“City Debates 2022 will explore how planning can be (re)conceived and practiced in contexts of dysfunctional states and compounded crises, featuring the work of the AUB/MSFEA Beirut Urban Lab (BUL).”
Beirut’s current in-disaster recovery epitomizes a recurrent scenario in contemporary times, one in which decades of neoliberal governance have hollowed-out public agencies, particularly in developing countries, and left communities vulnerable to large-scale climate or man-made events. In Lebanon and many other contexts of the Global South, even the illusion of representative or people-centered public governance has waned, and public agencies are widely identified as partisan bodies representing private (propertied and financial) interests. The very premise of planning is shaken, since the profession has rested on the now debunked assumption of a common good embodied by a custodian—the nation state. How do cities recover in such contexts? To what extend can relief agencies, local and international, operate in the absence of such a custodian? Can active civic groups and mobilized citizens provide counterpoints?
Beirut’s current in-disaster recovery epitomizes a recurrent scenario in contemporary times, one in which decades of neoliberal governance have hollowed-out public agencies, particularly in developing countries, and left communities vulnerable to large-scale climate or man-made events. In Lebanon and many other contexts of the Global South, even the illusion of representative or people-centered public governance has waned, and public agencies are widely identified as partisan bodies representing private (propertied and financial) interests. The very premise of planning is shaken, since the profession has rested on the now debunked assumption of a common good embodied by a custodian—the nation state. How do cities recover in such contexts? To what extend can relief agencies, local and international, operate in the absence of such a custodian? Can active civic groups and mobilized citizens provide counterpoints?