20.11.2024

Our Reflections

Not Collateral Damage but a Deliberate Act of Cultural Erasure

29.10.2024

Our Reflections

Mapping One Month of Announced Strikes in South Beirut (September 27 - November 4, 2024)

Since September 27, Israel’s war on Lebanon has expanded its brutal violence to Lebanon’s capital, Beirut as well as many regions across the country. No less than 325 buildings have been destroyed south of the city where the radius of devastation (seen in the outlined gray zones) extends over 11.87km2, or more than half the capital’s immediate urbanization perimeter.

04.10.2024

Our Reflections

Israel’s Assault on Lebanon, Sept. 2024

09.08.2024

Our Reflections

Twenty Years of City Debates - The 20th Edition's Introductory Note

04.04.2023

Article

Robert Saliba’s Mental Imaging of Downtown Beirut

We are honouring the memory of our colleague, friend, and teacher, Professor Robert Saliba, by publishing one of the early and ground-breaking works which he conceived and coordinated, and which remains a hard-to-find yet incredibly insightful text. At a time when Beirut’s memory continues to be erased, the relevance of his work stands out.

17.02.2023

Our Reflections

In Memory, Habib Debs

Since the early 1990s, Habib Debs has been involved in nearly every battle to improve urban planning and design in Lebanon (and beyond), its standards, methods, and practices. A champion of cultural heritage protection, a gifted public space designer, and a leading figure in city planning, he will be remembered for his incredible talent, innumerable contributions, deep humanism, and his role as an engaged citizen fighting for a more just and secular country.

09.11.2022

Our Reflections

Disaster Governance and Aid Effectiveness: the Case of Lebanon’s 3RF

Following the Beirut Port Blast, the Reform, Recovery, and Reconstruction Framework "3RF" came to life. Sophie Bloemeke and Mona Harb examine three interconnected sets of structural constraints that limit the platform's performance.

10.08.2021

Our Reflections

Launching an Urban Observatory Amidst a Painful and Slow Recovery

One year after the Beirut port blast, we remain in awe at the social mobilization that continues to surround the people in the neighborhoods affected by the explosion. Over 12 months, and amidst devastating, economic, political, and health crises, city-dwellers—organized or not, working side by side with a large array of local and international organizations, are still struggling to repair homes, businesses, schools and hospitals and restore the viability of their city.

27.05.2021

Our Reflections

On Apartheid Planning

In line with our commitment to produce informed scholarship on urbanization and advocate socially-just and viable urban policies, we launch the Beirut Urban Lab’s Arabic website on the heels of the anniversary of the Nakba, the 73rd commemoration of the massacres that marked the establishment of the State of Israel, while Palestinians continue to count their dead and while the residents of Gaza, sieged for the past 13 years, discover the daunting destruction after 11 days of relentless military aggression.