectives (Fawaz M. , 2004):

• Create embellishment zones and extensions for towns and villages

• Re-parcel old neighborhoods and built zones for embellishment and hygiene
purposes
• Rebuild demolished neighborhoods after a disaster
• Execute approved alignments
• Create new residential zones
• Execute entirely or partially major approved urban plans
• Modify limits between two or more parcels

It was explained previously in Section 3.1 how the law defines the application of
these operations in regards to non-constructible parcels and how it can be applied for
neighborly parcels. However, traditionally, land consolidation is a tool for the
improvement of farms, throughout the consolidation of fragmented agricultural parcels
(Van der Molen, Lemmen, & Uimonen, 2005). In European countries, amongst the few
problems that face this type of mechanism:

• Existing information systems do not adequately support land reallocation

• Long duration of projects: In Germany a land consolidation project last about
16-17 years while in the Netherlands in can last up to 12 years. Furthermore, in
Finland from 8to 12 years, in Sweden from 5 to 7 years, while Norway this
process takes only 2 to 4 years (Stilwell & See, 2012). Project duration is
54
 strongly related to the land consolidation type and approach, the size of the
consolidated area, the number of landowners, the current activities of an
authority and the available resources (Stilwell & See, 2012).
• High operational costs (Stilwell & See, 2012).
• Conflicts between stakeholders (Stilwell & See, 2012).
• High urbanization rate
• Outdated and inappropriate existing formal urban planning standards and
regulations

Nevertheless, in order to integrate non-constructible parcels in the city fabric,

new and improved mechanisms are required to adjust the land use and lay the urban
framework required for their development. References for such mechanisms are mostly
brought up from agricultural, rural and slum cases. Amongst the identified mechanisms,
we find:

• Modern Land Consolidation and Land Reallocation: Whether for proximity use
or other purposes, this option serves the adjacent plots and can lead to bigger
plots to be used as temporary uses or other (Van der Molen, Lemmen, &
Uimonen, 2005).
• Other mechanisms used mostly in slums such as Land Pooling/Land
Readjustment/Land Reconstitution and Land Sharing (The World Bank Group,
2001)

Modern land consolidation

“Modern land consolidation” (Thomas, 2004, p. 2), as opposed to the traditional
land consolidation process, includes tools that deal with more than agriculture alone; its
main objectives are to develop procedures that will be simplified, cost-effective and
shorter in duration (Van der Molen, Lemmen, & Uimonen, 2005). During a symposium
on “Modern Land Consolidation” held in Clermont Ferrand, France, Thomas describes
the different tools in Land consolidation in Germany (Thomas, 2004); a 150 years old
procedure that ranges from Comprehensive Land Consolidation, and Simplified Land
Consolidation, to Voluntary Land Exchange, amongst others, Thomas (2004) stresses
that all these measures should be part of a larger scope which is Land Management,
that brings current land use, land ownership issues and other land tenure in
accordance with private and public requests according to plan.

Landowners in need for expansion by consolidating the neighboring unused plot,

scattered plots in need for adjustment, regulation of ownership issues, amicable
exchanges of property, sustainable development and reducing urban disparities are
amongst the drivers for such contemporary urban operations. By comparing these
drivers to the proposed Lebanese land consolidation drivers previously listed, it is
noted that modern land consolidation focuses on two important issues: the ownership

55
of parcels and sustainability. For the purpose of this thesis, the issue of sustainability,
even though important in meeting global urban planning trends will not be discussed.
However, one of the most problematic issues in today’s land consolidation process in
Lebanon is the ownership issue. Modern land consolidation provides a new approach
to land consolidation by acknowledging the needs of the owners rather than those
serving the implementation of a larger master plan.

Land Pooling/Land Readjustment/Land Reconstitution

Some land development techniques, where a group of separate land parcels are
assembled for unified planning, servicing and subdivision as a single estate, with the
sale of some of the new building plots to recover the costs and the redistribution of the
other plots back to the landowners, are directly inspired from slums experiences such
as Bangkok or Sri Lanka (The World Bank Group, 2001). Land Pooling is differentiated
as where land is legally consolidated (‘pooled’) by the transfer of ownership of the
separate parcels of land to the agency handling the transaction and redesign, with the
later transfer of ownership of the new building plots to the landowners as shown on a
re-parceled plan (The World Bank Group, 2001).

Land readjustment is where the land parcels are only consolidated with the
agency having the right to design services and subdivide the land on a unified basis,
and then the landowners exchange their rural land parcels for their building plots as
shown in the re-parceled plan (The World Bank Group, 2001).

Land reconstitution - another variation - is a regulatory arrangement imposed on

landowners that is designed to facilitate the development of land but which requires the
owners to contribute land and cash. Land remains in separate ownership and partial
cost recovery is achieved through betterment tax (The World Bank Group, 2001).

Land pooling can be used for consolidating separate landholdings for their unified
subdivision for the planned pattern of urban land uses; achieving the timely servicing
and subdivision of urban-fringe landholdings to a good standard; financing the cost of
providing the road and public utility service networks out of the related land value
increases or ensuring an adequate supply of land for new housing development
(Archer, 1983). These techniques mainly used for residential and slums are widely
used in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan and in some cities in Australia and Canada.
Community organization, a land sharing agreement, rehousing the community in a
smaller area requiring increased residential densities and reconstruction are amongst
the drivers for such urban operations.
56
 Real estate companies
The possibility of creating a real estate company exists in the Lebanese
legislation since 1962 (Law of 24/9/1962) but was never applied until the DGUP, in
1974, prepared the creation of two real estate companies for the areas of Galgoul
(North of Bachoura) and Saifi. The 1975 war events stopped this project but this
possibility was maintained in Article 21 of the Decree Law no 69 of the 9th of
September 1983 (Fawaz M. , 2004). This law allows jointly or separately Public
Authorities and local municipalities to create a real estate company for the purpose of
developing a project in any part of Lebanon. The council of Ministers, through a decree,
creates this company that comprises owners, tenants and authorities such as the
Government or local municipalities.

In return to giving their rights to the company, private and public owners as well
as tenants receive stocks. For the purpose of creating infrastructure, public spaces and
other public facilities, the Government or Municipalities retain 25% of the area for
themselves. The company is free, according to the planning guidelines, to sell, build,
develop or rent out planned parcels. All benefits are redistributed to stockholders.

Expropriation for the sake of public interest

The current law no58/91, that replaces the old law of 54, regulates the
expropriation process in Lebanon. Article 1 of this law states that the Administration
can expropriate buildings, fully or in part, for the purpose of public interest (Fawaz M. ,
2004). Upon the demand of local municipalities, the concerned minister can declare by
decree the public interest proposition. Public administration and Municipalities can then
expropriate buildings. An expropriation committee of experts, also mandated by
decree, evaluates the land and built and fixes the amount of indemnities resulting from
expropriation. Public authorities pay the indemnities to owners and bets on the real
estate added value of the land after the public project is realized (Fawaz M. , 2004).
One of the major setbacks of this type of operation today is the lack of funds within the
Authorities’ register.

Throughout the previous section, a rundown of urban operations revealed the

potential of current regulations in managing the urban fabric. Any proposed urban
strategy to implement temporary use programs on interim spaces, and to integrate non-
constructible parcels within the city’s fabric requires the application of a certain number
of operations. However, in order to implement urban operations, it will be important to
take in consideration the spatial, social, economical and cultural context.

57
 3.4. The context

“Cities undergo continuous transformation in their spatial, socio-economic

and political milieus. Among the rising issues in Lebanon’s urban milieus, the
emergence of significant urban divides stands out. Such divides could
exacerbate if unaddressed and could evolve in an uncontrolled manner
affecting the livability in cities” (UN-Habitat, 2011, p. 80).
This urban divide is translated spatially, socially and economically; spatially
through the spatial divide and socially and culturally through the sectarian divide. Both
cases will be examined in the following sections and could be important drivers for the
implementation of temporary use programs.

Spatial
Time gaps in Beirut can be associated in part to the transformation of the urban
fabric due to the various implemented plans described in Section 2.2.2, hence
generating a series of unused residual parcels. Also, the spatial divide in which the
inadequacy of the public transportation infrastructure, high cost of fuel/diesel, and
traffic congestions have made low and middle income residents living in the suburbs
face difficulties in interacting with residents of the city (UN-Habitat, 2011). This reduces
the opportunities for mingling and interacting between different socio-economic
classes. The need to create different means of transportation seems of utmost
importance and temporary uses with their connectivity potential could fill that gap.

Social
Beirut’s diverse social fabric is more evident in the three study districts. While
Saifi, a prime residential area, is prosperous due to the boom in the real estate sector
mainly because of its proximity to Ashrafieh and Downtown Beirut, Bachoura is a
devastated area currently shifting from a residential character to a more services
oriented one with the emergence of Beirut Digital District, and Zokak El-Blat is still a
high density residential area.

Moreover, the sectarian divide, a commonly found situation in Beirut, where

sectarianism along with socio-economic regional disparities have paved the way to the
development of a social segregation system (UN-Habitat, 2011). This system is hence
built on closed and dense intra-group networks of social relation where the divisions
are translated on the spatial milieu generating places of residence that have become
increasingly homogenized with urban areas predominantly Christian, Sunni, Shia and
others (UN-Habitat, 2011). We have seen earlier in Section 2.2.2 how temporary use
plays an important role in the suturing of social fabrics. In that perspective, non-

58
constructible parcels, along with the programs assigned to them, could become
catalysts for not only physical integration but also social integration within the city.

Figure 6: Saifi, Bachoura, Zokak El-Blat

Source 7: By author (July 2013)

Economic
In a dense city like Beirut, where every square meter has become more and
more valuable, and despite war, conflicts and political crises, the price of land,
according to the Finance Ministry, has continued to rise exponentially over the last five
years (Battah, 2011).

Moreover,

“Land, an important component of residential prices, has been favoring

upward pressures on end-users prices in the market. Residential prices are in
fact influenced by the cost of land purchased to undertake the project, the cost
of construction materials used in the building phase and the developer’s
margin” (Bank Audi, 2012, p. 7).
Amongst the urban divides addressed in the UN-Habitat report on the Lebanon’s
urban profile (2011) is the socio-economic divide, where the absence of a clear urban
development policy framework, together with the inefficiency of Lebanese land property
Law, contributed to the increase in prices of the land and housing units. Consequently,
the lack of an urban policy framework significantly increased the gap between the poor
and the rich. It is mostly obvious in the area of Khandak el Ghamik (Bachoura district)
where even though poor conditions apply, its proximity to the Downtown area has
boosted the market-value of the built-up area to a minimum of 1000-1500US$/m2 (UN-
Habitat, 2011). This area is now being developed by investors to become the Beirut
Digital District.

59
 In 2004-2005, at a time where locals and foreigners especially from Arab and
Gulf countries were looking at the real estate sector in Beirut as a safe haven for
investments, new projects have risen dramatically (Hayek Group s.a.r.l, 2006). In order
to respond to such demand, which was mostly of a residential nature, and build these
new projects, finding new land was crucial. Buying vacant plots, demolition of old
buildings and land consolidation were very common operations and that led to major
changes in the urban fabric of Beirut.

Cultural
In cities like Berlin, the emergence of sub-cultures in the form of music and
entertainment industry, favored the implementation of temporary uses on residual
spaces. Beirut, holds within its realm immense cultural heritage and non-constructible
parcels, in a very underrated manner are part of this heritage. Right of ways, vacant
parcels, or even illegal buildings, are the physical translation of part of this heritage.

60
4. Methodology
This chapter introduces the research methodology used for this study and how it
has guided data collection, analysis and development of case study. Essential
background and fundamental guidelines common in different approaches to case study
methodology (CSM) are provided (Yin, 2003). The subsequent three sections describe
the data collection phases for this study, which consisted of mapping, fieldwork and
interviews.

4.1. Mapping
Since no data regarding non-constructible parcels was available, maps had to be
redrawn in order to identify and highlight this type of information. The use of
Geographic Informational System Software (GIS) proved to be adequate for this type of
query, since it provides a layering system coupled with a geographic referencing
system that allows maps from different sources to be stored, manipulated, analyzed
and managed. The following will describe the different stages that were gone through
in order to build a GIS database.

4.1.1. Data collection and analysis

The most recent cadastral maps for Beirut are the 2004 Municipality of Beirut
maps edited and compiled in 1964 by the OGA9 and updated in 2004 for the Beirut
Municipality by the topographical firm of Khoza Sfeir. Once these maps (available on
digital print only) are entered into a GIS database, other maps are added and redrawn
as well, in order to identify information regarding the evolution of the built and the
topography of Beirut. The following maps were added and redrawn:

Table 3: List of available documentation (maps and photographs)

Date Source
Cadastral maps 1963 Unknown
Cadastral maps 1998 OGA
Cadastral maps 2004 OGA
Topographical maps 1997 OGA
Aerial photograph 2005 OGA
Google Earth 2013 Google

9
OGA: Office of Geographical Affairs, the Lebanese Army
61
 The basic generated map is that of Municipal Beirut that shows the evolution of
the built and parceling since 1963, the topography, the zoning, the district limits, the
road infrastructure and the Municipal Beirut boundary. The analysis of this map will
help understand the emergence of some non-constructible parcels, especially the ones
generated by the construction of new roads and delineation of new zones.

• All cadastral and topographical maps are available in Appendix C

• All the aerial photographs are available in Appendix D

4.1.2. Use of mapping for this study

The next step is to identify the non-constructible parcels according to the zoning
table (Table 3 in Section 3.3) that defines the constructible surfaces as per zones.
Proceeding by elimination would lead to identifying non-constructible parcels as
defined by Article 5 of the decree n° 6285/54. As explained in section 3.1, existing
parcels and consolidated parcels need to have minimum areas and dimensions in
order to be constructible as indicated in Article 2 of the decree n° 5550/73. By ruling
out what is permitted, one can begin to assess the current Municipal Beirut parcel
situation in terms of non-constructability. This method allows for a complete
identification of non-constructible parcels within the boundaries of the zoned districts,
however it does not identify vacant land part of a larger parcel, although defined as
non-constructible as per Article 5 modified by decree n° 5550/73.

Through GIS, a basic non-constructible parcels’ map for Municipal Beirut was
generated. Using recent aerial photographs of Beirut and cadastral maps, a land use
map and base map were generated.

The mapping process builds on a database, updated to 2004, and the following
maps for Municipal Beirut are generated:

• Built-up map: Identifies the built parcels and their relation to the voids
• Parcels map: Identifies the existing parcels and their identification
• Road map: Highlights major, secondary and tertiary road network and will be
used to define accessibility to parcels
• Non-constructible parcels maps: According to the study areas Zoning regulation
and as per Land occupation density, built-up space and minimum dimensions
for constructible areas that follow the guidelines of the zoning tables. Entering
this data into GIS and filtering, the constructible parcels as per table, generates
by elimination a map showing the non-constructible parcels.
• Land use map: Identifies the cemeteries, archeological sites, parking spaces,
schools, sports facilities, etc.
• Base map: Identifies major landscape features of the urban fabric such as
green spaces, wastelands and other.

All the GIS generated maps will be available in Appendix E.

62
 Separate maps for each district of the study area are generated, i.e. Saifi,
Bachoura and Zokak El-Blat. When entering data into GIS, different attributes were
specifically given to the non-constructible parcels in the three districts:

• District name
• Number of the parcel
• Zoning area
• Nature of use of each non-constructible parcel
• Constructability status of the parcels
• Proximity to major, secondary and tertiary roads
• Land consolidation potential or adjacency of parcels one to the other

All the GIS generated districts maps are available in Appendix F.

These attributes will help isolate the urban characteristics and allow future
comparison in the analysis chapter. These maps are used to classify the non-
constructible parcels and extract data regarding the percentages and total counts of
non-constructible parcels, sizes and areas of the parcels, their nature of use in terms of
areas and count, and other relevant data that will be shown in the analysis chapter.

4.1.3. Selection of study area

The two cases of the Beirut Central District and the Port district, area highlighted
in red on the map, have no non-constructible parcels and hence are excluded from the
study. The reason for that is that the Beirut Central District, or the premises managed
by Solidere10, is regulated by its own set of laws and regulations, and because of its
new master plan, there is no such situation as of the non-constructible parcels. Also,
the Port district as per Decree n˚ 6285 of 11/9/1954 is labeled as Zone 9 (Figure 7) and
it is as non-aedificandi zone; that is a zone listed on the land use plan on which
construction is forbidden.

10
http://www.solidere.com. Since Solidere was planned under its own set of laws and
regulations, non-constructible parcels are inexistent in its premises.
63
 Figure 7: Municipal Beirut district map_Location of study districts

Source 8: By author

The selected case studies are the districts of Saifi, Bachoura and Zokak El-Blat.
The areas of the three districts that are part of Solidere have certain functions that are
explained in Table 4 and consist mainly of commercial, public buildings and office
spaces.

Table 4: Functions by sector part of Solidere

Sector Dominant functions by sector District

Fa Commercial, Services, Existing schools Zokak El-Blat
Ga Commercial, Offices, Public buildings Zokak El-Blat
Ha Commercial, Offices, Services Saifi, Bachoura
I Residential Saifi
Ja, Jb Public spaces, offices, Residential, Bachoura
Commercial, Hotels, Administrative buildings Zokak El-Blat
Source Adapted from E. El-Achkar (1998, p. 117)

64
 Figure 8: General Map Saifi, Bachoura, Zokak El-Blat

Source 9: By Author

This general map is a compilation of data that shows:

• The road network

• The state of the built-up in 1963 and in 2004
• The constructible parcels as of 2004
• The built non-constructible parcels as of 2004

This generated map, based on available cadastral maps from 2004 and before,
will serve as a reference for fieldwork updates. It will also be used to extract preliminary
data regarding the non-constructible parcels in 2004 (counts, areas, etc.), and hence
test the validity of the objectives of this thesis and the potential of future findings.

Saifi is located South of Downtown Beirut, on its Eastern side. It is bounded by

Damascus Road from the West, Rue du Liban from the East, Abd El-Wahab Street and
Charles Helou Avenue from the South and North. Two major arteries separate Saifi
district from Solidere area: General Fouad Chehab Avenue and Georges Haddad
Street.

Two areas owned by the ‘Waqf’ are located in Saifi district: the Université Saint
Joseph campus on Huvelin Street and the Sacré-Coeur college in Gemayzeh.

65
Moreover, Saifi has nine different churches that are distributed within its boundaries.
On the other hand, Saifi is mainly a residential area that has seen the proliferation of a
vast number of bars and restaurants, especially on the ground floors of its buildings.

Figure 9: Photographs from Saifi district showing the status of the built

Source 10: By author

66
 Figure 10: Photographs from Saifi district showing the status of the built

Source 11: By author

The district of Bachoura is situated in between Zokak El-Blat and Saifi. It is

bounded by Mamoun Street from the South, Rue de Damas and Bechara El-Khoury
Street from the East, Ahmad Tabbara Street from the West and Emir Bechir Street
from the North. Avenue de l’independence divides Bachoura from East to West and
Basta Street and Ibrahim Ahdab Street from North to South.

Zokak el Blatt is bounded by Othman Ben Affan Street from the South, Ahmad
Tabbara Street from the East that extends to the North to Toufik Khaled Street, Abdel
Kader Street from the West and Rue de France and Rue Capucins from the North.
General FouadChehab Avenue divides it into two: the north side part of Solidere, and
the south one. Ahmad Beyhum Street crosses the East part of the district from South to
North, and Rue du Patriarchate crosses it in a similar manner on the West side.

Figure 11: Location of photographs. By author

67
 Figure 12: Photographs from Bachoura district showing the status of
the built

Source 12: By author

68
 Figure 13: Photographs of Zokak El-Blat district showing the status of the
built

Source 13: By author

69
 4.1.4. Limitations
One of the limitations of this method is that available data is not updated; the
most recent is from the year 2004. Since then, many projects have been built in Beirut,
new roads were traced and that has modified the urban fabric. Through fieldwork,
maps have been updated up to the year 2013, regarding built and un-built status of
non-constructible parcels and nature of use, enabling more realistic data and
classification. However, some urban operations such as land consolidation cannot be
identified through fieldwork, and new parcel boundaries remain uncertain in some
cases. For further validation, verification, and explanation and in order to answer the
questions related to the current and future states of non-constructible parcels, other
methods will be necessary, such as fieldwork data collection and interviews.

On the other hand, and given the absence of comprehensive population surveys,
and with the last census held in 1932, socio-demographics data for the districts of Saifi,
Bachoura and Zokak El-Blat present certain limitations (UNDP/MoSA, 2006). However,
the National Survey of Households Living Conditions 2004-200511 (UNDP/MoSA, 2006)
only provides information at the level of Governorates. Hence, comparative social data
on the level of districts regarding distribution of households, the age pyramid, the
unemployment rate, the social habits and activities, educational and artistic activities,
are unavailable and existing data on level of Governorates are of very little use in the
context of this thesis.

4.2. Fieldwork
The aim of this method is to update, through site visits, the existing database, in
order to generate a map reflecting the current state in 2013.

4.2.1. Preparatory work

• Selecting the tools and materials used during survey: A camera and an itinerary
map (Appendix G) were used during the survey. After studying the generated
map of 2014, and setting the non-constructible parcels to visit, as well as
construction sites and new buildings that have popped-up since 2014, setting
predefined itinerary of visits for the districts to survey becomes an important tool
to avoid random browsing in the districts.
• Defining purpose of the visits: the site survey is to take photographs of
previously identified non-constructible parcels (in itinerary) and to update land
use and emergence of new buildings in vacant parcels or the demolition of old
buildings, as well as to interact with locals to extract further information about
plots and neighborhoods.

11
A comparative study done by the UNDP with the collaboration the Ministry of Social
Affairs in Lebanon.
70
 • Creating and testing fact sheets (Appendix H) for noting down and updating
information during survey: A fact sheet was created and tested on few random
non-constructible parcels in order to note down the criteria to be used. This
sheet was also helpful in measuring the discrepancies that exist between the
available maps and the recent status of the urban fabric. This new evidence
made it clearer that fieldwork was necessary in order to update the existing
cadastral maps, mainly regarding cadastral status, nature of use of the built and
non-built parcels, constructability status, status of the built, ownership, new
projects, etc.

4.2.2. Data collection procedures

The fieldwork allows verifying the database generated in the earlier process as
explained in the following:

• During the fieldwork, and according to the predefined itinerary, each highlighted
non-constructible parcel was photographed and information predefined in the
fact sheets was noted down. Also updates for new projects and buildings were
noted down in order to complete the cadastral maps. Not only non-constructible
parcels were surveyed but also other parcels that showed modifications in their
constructability status and nature of use.
• Photographic survey of parcels: photographs were taken and numbered to
facilitate recognition and completion of fact sheets. Photographs were archived
by districts and by parcel number and were used in this thesis as a pictorial
support, in conjunction with maps, in order to illustrate the current situation of
the parcels. Photographs proved to be necessary in the land use classification
of the parcels, since vacant plots were used in various ways such as garbage
dumps, generator stations, parking lots, etc.

4.2.3. Data entry

Completion of fact sheets and update of cadastral maps: all the gathered
information was transferred to a digital database. Using GIS, maps were updated and
the new documentation was generated for the analysis stage. In the following sub-
sections, the organizational process of data entry will be reviewed as well as the
information that was generated:

Updating maps
Once all this data is collected and integrated into GIS, updated and filtered maps
of the three districts could be generated and one could proceed with classification. The
advantage of this procedure is to avoid discrepancies between all existing maps and to
arrive at a precise land use field survey for non-constructible parcels.

Identification of parcels
Through collected data and fieldwork, these parcels are identified according to
the following factors:

• The parcel number: To identify the plot/parcel

71
 • The parcel area: First of all, the area of the parcels is a key information in the
process of data entry, since it allows to filter, as per table on minimal
dimensions and areas for constructible parcels table (Section 2.2.1). Once this
information was entered, a preliminary map showing the non-constructible
parcels distribution and location would be generated. This information is also
useful to determine future use and potential of parcel in terms of area and
space available. Very small parcels could be filtered out as not useful.
• The construction status (built or non-built): To investigate why they were built
and by whom. Also, during the analysis process, built parcels would be critical
in determining future use of the parcel. Should the status of the built be in a
condition allows its preservation, it can be decided that they should be left as is,
thus not useful in the selection process.
• The ownership status: This information will be crucial in determining the
organization scheme of the parcels. Whether private, public or municipality
owned, it would affect the overall administrative management of the parcels.
• The nature of the built/non-built: In the case of the built, as to what type of
commerce or residential. In the case of the non-built, as to what type of vacant
parcel: Parking, garden, garbage dump, etc.
• The description of the built: year of built, number of floors, status of the
construction (needs rehabilitation, old, new, etc.)
• Accessibility to plot: This indicator will investigate the proximity of non-
constructible parcels to major, secondary or tertiary road, or even if the parcels
is not accessible by any of the previous road networks.
• Type of operation that led to non-constructability status (if any) such as the
application of Article 5 of Decree n0 5550/73, the outcome of land
consolidation, or the application of a previous master plan that led to the
creation of a new road hence the generation of adjacent residual parcels, as
discussed in Section 2.2.2.

All the updated GIS generated maps will be available in Appendix I.

Limitations
Although this procedure proved to be efficient, some limitations regarding
inaccessible sites was noted, and few areas were inaccessible and in some the use of
camera was forbidden, such as areas where political parties have their headquarters
and other sensitive areas where it seemed unwanted to use a camera and using my
own judgment in refraining seemed best. In that case, the procedure was restricted to
taking notes and relying on visual memory. In the case taking photographs was
forbidden, updates for land use were achieved, but in other areas were access was
difficult, such operation was unachieved. Another limitation is related to knowing or
asserting the ownership of the parcel. Due to the high number of non-constructible
parcels within the boundaries of the districts, it was difficult to access ownership data.

72
 Figure 14: Fieldwork Limitations: Areas not photographed marked by the
circle. Zokak El-Blat (left), Saifi (Middle), Bachoura (right)

Source 14: By Author

For example in some dense neighborhoods in Bachoura (Figure 14, right) and
Zokak El-Blat (Figure 14, right), taking photographs and site surveys looked suspicious
for some residents, and it made the task difficult to achieve. In Saifi (Figure 14, middle),
the area of around a political headquarters was secured and it was unauthorized to
take photographs.

4.3. Interviews
For the purpose of understanding some legal and regulatory issues regarding
urban planning in Lebanon and more specifically land consolidation and tools related to
that, as well as legal process in regards to law changes and reforms, it will be
imperative to conduct interviews with members of HCU, DGU, CDR, municipality,
activists or any other person related to the local urban planning field.

Open-ended interviews are used for this research. They are defined as "an
informal interview, not structured by a standard list of questions. Fieldworkers are free
to deal with the topics of interest in any order and to phrase their questions as they
think best" (Nichols, 1991, p. 131). This type of structured interviews uses a wide range
of questions in any order depending on the development of the interview (Glynis,
Hammond, & Fifie-Shaw, 1995). Open-ended questions allow the interviewer to gain
more detailed answers from the respondent (Wimmer & Dominick, 1997). The richness
of the data is therefore entirely dependent on the interviewer.

73
 4.3.1. Interviews and ethical considerations
For the interview phase, the participants were initially contacted by telephone
prior to the interview that was followed up by an email explaining the study’s aim and
the interview procedure. The email ensured participants about anonymity and
confidentiality of data collected and informed them that the interview was recorded for
transcription. The interviews were at times recorded with a digital voice recorder and at
other times hand notes were taken and the files transferred to a computer for
transcription.

Respondents were selected in relation to issues that required more information

and that proved to be complementary to the literature review such as:

• Legislation on Beirut
• Urban planning in Beirut and land consolidation
• Urban Land consolidation and land reallocation: Future proposals to use non-
constructible parcels within the urban fabric
• Real estate legal issues and limitations
• Public spaces within Municipal Beirut: Status and permits
• Legal limitations: Future use and law proposals
• Authorities’ role: Decentralization

4.3.2. Development of interview questions

Persons scheduled for interviews are:

• Director of the General Directorate of Urban Planning in Beirut (present)

• Former Director of the General Directorate of Urban Planning and former
director of the Highest Counsel on Urban Planning in Lebanon (1993-1999)
• Vice president of the Beirut Municipal Council

All the Interviews will be available in Appendix J.

4.3.3. Advantages and limitations

There are of course both advantages and disadvantages to this type of structure.
It is particularly useful as a pilot study, to test out what people’s responses would be to
a particular issue; it may take the interview in directions the interviewer never
considered (Wimmer & Dominick, 1997). Freedom for the respondent to answer how
they wish to is important in giving them a feeling of control in the interview situation.
This also has its disadvantages, namely in terms of the amount of time needed to
collect and analyze the responses (Wimmer & Dominick, 1997). Open questions used
in this unstructured interview approach can cause confusion either because of the lack
of understanding of the question by the informant or by the lack of understanding of the
respondent's answer by the interviewer (Wimmer & Dominick, 1997). Despite some of
these disadvantages, open-ended questions are very important.

74
 4.4. Processing empirical data
Three steps will be required in order to process empirical data:

4.4.1. The Input

It is the process through which collected data is transformed into a digital form. It
is very important step because correct output result totally depends on the input data.
In input step, following activities can be performed.

• Verification: The collected data is verified to determine whether it is correct as

required.
• Coding: The verified data is coded and digitized.
• Storing: The data is stored and will be given to the selected program as input
for processing. In the case of this thesis it will be GIS and Excel.

4.4.2. The Processing

The term processing denotes the actual data manipulation techniques such as
classifying, sorting, calculating, summarizing, comparing, etc. that convert data into
information.

• Classification: The data is classified into different groups and subgroups, so that
each group or sub-group of data can be handled separately.
• Storing: The data is arranged into an order so that it can be accessed when
required.
• Calculations: The arithmetic operations are performed on the numeric data to
get the required results. For example, the parcel’s counts and areas of a
specific district.
• Summarizing: The data is processed to represent it in a summarized form.

4.4.3. The Output

After completing the processing step, output is generated. The main purpose of
data processing is to get the required result. In output step, following activities can be
performed.

• Retrieval: Output stored on the storage media can be retrieved at any time.
• Conversion: The generated output can be converted into different forms. For
example, it can be represented into graphical form (tables or figures).
• Communication: The generated output is imported in the thesis document for
presentation.

75
5. Comparative analysis of case studies
In this chapter, and throughout the empirical data collected and the interviews
conducted and in response to this thesis objectives to identify and classify non-
constructible parcels within the three study areas, collected data will be archived and
analyzed with regards to the spatial, land use, regulatory, tools and actors’ role
parameters.

Complete data collection and analysis charts will be available in Appendix K.

5.1. Identifying the non-constructible parcels/residual

spaces within the three study areas
In this section, and based on empirical data of this thesis, non-constructible
parcels will be identified within the boundaries of each study area. The historical
evolution of the urban fabric of each district will also be reviewed since demolitions and
land consolidation processes, as well as major urban and socio-economic events that a
city goes through (Bauman, 2001) (Trancik, 1986) (Studio Urban Catalyst, 2003), are
closely related to the residual spaces situation.

Table 5 shows the primary parameters that lead to the identification of non-
constructible parcels in each district. Saifi district falls under the regulation of Zone 2,
Bachoura district falls under the regulation of Zone 2 (area north of Avenue de
l’Independance) and Zone 3 and Zokak El-Blat district falls under the regulation of
Zone 2 (area east of Ahmad Beyhum Street) and Zone 3.

Table 5: Minimal dimensions and areas for constructible parcels

Dimensions and minimal areas for constructible parcels

Zone 1 Zone 2 Zone 3 Zone 4 Zone 5 Zone 6 Zone 7 Zone 8 Zone 9 Zone 10

Area (m2) 250 250 300 300 500 400 250

A As of Decree
Façade (m) 10 10 12 15 17 15 12
no. 2616 of
Depth (m) 10 10 12 15 17 15 12 14/09/1953 As of Decree
Non
amended by no. 4811 of
100 100 120 150 250 200 100 aedificandi
Area (m)2 Decree 24/6/1966
no.14312 of
B Façade (m) 9 9 10 10 12 12 9
21/05/1970
Depth (m) 7 7 8 8 14 8 7
A: Parcels resulting from subdivision B: Existing parcels

Source 15: By author adopted from E. El-Achkar (1998, p. 32)

Since 2004, and mainly to give way for the recent developments, as it will be
shown in section 5.2.2, buildings within the boundaries of Saifi district were
demolished, especially along Georges Haddad Street (Figure 15), adjacent to the
Solidere area. Saifi consists mainly of buildings that were built before 1963, and the
76
development of peripheries such as the northwestern and the southern peripheries
happened between 1962 and 2004. The old nature of this fabric explains in part the few
demolitions that occurred inside the district, as opposed to the massive developments
along Georges Haddad Street.

Through GIS mapping and fieldwork, empirical data shows that Saifi holds within
its urban fabric a total of 423 parcels, of which 77 are non-constructible (18%)
accounting for a total non-constructible area of 3976 m2or 1.5% of the total footprint of
the built area of Saifi (Figure 15).

The data extracted from this identification map will be analyzed and decrypted in
the following sections in order to achieve a comprehensive classification of these
parcels and hence respond to the third objective set for this thesis. It will be shown in
section 5.2.1 how these parcels are spatially distributed and comparative analysis with
the other districts regarding scale and form will be conducted. Moreover, the nature of
use as well as the potential of these parcels will be developed.

Figure 15: Demolished areas - Non-constructible parcels / Saifi District, 2013

L e g e n d

District_Limits

¨ ¨
DMLSHD_Saife

Date L e g e n d
Built 1963
Built 1963-2004 District_Limits

Saifi_PRCLS Saifi_PRCLS
CST_Status CST_Status
C C

NC_Built NC_Built
0 30 60 120 180 0 30 60 120 180
NC_Unbuilt Meters NC_Unbuilt Meters

Source 16: By author (July, 2013)

Figure 16 shows that besides massive demolition in the Solidere area (north of
the district), Bachoura witnessed some demolition and rehabilitation of old buildings in
77
its eastern part to prepare the implementation of the Beirut Digital District. The
demolition and land consolidation operations that happened in this specific area are
reflected through the absence of non-constructible parcels. The same phenomenon is
witnessed along the Avenue de l’Independance where demolitions occurred massively.
In section 5.2.2 the recent developments and economic drivers behind those
operations will be reviewed.

Through GIS mapping and fieldwork, empirical data shows that Bachoura holds
within its urban fabric a total of 809 parcels, of which 118 are non-constructible (14.5%)
accounting for a total non-constructible area of 4480m2or 1.5% of the total footprint of
the built area of Bachoura (Figure 16).

It will be shown in section 5.2 how these parcels are spatially distributed and
comparative analysis regarding scale and form will be conducted. Moreover, the nature
of use as well as the land consolidation potential will be reviewed.

Figure 16: Demolished areas - non-constructible parcels, Bachoura district,

2013

L e g e n d

District_Limits

¨ ¨
DMLSHD_Bachoura

Date
Built 1963 L e g e n d
Built 1963-2004

Bachoura_PRCLS Bachoura_PRCLS
CST_Status CST_Status
C C

NC_Built NC_Built
0 30 60 120 180 0 30 60 120 180
NC_Unbuilt Meters NC_Unbuilt Meters

Source 17: By author

78
 Figure 17: Demolished areas - Non-constructible parcels, ZokakEl-Blat, 2013

L e g e n d

District_Limits

¨ ¨
DMLSHD_ZokakElBlat

Date
Built 1963
L e g e n d
Built 1963-2004

ZokakElBlat_PRCLS ZokakElBlat_PRCLS
CST_Status CST_Status
C C
NC_Built NC_Built
0 30 60 120 180 0 30 60 120 180
NC_Unbuilt Meters NC_Unbuilt Meters

Source 18: By author

Four major demolition operations of the urban fabric took place in Zokak el Blat:
the demolition caused by the addition of the two major axes, Fouad Chehab and
Ahmad Beyhum or Salim Salam Avenue (1964-1977), the destruction caused by the
civil war (1975-1990), the demolition caused by the reconstruction process in Solidere
area (1991-2003) and the demolition caused by the land and real estate speculation
(2003 – 2011)12. In that sense, new infrastructure, the social and economical events of
Zokak El-Blat are the main reason behind the random and chaotic demolition process
in that district and the diverse building typologies within the district’s urban fabric.

On the other hand, and in response to one of this thesis objectives with regards
to the identification of non-constructible parcels, Zokak El-Blat holds within its urban
fabric a total of 559 parcels, of which 151 are non-constructible (27%) accounting for a
total non-constructible area of 8144 m2or 3.5% of the total footprint of the built area of
Zokak El-Blat (Figure 17). We can see that Zokak El-Blat has the highest percentage of
non-constructible parcels among the three districts (Table 7). Given the different
demolition phases stated earlier, and the high number of non-constructible parcels, it

12
Study by Majal/Alba on the “Urban Observation of Zokak El-Blat”, October 2012
79
could be established that a lack of urban planning regarding the development of this
district is behind this paradox, resulting in random development in the last 10 years and
the creation of streets and roads.

It was the aim of this section to establish a road map on which the comparative
analysis of the following sections will be based. By identifying the non-constructible
parcels in each, reviewing the historical evolution of the districts, and through the
empirical data that was elaborated, a preliminary assessment of the non-constructible
parcel’s situation within the boundaries of the three districts was achieved. These
findings extracted from the empirical works, as explained in the methodology chapter,
show the following:

• The location of the non-constructible parcels within the boundaries of the three
study districts
• The number of non-constructible parcels and their percentages in relation to the
total number of parcels in each district.

Table 6 summarizes the preliminary findings regarding the number of parcels in

each district and the percentage of non-constructible parcels in each of them:

Table 6: Number of parcels/non-constructible parcels in all study districts

Saifi Bachoura Zokak El-Blat

Total parcels (No) 42 809 559

3
NC parcels (No/%) 77(18%) 118(14.5%) 151(27%)

Source 19: By author

Other left over spaces could also be added to that list, street related filler spaces
such as median strips in the middle of the streets, odd shaped traffic median as it was
proposed by Mayor Bloomberg as part of the resiliency strategy to reclaim the streets
of New York (Clendaniel, 2013), but for the purpose of this thesis, we will restrict to the
non-constructible parcels as defined by the laws and regulations of Beirut.

In that sense, the first objective of this thesis was to identify the non-constructible
parcels within the boundaries Municipal Beirut and more specifically the three districts
of Saifi, Bachoura and Zokak El-Blat. By locating these parcels on the updated maps,
the data regarding counts and areas, the foundation for a comparative analysis of the
urban parameters is set, and the first objective is achieved.

80
 It will be explained in the following sections of this chapter how these non-
constructible parcels are spatially distributed and comparative analysis regarding scale
and form will be conducted in order to define a strategy for their integration within the
urban fabric and to implement temporary use programs. Moreover, the nature of use as
well as the land consolidation potential will be reviewed in order to answer the third
objective of this thesis, which is the classification of these parcels.

5.2. Uses
Should non-constructible parcels integrate the urban fabric and become interim
spaces, accessibility will be an important parameter to study. Moreover, their
integration and future use will depend greatly on the socio-economical and cultural
context in which they belong. This section will compare and analyze the spatial, socio-
economic and cultural contexts of the three study areas.

5.2.1. Spatial
Among all parameters to be examined here below, the spatial context is the one
that is least subject to change after implementation of temporary use programs since it
involves parameters related to the relationship of the parcels with the existing urban
fabric. Its importance relies on the fact that it helps identify zones of density (where
non-constructible parcels are more dense) within the districts, adjacency to roads and
streets and form and scale of the parcels. Although these parameters are static, the
relevance of the findings will help define the future connections between the parcels
and how they will play a role in suturing gaps in other domains such as social,
economical or cultural. This section will compare and analyze the following parameters
in each of the three selected study districts:

• The location or proximity to a road network

• The geographical distribution
• The geometric form and scale

Location/proximity to roads
Three types of roads have been identified as per the base map in Figure 8: Major
road, secondary road and tertiary road. In order to clarify the hierarchy of roads here
are few examples from each district:

In Bachoura district (Figure 18), the orange color show the primary or major
roads such as Rue de L’independence and Ibrahim Ahdab Street, the blue color shows
the secondary roads such as Abd El-Hamid Zahraoui Street while the yellow color
highlight the tertiary roads or inner passages that lead to the inside of the blocks.

81
 Figure 18: Hierarchy of road network,Bachoura

Source 20: By author from Municipal Beirut cadastral maps

In Saifi district (Figure 19), the major artery such as Rue du Liban, the secondary
roads such as Rue Huvelin or Dahdah Street while the tertiary roads are highlighted in
green.

Figure 19: Hierarchy of road network, Saifi

Source 21: By author from Municipal Beirut cadastral maps

82
 In Zokak El-Blat district (Figure 20), the major roads such as Boustani and Barres
streets, the secondary roads such as Abd El Kader Nahass Street and the tertiary in
green.

Figure 20: Hierarchy of road network, Zokak El-Blat

Source 22: By author from Municipal Beirut cadastral maps

While the primary and secondary roads are always vehicular roads, the tertiary
can be either vehicular or pedestrian. In many cases, the tertiary road network
becomes right of ways and ensures accessibility to parcels inside blocks. Sometimes
these right of ways are part of the non-constructible parcels, other times they are just
untraced vacant spaces through which a pedestrian can cross to access parcels inside
the blocks; as an example we can identify the vacant spaces in between buildings due
to regulatory recess lines. In that case these vacant spaces are not identified as non-
constructible and hence are not part of the study, even though they crucial to accessing
the inner blocks. This initial finding shows the configuration of the existing network of
roads within the study districts and defines the main elements that will make the base
of the next analysis.

According to the proximity of the non-constructible parcels to this network, the

following situations (Table 7) have been identified and accordingly the following
denomination was adopted:

• Adjacent to Major Road (AMR): Any situation where a non-constructible parcel

has a façade on a major or primary road
83
 • Adjacent to Secondary Road (ASR): Any situation where a non-constructible
parcel has a façade on a secondary road
• Adjacent to Tertiary Road (ATR): Any situation where a non-constructible parcel
has a façade on a tertiary road
• Not adjacent to any road (NAR): Any situation where a non-constructible parcel
is isolated inside a block of parcels and is not accessible

These different situations define the accessibility parameter of non-constructible

parcels and will help evaluate the potential of further use with regards to temporary
uses. The objective will be to achieve a classification for these parcels based on a
degree of exposure in the same manner a commercial storefront has a higher degree
of exposure if located on a major road, hence a better chance of being spotted and so
on. For instance, in the first situation (AMR), parcels have a high degree of accessibility
since they are directly adjacent to a major road and in that sense they are highly
exposed and could be key parcels in the implementation strategy of temporary uses. In
the other two situations (ASR and ATR) where adjacency with secondary and tertiary
roads is found, parcels become less exposed to major circulation and could be
integrated to the frontal parcels (AMR) through a path or network. In the last situation
(NAR), no accessibility whatsoever exists to these parcels and this could be limiting in
terms of the future role these parcels could play since they are the least exposed.

Hence, three non-constructible parcels types emanate from this relation between
accessibility and potential of use and for the purpose of this thesis, generic
denominations will be assigned to them: the highly exposed, the less exposed and the
least exposed. According to this degree of exposure, different temporary use programs
will be assigned.

Based on fieldwork, data collection and GIS mapping, the count and total area for
the above-identified situations are the following:

Table 7: Number of non-constructible parcels and respective areas (m2)

according to their proximity to roads

AMR ASR ATR NAR

30(1407) 19(959) 8(370) 26(975)

Saifi

71(3136) 53(2961) 57(2675) 16(1261)

Bachoura

61(2736) 70(4087) 5(223) 22(1346)

Zokak El-Blat

Source 23: By author

84
 The study of the above-tabulated data shows:

• There are 15% of non-constructible parcels in all three districts that are
currently not accessible or least exposed.
• There are 37% of non-constructible parcels in all three districts that are
adjacent to a main artery or road or highly exposed.
• There are 48% of non-constructible parcels in all three districts that are either
connected to a secondary or tertiary road or less exposed.

This section has defined, through the study of the adjacency parameter of non-
constructible to the existing road network, three types of non-constructible parcels with
regards to their degree of exposure. This classification in three types, the highly
exposed, the less exposed and the least exposed, will be taken in consideration when
assigning later on the different temporary uses for each parcel. This classification also
helps defining the way the user uses the site as it was explained in section 2.2 with the
classification of Studio Urban Catalyst with regards to tactics for temporary users.

Geographical distribution
In the case of Beirut, the importance of the geographical distribution of non-
constructible parcels within the boundaries of the districts relies mostly on which
neighborhoods will be better served by the presence of these parcels in regards to their
number and distribution, and how their presence interacts with the surrounding
infrastructure.

In Saifi district for example (Figure 21), the highest density of non-constructible
parcels is found in the eastern part of the district. Bounded from the west by Georges
Haddad Avenue, from the north by Gouraud Street and from the south by Sursok
Street, right of ways, un-built and built parcels are equally distributed in this zone. The
high number of parcels in this area is mainly due to less demolition that occurred in that
part of the district, except for parcels along Georges Haddad Street as shown
previously in the evolution maps since a good number of these buildings are protected
from demolition and characterized by their historical value. Another reason would be
that this area is highly residential, and opportunities for the development of large
projects that would require land consolidation hence consolidate these parcels with
others and change their status into constructible, are scarce.

In the southern part of the district, few parcels are scattered around the USJ
campus. This area has witnessed a recent proliferation of new residential projects,
which justifies the demolition and consolidation of few parcels, thus the low number of
non-constructible parcels. On the northern part of the district, few built non-

85
constructible and a couple of right of ways parcels still exist, and they are mainly
located on the periphery of the district.

In Bachoura district (Figure 22), the highest density of non-constructible parcels

is noticeable on the southern part of the district that is on the south of Avenue de
l’Independance. They are mainly built parcels scattered in the center part of the
Southern area on both sides of Toufic Khaled Street. Despite extensive demolition after
2004, this area has recently only seen two major residential projects emerge.

The presence of Solidere on the Northern side has favored the emergence of the
Beirut Digital District accompanied by massive demolition of old buildings and the
rehabilitation of some, mainly on the major road of Bechara El-Khoury. Moreover, the
vast majority of the parcels are located inside the blocks with right of ways for
accessibility, while in Zokak El-Blat, the vast majority of the parcels are located on the
periphery of the blocks rather than inside as is the case with Bachoura district. The
center part of Bachoura is the least part affected by demolitions and we find few non-
constructible parcels some of which are built and others are right of ways.

During fieldwork and surveys in the Bachoura district, it was clear that this
southern part of the district was highly residential with large blocks of residential
buildings served by secondary and tertiary roads and very few open spaces, except for
a park on Basta Street. The location of these parcels in that area can also be
convenient since they can help providing some open spaces to public use and bring in
some open areas to an already very dense neighborhood.

In Zokak El-Blat (Figure 23), and along the Rue du Patriarchate, there is the least
amount of built non-constructible parcels, while just south of Solidere, are the highest
density of built and un-built parcels. This density extends to the Eastern side of the
district.

However, in the quest to understand the way these parcels can be integrated in
the existing urban fabric, the relation between their integration and the geographical
distribution parameter in terms of how one would affect the other remains uncertain. In
the works of Winterbottom (2002), Kienapfel (2001), Studio Urban Catalysts (2003) and
many others, the integration in the urban fabric does not necessarily imply an even
distribution of the parcels on the territory, since residual spaces are perceived as
specific urban situations and the simple fact they are present becomes a catalyst for
temporary use programs. Nevertheless, the dense geographical distribution in certain

86
areas can be helpful in defining different zones for temporary use programs, in order to
facilitate the navigation of users between the parcels.

Hence, from the data described above, a classification of the non-constructible

parcels with regards to their geographical distribution allows to define in each district
different zones of density. We find the following: zones of high density, zones of low
density and zones of very low density. These defined zones, in conjunction with the
accessibility parameters presented earlier as well as the other parameters that will be
explained in the following sections, could be helpful in assigning not only different uses
for sites but also different types of programs assigned to a certain zone.

Throughout this section it was investigated how non-constructible parcels were

geographically distributed within the boundaries of the three study areas. It was
explained that the geographical distribution of these parcels would generate zones of
density in which temporary use programs would be implemented. However the density
parameter could fluctuate depending on the adjacent neighborhood’s geographical
distribution of parcels. The district’s boundaries in the case of this thesis are merely a
limitation for the collection of data, and further studies in other adjacent districts, in
conjunction with this study, will show the true value of density and generate a more
accurate geographical distribution with regards to Municipal Beirut as a whole.

To complete the spatial analysis of these parcels, the following section will
investigate the parameters of form and scale with regards to the different types of non-
constructible parcels.

87
 Figure 21: Geographical distribution of non-constructible parcels, Saifi
district

Source 24: By author

88
 Figure 22: Geographical distribution of non-constructible parcels, Bachoura
district

Source 25: By author

89
 Figure 23: Geographical distribution of non-constructible parcels, Zokak El-
Blat district

Source 26: By Author

90
 Form and scale
In order to assess the physical nature of the non-constructible parcels in the
three study districts, it will be important to study and analyze the form and scale of
these parcels. These parameters will be important in defining the nature of the program
to be implemented since non-constructible parcels occupy a small footprint and vary in
size, as it will be explained. These parameters will also be important in defining the way
the user uses a site, since a 10m2 parcel cannot be used in the same manner as a
120m2 parcel.

Figure 24: Examples of right of way cases and non-constructible parcels, Saifi
district

608 606
681
698
690
693
689 691
1060

937

938

1018

¨
L e g e n d

District_Limits

Saifi_PRCLS
CST_Status
C
NC_Built
0 5 10 20 30
NC_Unbuilt Meters

Source: By author

It was shown in Section 2.2.1 that Article 5 modified by decree n° 5550/73

defines certain situation that does not allow construction on narrow parts of parcels in
order to maintain visual clearance on corners, manage parcels densification and avoid
transferring odd forms into the volumetric of the buildings. These situations have for
outcome the creation of residual and non-constructible parcels with certain shapes and

91
forms. It was also shown that the article only defines shapes on corners and on parcels
adjacent to a road, in a manner similar to the left-over spaces in Berlin, where after
World War II, rebuilding the city aimed at reducing the percentage of lot coverage,
which created over 100 open corners (Kienapfel, 2001).

In that sense, the law differentiates between two different types of non-
constructible spaces: first residual spaces part of bigger constructible parcel and the
second the non-constructible entities with unique parcel identification. This situation
denotes one limitation though; GIS mapping does not recognize the first type of parcels
as unique entities and hence they are not calculated as non-constructible in this thesis.
They are similar to the recess limits of a parcel or a private garden or other private
open space part of a constructible parcel. It will be important, in order to propose new
laws and regulations, to consider these differences.

Using the same example in Figure 24, we can see that the only recognized
shape is the right of way, since it is linear and narrow, while the other parcels have
various odd geometric shapes. In terms of dimensions and proportions, right of ways
can vary from a width of 2 to 5 meters, while the length can vary from 5 to 30 meters
inside a block (Figure 24). On the other hand, other non-constructible parcels have by
regulation a certain dimension they cannot exceed, in Zone 1 and 2 the façade cannot
exceed 9 meters for a depth of 7 meters, while in Zone 3 the façade can have a
maximum of 10 meters for a depth of 8 meters. It was identified during data collection
some parcels that had 1 meter for a façade and 2 meters for depth.

These shapes, in the case of adjacent to roads (major, secondary or tertiary)

parcels, follow the shape of the street or road they are adjacent to, and in the case of
isolated parcels, their shape depends on the built or non-built parcels that surrounds
them.

As indicated in Article 2 of the decree n° 5550/73 in section 2.2.1, non-

constructible parcels, depending on the zones they are part of, are bound by certain
dimensions and areas. In order to get a better idea on the scale and areas of these
parcels, and through GIS mapping, Table 8 shows the following:

92
 Table 8: Non-constructible parcels areas

Min Area (m2) Max Area (m2) Average Area (m2)

0.03 105.15 44.7

Saifi
0.04 116.27 50.94
Bachoura

1 117.8 53.12
Zokak El-Blat

Source 27: By author

With an average of around 49.5m2 per parcel in all three districts, any strategy
that will be defined in regards to temporary use, as per this thesis objective, will have to
take in consideration the above-tabulated data.

Throughout this section, the analysis of dimensions, form, and scale showed:

• Dimensions, within the limits of the zoning table vary from one parcel to the
other;
• The only recognizable form is the one of right of ways, other parcels are oddly
shaped;
• There is a category of non-constructible spaces not identified as entities and
part of constructible parcels that are acknowledged by the regulations, and that
is a limitation for this study. This urban situation could be added to the already
existing reservoir of identified non-constructible parcels and could play an
important role in the city;
• The average area of a non-constructible parcel within the boundaries of the
three districts is approximately 50m2, and that is a number to be taken in
consideration when assigning future programs to these parcels;
• Isolated parcels accounting up to 60% of the total number of parcels have an
average area of 42m2.

In order to answer to one of this research’s objectives and have a better

understanding of the reasons behind the presence of the non-constructible parcels,
their density and their amount, it will be important to review and analyze the recent real
estate developments of the districts. The following section will analyze the socio-
economic parameters that are found in the three study districts.

93
 5.2.2. Socio-economic
In the absence of specific social studies specific to the case of the three study
districts, and from regional surveys such as the one of UN-Habitat (2011) one can only
attempt to extrapolate the following:

Firstly, the sectarian divide, as discussed in the literature review (UN-Habitat,

2011), resulting in places of residences that have become increasingly homogenized
with urban areas predominantly Christians, Sunni, Shia and others. This sectarian
divide is also one of the reasons why these three districts were selected for this
research; the contrasting profiles of the urban fabric, the residents and the real estate
development only challenge the strategy to be adopted in implementing temporary
uses in these areas. This parameter will surely guide future temporary uses project
initiators in their selection of products, marketing strategies, and other socially oriented
decisions.

Secondly, and more problematically, a gentrification situation is happening in

Bachoura, where the implementation of the Beirut Digital District is replacing old
residential neighborhoods with offices and headquarters for major technology
companies. In the mapping of the potential of unused spaces in the center of Oslo
(Soldeberg, 2011), it was demonstrated that the inactive residual spaces had various
problems with a general decay; they seem to have no strong economic interest to
developers and entrepreneurs. The garbage dumps, the parking spaces, the vacant
parcels and other land-use only confirm the lack of interest to these spaces in Beirut.
The built non-constructible parcels are also left to decay and often take part of a
conflict between authorities and private owners.

However, on a larger scale, in Saifi, and as a result of the 2004-2005 real estate
surge and until today, new residential projects have risen in vacant plots or replacing
old buildings: Hugo 43, Monot 38, Le Patio, Saifi Homes, Saifi Suites, Saifi 477,
Convivium 6, Saifi 1079, Dalal Building are only a few examples of that real-estate
surge (Figure 25). Other projects of a commercial nature such as restaurants, art
galleries, mini-markets have seen the light to respond to a large number of residents
and visitors. The North-Western part of Saifi, part of the Solidere area, have witnessed
the surge of residential buildings such as District S, Saifi Village and more recently
Beirut Gate.The high land occupancy density and built-up space and its location in the
city center make Saifi district a very attractive development ground for real estate
developers, which explains the high number of projects in progress.

94
 Figure 25: Recent real estate developments in Saifi district

DEMOLISHED
SAIFI 1079

RUINS

CONVIVIUM 6 SAIFI 477

DISTRICT S

SAIFI HOMES
DALAL BLDG

SAIFI SUITES

SAIFI VILLAGE 2 MEDCO STATION

CENTRALE

SAIFI VILLAGE

BEIRUT GATE

OFFICE BLDG

ACHRAFIEH CAFERES
DEM

RESTAURANT

RESTAURANT
RESTAURANT RES

L e g e n d REATAURANT

District_Limits
RESTAURANT RESTAURANT LE PATIO

¨
UPDATE_2013_Saife RESTAURANT HUGO 43 RES

RESTAURANT MONOT 38
Date
Built 1963
Built 1963-2004

Saifi_PRCLS
CST_Status
C
NC_Built
0 30 60 120 180
NC_Unbuilt Meters

Source 28: By author

95
 Figure 26: Photograph showing South of Saifi district new developments

Source: By author (July, 2013)

Major changes are occurring in Bachoura district such as the launch of the Beirut
Digital District project (Figure 27), which witnessed the demolition and the rehabilitation
of large parcels on its northeastern part, adjacent to Solidere area (Beirut Digital
District, 2012). Major residential projects are also surging on its southeastern boundary
as well as a few residential buildings in its middle part, such as Project 419 and Noor
Towers. The majority of new developments are situated in the northeastern part of
Bachoura, falling under the more attractive Zone 2 area and adjacent to Saifi and
Solidere.

Recent infrastructure works on the eastern side of Bachoura, along Bechara El-
Khoury Street, witness the construction of a tunnel linking the northern part of
Bachoura to Mazraa, in order to relief traffic from Sodeco crossing.

Zokak El-Blat saw since 2004 the proliferation of many small-scale residential
buildings (Figure 28), and two large-scale residential projects on its Northern boundary
with Solidere. New developments are mostly located on the periphery of the district in
Zone 2.

96
 Figure 27: Recent real estate developments in Bachoura district

DEMOLISHED

BEIRUT DIGITAL DISTRICT

PARKING

NEW TUNNEL
GREEN AREA

VACANT LAND
PROJECT 419 NEW PROJECTS

L e g e n d

NEW PROJECTS
NEW_TUNNEL
NOOR TOWERS
District_Limits

¨
UPDATE_2013_BACHOURA
NEW PROJECTS
Date
Built 1963
Built 1963-2004

Bachoura_PRCLS
CST_Status
C
NC_Built
0 30 60 120 180
NC_Unbuilt Meters

Source 29: By author

97
 Figure 28: Recent real estate developments in Zokak El-Blat district

RESIDENTIAL
RESIDENTIAL

GARDEN
RESIDENTIAL

RESIDENTIAL
DEMOLISHED
CITY INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL
RETAIL

GAZ STATION

RESIDENTIAL

RESIDENTIAL

RESIDENTIAL

RESIDENTIAL

RESIDENTIAL

RESIDENTIAL

RESIDENTIAL

RESIDENTIAL

RESIDENTIAL

L e g e n d RESIDENTIAL

District_Limits

¨
UPDATE_2013_ZOUKAKELBLAT

Date
Built 1963
Built 1963-2004

ZokakElBlat_PRCLS
CST_Status
C
NC_Built
0 30 60 120 180
NC_Unbuilt Meters

Figure 29: By author

98
 Having seen that most European countries highly depend on Governmental and
public subsidies, which in return depend on the economic situation of the city (Studio
Urban Catalyst, 2003), how does Beirut compare to cities like Amsterdam where we
find booming economies and other stagnating cities like Berlin and Naples where there
is almost no funding for temporary use projects? The case of Beirut is a paradox since
even in an stagnating, prices of the built-up in Bachoura have continued to rise (UN-
Habitat, 2011), pushing for more gentrification, and one might ask how ready
landowners are to put their land to public use by developing programs such as
temporary uses.

In summary, on a social level the three study districts are a challenge for the
development of temporary use projects, since studies show that project’s like these can
have greater social commitments hence, these social divides will not become an
obstacle to such developments, but should be taken in consideration when assigning
the different programs. On the economic level, the country is going through difficult
times, and governmental and public subsidies can be hard to find, even though the it
was argued that once temporary use gets started, it will get easier for them to get
public funding since they will become an active player in the economy (Studio Urban
Catalyst, 2003).

5.2.3. Cultural
The analysis of the three districts shows some disparities between the cultural
activities that occur in them. In the same way spatial, social and economic disparities
were decisive in the choice of the study districts, cultural disparities have an important
role to play in deciding which programs to implement.

As such, in Saifi district, we find many theatres, universities, churches, galleries

restaurants and pubs that host a multitude of activities targeting a wide audience, while
in Bachoura and Zokak El-Blat, cultural activities are restricted to schools and
municipalities that host exhibitions and art shows related to the neighborhood. These
disparities also raise the issue of whether implemented programs should be of a
homogenized nature or should they be tailor-made according the context of the
neighborhoods and districts.

So far, the issue of non-constructible parcels was addressed in a general

manner, disregarding the current status of each, the manner in which they are being
used and the way they are being maintained. In the following sections the various land
uses of the built and un-built non-constructible parcels will be identified and analyzed.
99
 5.3. Land use
This section will examine the non-constructible parcels identified in the previous
section in the three study districts by comparing and analyzing urban parameters
including: status of the built, nature of use, and types of occupancy. In that case the
analysis of these parameters is necessary for the classification of the non-constructible
parcels and the identification of the mechanisms that will be used in developing future
strategies for temporary use.

5.3.1. Built and non-built parcels

There are two major categories of non-constructible parcels in the three districts
of Saifi, Bachoura and Zokak El-Blat, the built and the non-built, divided as follows:

Table 9: Number of built and un-built non-constructible parcels

Saifi Bachoura Zokak El-Blat

NC-Built 31 79 63

NC-Unbuilt 46 118 89

Source 30: By author

Table 10: Percentage of built and un-built non-constructible parcels of total

number of parcels (constructible and non-constructible)

Saifi Bachoura Zokak El-Blat

NC-Built 7.3% 9.76% 11.3%

NC-Unbuilt 10.8% 14.6% 15.6%

Source 31: By author

The number of un-built parcels in all three districts is higher than the built; in a
situation where built parcels are more demanding in terms of cost, i.e. rehabilitation
and renovation, dealing with residents, and legalizing permit status, it is more cost
effective to deal with un-built parcels, should their status allow it because not all un-
built parcels are vacant land as shown in the Table 11. The cost effectiveness issue
can be crucial in implementing low cost programs such as temporary uses, especially
in the case where governmental and public subsidies are lacking, as we have seen
previously in the economic section. Nevertheless, built parcels should not be
disregarded as a valuable source, since they should be exploited differently and hence
require other types of programs.

100
On the other hand, having more vacant parcels means that there will be more open
spaces, hence the connectivity between parcels will be more efficient as it will be
shown in the connectivity and mobility section. Yet, in the un-built parcels category,
there are the vacant lands and the right of ways and with regards to temporary uses,
vacant land are more interesting situations since right of ways need to provide
clearance to access the parcels. Further investigation (Table 11) shows percentages of
each of the two types along with the other categories of built parcels:

Table 11: Nature of use: Number and respective areas (m2)

Saifi Bachoura Zokak ElBlat

2 (122) - 5(242)
Commercial
30(1695) 14(1019) 54(4178)
Residential

32(1340) 46(1307) 51(1732)

Vacant Land

10(640) 33(1525) 33(1716)

Right of Way

3(180) 25(628) 8(275)

13
Other

Source 32: By author

Table 11 shows that vacant land accounts for 37.2% of the total number of
parcels and 26.4% of the total foot print area of the parcels. Even though right of ways
make 22% of the total foot print, implementing programs on them can be more delicate
since they should also leave way for access to other parcels.

While the low percentage (2%) of commercial land use only reflects the
percentage of building totally dedicated to commercial use, it is rather common to have
commercial stores on ground floors of residential buildings, and that is not accounted
for in the table. Having observed that most buildings in the three districts have
commercial stores occupying their ground floors, those two categories could be
merged into one renamed “mixed: commercial and residential”.

Residential buildings account for 28.3% of the total number of parcels for a
footprint of 41.5%; these figures reflect illegal residential buildings constructed on the

13
Some are built such as guard houses and added parts of ongoing new projects, others
are un-built such as new road infrastructure
101
larger parcels, which explains the high percentage of foot print area as opposed to the
lower percentage of number of parcels. Those categories will be further examined in
the following section.

Figure 31, Figure 32 and Figure 32 here below, show the distribution of these
land uses within the three study districts. The analysis of these figures shows that in
the districts of Bachoura and Zokak El-Blat, old residential buildings are regrouped in
certain areas. For example old residential buildings in Zokak El-Blat are regrouped in
the southern part of the district, while in Bachoura we find the same groups on the
northern just below the Solidere boundary. This situation could impose a specific type
of program for these parcels since they are part of a dense residential neighborhood
with very few vacant parcels. It could also impose certain operations such as
demolition and land consolidation in order to provide some open spaces. Smaller
similar groups are found in Saifi, in the Gemayzeh area.

Another similarity among all districts is that the commercial buildings are adjacent to
major or secondary roads and on periphery of blocks and are rather disseminated
within the boundaries of the districts.

Vacant lands in all districts are dispersed inside the districts, yet in Bachoura we see in
the southeast part a small group of vacant land. While right of ways in Bachoura and
Zokak El-Blat are evenly dispersed in the districts, in order to provide accessibility to
the inside of the blocks, Saifi relies on the major and secondary roads to provide
accessibility since the blocks are smaller in size.

This section has provided information regarding the geographical location of parcels
according to their nature of use. The following section will further examine those types
of occupancies in the three districts and extract relevant data regarding the areas they
occupy and the number of parcels.

102
Figure 30: Land Use map, Saifi District

L e g e n d

Nature_of_Use
COMMERCIAL
COMMERCIAL-RENOVATED
GUARD HOUSE
PART OF NEW PROJECT
PART OF NEW ROAD
PASSAGE
RESIDENTIAL
RESIDENTIAL OLD
RESIDENTIAL-EXT
RESIDENTIAL-OLD
RESIDENTIAL-UC
RESIDENTIAL_UC
VACANT LAND
VACANT LAND-DUMP
VACANT LAND-ENTRANCE
VACANT LAND-GARDEN
VACANT LAND-GENERATOR
VACANT LAND-PARKING

District_Limits

0 25 50 100 150
¨
Meters

Source 33: By author

103
 Figure 31: Land use map, Bachoura district

L e g e n d

Nature_Of_Use
COMMERCIAL
PARKING
PART OF NEW PROJECT
PART OF NEW ROAD
PASSAGE
RESICENTIAL-OLD
RESIDENTIAL
RESIDENTIAL-OLD
RESIENTIAL-OLD
VACANT LAND
VACANT LAND_GARDEN

District_Limits

0 30 60 120
¨
180
Meters

Source 34: By author

104
 Figure 32: Land Use map, Zokak El-Blat district

L e g e n d

Nature_Of_
COMMERCIAL
PART OF NEW PROJECT
PART OF NEW ROAD
PASSAGE
RESIDENTIAL_OLD
VACANT LAND
VACANT LAND_GARDEN

District_Limits

0 30 60 120
¨
180
Meters

Source 35: By author

105
 5.3.2. Types of occupancy
Among these five main types of land uses, some sub-uses are identified and
distributed within the study districts as follows:

• Commercial: It is a built land;

• Residential: Also built, residential buildings could be extensions such as
entrances for buildings (external) or additions for existing buildings. Both
commercial and residential built spaces described above are often in decay.
• Vacant land: They are un-built land of various uses such as brown land,
junkyards or dumps, gardens, entrances for buildings, support for neighborhood
generator or parking lots.
• Right of way: They are un-built passages and movement corridors that lead to
the inside of blocks;
• Other: Some are built such as guard houses and added parts of ongoing new
projects, others are un-built such as new road infrastructure.

When analyzing the nature of use statistics (Figures 33, 34 and 35), it is noted
that vacant land, passages (right of ways) and old residential buildings are the top
three nature of uses of non-constructible parcels in the three study districts. They have
the largest surface area in square meters of land use. Moreover, parking lots in Saifi
occupy a large amount of space (ranked second in Saifi behind vacant land), while in
Bachoura they are very rare and Zokak El-Blat almost inexistent. Due to the dense
nature of the urban fabric in Bachoura and Zoka El-Blat, right of way parcels are more
numerous and occupy a larger area than in Saifi. It is also due to the high number of
new residential projects in Saifi that have reduced considerably the size of the vacant
plots and their right of ways. Land consolidation played an important role in reducing
these non-constructible parcels in Saifi. There are very few vacant non-constructible
parcels that are used as gardens in all three districts, and that depicts a major problem
in the existing urban fabric, as people have very few spaces in which they could turn to
for green areas. Some of these existing parcels are playgrounds and others are just
random and unorganized green spaces that need maintenance.

106
 CST STATUS / NATURE OF USE

30

25

20
# OF PARCELS

15

10

NATURE OF USE

AREAS BY NATURE OF / NC PARCELS

SAIFI

1200 COMMERCIAL

1000 COMMERCIAL_RENOVATED
GUARD HOUSE
800
AREA (m2)

PART OF NEW ROAD

600 PASSAGE
RESIDENTIAL
400
RESIDENTIAL_UC
200 RESIDENTIAL-EXT
RESIDENTIAL-OLD
0
NATURE OF USE RESIDENTIAL-UC

Figure 33: Nature of use, Saifi district, by Author

107
 NATURE OF USE (COUNT)/NC PARCELS_BACHOURA

50
45
40
35
# OF PARCELS

30
25
20
15
10
5
0

AREAS BY NATURE OF USE FOR NC PARCELS_BACHOURA

1800

1600

1400
PARKING

1200 PART OF NEW PROJECT

PART OF NEW PROJECT

1000 PART OF NEW ROAD

AREA

PART OF NEW ROAD

800 PASSAGE
RESIDENTIAL-OLD
600 VACANT LAND
VACANT LAND_GARDEN
400 COMMERCIAL

200

0
NATURE OF USE

Figure 34: Nature of use, Bachoura district

108
 NATURE OF USE (COUNT) / NC PARCELS
ZOKAK EL-BLAT

60

50

40
# OF PARCELS

30

20

10

AREAS BY NATURE OF USE FOR NC PARCELS ZOKAK EL-BLAT

4500

4000

3500

COMMERCIAL
3000
PART OF NEW PROJECT
AREA (m2)

2500 PART OF NEW PROJECT

PART OF NEW ROAD
2000 PASSAGE
RESIDENTIAL_OLD
1500 VACANT LAND
VACANT LAND_GARDEN
1000

500

0
NATURE OF USE

Figure 35: Nature of use, Zokak El-Blat district

109
 5.4. The regulatory and legislative mechanisms
It was explained in section 3.1 how the regulatory and legislative mechanisms in
Lebanon rely, throughout its recent history, on the following major decrees:

• On the laws and regulation of urban planning: Decree-law 69/1983 of

September 9th 1983 and its amendment;
• On land consolidation and reallocation: Decree-law 70/1983 of September 9th
1983 and its latest amendment in 1991

Moreover, Lebanon’s legislation and laws on urban planning go back to 1954

with Decree-law 6285 of September 11th 1954 and its amendments.

It was also explained where and how non-constructible parcels were cited in the
above-mentioned laws such as articles 27 and 28 of Decree-law 70/1983 (Appendix A,
p.33), and indirectly in the zoning and land occupation density tables of article 5 of
Decree-law 6285 of 1954.

The following section will discuss and analyze the urban strategies as well as the
urban operations and tools that are currently being applied to integrate non-
constructible parcels and regulate and manage the implementation of temporary use
programs within the city of Beirut. By comparing both international and local
interventions, the recommendation chapter will propose operations and tools as a
solution for the different existing situations in Beirut within the framework of a complete
urban strategy.

5.4.1. Urban strategies

In was explained in section 2.2.3 how different urban strategies approached the
implementation of temporary uses on residual parcels. This section attempts to
compare the existing urban strategies in Beirut to the international strategies discussed
previously, with regards to their understanding of the potential of temporary use as a
catalyst for the regeneration of the city and understanding the user’s needs; the long or
short-term vision; the resources; the leaders; the user driven developments; the
collaboration between actors and the acknowledgment of the potential of the non-
constructible parcels.

Temporary use programs such as market places, concerts, political events and
pedestrian streets and even neighborhoods are not uncommon situations in Beirut. The
municipality often delivers permits to allow the implementation of such programs, and
depending on the nature of the program, the process requires a certain time to achieve.
However, these events are not part of an urban strategy the Municipality has put in

110
place, and in most cases, these activities use the existing infrastructure of streets and
neighborhoods as a stage rather than develop on non-constructible parcels. Moreover,
and with regards to the criteria listed above, the question would be: does Beirut
Municipality have a strategy for the implementation of temporary uses on non-
constructible parcels?

The first part of the answer would be regarding the acknowledgment of non-
constructible parcels as a potential resource within the urban fabric. It is clear that the
regulation in that regard is outdated and does not, as we have seen, acknowledge that
resource. Moreover, interviewed local authorities still look at non-constructible parcels
as an opportunity for developers through land consolidation operations. In that sense,
developments are promoter oriented rather than user oriented. Hence non-
constructible parcels are not yet looked at as opportunities for the implementation of
temporary uses. Beirut Municipality has yet to assign a committee to short list potential
sites and define user’s needs. Since most of the parcels, whether built or un-built are
currently in decay, it is safe to assume that no resources or funding are available, not
even for the maintenance of the public parcels. In all of the interviews with former and
current directors of the DGU, it was clear that planning strategies are still very classical
and rely heavily on the traditional tools such as land consolidation and re-parceling.
Hence a vision, whether long or short-termed, regarding the temporary uses on non-
constructible parcels in Beirut is rather inexistent.

Furthermore, the proliferation of real estate development in areas like Saifi,

Bachoura and Zokak El-Blat could create conflicts between real estate developers and
temporary use project initiators. None-constructible parcels are of no interest to
developers since they are obviously by law non-constructible, but as it will be explained
in section 5.4.2, in certain situations where grouped parcels could be subject to land
consolidation, interest from developers could arise and they would see an opportunity
in acquiring these grouped parcels and developing lucrative projects on them.

This section asks the question of whether Municipal Beirut has developed a
strategy of any kind for the implementation of temporary uses on non-constructible
parcels. It was elaborated that on so many levels and based on developed urban
strategies in section 2.2.3, Beirut Municipality has no urban strategy with regards to
temporary uses. However, the DGU could apply on its territory traditional urban
operations regarding the planning of the city, and the following section will review those
operations.

111
 5.4.2. Urban operations
Non-constructible parcels can have various relationships one to the other. In
order to develop the urban operations within an urban strategy, it is essential to identify
these relations in order to define the tools to be applied for the purpose of first
integrating non-constructible parcels within the urban fabric and second implementing
temporary use programs on them.

This section reviews starts by identifying these various relationships with regards
to the different urban situations identified through data collection, and then it will review
the urban operations that will help achieve their integration as well as tools used to
complement these operations.

Relation between different categories of non-constructible

parcels
It was identified in section 5.3 two major categories of non-constructible parcels:
the vacant and the built. The relationships between both these categories generate
different urban situations:

• Vacant/Vacant (V/V): Any situation where two ore more vacant non-
constructible plots are adjacent
• Vacant/Built (V/B): Any situation where ore more vacant non-constructible plots
are adjacent to one or more built non-constructible plots
• Built/Built (B/B): Any situation where two ore more built non-constructible plots
are adjacent.
• Isolated: There are also the isolated parcels that have no connection
whatsoever to other non-constructible parcels. They can be either vacant or
built.

Furthermore, and in order to assess the future potential of these situations with
regards to temporary use implementation, and to assign the urban operation that will
be applied along with the tools, it will be important to validate the accessibility
parameter in relation to the different categories and situations.

For example with regards to the land consolidation potential of these parcels, the
14
law acknowledges land consolidation between constructible parcels and non-
constructible parcels.

Any type of situation where there are two or more adjacent parcels, there is a
potential for land consolidation as stated above. Furthermore, a built/vacant situation

14
Decree-law 69/1983 and article 27 and 28 of the 1991 legislation
112
can lead to a situation where the vacant plot could be consolidated with the built plot in
order to provide, in case of private use, an annex or parking space, and in the case of
public use, a garden or playground. However, an isolated parcel can only be treated as
such and could provide a breathing area inside a block to use as a public space,
should the area of that parcel is large enough to allow this. Further investigation in
Table 8 previously presented shows that the average area of an isolated parcel in Saifi
is 41.2m2, for a maximum area of 105m2. For Bachoura the average area is 42.2m2 for
a maximum area of 116m2 and Zokak El-Blat, the average is 43.6m2 for a maximum of
117.8m2. These isolated parcels, as it is shown in Table 12 account for an average of
60% of the total non-constructible parcels in all three districts.

Table 12: Count of types of relationship between non-constructible parcels

V/V V/B B/B Isolated

13 11 9 50(60%)
Saifi
33 15 31 118(60%)
Bachoura

22 17 37 83(52%)
Zokak ElBlat

Source 36: By author

113
 Figure 36: Examples of relationships between non-constructible parcels,
Bachoura district

388
136

122
126
413
176
177
1515 415
405
416

181 183 1333

184185 212
214
1368
209 208 210 440
193
442

190

1379
1380 204
1314 1381 1490

444
1402 445
446

¨
L e g e n d

District_Limits

Bachoura_PRCLS
CST_Status
C
NC_Built
0 5 10 20 30
NC_Unbuilt Meters

Source: By author

In Figure 36 we can identify the various relationships between non-constructible

built and un-built parcels. In this sample case study of a neighborhood in Bachoura, it
can be highlighted:

• Vacant/Vacant: Plots 444, 445 and 446

• Vacant/Built: Plots 126 and 122
• Built/Built: Plots 176, 177 and others as shown in map
• Isolated: Plot 136, 193, 181, 212, 204, 405, 416 (built) and Plot 388 (un-built)

114
 Similar situations are found in the other districts of Saifi and Zokak El-Blat. This
identification will help define the type of operations to be used when implementing a
strategy of temporary use implementation.

Land consolidation and re-parceling

It was explained in the previous section how vacant and built non-constructible
parcels are related. The current land consolidation laws and regulations acknowledge
non-constructible parcels and their relation to constructible parcels, it also regulates
land consolidation process between them in terms of minimal areas and dimensions. In
an interview with the director of the DGU at the Municipality of Beirut (Appendix J), one
case was given to exemplify the consolidation situation between non-constructible
parcels: three adjacent non-constructible parcels of 60m2 each located in zone 3 could
be consolidated into a bigger parcel of 300m2 (referring to Table 7 in section 5.4.2). He
explained that this law favors building on bigger plots and provides a better
composition for the city as well as solution for parking spaces. Figure 36 shows that
within the boundaries of the study district of Bachoura or others, there are many
opportunities for such operations, and this is one concern that was referred to in
section 5.4.1 in regards to real estate developers interested in these types of land
consolidation operations. By land consolidating the adjacent parcels built non-
constructible parcels (in Red), and demolishing them since they are in decay,
developers could replace them with newer projects such as residential or commercial.
In that case the potential for implementing temporary use projects on these parcels
would be lost.

On the other hand and regarding the limitations of this procedure, the director of
the DGU at the Beirut Municipality states that should the parcels belong to different
zones, they need to share the same servitudes (for example right of way) in order to
consolidate, otherwise the operation cannot be achieved. The solution would be to use
a different operation that is real estate unity15, which means that the parcels would
keep their entity but would act as one parcel, and that could create, according to the
interviewee, problems later on such as managing the land, selling it or even renting it.
In the three study districts, this specific situation does not exist, but it could be present
in other districts.

15
Wihda Ikariah
115
 In order for land consolidation to be applied, parcels need to be adjacent, and in
the case of non-constructible parcels, which are scattered within the boundaries of the
districts, this can become a problem, and hence cannot be applied to all, should it be
needed. It will be shown below that other operations, such as modern land
consolidation (Thomas, 2004), land pooling (The World Bank Group, 2001), real estate
companies and expropriation, provide solutions for this situation.

Modern land consolidation and land pooling

Applying modern land consolidation could mean that in the previous example
(Figure 36), all parcels in red within a neighborhood could be consolidated. This
operation, and in order to better manage the parcels, could: a) reduce the number of
owners b) adjust scattered parcels by giving them one entity and c) reduce urban
disparities by consolidating scattered parcels. Through amicable exchanges of
property, this process can be achieved, since each owner may have interests in other
location and may be willing to exchange his property for another one. The community,
NGO’s, or other private or public company can own these parcels in order to benefit
public use. Similarly, land pooling can provide the same benefits such as community
organizations and land sharing agreements by transferring ownership of the separate
parcels to an agency handling the transactions. This agency will act as an intermediate
in order to organize transfer of ownership; the agency will buy the land and then resell
it to the other owners.

Real estate companies

It was discussed previously that land consolidation could be a solution for
adjacent non-constructible parcels. However, on a larger scale such as neighborhood
or district, parcels are non-adjacent and land consolidation as a complete solution
becomes less realistic. During a talk with one former DGU director (Appendix J), the
creation of a real estate company, should the procedures follow the regulations, can
provide an interesting solution for districts in need for major restructuring in terms of
infrastructure and embellishment.

The law of 24/9/1962 stipulates that an independent committee should run the
evaluation process of land and built, in order to assess the real value of the real estate
company. According to the same interviewee, and in some cases such as the case of
Solidere, the evaluation process was done internally rather than on a governmental
level, which led to some discrepancies between real and proposed value of land. In a
recent article on the Beirut Digital District BDD implementation in Bachoura (Whiting,

116
2012), even though the operation was not the same as Solidere and rather a private-
public partnership, it was stipulated that this discrepancy could lead to gentrification
(Whiting, 2012). On that subject, the former DGU director noted that speculation, in
both of these cases, played a big role in amplifying the price tag, up to 60% in his
opinion, and that is something that can be avoided when abiding by the existing
regulations hence having more publicly oriented projects.

The real estate company solution, whether for owners or tenants, on

constructible or non-constructible parcels, could provide a complete solution for the
redistribution of estate in order to implement a master plan to serve both public and
private needs. On the other hand, this solution could also eliminate the presence of
non-constructible parcels in order to give way for bigger parcels.

117
 Figure 37: Examples of relationships between non-constructible parcels,
Zokak El-Blat district

865

825
826
854
1118933
1117
914
912
842 769
1054
762761 760 768
767

793 921757
849
752753
1100
745

852
830829
840
841 828 835

¨
L e g e n d

District_Limits

ZokakElBlat_PRCLS
CST_Status
C
NC_Built
0 5 10 20 30
NC_Unbuilt Meters

Source 37: By Author

Expropriation for the sake of public interest

In Figure 37, the construction on parcels highlighted in red is illegally built on
non-constructible parcels; they represent on average 10% of the total number of
parcels in all three districts, showing slightly higher numbers in Bachoura and Zokak
EL-Blat (Table 9 and Table 10). In this case, the Authorities (Municipality of Beirut)
could show public interest for the implementation of public spaces and hence
expropriation procedure could be undertaken. Owner’s approval in that case is not

118
required, and, provided that the Municipality has the funds to accomplish that
operation, it could lead to a situation where owners get their right share of the sales,
and the public benefits from the presence of these public spaces. Temporary use
programs could be implemented on these parcels as part of the Municipality’s strategy
to develop those areas. The current laws on expropriation for the sake of public
interest, according to the former director of the DGU, are clear enough and strict
enough to be applied. The main problem remains the Authorities’ will to apply the law,
and the funding to back it up.

All the urban operations described above require a number of tools in order to be
implemented. In the following section, these tools will be reviewed and assessed.

5.4.3. Tools
In order to integrate non-constructible parcels that host temporary use programs
within an urban strategy that require certain urban operations, tools need to be applied.
Private-public partnerships, permits and licenses, agreements and contracts, as well as
short-term leases require certain conditions in order to be applied. This section
explains these different conditions under which these tools need to be applied and
reviews the existing tools currently used by the Municipality in different situations. In
the recommendation chapter, these tools, combined with urban operations within the
general framework of a defined urban strategy will be proposed.

Private-Public Partnership (PPP)

A recent example in Bachoura, the Beirut Digital District, although not of
temporary use, was implemented through a PPP. Launched in September 2012 as a
Private-Public partnership between ZRE; a private company whose sole aim is to
develop communities that bond, interact, and flourish within their neighborhoods,
Berytech; an incubator accelerator for the development of startups in the ICT field, and
The Ministry of Telecommunications acting as a facilitator, Beirut Digital District (BDD)
is being developed on privately owned land after being completely destroyed during the
war (Beirut Digital District, 2012). In return, the government has licensed the district as
a digital zone and provides incentives and infrastructure at discounted rates (Whiting,
2012).

The Lebanese Telecommunication Law 431/2002 sets the general legal

framework of this partnership. It contains a detailed institutional framework, including
the creation of the telecommunications regulatory authority. It includes licensing,
competition policy, quality service, interconnection, scarce resources management,

119
infrastructure sharing, universal service, tariffs regulation, penalties and sanctions and
dispute resolution (World Bank, 2014).

According to the World Bank

“There is no broad international consensus on what constitutes a public-

private partnership (PPP). Broadly, PPP refers to arrangements, typically
medium to long term, between the public and private sectors whereby some of
the services that fall under the responsibilities of the public sector are provided
by the private sector, with clear agreement on shared objectives for delivery of
public infrastructure and/ or public services. PPPs typically do not include
service contracts or turnkey construction contracts, which are categorized as
public procurement projects, or the privatization of utilities where there is a
limited ongoing role for the public sector” (World Bank, 2014, p. 1).
In the case of the BDD, the land is privately owned, but in a situation where land
need to be acquired, it is often the case where PPP is combined with one of the
operations described in the previous section (land consolidation, real estate company
or expropriation). The example of BDD demonstrates how certain authorities such as
the Ministry of Telecommunication, in that case, can implement rules in regulations in
their laws to favor those types of partnerships. The same scenario could be foreseen
for the Ministry of Tourism or other Public Authorities interested in activating the non-
constructible parcels in Beirut through private funding and various partnerships.

Permits
Authorities through the Municipality of Beirut play an important role in delivering
permits for temporary use programs on any publicly owned parcel within the
boundaries of Municipal Beirut. Article 50 of the Lebanese Municipal Act16 (Appendix A)
stipulates that the municipal council is entitled, within its boundary, to establish or
manage, directly or indirectly, or contribute to or to help in the execution of all kinds of
social and cultural events such as theatre, conferences, festivals, musical events, etc.
(Ministry of Interiors and Municipalities, 2009).

During an interview with the vice president of Beirut Municipal Council (Appendix
J), it was made clear that the Municipality counsel delivers permits for such events
upon request by organizers. The Municipality is only allowed to grant permits for the
use or exploitation of its own property. In this case, the Municipality may grant a permit
on the use, exploitation or temporary occupation of its property, and collects a fee upon

16
Decree-Law No. 118 of June 30, 1977
120
granting a permit as per Article 43 and 46 of the Law on Municipal Fees and
Surcharges No. 6o of August 12, 1988.

According to the vice president of Beirut Municipal Council, the procedure is the
following:

• A letter is sent to the Mayor and the Muhafez

• The letter is transferred to the local Municipal committees in charge
• The committees write their recommendations and is redirected to the Municipal
Council
• The Municipal Council approves or disapproves the request
• The decision is sent to the Muhafez (Municipal authority) for coordination
• Final decision taken by the Muhafez

The procedure usually takes a month and a half to two months to get approved.
The drawbacks for such procedure are the following:

• The Muhafez has the last call

• The duration of the procedure
• It can be expensive
• No strategy on a Municipal level
• The Municipality has no dedicated team for this endeavor

Agreements and contracts

The Municipality currently draws no templates for agreements to be later
transformed into contracts, as it was explained in the Leipzig case in section 2.2.3;
each case submitted for request is studied as it comes, and depending on the context
the cases are approved upon.

Short term leases and adaptive rental policies

In the case of events on larger parcels, such as festivals, concerts and other, the
Municipality imposes a rent or an occupation fee, which was left undisclosed during the
interview. However, with regards to short term leases and other adaptive rental policies
specific to the non-constructible parcels situation and temporary uses, the Municipality
does not engage in any of this and remains focused on case-by-case rents.

Freeing up vacant public space for temporary use

The Municipality can free up vacant public space only if owned it. It cannot
interfere on privately owned land. However partnerships with private owners could be a
solution for the Municipality or private initiative from owners with users to allow them
the use of their land.

121
 Providing benefits for private owners who support temporary
uses
Since the Municipality does not have a strategy regarding private owners and
temporary use of space, the concept of providing them with benefits is not part of their
policy. Incentives in the shape of subsidized clearance of derelict sites, real property
tax relief for the term of the agreement, reduction of running costs, are a good tool to
convince owners of supporting temporary use. The only limitation to this tool would be,
in the case of Beirut, the abundant land to provide benefits for and the reduced budget
of Municipalities.

Strong commitment and support from local municipality to

temporary project initiators
Regarding temporary projects, the Municipality of Beirut can provide planning
and building control for permission to build temporary structures, close roads or block
them for an event as well as event licensing. While negotiation is required for non-
standard programs, it will be important for the municipality to ensure the presence of a
committee who’s role is to coordinate between the temporary project initiators, and to
investigate the sites where it will appropriate to implement these programs (Killing
Architects, 2008).

“The local municipality was key in all of the projects studies, not only because
it is they who grant permission for these projects to take place, but also in the
local contacts and advice that they are able to provide” (Killing Architects,
2008, p. 44)

Funding and sponsorship

In the case of the Municipality of Beirut, funding and sponsorship has to be made
available from other sources then the Municipality, since the latter does not provide this
service. While funding can be found at private organizations, international festivals,
banks, embassies, and other similar entities, sponsorship can come from commercial
brands, media, and other.

By identifying the tools used in international cases as explained in section 2.2.3,

this section has identified the validity of these tools with regards to the Beirut case. It
has explained that the lack of vision or urban strategy regarding non-constructible
parcels integration and temporary use implementation has left the Municipality with a
set of outdated tools that still focus on a traditional planning rather than user oriented
and bottom-up strategies. This section has also explained that even though private-
public partnerships are being applied in certain areas such as Bachoura, they are still
122
used within the framework of a top-down strategy rather than a user oriented one,
hence not activating any public spaces or responding to user’s needs. It was also
explained that permits were delivered for specific temporary uses such as concerts,
festivals, and markets but these permits remain on a case-by case studies and hence
not part of general strategy of implementation. Other tools such as agreements and
contracts, short term leases, freeing up land or providing benefits for the owners are
yet to be of the Municipality’s priorities. Finally this section has explained that in
comparison with international cases, Municipality do not show strong commitment or
support for temporary use project initiators and funding to any type of temporary use
project today is restricted to sponsorships from private organizations.

For any strategy, operation or tool to be implemented, there are a number of

actors that should be involved. Whether through the decision making process or the
implementation process, involved actors have a responsibility to assume with regards
to any type of project implementation that benefits the city. In the following section, the
actors that are involved in these processes will be reviewed.

123
 5.5. Actors
In all interviews conducted, there was a consensus that the Beirut Municipality
should play a bigger role in defining urban strategies, running urban operations and
implementing tools as well as coordinating between owners and users. Moreover, its
authority regarding urban legislation should be reinforced. In many of the international
cases reviewed, local authorities were initiators, along with owners and users, as well
as NGO’s and activists of defined urban strategies encouraging temporary use
implementation on residual spaces.

5.5.1. Owners
According to a former DGU director, and during one of the interviews (Appendix
J), it was argued that the biggest obstacles to a land consolidation and re-parceling
operation were the landowners. The more owners in an operation, chances are more
problems will appear. According to that same source, owners are being asked for their
opinion before even land consolidation starts, and that is a big concern. By giving them
benefits and encouraging their involvement, landowners could play an important role in
promoting temporary use programs. With the coordination of the Municipality, they
could free up their parcels in order to allow temporary program implementation. This
section reviews the local actors and by comparing to international cases reviewed in
section 2.2.4, explains their level of involvement in the current temporary use project
implementation on non-constructible parcels.

5.5.2. Municipalities and local public authorities

The inability of the Municipality to interfere on vacant private land, according to
the current legislation, is a major obstacle in the face of the implementation of
temporary programs on non-constructible parcels. The Beirut Municipality is excluded
from the land consolidation process and only the DGU is in charge of the decision-
making process. According to a former director from the DGU, legislation needs to be
reformed by including the name of the Municipality next to the DGU whenever land
consolidation is mentioned. However, the case of Beirut and the non-constructible
parcels is a specific case, and for the purpose of this thesis, the implications of such
reforms on the Lebanese territory will not be studied.

5.5.3. Users, NGO’s and activists

Users could be more involved in the implementation of temporary programs
through neighborhood committees and Municipality Council participation. NGO’s such

124
as “Nahnoo17” involved in the re-activation of the Pine Forest in Beirut or young activist
group such as “Lil Madina” play an important role in the evaluation process. For
example in a recent Workshop in Saida regarding the land consolidation and re-
parceling of the Wastani area, “Lil Madina18” have managed to get themselves invited
to the Workshop and explained their vision on the project. Their intervention affected
positively the rest of the Workshop. It was explained in section 2.2.4 that different types
of users were identified in the Berlin context (Studio Urban Catalyst, 2003), and
informal users (Groth & Corijn, 2005) such as artists, community organizations, and
others started emerging to create citizen-led actions.

Chapter 5, by identifying non-constructible parcels within the boundaries of the

study districts and analyzing collected data with regards to the spatial context, the land
use, the regulatory process and the actors, has laid the ground for future
recommendations in terms of urban strategy, operations, tools, temporary use
programs and connectivity.

17 nd
http://nahnoo.org/ accessed on June 22 2014
18
http://lilmadinainitiative.wordpress.com/author/lilmadinainitiative/ accessed on June
nd
22 2014
125
6. Recommendations
It was discussed in Section 3.1.1 how the urban development process in Europe
produces time gaps, i.e. when the former use comes to an end and whereas the future
use has not yet started (Studio Urban Catalyst, 2003). Bachoura in that sense is at this
stage of its urban development process. Besides the decaying status of its built and
infrastructure and its proximity to the city center, the changing nature of land use that
has occurred in the northern part of Bachoura may have triggered this time gap. By
shifting from residential use to a projected digital center with the slow implementation of
Beirut Digital District on its premises, Bachoura has the potential to become fertile
ground for temporary use. Studio Urban Catalyst (2003) explains that this spatial
vacuum is a fundamental and necessary urban context in order to allow for temporary
use, and Bachoura might just be creating this spatial vacuum.

The district of Saifi, as explained in previous sections, is a prosperous district in

the sense that it has witnessed the rise of many luxurious residential development
projects. However, this development is not drastic enough to create the time gaps
discussed previously and produced in Bachoura. That observation does not necessarily
disregard Saifi as a potential area for temporary use programs, since there are other
spatial, social, economical and cultural parameters for hosting such programs, but
rather assumes that Bachoura, with regards to the time gaps factor, could be in a better
situation to adopt these implementations. The district of Zokak El-Blat, with its dense
urban fabric and high percentage of illegally built non-constructible parcels, as we have
seen in the analysis, also lack this time gap factor that Bachoura holds since the
residential fabric and the continuous residential developments rather categorizes it in
the same way as Saifi. In that sense, and although the new developments lack the
luxurious label that Saifi has, Zokak El-Blat remains an uncertain incubator for
temporary use implementation.

Based on examples from empirical data, in the different study areas (Figure 38),
the following sections explain the recommendations on many levels: the urban
strategy, the urban operations, the tools for the implementation of temporary use
programs on non-constructible parcels, the temporary use programs and the
connectivity between non-constructible parcels. At the end of this chapter all layers will
be superimposed in order to achieve a complete strategy of implementation for the
districts as well as future recommendations regarding neighborhoods, districts and
Municipal Beirut. Figure 47, a map regrouping all the three study areas, will show the
implications on the Municipality.
126
Figure 38: Location of examples, Bachoura district

Source 38: By author

127
 Figure 39: Example 01, Existing Situation

1164

1443
11671168

1173

1185

1192 1226
1181
288
1221
1213

1530
292
1219

¨
L e g e n d

District_Limits

Bachoura_PRCLS
CST_Status
C
NC_Built
0 5 10 20 30
NC_Unbuilt Meters

Source 39: By author

In order to integrate non-constructible parcels within the urban fabric and hence
following the urban strategy to be proposed, it will be important to understand how
these operations can be applied on a neighborhood scale. This block was selected
because it holds many isolated non-constructible parcels, and could be a typical
example of what exists in other lots and other districts. This case study holds right of
ways (7), vacant land (1), isolated built parcels (5) and adjacent built parcels (2). In
terms of ownership, the Municipality owns right of ways and built parcels could be
privately owned. It will be explained in the following section what type of operations
could be applied in order to reconsolidate that block. It will also be explained how these
interim spaces can generate a network that connects them to the rest of the city.

128
 Figure 40: Example 02, Existing Situation

1312 571
478 574
572
559
484
484

564 557
1332 486
496 483 556
1332 555
467
488
466 495
493 551
567

1449
464 1449
494
462 531550
510
461 503 532
460 512
456 529
1306
457 458 508 528
502
505 507 518
506
504
517

538
549
533 538

¨
L e g e n d

District_Limits

Bachoura_PRCLS
CST_Status
C
NC_Built
0 5 10 20 30
NC_Unbuilt Meters

Source 40: By author

This specific example as opposed to the previous, holds many adjacent parcels
and a high number of built non-constructible parcels. It holds cases of adjacent built
parcels (5), isolated built parcels (9), right of ways (3), isolated vacant parcels (3) and
cases of adjacent vacant parcels (4). Apart from right of ways, which are Municipality
owned, it is unclear, due to the limitation on this issue, whether vacant lands are public
or private.

129
 Figure 41: Example 03, Existing Situation

388
136

122
126
413
176
177
1515 415
405
416
181 183 1333
184185 212
214
1368
209 208 210 440
193
442

190

1379
1380 204
1314 1381 1490

444
1402 445
446

¨
L e g e n d

District_Limits

Bachoura_PRCLS
CST_Status
C
NC_Built
0 5 10 20 30
NC_Unbuilt Meters

Source 41: By author

Its high number of adjacent built non-constructible parcels and low number of
vacant parcels characterize this specific case study. This type of situation can also be
found in some parts of Zokak El-Blat.

The following sections will show the recommended applications in the specific
examples and will attempt to define the adequate urban operations that could be
applied, the temporary use programs to be implemented and the connectivity between
them and to other districts and hence the rest of the city.
130
 6.1. Urban strategies
In section 2.2.3, the different urban strategies that were developed in order to
implement temporary use programs on residual spaces were reviewed. It was
explained that all of the four reviewed strategies shared the same understanding of the
potential of temporary use as a catalyst for the regeneration of the city. They mostly
differed on their time frame since two of them shared a long-term vision for the
implementation and the other two were most focused on short-term event-like
implementations. These strategies also had their differences in regards to resources,
leaders and collaboration, however they were all bottom-up strategies, user driven and
focused on understanding the user’s needs.

In the case of Municipal Beirut, and more specifically in regards to the

implementation of temporary use programs on non-constructible parcels, the urban
strategy to be developed will have to depend on many factors: First and foremost the
acknowledgement, the identification and the short-listing of the sites where the
implementation will take place; throughout this thesis and more specifically in chapter 3
and 5, non-constructible parcels were identified and analyzed. The analysis validated
the existence of these urban resources within the city’s fabric and showed the many
complex relationships between these parcels and their surroundings. Through the
collected data of the three study districts, the spatial context, the land use, the
regulatory processes as well as the actors involved were depicted and analyzed.

Second, it was explained that the Beirut Municipality has no current strategy,
whether on short or long-term, for the implementation of temporary uses on these
parcels. The municipality still deals with temporary uses on a case-by-case study, upon
the request of the project initiators, and no vision whatsoever with regards to the
development of these programs and the integration of the non-constructible parcels
within the city’s fabric is being thought of. Moreover, the current regulation
acknowledges these parcels as not constructible rather than non-constructible i.e.
lacking an identity of their own; they are the result of random and punctual urban
development strategies, hence of no interest for developers.

Third, in terms of funding, the Municipality does not allocate any resources for the
implementation of temporary uses and relies mostly on the project initiators to attract
sponsors and funds from private parties. Finally, the Municipality does not
acknowledge collaboration between the different actors in order to develop
collaborative methods for dealing with these implementations.

131
 On the basis of these revelations, the proposed urban strategy dedicated for the
implementation on temporary uses on non-constructible parcels will have to be of a
tactical nature where temporary use is applied as part of a long-term vision for the
regeneration of the city with adequate resources to back it up. Beirut municipality
should be adjusting its current policy in order to meet developing user’s needs. This
strategy can be defined as “consistent” (Lehtovuori & Ruoppila, 2012, p. 45) in the
sense that is strategically focused on the implementation process.

The implementation of this strategy requires in some cases that urban operations
be applied.

6.2. Urban operations

It was shown in section 5.4.2 how the different urban operations such as land
consolidation and re-parceling, real estate companies and expropriation could
transform an existing urban fabric. In order to assess the validity of implementation of
these operations within the three districts of study, some parameters were extracted
throughout the comparative analysis to highlight various urban relationships between
non-constructible parcels such as vacant to vacant, built to vacant, built to built or
isolated parcels.

In order to arrive to a general picture of the three study areas, it will be important
to start by understanding how these operations work on the neighborhood level. The
neighborhood chosen were based on the zones of high density identified in section
5.2.1 (Geographical distribution). In this section, examples from empirical data, in the
case of Bachoura, will be used to demonstrate the various operations that could be
applied within the urban fabric of the study districts, in regards to the urban strategy
described in the previous section. These operations will be evaluated in regards to
temporary use programs implementation and should be serving mainly the public rather
than private needs of developers.

In example 1 (Figure 39) where isolated parcels are numerous within the built
fabric, land consolidation operations are impossible to apply. Rights of ways are public
spaces and the implementation of temporary use programs on these parcels would
require Municipality interference and that would be discussed in the following section.
However, regarding the adjacent built parcels (#1167 and #1168), and since they are
adjacent to a major road, land consolidation could be applied in order to unify both
parcels and create a constructible parcel, and hence establish a legal alignment with
the rest of the street elevation.
132
 In example 2 (Figure 40), adjacent vacant parcels (4 cases) regrouping three
parcels should be consolidated and resolving ownership issues could come from
amicable exchange of property or transfer of ownership. In these situations, vacant
parcels should remain vacant since they are located in a dense residential area of
Bachoura and could bring some breathing space for surrounding residents. Since three
out of four of these cases are adjacent to either major or secondary road, accessibility
to these parcels can be rather easy. Isolated built parcels are located inside the block
and are adjacent to a tertiary road; they are closely located and could become part of a
network in this specific neighborhood, a topic to be discussed in the following sections.
No urban operation is recommended for these blocks.

In example 3 (Figure 41), it is recommended to consolidate the different adjacent

built parcels in order to create a built entity or they could be demolished and re-
integrated in the vacant land network. The location of these parcels inside the blocks,
connected to a secondary road, should they are demolished, can create an interesting
vacant lot inside the block, leaving room for a temporary use program to be
implemented.

133
Figure 42: Example 02, Urban Operations

Source 42: By author

Table 13: Example 02 / Urban Operations

Plots involved Status of the Built

Land Consolidation / Demolition 504,505,507,508 Residential

Land Consolidation / Demolition 528,529 Residential

Source 43: By author

134
 Figure 43: Example 03, Urban Operations

Source 44: By author

Table 14: Example 03 / Urban Operations

Plots involved Status of the Built

Land Consolidation/Demolition 208,209,214,1368 Residential

Land Consolidation/Demolition 1379,1381 Residential

•
Source 45: By author

135
 6.3. Temporary use programs and the tools for their
implementation
Temporary use program implementation requires Municipality interference on
publicly owned parcels, as well as owner’s cooperation on privately owned land. In
regards to the tactical urban strategy proposed in Section 6.1, temporary use
implementation has to be part of a long-term vision to enhance the quality of life for the
users in Beirut. Although the Municipality should be leading this process and carefully
following it up, informal actors should play a key role in the decision-making process
and the implementation process. A collaboration of all actors within the framework of
this strategy would push the implementation process forward and help its application.

First, the Municipality needs to create a unit within its premises, as it was
explained in the Leipzig project, in order to investigate and shortlist the potential non-
constructible parcels. In the case where land is publicly owned, the Municipality would
grant a permit for the organizer in order to use its vacant lot. The current procedures
have limitations as discussed in section 5.4.3, and new ones need to be implemented.
The created cell would be in charge of these procedures and would be run by experts
in the field of design, events, economics, technology and other city related issues.
Permits should be delivered rapidly, within 72 hours, as it was done in London part of
the 72 Hour Urban Action. Knowing that the current delivery time for a permit in Beirut
takes about 3 to 4 months, with the uncertainty of delivery since it s a case by case
process led by the Muhafex, any delivery time from 2 to 3 weeks would be sufficient
and credible. Decisions need to be taken on a local level, hence bypassing the
Muhafez as it is the case today. We have seen that bureaucratic process can be slow,
so the less of that the better.

In the case of privately owned parcels, the Municipality needs to interfere as well.
Owners have to be contacted and notified that their unused property should be made
available for a certain period of time. Of course incentives need to be given to owners
who support the implementation of these programs, such as tax cuts or other. For the
Municipality and the owners, it is a win-win situation, since the Municipality improves
neighborhoods in disrepair by freeing up needed public space, and owners see their
property being managed and taken care of. Acknowledging that the parcels are small in
size, incentives could still be of interest for owners, since the current status of most
non-constructible parcels, especially in Bachoura and Zokak El-Blat is in decay. By
issuing land procurement contracts, the Municipality promotes private activities by
prospecting and using privately owned sites for temporary use programs. Short-term

136
leases and adaptive rental contracts could be negotiated with owners should the
duration of the project require so. Moreover, by creating private public partnerships with
landowners, Municipalities could encourage owners to invest in temporary programs by
freeing up their land.

In order to implement programs that integrate the urban fabric, spatial, social,
economic and cultural components discussed in previous sections should be taken in
consideration. Programs implemented could respond to a local need as well as a more
general need, at the city’s scale. For example in Bachoura, small open air markets
could happen on vacant parcels in order to promote local products; temporary antique
markets or flea markets, already existing in Bachoura (Figure 44), could also take place
in these open air spaces and could help promote the district’s produce. Pop-up shops
of a design nature could integrate the streets of Saifi in the framework of a design week
or a design festival. Since it was explained that the emergence of sub-cultures could
favor the implementation of temporary projects, vacant illegal buildings could be
occupied by cultural installations that will promote local artists.

Figure 44: Indoor and outdoor markets, Bachoura

Source 46: By author

Policy-makers should support the conditions of temporary uses, but refrain from
much intervention in the activities. In the end, to explore potentials of a place,
temporary uses primarily require cheap spaces and freedom from constraints. It is
place-specific, user-centric and experiment-driven development activity. Yet that
maybe nourished with suitable regulation and support mechanisms.

137
 6.4. Connectivity and mobility
Throughout this thesis, the issue of non-constructible parcels, legislation and
temporary use programs was explained however there is another dimension to be
added to these layers and that is the network generated by these non-constructible
parcels. This layer became of interest once empirical data was collected and non-
constructible parcels were spatially analyzed and it became clear that the potential of
these parcels would not only exist in the entity of each but also in their connection to
each other. This relation was explored in Section 5.2.1, and different parameters were
identified such as adjacency to roads and proximity to other non-constructible parcels.

In Figure 45 and Figure 46, in the case of Bachoura, the proximity of some
parcels to each other, and their various adjacency relationships to roads, could
generate a path or a connection that would lead users from one parcel to another.
These mobility paths explore the inner blocks of the districts and use soft transportation
(pedestrian and biking) as their main transportation mode. In example 02 (Figure 45),
the path connects 21 non-constructible parcels and guides the user from a major road,
to the inner block. The programs implemented on these parcels could benefit from
these paths in order to develop certain themes or topics allowing the user to wander
with a purpose. Cultural paths could pave the way for historical exploration of certain
districts. Non-constructible parcels become nodes where the user can rest, explore or
participate in any sort of activity the program suggests.

In example 03 (Figure 46), the path created by these parcels explores the block
in all its directions, creating porous walkways from and to the heart of the block. These
paths add another layer to the existing urban fabric of the city, and one path can lead to
another one hence generating a network of paths on the city scale. They are informal in
the sense that are not physically traced in the way a road is, rather they are connected
through their programs and this virtual connection makes this new layer in the city
noninvasive and allows it to seamlessly blends in with the existing fabric.

The use of examples on a neighborly scale was important since the strategy
proposed is user oriented, and implementation of urban operations have to be thought
of from the user perspective. These examples showed that using existing operations
within a new and original strategy could provide interim spaces that would benefit both
the user and the owners. In section 5.2, zoned of densities were defined in which
operations would start; by overlapping these zones in Figure 47, and looking at the
implementation process from the district or the city’s perspective, it is explained how

138
integrating non-constructible parcels in the city through the development of a user
based strategy and implementation temporary uses that target the user in his context
could develop into a more binding strategy for the whole city.

Figure 45: Example 02, Connectivity

Source 47: By author

139
Figure 46: Example 03, Connectivity

Source 48: By author

140
Figure 47: The effect of the strategy on other districts

Source 49: By author

141
7. Conclusion
Throughout this thesis, it was attempted to answer the research question: How
can non-constructible parcels within Municipal Beirut host temporary use programs that
are integrated within the urban fabric?

The review of residual spaces and temporary uses in North American and
European cities, has shown that the concept of residual spaces has shifted from being
referred to as an undesirable urban situation to being acknowledged as a driving force
in the urban fabric and, moreover, as an opportunity for the implementation of
temporary use programs. In defining the activation components for these temporary
uses and highlighting the spatial, socio-economical and cultural contexts it was clear
that temporary uses could be a catalyst for the city regeneration. Several urban
strategies, mechanisms and tools led by local authorities, owners or other informal
actors were reviewed, and they all shared one common thread and that is the user-
oriented tactics. Through different regulatory reforms and tools such as land
procurement contracts and authorization agreements, cities managed to reclaim the
potential of residual spaces by collaborating with private owners and giving them
incentives to encourage temporary use implementation on their property. Municipalities
and local authorities have appointed special committees for following up on the
process, and by short-listing potential sites, and proposing new programs, they were
able to gain the confidence of the owners and implement successful projects.

Beirut finds within its realm an urban resource that can no longer be ignored. In
the context of urban growth and the continuous lack in open and public spaces, non-
constructible parcels within Municipal Beirut appear as an adequate support for the
implementation of temporary uses. Through the review of the existing Lebanese laws
and regulations and the current legislation in Beirut, it was found that non-constructible
parcels are not acknowledged at all. They are of no interest to developers or
Municipality since they cannot be built. The review of the current urban operations has
shown that classical operations such as land consolidation and re-parceling,
expropriation and real estate companies still prevail.

Through data collection, fieldwork and interviews, an updated database of the

existing non-constructible parcels within Municipal Beirut was generated. Through
analysis of this collected data, an understanding of the spatial, socio-economic and
cultural context of the three study areas of Bachoura, Saifi and Zokak El-Blat was
delivered. In relation to non-constructible parcels, land uses and regulatory

142
mechanisms were analyzed. Tools and actors were also reviewed and analyzed in
order to arrive to a classification of these parcels which became the base for
recommendations in regards to urban strategies, operations, temporary uses and
connectivity. On the basis of these revelations, the proposed urban strategy dedicated
for the implementation on temporary uses on non-constructible parcels had to be of a
tactical nature where temporary use is applied as part of a long-term vision for the
regeneration of the city with adequate resources to back it up. By adjusting its current
policy, Beirut municipality should strive to meet developing user’s needs. This strategy
can be defined as “consistent” in the sense that is strategically focused on the
implementation process.

Through many examples on a neighborhood level in the district of Bachoura,

which proved to have a time gap factor that generates a vacuum, hence favors the
implementation of temporary uses on its land, different operations were applied in order
to integrate non-constructible parcels within the city. Temporary use programs were
proposed with the purpose of integrating the socio-economical and cultural fabric of
these districts, a fabric that is overwhelmed by urban divides such as social,
economical or spatial. A network of paths and connections between non-constructible
parcels and the rest of the parcels was established and it was shown that this
connecting network would also be important on the city scale by extending the urban
operations towards other adjacent districts.

The major limitation that this thesis has faced was the ownership issue of the non-
constructible parcels. It was important at some points to define whether owners were
public or private to be able to further develop the operations and the tools.

Finally, I wish the data collected for the purpose of this thesis as well as the
methodology used, would serve as a reference for further studies in that field.

143
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Appendices
(Available on CD here attached)

Appendix A: Laws and Decrees

• Decree Law No. 69/83

• Article 5 of Decree Law No. 6285/54
• Article 5 of Decree Law No. 5550/73
• Decree Law No. 118/77 (Municipality Act)

Appendix B: Licenses

§ Prior to land consolidation license

Appendix C: Existing plans

§ Cadastral Maps 2004

§ Danger master plan of 1932
§ Ecochard master plan of 1943 and 1964

Appendix D: Aerial Photographs

Appendix E: GIS generated maps

Appendix F: District maps

Appendix G: Itinerary/Fieldwork

Appendix H: Fact Sheets

Appendix I: Updated GIS maps

Appendix J: Interview transcripts

Appendix K: Data collection

• Analysis Charts
§ Tables

Appendix L: Implications on other districts

Appendix M: Visual Presentation (PDF)

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 List of Figures

Figure 1: The Land Procurement Network_Leipzig ...................................................... 37  

Figure 2: Plots 634/602 Saifi: Non-constructible parcels with various uses ................. 44  

Figure 3: Location of Plots 634/602, Saifi district ......................................................... 44  

Figure 4: Examples of non-constructible situations as per Article 5 modified by decree

n° 5550/73 ............................................................................................................. 46  

Figure 5: Municipal Beirut zoning plan ......................................................................... 47  

Figure 7: Saifi, Bachoura, Zokak El-Blat....................................................................... 59  

Figure 8: Municipal Beirut district map_Location of study districts ............................... 64  

Figure 9: General Map Saifi, Bachoura, Zokak El-Blat ................................................. 65  

Figure 10: Photographs from Saifi district showing the status of the built .................... 66  

Figure 11: Photographs from Saifi district showing the status of the built .................... 67  

Figure 14: Fieldwork Limitations: Areas not photographed marked by the circle. Zokak
El-Blat (left), Saifi (Middle), Bachoura (right) ......................................................... 73  

Figure 15: Demolished areas - Non-constructible parcels / Saifi District, 2013............ 77  

Figure 16: Demolished areas - non-constructible parcels, Bachoura district, 2013 ..... 78  

Figure 17: Demolished areas - Non-constructible parcels, ZokakEl-Blat, 2013 ........... 79  

Figure 19: Hierarchy of road network,Bachoura ........................................................... 82  

Figure 20: Hierarchy of road network, Saifi .................................................................. 82  

Figure 21: Hierarchy of road network, Zokak El-Blat .................................................... 83  

Figure 22: Geographical distribution of non-constructible parcels, Saifi district ........... 88  

Figure 23: Geographical distribution of non-constructible parcels, Bachoura district ... 89  

Figure 24: Geographical distribution of non-constructible parcels, Zokak El-Blat district

.............................................................................................................................. 90  

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Figure 25: Examples of right of way cases and non-constructible parcels, Saifi district
.............................................................................................................................. 91  

Figure 26: Recent real estate developments in Saifi district......................................... 95  

Figure 27: Photograph showing South of Saifi district new developments ................... 96  

Figure 28: Recent real estate developments in Bachoura district ................................ 97  

Figure 29: Recent real estate developments in Zokak El-Blat district .......................... 98  

Figure 30: By author ..................................................................................................... 98  

Figure 31: Land Use map, Saifi District ...................................................................... 103  

Figure 32: Land use map, bachoura district ............................................................... 104  

Figure 33: Land Use map, Zokak El-Blat district ........................................................ 105  

Figure 34: Nature of use, Saifi district ........................................................................ 107  

Figure 35: Nature of use, Bachoura district ................................................................ 108  

Figure 36: Nature of use, Zokak El-Blat district .......................................................... 109  

Figure 37: Examples of relationships between non-constructible parcels, Bachoura

district .................................................................................................................. 114  

Figure 38: Examples of relationships between non-constructible parcels, Zokak El-Blat

district .................................................................................................................. 118  

Figure 40: Example 01, Existing Situation .................................................................. 128  

Figure 41: Example 02, Existing Situation .................................................................. 129  

Figure 42: Example 03, Existing Situation .................................................................. 130  

Figure 43: Example 02, Urban Operations ................................................................. 134  

Figure 44: Case Study CS 03, Urban Operations ...................................................... 135  

Figure 45: Example 02, Connectivity .......................................................................... 139  

Figure 46: Example 03, Connectivity .......................................................................... 140  

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 List of Tables

Table 1: Dimensions and minimal areas for constructible parcels as per Article 2 of the
decree n° 5550/73 ................................................................................................. 46  

Table 2: Land occupation density and built-up space in the ten zones as per Decree
no.6285 of 11/9/1954 ............................................................................................ 47  

Table 5: List of available documentation (maps and photographs) .............................. 61  

Table 5: Functions by sector part of Solidere ............................................................... 64  

Table 6: Minimal dimensions and areas for constructible parcels ................................ 76  

Table 7: Number of parcels/non-constructible parcels in all study districts .................. 80  

Table 8: Number of non-constructible parcels and respective areas (m2) according to

their proximity to roads .......................................................................................... 84  

Table 9: Non-constructible parcels areas ..................................................................... 93  

Table 10: Number of built and un-built non-constructible parcels .............................. 100  

Table 11: Percentage of built and un-built non-constructible parcels of total number of
parcels (constructible and non-constructible) ...................................................... 100  

Table 12: Nature of use: Number and respective areas (m2) .................................... 101  

Table 12: Count of types of relationship between non-constructible parcels ............. 113  

Table 14: Example 02 / Urban Operations ................................................................. 134  

Table 15: Example 03 / Urban Operations ................................................................. 135  

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