Precarious Homes

The precarious neighborhoods seen on the map were identified based on earlier studies conducted in Beirut and its suburbs (Fawaz & Peillen, 2002; Fawaz et al., 2021). The map points to locations in Beirut where the majority of residents live with heightened threats of eviction, facing economic, political, and/or social hardship, with lower-than-average access to urban services than other sections of the city. We point to three forms of precarious neighborhoods, identified according to the conditions of their historical production:

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 Palestinian Refugee Camps  are neighborhoods established in the 1948-1951 period to shelter refugees who fled to Lebanon to escape the massacres that marked the establishment of the State of Israel in their historic homeland. To date, Palestinian refugee camps are located on land rented out by the United Nations Relief Agency in West Asia (UNRWA). UNRWA also supports refugees in the organization of their neighborhoods that are considered outside the jurisdiction of Lebanese authorities. Since then, these temporary encampments have consolidated into neighborhoods where incrementally developed multi-story residential buildings house refugees and other vulnerable population groups ( Sayigh , 2005; Peteet, 2011). Physical conditions in the camps are typically dismal and services are direly lacking. Worse, residency is criminalized given that the Lebanese law mandates camps not to consolidate beyond their original temporary structures. Consequently, buildings are in violation of building and zoning codes and services are only secured through informal hookups.

 Urban Informal Settlements  are neighborhoods developed historically in urban peripheries to house vulnerable population groups, including rural migrants, impoverished city dwellers, foreign migrant workers, and more recently refugees. Each of  the informal neighborhoods  identified on the map has a unique historical trajectory, but all trajectories span over several decades and typically connect their development to the establishment of the land registry, the construction of refugee camps, and/or incidents related to the Lebanese civil war. Informal settlements are constructed in violation of property, zoning, and/or building regulations. The illegal occupation of land extends over both public and private land. 

 Neighborhoods Developed as Permanent Refugee Housing  are low-income urban pockets historically established as permanent resettlement sites for Armenian or Syriac refugees in the pre-independence period. These neighborhoods have consolidated into high-density, low-height settlements that include mixed-use functions.

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The buildings identified on the map in yellow are sites of eminent redevelopment. In these buildings, residents live with the immediate threat of eviction, knowing that a building permit has been filed, some of their neighbors have already been evicted, and all maintenance on the building has been stalled.

These sites were identified through two lists of permits obtained from the Order of Engineers and Architects in Beirut. The first list includes all lots where demolition permits had been filed between 1996 and 2021, but no demolition has occurred, as evidenced by recent satellite imagery. The second list includes all lots where building permits were filed between 1996-2019, while a pre-existing building still stood with at least some of the units occupied at the time of the field survey conducted by the Beirut Urban Lab team in 2019 (BBED 2019).

In 2019, the BBED survey found that 138 sites in Beirut were earmarked for projected redevelopment while pre-existing buildings still stood on the same lot. In most cases, the buildings were still occupied by several households who dwelled with the looming threat of eviction typically aggravated by the intimidation of a landlord-developer who was eager to see them leave with no compensation. In some cases, property owners had also temporarily rented out housing units to refugees and/or migrant workers who they could evict without prior warning once the development project is initiated.

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Since the 1960s, an ambition to modernize the City of Beirut and adapt its narrow street networks to the discipline of the private car has animated public planning agencies. As a result, the decades preceding the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) witnessed the planning and decreeing of numerous road networks that would cut through residential areas, displace populations, and make way for vehicular mobility. It may well have been the silver lining of the civil war, but the brutal years prevented the implementation of several severe infrastructure breaks, as did the inefficiency and corruption of the post-war years. Since the early 2000s, activists and professional planners mobilized against the implementation of several road projects that would cut through historical neighborhoods. Other road projects were suspended because of budget deficits. Many of the areas earmarked for road-related expropriation remain on hold, their dwellers unable to repair or upgrade their homes and property holders are prevented from redeveloping the lots they own. Many dwellers have received partial or no compensation and have lived for decades under the threat of eviction. In these areas, dilapidated physical conditions have reflected the anxious anticipation of demolition and displacement, while many residents hold on to the possibility of staying in neighborhoods and/or homes that hold the wealth of personal and communal memories.

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 The Fouad Boutros Throughway  The Fouad Boutros Throughway is a road section that links the Beirut Peripheral Highway to the North Lebanon highway, cutting through the residential neighborhoods of Geitawi and Mar Mikhael. The road design was approved in the late 1960s, the property was expropriated in the early 1970s. About twenty-five houses and multi-story residential buildings are directly affected by the highway trajectory. These buildings include several units developed incrementally on municipal property by squatters who have occupied them at least since the 1980s, when they arrived as war-displaced populations. Other buildings along the highway had been expropriated and property owners have received monetary compensation in 1974 and were forced out. Today, the buildings are partially occupied. Some of the residents claim that they are old tenants entitled to eviction compensation, others are subletting units from self-declared landlords. At the time of the Beirut port blast in August 2020, many of the buildings along the highway trajectory stood dilapidated. These buildings were severely affected by the explosion. Many hold important heritage value, in contrast to the recent commercial developments that tower over the neighborhood.

 The Petro Trad Road  The Petro Trad Road was planned in the context of the 1963 Master plan of Beirut and its suburbs. The road was intended to act as a service road that links the George Haddad street on the eastern side of Beirut’s historic core to the international Damascus Road. The road cuts through 50 lots, of which 10 at least have classified houses and villas with unique heritage features (Tarraf, 2014). Two sections of the highway were implemented during the 1990s. The implemented road sections bulldozed several residential buildings. The road passage also paved the way for large-scale real-estate development in the remaining lots on Sodeco Square. The unimplemented road segment goes through residential buildings, two cemeteries, and several renovated heritage buildings.

 Hayy el-Tamlis Road  An unimplemented planned road in a neighborhood called Hayy el-Tamlis has threatened neighborhood residents with displacement since its approval as part of the 1960s road plan of Beirut. The road cuts through 36 lots where all building activities and repair have been on hold for decades given the looming threat of road development. Yet the road was never implemented, owing to residents’ resistance and state neglect. Today, the buildings along the planned road are severely dilapidated. Aside from the uncertainty generated by potential road development, the area has fallen prey to territorial in-fighting among strongmen affiliated to different political parties in the area. Violent clashes have been recorded on multiple occasions over the past decade, exacerbating difficult living conditions for the neighborhood’s residents.

 Zaroub Abla Road  Zaroub Abla is a narrow artery where the Municipality of Beirut is said to have planned a road widening and throughway intervention in the early years of the 1970s. In June 2000, the municipality proceeded with implementation, expropriating a few lots where houses blocked the road partially, while others were earmarked for later execution. The proposed road cuts through 7 lots, all of which have small houses, and it requires the full demolition of at least a few of these houses. The project execution was halted in the Summer of 2000, when the families who inhabit these homes received eviction notices. As Beiruti families who were born and raised in the neighborhood, the families refused to leave their homes. They stood firm in front of the bulldozers and eventually forced the Municipality to put the project on hold. Aside from an outdoor structure recently developed by neighborhood strongmen who gather daily in the area, all building activities have been on hold for several decades. This includes numerous houses whose residents reside in derelict conditions due to the imposed municipal restrictions on repair.

 Zaroub el-Illeyeh Road  The neighborhood of Zaroub el-Illeyeh is a cluster of 10 dilapidated buildings. Since the 1960s, the dense neighborhood has been the site of multiple planning interventions that seek to facilitate vehicular circulation across the area. The first road was completed in 1970, as evidenced by the expropriation notices and the marked betterment contributions on the property records. The second road was approved during the civil war in 1977, but it was only partially executed. The planned road cuts through 11 lots, each of which holds several housing units (e.g., individual houses, multi-story buildings, and shelters). The Municipality of Beirut still perceives the approved road plan as priority, hence renewing the project approval in 2015, and extending the expropriation notices for another decade.

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The Beirut port blast that rocked the city on August 4 ^th , 2020 left the city devastated. Aside from the hundreds of deaths and thousands of wounded individuals, more than a third of Beirut’s buildings were affected by the explosion ( The World Bank , 2022). Several surveys sought to reflect the extent of damage in order to help assess the costs and articulate recovery strategies ( Beirut Urban Lab , 2021). Of those, we cross on this map the  damage assessment layer  developed by the Rice University’s Spatial Studies Lab based on  NASA ’s remote sensing visuals with the outcomes of three  structural damage surveys  conducted by the Order of Engineers and Architects in Beirut, the Lebanese Red Cross (LRC), and the  Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture  at the American University of Beirut.

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Research conducted in the context of Beirut’s  Post-Blast Observatory  has shown that the repair of these units has moved at a differing pace. Several factors explain this discrepancy. For example, many of the buildings claimed by absentee owners and/or investors still stand unrepaired. In addition, buildings holding heritage value are slower to repair (costly, and need expertise) as are those with structural damage (for similar reasons). Numerous high end buildings also await insurance payments before they can be repaired.

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