From City to Sea(Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture, 2016)

AUB BLA Thesis

Beirut Beirut Exhibition

Location: Beirut, Lebanon
BLA Thesis, AUB 2016
Advisor: Yaser Abunnasr

People around the world are being challenged to their rights to access public spaces. The right to landscape is an integral topic when discussing public rights, where social justice becomes directly related to public space. Linking landscape to human rights allows us to see that it could be a tool to protect social rights and public interest. While the landscape is perceived in its social, cultural and natural contexts, the ‘right to landscape’ becomes a right to preserve nature, heritage and identity. The project analyzes the multi-tiered accessibility struggle through questioning the meaning of the right to access the city and the sea. The Manara Park proposes a design strategy that reinstates the historic right to social, cultural, and ecological landscapes.

Rapid development and privatization along the coast of Beirut has altered the relationship between the city and the sea, where access to the sea has become a daring challenge to people. The gradual descent of the urban fabric towards the coastline is now being replaced by a wall of towers. A metaphor that signifies the limits of accessibility and the need to reinstate the right to access to the coastline. Since the end of the civil war (1975- 1990), Beirut has been exposed to re-construction projects that have altered the city’s identity due to a weak regulatory framework which allowed private firms to freely develop large plots and effectively plan the city. Privatization of state owned lands and the deterioration of natural spaces weakened the culture and heritage of the city. The failure of issuing legal articles to protect public rights to land, preserve heritage and important natural areas, has resulted in threats to ecology, public health and also diminished the accessible public spaces in Beirut.

Joude Mabsout