Mona Fawaz

• American University of Beirut

How does a profession that prides itself on standing for the common good and working through action –not mere analysis or gesturing- demonstrate its effectiveness in a city devastated by intractable political, economic, financial, health, and social crises? In this essay, I dive into the current context of planning in Beirut (Lebanon) where I have...

Much of the literature covering forced population displacement has neglected spatial implications, dealing with place as mere context. Building on a case study of the city of Halba (Lebanon) where it maps a process of contingent encounters through which disparate resources, individuals, and groups are stitched together to generate large-scale housi...

Many states, including Lebanon, have used the Covid-19 pandemic as an occasion to reassert their power and to consolidate their policing and repressive apparatuses. We are far from a seamless scenario, however. Rather than a mere reproduction of the sectarian political system, we argue in this paper that the governance of the pandemic in Lebanon re...

In this conversation two of our Editors (Ana and Michele) are encountering researchers and organisers from Lebanon to reflect around the struggle for housing in the midst of the pandemic. They are Mona Fawaz, Mona Harb, Karim Nammour, Farah Salka. In this conversation, we tackle issues of new and old forms of housing injustices, housing policy, old...

This paper explores the relationship between property and gentrification, building on a case study of the neighbourhood of Mar Mikhael (Beirut, Lebanon). First, we discuss the ways in which the distribution of property ownership shapes processes of displacement. We then investigate how property is made and reorganized through processes of gentrific...

On the occasion of the United Nations Habitat III Conference on cities, to take place in Quito (Ecuador) in October 2016, this research publication proposes an innovative reflection on precar­ ious neighborhoods-whose populations are set to double over the next twenty years. Building on extensive field research across all continents, the different...

Although property is a basic ingredient of planning, its repercussions on the profession have rarely been considered. Building on the critical analysis of property, I argue that planning is giving in to the “property effect,” the unquestioned assumption that natural and built landscapes are propertied. Looking specifically at one case-study of land...

Taking the provision of building permits as an entry point to its analysis, the paper documents the widespread practice of issuing ‘exceptions’ on which planning agencies in Beirut (Lebanon) frequently rely in their management of urban developments. The paper analyses ‘exceptions’ as a variable set of policy departures that take numerous forms (e.g...

This research looks at post-2006-war reconstruction of the southern suburbs of Beirut under the auspices of Hezbollah (the Islamic resistance movement in Lebanon). The project was widely acclaimed as an alternative to current neoliberal planning practices in the Middle East and beyond. Based on a critical reading of the conception of property issue...

Over the past decade, security has gained enormous attention in the urban literature, reflecting its visibly increasing presence in cities worldwide. It is now widely acknowledged that security is a structuring force for cities both historically and now. Few scholars have however looked at the implications of security on the daily practices of urba...

The struggle between the state and particular social groups seeking recognition or independence is generally depicted in the context of direct and sometimes violent conflicts such as guerrilla warfare, terrorist attacks, or the coercive state occupation of strategic spatial locations. However, open conflicts are only a part of how politics of ident...

This paper presents the first findings of ongoing research documenting the changing modalities of governing and organizing the built environment in the past two decades in Lebanon, a phase widely associated with the advent of neoliberalism in the country. Taking building permits as the entry point for an investigation of these modalities, our resea...

The current housing policy paradigm supports the integration of informal settlements' housing markets with the larger housing markets. Given, however, that housing production and exchange happen in a continuum of formal and informal processes, this article seeks to look at the effects of this integration on the conditions of housing acquisition for...

Drawing on Lefebvre's theorization of space in order to examine the compatibility of neoliberalism and the right to the city, this study investigates how the formation of informal settlements since the 1950s had provided low-income dwellers in Beirut (Lebanon) a means to conceive of and engage in city making (neighbourhood production, management, a...

This study examined the association between housing quality and chronic illness among household members in the little investigated, underserved urban communities in Hay el Sellom, one of the largest informal settlements on the outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon. A population-based cross-sectional survey. Face-to-face interviews were conducted to obtain t...

This article documents the early development of an informal settlement in Beirut (Lebanon) through the trajectories of the developers who participated in its production, looking specifically at the role that social networks played in the process. Drawing primarily on the methodological approach developed by Pierre Bourdieu, my analysis reveals that...

The current consensus in housing policy recognizes the importance of learning from rather than about informal settlements. To serve this end, this dissertation presents a novel methodology for investigating land and housing markets. The methodology consists of investigating time-evolving relationships between attributes of the social agents who int...