Water privatization in Lebanon

Mapping Lebanese Rivers

Water privatization touches on many intriguing and conflictual debates such as public versus economic good, monopolies, human rights and government failures in provision of services. The lists of incentives or the lack of them for the market to provide for the low income areas are obvious.

 If I were to debate this issue in theory, I would definitely agree on the dangers of turning a public need into an economic good controlled by efficient yet financially guided partners.

However, in the midst of a continuous debate in Lebanon about water and electricity privatization I found my position less definite

Demonstrators burn tires to block roads in  south Beirut, which have suffered extensive electricity and water cuts. (Hugh Macleod/IRIN) http://electronicintifada.net/content/politicized-power-cuts-behind-deadly-riots/7328

 

Behind “the pink house”

Around the Pink House

I watched again one of my favorite Lebanese movies. For everyone that has not seen it yet pick up a copy or at-least read about it. 

This blog entry will discuss the  movie, “Around the Pink House” that highlights how post war policies on the macro level regarding reconstruction and the internally displaced affected people’s ability to recover from the war. The ambition of this entry  is to highlight the importance of personal narratives and experiences within spatially just reconstruction plans and policies, which were disregarded, and shows how the top down macro scale decisions continue to disturb the post-war geography of the city. 

Documenting the invisible struggles:

The movie begins with a day to day event interrupted by a traffic jam in a neighborhood with men in uniform running in-between the cars. The scene of daily life mixed with a scene of militias and day to day war scenes highlights a confused and forced transition from the war period to the post war period. The people stuck in the traffic are not disturbed by the militia men running through and are discussing an explosion that is shown on a television in a cafe.  

This starts the conversation about reconstruction and what this new type of city destruction will bring to the residents of the city. One man in a  café proposes that the new plan for a new ‘world’ city is going to save the neighborhood with an upsurge in the economy.

 

 

The movie then focuses on the pink house by showing us a man looking into the day to day activities and windows of the houses residents.  We see the the pink house in the activities of its residence.  

The camera slows down several times during the movie; the music becomes eerie and shifts into the private moments of the characters. The moments only share a common house, the pink house,  but their memories and thoughts are varied all affected by the trauma and displacement of the war.   

These portraits create multiple narratives that show that the groups opinions about post war reconstruction were not based on peoples religions but on their a geo-political locations  and outlook on social justice.

Around the Pink House - screen shots

 

Occupying the urban landscape: Burj-el-Murr

A serene sacred monolith stands still in Beirut’s continuously changing urban fabric. This 40 story unfinished tower dominates the skyline of down-town Beirut.

The unfinished building is about 35 years old now. Its construction started in 1974 and by 1975, the start of the Lebanese civil war, 28 of its floors were built. Despite the unrest, the work continued until the whole structure was erected.

The building was structurally daring relying on a hollow tube concrete structure with its facades as the load bearing walls braced by the core buildings shear walls. It was firm enough to withstand the weapons used on the battle-field and to continue to exist as an icon in the post war period. 

Its height, location and facade treatment and structure made this an ideal sniper location. It created a type of panoptic war tactic which drew an imaginary urban circle of about 2.2 km  of fear around it.

After the war a post construction boom took place. Sites and buildings were either erased and reconstructed or developed a new. The Murr tower's problem or advantage is that it is too high to topple and too solid to implode making its erasure problematic and expensive.

This concrete artifact originally meant to be an office tower was only used as a sniper outpost.

Today it stands filled with disturbing memories, horror stories and scars rising to the sky. What is to become of this structure and what should become of it has been an issue to many in Beirut? In the mean time it stands as an unused tower.

Proposal

 

With the past blog post, Beirut is ill: The WHOs 'Healthy City Networks',

( http://spatiallyjustenvironmentsbeirut.blogspot.com/2011/07/beirut-is-ill-whos-healthy-city.html ) showed that the required public green  space required for Beirut is extremely scarce. We need to start dreaming of possibilities for  new public green spaces.  Green spaces have a range of functions and types of which not all need to be equally physically accessible. Access may range from the climate change results they cause in terms of oxygen production and or food production, ecological variety, visual access, or physical contact access among other types.

 What I propose for Burj-el-Murr , which is structurally viable, is a landscape of green.

 The Burj’s east and west facade is made of 6 equally placed and sized windows on each floor. The strategy is simple, a range of bush type plants or trees to be placed on each of the widows from inside with guidance to the exterior.   

The result might just be a vertical mountain or wall of green that will overtake the sacred monolith of Beirut.

The project proposal will require an efficient watering system and maintenance system but its result will be immeasurable on the street and urban scale among others. 

The hill will grow on itself and slowly decompose the building. After 50 years when the mound is more or less fully grown the exterior may become habitable in some form and the building will be lost.


Original Images 
by  Ramiabikhalil  http://www.arch.mcgill.ca/prof/davies/arch671/winter2007/students/abou/RamiAbouKhalil_ThesisDescription.pdf
by Centrifugador
all collages  by sandra rishani