Magazine

Baalbek: A Long History of Exclusion, for the City and its People

In this text, we present an overview of the city of Baalbek and its neighborhoods, and the exclusion that resulted from specific planning tools. We read into the numerous masterplans, in their dwarfing …

Investigation

Agenda of the Latest Legislative Session

The agenda of the legislative session on the 30th of June and 1st of July 2021 included 76 items. Despite the multiplicity of proposals and the diversity of their sources, it is noted …

Investigation

“Those who cannot pay for a gallon of gas, let them use a different means of transportation.”

Since the end of the civil war, the dominant class has collaborated with the private sector to destroy many sectors at the expense of public interest. In the context of public transport, the …

Investigation

Tripoli in the Eye of the Storm: the Old Disenfranchisement

The Old Disenfranchisement

In most countries of the world, the south is the most deprived. In Lebanon, the system managed to make the north the most deprived, poor and destitute place. We will present a brief …

Petition

A “Zero Eviction” Policy, Fair Rent, and a Limit to Vacant Properties:

This is What the Public Good Demands

The mainstream Lebanese media portrays the on-going housing crisis as a conflict between the landlord and the tenant, neglecting the role of the state in regulating rents, determining land uses, and managing property …

Investigation

Housing as a Feminist Cause

Stories from the Housing Monitor

If the COVID pandemic has shown us anything over the past year, it is that crises, no matter how global they may be, are not experienced equally by everyone. In times of multiscalar …

Research-Based Article

Um Hassan’s New House:

The Costs of Staying in the City

Um Hassan moved to Tarik Al Jadidah in 1982, when she was an 18-year-old mother of two. She came from the south and married a relative who was living in Beirut. Em Hassan …

Investigation

Water Occupation:

Water in the Expansionist Zionist Ideology

The hegemony of “Israel” occupies four countries: Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. We cannot look at the occupation, without seeing the obsession with securing water resources, with all the colonizing practices that this securing requires; land is worthless without water.

Petition

Open Public Gardens, They Are the Safest Spaces

An Open Letter to the Government and the Beirut Municipality

This is an open letter to the government and Beirut municipality, demanding the reopening of public gardens in Beirut, following the gradual lifting of closures due to covid-related health concerns. Read it in …

Interview

Dwellers in the Face of the State’s Exclusionary Policies

In the context of reading the urban transformations that Lebanon is witnessing as cross-border transformations generated by capitalist governments adopting neoliberal policies, and aiming to reshape neighborhoods and land into a commodity in …

Investigation

On the European Corporates’ Vision of the Beirut Port Reconstruction:

Proposed Priorities versus People's Priorities

Even when a solution brought by private companies might seem like a source of hope for the neighborhoods destroyed by the Beirut Port explosion, it only proposes a replica of the reconstruction catastrophe …

Investigation

When the City Becomes a Translation of Racism

The mainstream racist discourse is not only related to insulting speech, but rather translates practices that become normal and normalized, making the lives of refugees almost impossible, and their housing in cities and …