Beirut Urban Lab
  • About
  • Platforms
    • Beirut Built Environment Database
    • The Territories of the Covid-19 Response in Lebanon (March - July 2020)
    • Beirut Urban Observatory
    • Government-Designated Shelters in Lebanon
    • Beirut's Post-Blast Urban Recovery
    • Precarious Homes
    • Oral Narratives by the Residents of Karantina
    • City of Tenants
    • Lebanese-Israeli Border Escalation
    • West Bank Violence Tracker
    • Tracking the Urbicide in Gaza
    • Levant Carta | Beirut
  • Thematic Areas
    • Social Value Of Land
    • Urban Recovery
    • Urban Citizenship
    • Critical Mapping
    • Planning Actors and Scales
    • Spatial Practices
    • Urban Informality
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • People
  • Eyes On
Search
search
عــربي
Browse
TWEETS

Our Reflections

  • Homeless in the City of the 44 Thousand Empty Homes…
    21.11.2024
    Our Reflections

    Homeless in the City of the 44 Thousand Empty Homes…

    In this short piece, we argue for the urgency of including Beirut’s vacant buildings in a medium-term emergency shelter response for the city. Secured and managed through a public actor and a reliable framework, a section of Beirut’s large stock of vacant apartments should be used as temporary shelters.
  • Not Collateral Damage but a Deliberate Act of Cultural Erasure
    20.11.2024
    Our Reflections

    Not Collateral Damage but a Deliberate Act of Cultural Erasure

    Cultural heritage has long been a target during wars, as it represents the identity, values, and history of a community. It is often the first casualty of conflict, symbolizing what a people stand for, cherish, and pass down through generations.
  • Mapping One Month of Announced Strikes in South Beirut (September 27 - November 4, 2024)
    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.
  • Israel’s Assault on Lebanon, Sept. 2024
    04.10.2024
    Our Reflections

    Israel’s Assault on Lebanon, Sept. 2024

    Over the past year, the Beirut Urban Lab has invested in regularly sharing information to counter media misinformation by coding and visualizing data on Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon’s southern border. Our findings show unequivocally Israel’s use of excessive and disproportionate violence against civilians.
  • Twenty Years of City Debates - The 20th Edition's Introductory Note
    09.08.2024
    Our Reflections

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

    The following are the introductory notes given by Mona Fawaz to open the conference, Disrupted Urbanisms, prior to the first keynote. The recordings of the 20th edition's sessions are available on the City Debates website.
  • Robert Saliba’s Mental Imaging of Downtown Beirut
    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.
  • In Memory, Habib Debs
    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.
  • Disaster Governance and Aid Effectiveness: the Case of Lebanon’s 3RF
    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.
  • Launching an Urban Observatory Amidst a Painful and Slow Recovery
    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.
  • On Apartheid Planning
    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.
  • Waiting for Urgency in Beirut
    23.04.2021
    Our Reflections

    Waiting for Urgency in Beirut

    Disaster is disorienting even when you know where you are. In the immediate aftermath of the Beirut port explosion last summer, it was impossible to know its reach. How far did the destruction extend? What were its boundaries?
  • The Beirut Blast: A Week On
    10.08.2020
    Our Reflections

    The Beirut Blast: A Week On

    As we write this short reflection, the Beirut Port’s August 4, 2020 explosion still runs deep shockwaves through every one of us. We are just beginning to absorb the unmeasurable losses that have fallen on our city and its people. Some 2,700 tons of Ammonium Nitrate were callously stored in a port hangar, in close vicinities of residential neighborhoods, for six years. It happened with the full knowledge of successive port authorities, customs’ officials, and many other public officials (and unofficials).
  • The Beirut Urban Lab: Adding an Anchor to the Ecosystem of Urban Change
    06.07.2020
    Our Reflections

    The Beirut Urban Lab: Adding an Anchor to the Ecosystem of Urban Change

    We launch the website of the Beirut Urban Lab at a time when everything around us is in peril. Thirty years after the presumed end of the civil war, Lebanon is drowning under the overlapping weights of a global health pandemic, a severe financial crisis, and the devastating failure to put in place a just and viable national recovery. Indeed, things are on the verge of total collapse.
beirut-logo
  • Raymond Ghosn Building, American University of Beirut, Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture
  • Copyright © 2025 Beirut Urban Lab. All rights reserved
  • PO Box. 11-0236 Riad El Solh 1107 2020, Beirut Lebanon
  • +961-1-374374 ext: 3603
  • [email protected]
  • beiruturbanlab.com
contact us
work with us
BUL in the Press