Remaking Beirut: Contesting Memory, Space, and the Urban Imaginary of Lebanese Youth

Craig Larkin∗ University of Exeter

Throughout the centuries Beirut has had an endless capacity for reinvention and transformation, a consequence of migration, conquest, trade, and internal conflict. The last three decades have witnessed the city center’s violent self-destruction, its commercial resurrection, and most recently its national contestation, as opposi- tional political forces have sought to mobilize mass demonstrations and occupy strategic space. While research has been directed to the transformative processes and the principal actors involved, little attention has been given to how the next generation of Lebanese are negotiating Beirut’s rehabilitation. This article seeks to address this lacuna, by exploring how postwar youth remember, imagine, and spatially encounter their city. How does Beirut’s rebuilt urban landscape, with its remnants of war, sites of displacement, and transformed environs, affect and inform identity, social interaction, and perceptions of the past? Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s analysis of the social construction of space (perceived, conceived, and lived) and probing the inherent tensions within postwar youths’ encounters with history, memory, and heritage, the article presents a dynamic and complex urban imaginary of Beirut. An examination of key urban sites (Solidere’s` Down Town) and significant temporal moments (Independence Intifada) reveals three recurring tensions evident in Lebanese youth’s engagement with their city: dislocation and liberation, spectacle and participant, pluralism and fracture. This article seeks to encourage wider discussion on the nature of postwar recovery and the construction of rehabilitated public space, amidst the backdrop of global consumerism and heritage campaigns.

INTRODUCTION

The music evoked Beirut’s Golden Age...Marwan’s voice burned with anger. “I hate the way they are demolishing the old centre and plonking down a new root- less, soulless ghost town with only a handful of old buildings preserved. Ignorant arrogant assholes! What do they think they’re doing? We need to continue the

∗ Correspondence should be addressed to Craig Larkin, Department of Politics, Amory Building, Rennes Drive, Exeter, EX4 4RJ; [email protected]. An earlier draft of this article was first presented at the June 2008 CRASH Conference, “The Culture of Re- construction: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Aftermath of Crisis,” at the University of Cambridge, and then at the Conflict in Cities International Workshop—“Jerusalem and Other Contested Cities”—Notre Dame, Jerusalem, January 10–12, 2010. I thank the participants of both conferences for their questions and comments and the anonymous referees of City & Community for their constructive criticism and guidance. I am also in- debted to the Lebanese students who generously allowed me to interview them. Finally, I thank “Conflict in Cities and the Contested State,” funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (RES-060-25-0015). City & Community 9:4 December 2010 doi: 10.1111/j.1540-6040.2010.01346.x C 2010 American Sociological Association, 1430 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20005

414 REMAKING BEIRUT: MEMORY, SPACE, AND THE URBAN IMAGERY

country, not reinvent it. Every single fallen stone should come back to its place. We should rebuild the souks, restore the crumbling buildings—preserve the essence of a city that’s been there at least five thousand years.” The Last Migration, Jad el Hage, 2002.

Beirut’s endless capacity for reinvention and transformation is best observed in its city center. This pivotal district has known as many labels and urban forms as it has historic lives. The medieval bourj, Ottoman provincial port, French colonial “Place des Canons,” independent “Martyrs’ Square” (Sahat al-Shuhada) have finally been succeeded by an ul- tramodern global cityscape. This most recent reimagining, a consequence of 15 years of devastating civil violence and self-destruction (1975–1990), preceded by 15 years of futur- istic urban landscaping,1 has become both a symbol of Lebanon’s national recovery and an object of postwar critique. Beirut’s commercial resurrection and deliberate rebrand- ing as a leading Arab metropolis and dreamscape of visual consumption has stirred fierce debates and contests over the nature and scope of urban reconstruction in the aftermath of conflict (Kassir, 2003; Nagel, 2000, 2002; Sarkis and Rowe, 1998; Sawalha, 2010). These frictions have been further compounded by the resurgence of sporadic violence2 and popular mobilization, which has transformed the Down Town into a strategic battleground between rival political coalitions over competing national visions—demonstrated by mass demonstrations, rallies, and tent protests (March 14 “Freedom Tent” and the Hizbullah led “Tent City”). While Beirut may once again be a city in transition, its future is invariably tied to an ongoing negotiation of its past. This article seeks to explore this process by examining the contradictory impulses of remembering and forgetting, erasure and recovery in the context of a postwar city. In a sense the focus is less concerned with global memory debates over justice, reconciliation, and truth (Nora, 2001; Ricoeur, 2004) but rather local encounters and resistance to the restructuring of urban space (de Certeau, 1988; Soja, 1989). I hope to contribute to the growing debate concerning Beirut’s rehabilitation, both on the level of its physical restoration and its national collective reimagining. Beyond discourses that problema- tize the city’s social amnesia (Hanssen and Genberg, 2002), historical myopia (SMakdisi, 1997), nostalgic longing (Khalaf, 2006), and management of cultural heritage (Fricke, 2005), there is a need to understand how the next generation of Lebanese is negotiating Beirut. How do postwar youth remember, imagine, and spatially encounter their city? How does Beirut’s rebuilt urban landscape, with its remnants of war, sites of displacement, and transformed environs affect and inform identity, social interaction, and perceptions of the past? The choice of Beirut as a case study stems from the fact that it has become perhaps “the world’s largest laboratory for post-war reconstruction” (Charlesworth, 2006:54), subject to the globalizing forces of consumerism, privatization, and regulation (Davis, 1990), the regional impulses toward “Dubiazation” led by Arab Gulf real estate conglomerates (el Sheshtawy, 2008), and architectural attempts to promote “the reunification of the Lebanese people” (Traoui, 2002:9). The focus on Lebanese youth is both in response to the lack of previous academic research and an attempt to observe and evaluate how postwar spaces and sites are inhabited and inscribed with meaning, across generations (Fried- land and Hect, 2006; Makdisi and Silverstein, 2006). Previous analytical approaches to young people and urban spaces have observed both the marginalization of youth (Davis,

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1990; Sibley, 1995; White, 1990) and young people’s role in subverting and constructing spatial/social order (Hil and Bessant, 1999; Robinson, 2000). This dialectic is certainly evident in Beirut’s city center although it is questionable how much power Lebanese youth have to resist and contest the elitist cityscape and construct alternative spaces. The alienation of Lebanese youth from the city center, while reflecting global urban trends (Tienda and Wilson, 2002), presents a more worrying reality in a city still struggling to recover public spaces and still fractured by sectarian symbols, political divides, and geographies of exclusion/inclusion. This article seeks to probe how urban marginalization is linked to broader processes of postwar dislocation and liminality. In addressing the overlapping themes of space/memory/identity I will draw on French sociologist Henri Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) concept of three interconnecting modes of socially produced space: the perceived, the conceived, and the lived. The first space is a product of human design, urban planning, and spatial organization. The conceived by contrast contains the abstract, the imagined space, as well as the visual order, signs, and codes of the city, dominated by political rulers, planners, and economic interests. Finally, lived space describes how people inhabit everyday life, the way they create their city as “users” through practices, images, and symbols (Hanssen, 2005). While Lefebvre’s framework is a useful starting point to desegregate the multiple layers of discourse, ideology, and practice that have shaped Down Town Beirut’s construction and imagining, it is cru- cial also to explore the city’s urban “spaces of uncertainty” (Cupers and Meissen, 2002: 152), which defy functional reduction but rather are hybrid, fragmented, and unstable, emerging from “encounters and confrontations between people.” Finally, any analysis of Beirut’s posttraumatic landscape must take account of the city’s immaterial sites, spaces, and absences, which shape the territory of the imagination and mediate daily urban encounters. As Friedland and Hecht (2006:35) suggest, “material and immaterial sites are bound together by the invisible bonds of memory, memory which is not regression to the past, but a progression from past into present into future. ...Central places, holy places and sacred places and memory places are those placement where everyone remembers, if only remembers that something has been forgotten and cannot be remembered what it is.” Huyssen (2008:3) explains this mnemonic process as the construction of an everyday urban imaginary—“the cognitive and somatic image which we carry within us of the places where we live, work, and play. It is an embodied material fact. Urban imaginaries are thus part of any city’s reality rather than only figments of the imagination. What we think about a city and how we perceive it informs the ways we act in it.” Urban imaginaries transform and are transformed by global and local encounters with capitalism, modernity, power, and globalization. Such a dynamic negotiation of space and place—imagined and lived, materially and immaterially reconstructed, mon- umentalized, and in flux—offers an insightful framework for examining how Lebanese youth navigate Beirut’s contested sites and rehabilitated center.

METHODS

My observations primarily emerge from extensive anthropological field work, involving over a hundred in-depth interviews with Lebanese high school and university students3 conducted in the summer of 2005 to the summer of 2006 in the aftermath of the March 8 and March 14 popular mobilizations. Various titles and prescriptive labels have been given to the period between February 2005 and May 2005 in which protest, euphoria,

416 REMAKING BEIRUT: MEMORY, SPACE, AND THE URBAN IMAGERY and popular mobilization followed the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al- Hariri. Among supporters of an emerging March 14 Alliance, led by Saad Hariri (Future Movement), Samir Geagea (Lebanese Forces), and Walid Jumblatt (Progressive Socialist Party), it was commonly known as “Independence 05” or the “Independence Intifada¯ ” (intifadat¯ al-istiqlal)¯ ; in the West it became dubbed the “Cedar Revolution” or the “Beirut Spring.” While this period witnessed seismic social shifts and political realignments— from high profile assassinations to mass protests, the resignation of Karami’s government to the withdrawal of Syrian troops after a 30-year presence—it also provided an opportune moment to examine the fears, hopes, and disenchantment of Beiruti youth and their encounters with their urban surroundings (Corm, 2005). Students were selected, using a combination of random sampling and snowballing techniques, from 10 different educational institutions throughout Lebanon. Given the sensitive nature of representation and proportionality in Lebanon, a country of 18 politically recognized religious sects governed by a rigid system of confessional power-sharing,4 my sample attempted to reflect Lebanon’s rich and diverse religious composition and its social, economic, and geographical divides. Therefore 33 percent of students were from a Christian confessional background, 26 percent were Shi’i, 24 percent were Sunni, 13 percent were Druze, and a few were from the resident minority communities: Armenian and Palestinian. Stu- dents were chosen from a varied range of schools and universities—public/private, sec- ular/religious, and rural/urban; with interviewees coming from Beirut, its surrounding suburbs and farther regions such as the South, the Bekka, Tripoli and the coast, the Shouf, and Metn Mountains. It can be difficult to delineate exactly Lebanese residency due to the high levels of displacement, mobility, and the ever-increasing expansion of Beirut’s suburbs. Students often referred to their family village, prewar district, or current home depending on the context and nature of the discussion. In an attempt to obtain an interview sample that reflected the full spectrum of Lebanese society, family names, residency, political affiliations, economic background, and religious confession informed the selection process.5 Interviews were conducted within school settings for High school students, while Uni- versity students were given the freedom to choose a place they felt most comfortable with. The interview process was semistructured and openended, allowing themes and stories to emerge naturally. Arabic and English were used interchangeably depending on the context and fluency of the student. These youth, ranging between 15 and 22 years old, are a generation without personal recollection of the conflict but with vicarious memories passed on by their parents, communities, and localities. In a sense this is a residual, transgenerational “Postmemory” (Hirsch, 2008, 1997) that both connects and reimagines the past, according to present needs and social contexts.6 I also make use of site observations (2001–2004, 2007) that derive from time living in the region and observing conflict resolution groups, forums, peace conferences, and everyday experiences. The article draws on a variety of secondary sources including journal articles, newspapers (Arabic dailies), NGO reports, and internet sources. The article comprises three parts: the first will briefly consider Beirut’s official reconstruction process; the second part examines how Lebanese youth conceive Down Town Beirut in terms of war memory, heritage, and nostalgia. The final part will explore their spatial practice and physical engagement with the city in terms of dislocation and liberation; spectacle and participation; and plurality and fracture.

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7 ERASE AND REWIND: BEIRUT, THE ‘ANCIENT CITY OF THE FUTURE’

Beirut’s dynamism is invariably born out of Lebanon’s troubled historic past and its dis- puted national imagining: a mountain refuge for religious minorities (Druze, Shi’i, Ma- ronites); a forged compromise of colonial powers and indigenous elites; a republic of tribes and villages; a cosmopolitan mercantile power-sharing enclave; a playground for the rich; a battleground for religious and political ideologies; a fusion and combustion of the Arab East and the Christian West; an “improbable, precarious, fragmented, shattered, torn”8 nation. The dichotomies and visions appear as endless and complex as the Lebanese experience itself. Certainly, it helps explain the ambiguous and contested place Beirut has always held in the collective understanding, whether under regional domina- tion or subject to Western colonial influence. Lebanon’s gradual emergence as a state—a consequence of Ottoman governance (Mutasarrifiyya era 1860–1914), French manda- tory rule (1920–1943), and the movement for national Independence in 1943—has often been overshadowed by the recurrence of internal civil violence—1820, 1860–1864, 1958, and 1975–1990. The most recent and devastating of these internecine conflicts (1975– 1990) claimed an estimated 170,000 lives, displaced two-thirds of the population, and resulted in the descent into militia rule and Syrian and Israeli armed intervention (Hanf, 1993; Khalaf, 2002). Throughout this turbulent period of prolonged war, Beirut’s central district was both the epicenter of its fiercest violence and the focus of the most concerted reconstruction plans. While ongoing militia battles transformed Beirut’s streets, buildings, and public markets into a scene from an apocalyptic nightmare, planners, architects, and politicians debated visions of the city’s postwar recovery. The Council for Development and Recon- struction (CDR) was established in 1977 to plan and administer all of Lebanon’s postwar reconstruction works. The CDR commissioned the first master-plan for the Down Town, produced by a French firm L’Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme (APUR) in 1977, followed by Dar al-Handassa’s proposal in 1983. After a continuation of hostilities, a 1986 joint plan (CDR and APUR) was suggested, which would broaden Beirut’s rehabilitation to include the entire metropolitan district. However, with a national peace agreement (Ta’if Accord) finalized in 1990, this was swiftly followed by the creation of Solidere,` 9 a private Lebanese company, founded by millionaire politician Rafik al-Hariri and exclusively entrusted with the reconstruction and development of Beirut’s central district. Solidere’s` legal mandate was provided in 1991 through an amendment (Law “117”) to the 1977 planning legislation, controversially enabling the Company to expropriate land and property of existing owners, who were to receive shares in Solidere` stock in return.10 Throughout the early nineties, Solidere` cleared the way for its ambitious master plan by systematically razing the war-damaged urban fabric, creating a virtual tabula rasa at the heart of the city. Lebanese academic Saree Makdisi suggests that by 1993, as much as 80 percent of all the structures in the Down Town were damaged beyond repair, yet only a third of this destruction was war-inflicted (1997:674). This campaign of structural erasure, coupled with the displacement and dispossession of an estimated 2,600 families, owners, and tenants, earned Rafik Hariri the dubious appellation among some Beirutis as ammar hajar wa dammar basher 11 —he who built the stones and destroyed the people. Solidere’s` 30-year “Master plan” (1994–2024) incorporates 472 acres: a third of which is reclaimed land, 175 acres that are allocated for new developments, such as a marina,

418 REMAKING BEIRUT: MEMORY, SPACE, AND THE URBAN IMAGERY

FIG. 1. A commercial boulevard leading to Nejmeh Square at the heart of Beirut’s Down Town. hotels, and global commerce, and only 54 acres (including 265 key structures) of which are part of Beirut’s original urban fabric. This partially completed project envisions a global, tourist friendly, cosmopolitan Beirut, which draws on the Lebanese traditions of commerce, pluralism, and innovation. Yet Solidere’s` concept of “Beirut reborn,” as a veritable “layered city of memory” in which “the past informs the future,”12 appears re- markably selective in the history it reproduces and the memory it evokes. Ancient Beirut is celebrated through the recent excavation and display of Roman baths, Cardo Max- imus, and Canaanite Tell, while a “heritage trail” weaves from manicured Mosques and Churches to beautifully restored Ottoman buildings and French colonial promenades (Figure 1). Consequently, the remnants of a traumatic and debilitating violent struggle have all but been erased, and replaced instead with an appeal to a more glorious, illustri- ous, and heroic past. Solidere’s` postwar reconstruction of Beirut has generated considerable public debate, academic criticism, and civic activism aimed at confronting political nepotism, challenging models of urban planning, and reclaiming Beirut’s lost and ever-endangered heritage. This first critical discourse that focuses on political corruption invariably involves the role and influence of former Lebanese Prime Minister and leading Solidere` share- holder Rafik Hariri. Hariri’s ascendancy to political office in 1992, which coincided with Solidere’s` reconstruction project, raised many questions over a possible conflict of private

419 CITY & COMMUNITY and public interests. These fears were further substantiated by government exemptions for Solidere` totaling $1 billion; the passing of new legislation to aid commercial exploita- tion of national resources (Beirut’s coast line); and the proliferation of legal suits by original tenants and landowners accusing Solidere` of bribing judges, undervaluing shares, and intimidating existing property holders.13 Saree Makdisi terms the process “Harirism,” the decisive withering of the State and common public space and the supremacy of private commercial interest and control. He comments,

For, to be sure, where state projects end and private projects begin can no longer be determined—not because this is a strong state that is organizing a command economy but because capital has become the state. State and capital have become incorporated as one and the same force or process defined by the same discourse— Harirism. (1997: 698)

Such sentiments are indeed difficult to dispute, given that while Lebanon’s national debt rocketed from $1.5 billion in 1992 to a colossal 32 billion in 2003, Hariri’s personal for- tune is estimated to have tripled during the same period. Resistance to Solidere’s` coer- cive power has most visibly taken the form of a “Stop Solidere”` campaign, headed by local lawyer Muhamad Mugraby, who seeks a return of Beirut’s national center to its original landowners. This group has sought to confront Solidere` through legal cases, public dis- cussions, and the use of giant posters in sites of ongoing controversy, such as St. Georges Hotel and Beach Club, urging the general public to resist and “Stop Solidere!”` As Mu- graby explains, in an interview with the Lebanese Daily Star newspaper, “In my opinion Solidere` is a Lebanese form of vigilantism under the colour of the law. It violates the constitution, which prohibits the confiscation of property without prompt compensation and only for the public good.”14 The second critical discourse of Beirut’s postwar reconstruction has emerged around the broader architectural debate concerning global urbanism and use of public space in cities (Boyer, 1993, Madanipour, 2000). Planners and urban theorists have increasingly questioned the neo-liberal model, in which city space becomes an arena for market- oriented economic growth and elite consumption practices, thus stripping the public sphere of its social and political dimension. Local Lebanese architects, such as Hashim Sarkis (1998), have similarly warned against Solidere’s` dangerous trend toward privatization, commodification, and commercialization of Beirut’s rebuilt center. As Jamal Abed, Professor of architecture at American University of Beirut (AUB), explains:

The Private company of Solidere,` in its attempt to work for the profit-orientated interests of its shareholders, will inevitably create private preserves for the wealthy that are then transformed into “public amenities” by allowing a select group of people to stroll unimpeded along its corridors and spaces of power. (1999: 53)

Such concerns are also echoed by newly emerging civil society groups, NGOs, and activists, such as Archis, Partizan public, and Beirutstudio, who seek to challenge Solidere’s` hegemonic and totalizing vision for the Down Town. These groups jointly sponsored an international workshop in August 2008, entitled “Rescripting Beirut,” which sought to draw together architects, designers, urbanists, and sociologists, in an “alternative exploration of a city lacking in spatial history but rich in untold narratives.”15 Yet resistance has

420 REMAKING BEIRUT: MEMORY, SPACE, AND THE URBAN IMAGERY also taken less formal and spontaneous forms; from impromptu concerts, exhibitions, street drama, and art installations, often housed in temporary tents or utilizing the remaining war damaged buildings in stark contrast to Solidere’s` “Glamor Zone” (Sassen, 1999). The final and perhaps most pervasive critique of Solidere’s` reconstruction project has been the emergence of memory initiatives aimed at confronting a perceived culture of forgetfulness, and seeking instead to preserve Beirut’s war torn fabric and recover local histories and communal narratives. This “heritage crusade” (Lowenthal, 1998; Khalaf, 2006:35), based on nostalgic longings and impulsive reaction to the erosion of familiar landmarks and icons, has resulted in a variety of responses, such as environmental ad- vocacy groups, workshops on postwar reconstruction, story-telling, and the increase in novels and autobiographies recalling past times, places, and experiences. Specific interventions include Bernard Khoury’s plans to renovate a disused central Beirut theatre16, preserving its bullet holes and crumbling plaster as a symbol of “the city’s tempestuous political history.”17 Studio Beirut’s “The Lost Room” project alterna- tively offers a multimedia memorial, highlighting city-specific memories and personal narratives of random Beiruti citizens.18 Also the activist group, Abrand, has sought to challenge the repackaging of Lebanese heritage and tradition through subversive posters that mock the process of global branding. One image shows the familiar Beirut Corniche promenade, which serves as a public space for evening walks, exercise, and socializing, transformed into an elite exclusive setting. Rather than a street vendor selling cheap Kaake (a bread snack) from his three wheeled wooden cart, instead it is covered with a pristine white table-cloth, adorned with vintage wines and spirits and surrounded by Lebanese elegantly dressed in formal evening attire. The criticism is implicitly aimed toward the gentrification of Lebanese public space. A second poster displays a traditional Lebanese dish of stuffed aubergine, “Koussa Mehchi,” transformed and masqueraded as Japanese Sushi, complete with chopsticks, carved vegetables, and a wooden serving dish (Figure 2). This poster is a veiled warning against Lebanon losing its very soul, identity, and cultural uniqueness in its desire to commodify and market its heritage (al-turath). It is important to note that the concept of urban “authenticity” can serve disparate agendas and interests, particularly during uncertain times. As Sawalha (2010:43) affirms in her anthropological survey of postwar Beirut neighborhoods, for many of the city’s inhabitants “the past was idealized as a refuge from an unpredictable future. They turned to a familiar past that was far from the unpleasant present and the unknown future.” Zukin (2010), in her study of New York, Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Spaces, observes “authenticity” as both a discursive device to legitimate gentrifying redevelopment plans—the recovery of the “original city”—and simultaneously a potential weapon for urban resistance and survival. She notes, authenticity is a “cultural form of power over space,” a tool “to control not just the look but the use of real urban places: neighbour- hoods, parks, community gardens, shopping streets”; yet it also can be evoked as a central tenet of social preservation—“a cultural right to make a permanent home in the city for all people to live and work” (Zukin 2010: xiii). The critical discourses surrounding Solidere` interventions undoubtedly inform the Lebanese general public’s response to Beirut’s reconstruction, yet it is questionable whether they fully represent or reveal the complexity of this engagement. A balanced reading of Solidere` accomplishments must acknowledge the “professionalization” of the company—from planning, design, marketing, and management—which has made it a

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FIG. 2. Abrand poster on an Ashrafieh wall mocking the process of global branding. model for regional redevelopment19 and a potent symbol of Lebanon’s reemergence as a vanguard of modernity in the Middle East (Nasr and Verdeil, 2008). Its achieve- ments must also be measured against the backdrop of fractious postwar politics, the lack of an independent and “definable government reconstruction agency” (Charlesworth, 2006:82), and the stasis in Beirut’s two other redevelopment projects—Elyssar targeting the Southern Beirut suburbs and Linord focusing on the East coast and the Metn-Nord landfill (Harb, 1998, 2001; Nasr and Verdeil, 2008). The strongest argument supporting Solidere’s` redeveloped Down Town remains perhaps its most contentious—the financial and commercial prosperity generated (particularly for Solidere` investors and stakehold- ers) by the dramatic rise in international and Arab tourism. In 2009 over two million tourists visited Lebanon contributing around $7 billion to the economy that is a fifth of Lebanon’s GDP. These numbers were 39 percent higher than the previous year and the leading tourist growth rate world-wide.20 Yet despite these impressive figures questions still remain over the viability and longevity of Solidere’s` laissez-faire consumerist cityscape given Lebanon’s political fragility and the scope of its unequal and imbalanced recovery. As Nasr (2003: 156–157) insightfully comments, “An apparently thriving leisure, food, entertainment and luxury-shopping sector, living of a minority of wealthy Lebanese or vacationers and shoppers from the Gulf cannot hide the fundamental crisis in the real economy, the steady decline in the quality of education, the limited amount of job creation, the high cost of the local factors of production, the continuing deterioration of the

422 REMAKING BEIRUT: MEMORY, SPACE, AND THE URBAN IMAGERY environment, the scarcity of investment opportunities or the burden of the public debt.” Beyond the ongoing debates between Lebanese scholars, architects, privileged elites, and cultural producers, I want to turn to the perceptions of Lebanese youth and how they are conceiving Beirut.

(RE)IMAGINING THE CENTER: WAR MEMORY, HERITAGE, AND NOSTALGIA

Among the Lebanese youth I interviewed, Beirut’s reconstructed Down Town exists more as a site of imaginative and emotive investment than a place of actual lived experience. Few of the hundred high school and university students regularly frequent the commercial district or are very familiar with its refurbished streets. Yet for each, the center still evokes family stories, distant memories, and the hopes and anxieties of Lebanon’s national future. As Beirut-based journalist Ciezadlo (2007) affirms, the Down Town “is where all the fears and fantasies about this little country have always converged.” For many students, Beirut’s vacant center represents not only a physical symbol of Lebanon’s lost past, but a blank screen on which diverse memories and narratives can be projected. Diana, a 20-year-old Druze student from the private Lebanese American University (LAU), explains, “the Down Town always reminded us of our loss, it was like having a city without a soul...interestingly I don’t even remember what it used to be like, but I know that people believe in this area.”21 For Diana, the absence is equated with personal loss and spiritless existence; although disconnected to the past visually, she is united through imaginative investment and the inspirational faith of others. Lama, a 16- year-old Sunni student from the Beirut suburb of Moseitbeh, focuses on a former family home, an elaborate Ottoman-type villa, in the Zokak el—Blatt neighborhood of central Beirut. The house, according to Lama, was “destroyed by militia guns, occupied by illegal squatters, flattened by Solidere` and rebuilt as an office block.” Lama’s sense of loss is sustained by her ability to mentally reconstruct the villa’s ruined shell and war torn edifice—suspended in time and perpetually existing in her mind. The building she imag- ines forms part of an effaced past but a very real present. Other students recount parents’ and grandparents’ nostalgic tales of Beirut’s prewar days of markets (souks), cafes, and popular entertainment, romanticized tales of a cosmopolitan meeting place for all reli- gions and every class. In the absence of actual-lived experience, these narrative accounts form part of the reimagining process, providing the next generation with a comparative framework in which to critique Solidere’s` contemporary work. For youth who have grown up alongside Beirut’s reconstruction project it is the very act of transformation itself that has raised the specter of war and stirred debate over issues such as memory, history, and architectural vision. Just as the hostile destruction of buildings can be an attempt to obliterate the past, rebuilding on top of ruins can be an attempt to negate tragic memory. Adrian Forty refers to this process as Counter-Iconoclasm,which involves “remaking something in order to forget what its absence signified” (1999:10). This process has been vigorously pursued by Israeli authorities in occupied East Jerusalem as highlighted by Shlay and Rosen in their article on the shifting green line in Jerusalem. The purpose behind such a policy is not only the extension of Israeli sovereignty and control in the city but the inscription of “new collective meanings, memories, and identities associated with the place” (Shlay and Rosen, 2010:4). Within the Lebanese context, Solidere’s` intention may have been to structurally cleanse all memory of the civil violence

423 CITY & COMMUNITY from Beirut’s center, but it has not been the consequence. As17-year-old Hanan22 from Ras Beirut explains:

Down Town is always the main focus of the past, because it was transformed and they always show you how it was and what it’s like now...every time we are in the Down Town, we remember the war, we remember the past and some places still look the same.

In Hanan’s mind Beirut’s rehabilitation is invariably tied to its war time destruction; the center-ville fuses parallel time frames, the new reality invoking and recalling the previous degradation. Indeed, juxtaposed images of the Down Town, “before and after,” have flooded the public domain in the form of photographic anthologies, television programs, exhibitions, and numerous books.23 Despite this mnemonic connection to Beirut’s former degradation, students remain largely divided over how the visual traces of conflict should be incorporated within the city’s rebuilt form. Some favor total erasure, believing forgetfulness to be both a rem- edy for the trauma and suffering of war and the only guarantee for a peaceful future co-existence. In the words of 17-year-old Rima from Aley, a mountain village overlook- ing Beirut, “Perhaps the answer is amnesia, if everyone forgets what happened and then they move on.”24 Other students are less comfortable with Beirut’s polished and highly selective historical narrative reflected in its showcase center that abnegates the lived experience of conflict. As Yasmine, a student of the American University of Beirut, from Mar Elias, suggests, “the redevelopment involved a covering or hiding of the memory of war, and in this sense it’s unreal. You can’t just talk of Romans and Phoenicians and our great heritage, without mentioning about militias, kidnapping and bombs.”25 Historian David Lowenthal explains this tension as the danger of history, with its claim to truth, being supplanted by heritage, and its “prejudiced pride in the past” (1998:5–24). In Beirut, perhaps this imbalance will be addressed through the construction of a war museum, a national memorial, or the preservation of some of the city’s “warchitecture.” A good example of this process at work is the controversial planned restoration of the Barakat building in Sodeco, a former militia sniper stronghold, which once dis- sected Beirut’s Christian East and Muslim West. This infamous classical yellow building, its bullet-riddled walls and gaping voids testifying to countless battles, is now earmarked to become Lebanon’s first war museum or rather Beirut’s museum of municipal history, Bayt al-Madina, the City House. For Mona Hallak, the leading activist behind the 11-year conservation campaign, the building is an important testament of the war: “this is a mon- ument produced by the war and it should stay as such.”26 Its restoration should provide “a place for meeting and reconciliation, a space for Memory so as not to be swept up by amnesia.”27 Despite Beirut municipality’s 2012 timeframe to redeem and rehabilitate the building, many students I interviewed remained highly skeptical of the project. Their responses varied from total rejection—“it’s exclusively a Christian Lebanese Forces symbol of death”; “it is still too sensitive! How many innocent people were shot from those windows?”—to poignant realism—“maybe they should just leave the shell, the image is powerful enough; we don’t need to know what happened inside.” Ghassan, a 22-year-old Maronite student from Bhamdoun, dismissed the project out of hand: “it’s an exploita- tive attempt to cash in on Beirut’s violent past. Probably we will be running civil war tours soon, with free militia t-shirts and baseball caps.”28

424 REMAKING BEIRUT: MEMORY, SPACE, AND THE URBAN IMAGERY

Such cynicism captures the post-war disillusionment and disenchantment of Lebanese youth (Hanf, 2003), yet it is a further critique of the uneasy symbiosis between political violence, reconstruction, and Lebanese commercialism. The Barakat building, while ini- tially draped with a life size image of the original untarnished edifice, was soon joined in the summer of 2007 with an equally proportioned Nescafe´ advertisement mimicking the political buzzword—“UNITE” —only this time under the banner of “Coffee Creamer- Sugar Perfect Harmony.” Similarly, during the Israeli-Lebanese war of 2006 many consumer brands sought to address the conflict through billboard campaigns encouraging national resilience. The Johnny Walker whisky brand’s “Keep Walking” slogan and fig- urine was transposed over a broken Lebanese bridge.29 Volkswagen produced an image of one of their compact car designs and a map of Lebanon under the punch-line “Small but Tough.” Lebanon provides fertile ground for a further exploration of the art of war advertising or the marketing of postwar recovery. Finally, many students are yet to be convinced of the positive didactic function of Beirut’s “negative heritage” (Meskell, 2002), warning of the danger of memorializing shame, pain, and victimization. They appear to favor less visible, more ambiguous forms of remembrance, such as the bullet scarred “Martyrs Memorial” statue, situated in the city’s central square. The disfigured sculpture, originally a memorial to those killed in the struggle for Independence from Ottoman rule, now has become an unintentional national emblem, capturing both the shared suffering of conflict and yet the resilience and endurance endemic to the Lebanese spirit. As one student explains, its significance lies in its inclusive ambiguity, which enables “everyone to imagine their own story” and allows for multiple interpretations of the war (Figure 3). In this sense the sculpture functions as a polysemic cultural artifact; much like Nir Gazit analysis of the Jerusalem newspaper Kol Ha’ir it has the power to elicit relative consensus on the core issues it embodies yet still sustains a diversity of interpretations. Interestingly, the memorial is accompanied by no plaque or commentary, and again highlights a postwar tendency that seems to favor visual representation over the more complex and contested narrative form. This impulse toward a plural, differential, and critical remembrance of the past, some social commentators suggest, is best found through the safety of visual ambiguity and embracing diversity, rather than forging an artificial totalizing memorial. As John R. Gillis (1994, p. 20) acutely warns,

[D]emocratic societies need to publicize rather than privatize the memories and identities of all groups, so that each may know and respect the other’s version of the past, thereby understanding better what divides as well as unites us. In this era of plural identities, we need civil times and civil spaces more than ever, for these are essential to the democratic processes by which individuals and groups come together to discuss, debate, and negotiate the past, and, through this process, define the future.

Other students instead question the relevance of commemorating historic war memo- rials in light of Lebanon’s ongoing political violence and public assassinations, such as the 2006 car bomb attacks that killed leading Lebanese politicians and popular journalists. As Fares, a 22-year-old middle-class Druze medical student living in Hamra, astutely explains,

425 CITY & COMMUNITY

FIG. 3. Martyrs memorial statue, in the center of Beirut’s Martyr’s Square.

There is no need to remember Lebanon’s past crimes and conflicts—when there is plenty to worry about today! Martyrs’ Square will always have its fallen. New figures simply replace the old—Hariri, the architect of a bigger, grander Lebanon; Tueni wrote about freedom and Gemayel symbolized the traditional elite.30

These new Lebanese martyrs that Fares recalls now visually encircle Beirut’s central square. Former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s flowered tomb sits adjacent to the grandiose Mohammad al-Amin Mosque, Gebran Tueni’s image peers down from his An-Nahar office, pleading with passers-by to “unite and defend Lebanon,”31 while Pierre Gemayel’s poster attached to a Lebanese Forces building proclaims his eternal legacy, “He lives for Lebanon.” Their untimely deaths are a contemporary reminder of Lebanon’s violent heritage and continuing fragility.

GOING DOWN TOWN: RECLAIMING THE CITY?

Turning now from how Beirut’s central district is conceived and imagined to how it is daily experienced and spatially encountered by Lebanese youth, it is helpful to explore three recurring tensions: dislocation and liberation, spectacle and participant, pluralism and fracture.

426 REMAKING BEIRUT: MEMORY, SPACE, AND THE URBAN IMAGERY

DISLOCATION AND LIBERATION

For a majority of Lebanese students, Beirut’s Down Town remains distant and “out of place,” cut off from the realities of contemporary society. This distance is experienced and understood on multiple levels. First, there is the Down Town’s spatial dislocation, a consequence of urban planning choices that have deliberately isolated and separated the center from its neighboring environs. This has been achieved through the construction of a series of vast car parks and motorways which virtually encircle and dissect the center from the periphery. As Jamal Abed suggests,

The Solidere` scheme is conceived in a complete isolation, enclosing the city center by a limited ring road and a connector to the highway leading to the airport. The connection comes to constitute a staged kind of preferred memory that is the first experience of a businessman or a tourist—that is to say consumer—coming from the airport and received by the new Down Town. (2004:48)

Second, greater space has been created through leveling densely populated residential neighborhoods such as Zokak el-Blatt and Wadi Abou Jamil, part of the traditional urban center and reshaping the topography with Levantine style office blocks, health spas, and prohibitively expensive designer flats and apartments. Finally, separation is made visible through the Down Town’s ultra modern and economically exclusive cityscape, which sharply contrasts the largely ignored, ever expanding urban sprawl of Shi’a Dahiyya in South Beirut, and the deprived and needy Eastern districts of Nabaa and Karantina. Students expressed multiple reasons for their perceived exclusion from the center, reflecting political, economic, and religious factors:

It’s good, but it should be more national, all of Lebanon or none...it’s not national, just for a certain religion (Alaa 17, Shi’a, Haret Harek); It represents a Westernized Lebanon (Tamara 17, Sunni, Moseitybe); The center is beautiful but it doesn’t represent Lebanon, perhaps the Gulf (Pierre 20, Maronite, Zhgarta); It’s cosmopolitan, perhaps it represents Rafik Hariri, it’s mostly elitist and cosmopolitan (Rafik 21, West Beirut).

While these responses suggest underlying prejudices and bias, they also reflect a common perception that Solidere` has failed to reconstruct an inclusive center, a place with which all identify in a new social, national, and global context. The overarching impression remains that the center has been turned into a playground for rich Gulf Arab tourists and a global elite privileged class, rather than a meeting place for Lebanon’s diverse population. An ethos of consumerism may encourage unity across both political and religious divides, but it fails to adequately engage or diffuse recurring sectarian tensions. As Sune Haugbolle, commenting on Lebanon’s recent spatial transformations, affirms, “a public space dedicated to reconnecting a divided population through expensive franchises offers a vision of pacification of conflicts, not one of solutions” (2006: 4). Yet for some youth, this separation is the inherent attraction and allure of the Down Town, it represents a different world, “Lebanon upgraded,” in the words of LAU student Angela. To Maha, a Lebanese University graduate originally from Kefraya in the Bekaa,

427 CITY & COMMUNITY it embodies the hope and inspiration for an ordered and more stable future: “I love Down Town, I always go there. I wish all Lebanon could be like it. ...If you go to Dahiyya buildings are everywhere, there is no structure or order. Down Town is planned and we don’t have urban planning like this in any other area of Lebanon.”32 For Tony, a Maronite Christian student from Keserwan,Beirut’scenter-villeisnotjust a symbol of order and unity, it is a place of liberation and awakening, a refuge from the restrictions, sectarian demarcation, and narrow confessionalism that he believes still mark some Lebanese neighborhoods and streets. Instead the Down Town offers him an escape, a place where he can make Muslim friends, experience life, and lose himself amidst the anonymity of a cosmopolitan crowd. He recounts,

When I worked in the Down Town restaurant al-Balade—this was my real opportunity. I got to meet Muslim Arabs and people from the Gulf. I worked there for 3 years and will never forget the experience. ...Down Town Beirut is more cosmopolitan. You cannot identify the religion of the shop owners. It’s a business area and Lebanese meet on business; they can join together on business.33

While Tony does not present Lebanese commercialism as an antidote for deep seated sectarianism, he equates it with a newly emerging civic space—where consumer practices and associations “temporally” trump other traditional cleavages and allow for new forms of social engagement. Since 2003, Beirut has witnessed the completion of four large retail malls, with three more planned, including the long awaited rejuvenation of the traditional Beirut Souks transformed into a 100,000 m2 retail and leisure complex, replete with covered (Souk al-Jamil) and open air markets (Souk Ayyas), a Gold Souk, Meditation Gar- den, Ajami Square, and 14 screen Multiplex.34 These commercial projects, while targeting both the local populace and regional tourism, have explicitly attempted to create inclusive neutral spaces that “bring together people from all walks of life” (Beirut Mall, Tay- ouneh), generating a “vibrant gathering place of people of all ages” (ABC Mall, Ashrafieh). Shopping complexes like the Beirut Mall (2006) in Tayouneh have been built along a traditional boundary between Shi’a and Maronite neighborhoods, using a modernist architectural design, while deliberately avoiding politically symbolic colors and accommodat- ing religious sensitivities through the location and layout of certain goods (i.e., alcohol). Furthermore, the marketing and branding of these commercial enterprises, such as the recently opened LeMall (2009) in Sin el-fil, seek to portray innovative places of belonging, free from surrounding social and political pressures. LeMall’s “IAmMyself.Me” campaign targets a youthful generation in search of identity and meaning, echoing the mantra of consumer self-realization, “I buy therefore I am.”

Being is believing that you (yourself) are different and the world becomes your playground but you will need somewhere to practice, somewhere that understands that you are different, some place that feels and supplies your difference, a place where you can stop trying and start being—Welcome to yourself. You are now at LeMall and what makes here so different from anywhere else is you. Out here you are different, you are imaginative, you are bold, you are brave, you are curious, you are creative, you are adventurous, you are mixing, you are matching, you are inspired, you are.35

428 REMAKING BEIRUT: MEMORY, SPACE, AND THE URBAN IMAGERY

Beirut’s urban regeneration founded optimistically on “retail therapy” mirrors Belfast’s attempts to transition from the “city of the troubles” to a “post-conflict consumerist metropole.”36 This rapid transformation has included the redevelopment of the La- ganside district, the construction of Victoria Square shopping complex (2008) and the historic reimagining of the Titanic Quarter—a fusion of modernist waterfront cityscape and nostalgic heritage center. Yet urban planners Bradley and Murtagh (2007) warn of the dangerous emergence of a “dual speed” city—the glossy, consumerist middle-class Belfast that can afford to be above sectarian divisions and the deprived working class estates still stratified by poverty, segregation, and fear. The prognosis is similar for Beirut, as one student confides, “the problems of our city are not really about religion anymore, but class and money—those who have and those who have not.”37 The once divisive green line, it would seem, has now been replaced by an equally dislocating red line, created by Solidere.` For local architect Assem Salaam, the class implications of Solidere’s` red-line approach to Beirut are stark, with the creation of a “paradise for the rich that you need to enter with a credit card through the Solidere` stage design” (cited in Charlesworth, 2006:75). Lebanese sociologist Salim Nasr explains this internal fragmentation and social stratification within the wider context of Lebanon’s increased class polarization and the emergence of a two-tier society: “a wealthy, extrovert, spending and ostentatious minority, living and moving at par with the globalised world elite to which it aspires to belong; and a pauperized, expanding majority, stuck with a receding economy, limited horizons and declining opportunities”(2003:143).

SPECTACLE AND PARTICIPANT

This new realm is a city of simulations, television city, the city as theme park. ...Here is urban renewal with a sinister twist, an architecture of deception which, in its happy-face familiarity, constantly distances itself from the most fundamental realities. The architecture of this city is almost purely semiotic, playing the game of grafted signification, theme-park building. Whether it represents generic historicity or generic modernity, such design is based in the same calculus as advertising, the idea of pure imageability, oblivious to the real needs and traditions of those who inhabit it. Michael Sorkin, 1992

Michael Sorkin’s urbanist critique of the modern Spectacle city—“a city of simulations” adorned with “architecture of deception” and “theme-park buildings”—finds clear reso- nance in the experience of Beiruti youth. Few believe themselves to be more than ob- servers, mere spectators in a city center designed for tourism and global interests rather than local considerations and communal needs. For 17-year-old Ibrahim, a high school student from a Sunni background from West Beirut, the superficiality and fac¸ade begin with the architecture, “It’s just a show, just buildings, what’s being built on the inside of Lebanon, nothing.”38 Lebanese academic Saree Makdisi is similarly critical of Solidere’s obsession with preserving the appearance of authenticity, the sense of belonging, the spectacle of history rather than acknowledging and engaging with the actual lived past. He concludes, “the spectacle here has assumed for itself, and hence has eliminated, the

429 CITY & COMMUNITY very function of time; it has taken on tasks and duties of history: of a history cleansed not merely of pain, but of all kinds of other feelings as well; in short it has produced a prosthetic history. In their place, new prosthetic feelings will be engineered to take the place of the old; new feelings to accompany the sense of spectacular history” (2006: 212). Yasir39 , a third-year university student from the Palestinian camp of Bourj al-Brajneh, echoes the same sense of numbness and disconnection he experiences with Beirut’s artificial center:

They are rebuilding a fake Lebanon...it’s like Disneyland. Down Town is fake in many ways. First the building style is not Lebanese, of course it’s reconstructed but in a way that is very European (I haven’t been to Europe, but my European friends told me that) and the term Disneyland was given by a French friend of mine, not me. ...They built it on top of ruins and how can a Lebanese working man afford a cup of coffee there. ...People going there are acting fake.

Interestingly, Yasir refers not only to a falseness of architectural style, but an insincerity of those who inhabit that particular space. He implies that in creating a “Disneyland,” Solidere` has not merely denied Beirut’s indigenous history but also encouraged inhabitants to indulge escapist fantasies. For Yasir, superficiality is expressed most clearly in the Down Town’s rampant consumerism, as elite fashion boutiques, exclusive restaurants, and designer outlets dominate the main streets and central Etoile district, peering out conspicuously from behind Ottoman facades. The limitations of Beirut’s spectacle city center are further underscored by students, who criticize the new Down Town for providing little “neutral” space for young people to meet, socialize, or engage with one another. Rami, a first-year-AUB student, originally from the Kesrewan Mountain range but currently living in Hamra, eludicates, “what it [the Centre] fails to be is a real meeting place...somewhere of common culture. We need more parks, places to meet, don’t build more churches or mosques which are very valuable, but they are in a sense divisive, why not build recreational facilities. We need to create bridging not bonding.”40 As this student eloquently argues, Beirut’s celebration of the Holy Triune—Mosque, Church, and Virgin-Megastore united on Martyrs’ Square— demonstrates a dominance of the religious and commercial over perceived shared public spaces. This failure to provide an accessible and dynamic meeting place for a multiplicity of ideas, remembrances, and experiences may indeed be rebuilt Beirut’s most serious flaw. Similarly, despite the almost complete refurbishment of the traditional Beirut Souks, many Lebanese youth remain skeptical as to whether they will be “open spaces for all communities and classes” or simply new forms of gentrified exclusive shopping malls. Although Solidere’s` Master plan does incorporate open green spaces and parks, these are often located encircling archaeological ruins and official State buildings (Grand Serail—the Government Palace), which restricts both their use and public access. In defense, Solidere` may point to the Garden of Forgiveness41 (Hadiqat as-Samah), future plans for an expansive marina walkway, or the recently dedicated Samir Kassir Garden, a small contemplative space containing ficus trees and a water pool, located adjacent to the slain journalist’s al-Nahar newspaper office on the edge of Martyr’s square. However, for a majority of interviewees these interventions are observed as limited, token gestures, particularly given the fact that Beirut’s largest green space, the Horch al-Sanawbar (the Pine forest), covering 255,000 m2, remains restricted to public access (surrounded in part by

430 REMAKING BEIRUT: MEMORY, SPACE, AND THE URBAN IMAGERY fencing, gates, and barbed wire) and subject to further development plans.42 A number of students contrasted the investment in Beirut’s Down Town with the inadequate funds allocated to the Horch park, concluding that it was due to its proximity to the less marketable and run-down neighborhoods of Mazraa, Sabra, Chiyah, Tarik al-Jdideh, and Badaro. Beirut’s “spectacle” Down Town has more recently been challenged as part of a dramatic process of political contestation. This has been most clearly observed in the mass demonstrations surrounding the “Independence Intifada” of Spring 2005 in which Beirut’s center-ville became a screen for projecting a new Lebanon: free, unified, modern, and anti-Syrian. This was then followed by the Hizbullah-led counter-demonstrations and 18-month sit-in protest (Dec. 2006–May 2008) and encampment in the commercial center that sought to destabilize the Western-backed government and give voice to an alternate Lebanese vision. There are various readings and interpretations of these climactic events but three significant themes are worth highlighting. First, the Intifada has been celebrated by some commentators as the return of both civic participation and political mobilization to Beirut’s center. Samir Khalaf optimistically hails the participation of a new generation of Lebanese youth “receiving their own overdue tutelage in national character- building”(2006:17). This resonates with stories and tales of many students, who recounted “March 14th” experiences that linked patriotic unity with physical occupation of the center (Figure 4). Rola, a university student, originally from the Metn Mountains, captures this ebullient mood, “I’m Lebanese and proud to be Lebanese, perhaps I’ve become even more so recently. I loved it when we went to the demonstration; I felt that Lebanon was really speaking, that I had a certain role, that I can bring change. I can do something. I went to all the parades, I was so into it and I still have my Lebanese flag on my balcony.”43 In this instance the Intifada¯ functions as a vehicle for empowerment, an opportunity for the Lebanese youth to reclaim their voice, their role in society, and consequently their city center. Some commentators instead hail the emergence of Lebanon’s socially and politically marginalized groups, in particular Shi’a Hizbullah, who, through their physical encampment and blockade of the center, managed to challenge the viability of the government and the hegemony of Solidere’s consumer cityscape. Through disrupting the political economy, by turning an elitist commercial center into a site of popular protest and dissent, these groups subverted and distorted the neoliberal “spectacle city” and posed questions concerning Beirut’s national imagining. Protest signs and placards not only ridiculed Prime Minister Sinoria’s reliance on U.S. backing, but also economic slogans were projected onto the walls of Down Town office blocks and trendy bars, declaring: “No to the government of VAT” and “No to the government of seafront properties” (Bazzi, 2006). As Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hizbullah, declared via video-link to the Down Town protestors on December 7th 2006, “From the homes of the poor, from the shantytowns, from the tents, from the demolished buildings, from the neighborhoods of those displaced by war, we will make sure that they hear our voices.” It remains to be seen what lasting impact this form of resistance will have on the public perception of the center. Will it be understood and interpreted as a temporary aberration or prove to be a symbolic rupture invoking new forms of engagement and participation from citizens previously marginalized from the center?

431 CITY & COMMUNITY

FIG. 4. Lebanese national flags and poster proclaiming “100% Lebanese” at March 14 popular demonstration.

Finally, a rather more critical analysis of the events suggests that Beirut’s Down Town, rather than being reclaimed by the people, was instead hijacked by political parties and leaders, making it a public stage for performing politics and contesting the Lebanese nation, both locally and through the medium of global media. Amongst a disillusioned and skeptical youth, the Down Town’s transformation into an opportune stage and setting for political power games further undermines its position as a shared public space for reconciliation. A “Garden of Forgiveness” may be located symbolically at the heart of the city center, yet there is little room for such encounters given the current climate of political tension and communal mistrust.

PLURALITY AND FRACTURE

Beyond contradictory accounts that either celebrate the Down Town’s new public spaces or berate its exclusive logic and artificial design are discourses which question the notion of one “rehabilitated centre.” For many students, Beirut has multiple informal “counterpublic”44 spaces that emerged during the civil conflict and continue to provide unique urban subcultures, reproducing cities within a city. One such district is Hamra, “the real and true Down Town Beirut,” according to one Lebanese University student. Hamra is

432 REMAKING BEIRUT: MEMORY, SPACE, AND THE URBAN IMAGERY home to the prestigious American University of Beirut; a variety of theatres and cultural centers; numerous bookshops and infamous coffee houses where rebellions, political parties, and ideologies were born. This intellectual and cultural hub, despite years of neglect and degradation, remains a popular meeting place for students from all backgrounds regardless of class, religion, or politics. Although Hamra is also subject to gentrifying impulses, with global chains and brands replacing local cafes such as the Modca (2003— Vero Moda) and the Horse-shoe (2007— Costa Coffee), it remains, in the words of Diana, a 21-year old student from the Lebanese University, “one of the most authentic districts in Beirut. It is multifaceted and due to the mixed nature of its residents there is more space for discussion and free expression.”45 The emergence of civil society groups, reconciliation centers, and artistic communities in Hamra is not only owed to the district’s liberal history but is a consequence of the constraining visions inscribed into Beirut’s Down Town. Perhaps it is Hamra’s lack of urban planning and official governance that has enabled this unofficial center to become a postwar space that allows citizens to ex- press themselves and contest future visions. In the words of Rami Daher, an architect and academic, “Hamra is becoming a kind of symbol which rejects the Solidere` model, and this is why it is becoming very popular amongst the intellectual crowd within the city of Beirut.”46 Another significant urban center, the antithesis of Hamra, is the sprawling southern suburbs of al-Dahiyya, home to around half a million inhabitants, in just 16km2 of con- densed urban space. Al-Dahiyya conjures up endless images, opinions, and myths, and as Lebanese American anthropologist Lara Deeb affirms:

To nonresidents, mention of al-Dahiyya often elicits such responses of discomfort, ranging from caution mingled with curiosity to outright trepidation: responses built on stereotypical associations of “al-Dahiyya” with poverty, illegal construction, refugees, armed Hizbullah security guards and secret cameras, and the “Shi’i ghetto.” Such stereotypes obscure al-Dahiyya’s complexity. (2006:45)

The majority of students I interviewed held these implicit derogatory assumptions. For Hala, a third-year Greek Orthodox AUB student originally from the coastal city of Byblos, the district represents another world, a paradox existence only to be negotiated through separation, denial, and the redrawing of spatial boundaries: “Al-Dahiyya is very foreign. I don’t know where I am going, I don’t know the people. ...ItisnotevenpartofBeirut, its part of a different district, the Jabal (the Mountain—Jabal Amal).”47 Yet regardless of personal antipathy, many students acknowledged al-Dahiyya’s strategic national impor- tance, some out of fear of Hizbullah’s hegemonic “state within a state,” others out of a conviction that this neighborhood embodies the spirit of resilience and represents an authentic Lebanese experience. Mohassin, a veiled, 22-year-old Lebanese University student from the Haret Hreik neighborhood, explains, “al-Dahiyya is the real beating heart of Beirut and the Arab world. Some people just see religious fundamentalism but we are grappling with resistance, freedom and advancement; we have enemies on all sides and always there is Israel.”48 Other, particularly Shi’i students, were keen to point out that despite little electricity (12 hours a day) or other municipal services, the suburb is thriving commercially, with the opening of new shops, cafes, and restaurants. Indeed on the congested junctions, images of Hizbullah martyrs and bearded clerics compete for space with billboards of Lebanese models and hairdressing salons. Similarly, fashion boutiques

433 CITY & COMMUNITY selling bikinis and miniskirts are to be found alongside Islamic bookshops and religious charities. Islamic modernity is being negotiated on al-Dahiyya’s streets in various guises: from the evolving fashion styles of “hijab chic” to the emergence of new mixed social spaces for youth in trendy restaurants and internet cafes (Deeb, 2006). The dynamic politics of urban reconstruction mix with political resistance. In the aftermath of Israel’s most recent devastating bombardment of al-Dahiyya in July 2006, Hizbullah established a private development agency, Waad49 , which has reconstructed 60 percent of the 200 residential buildings destroyed in the war.50 In bypassing official planning processes and the local municipal authority Hizbullah has appropriated reconstruction as a means to bolster local support, strengthen their de facto control, and expand the scope of Islamic resistance. As Mona Fawaz astutely explains, Waad differs from Solidere` in that “rather than a private company with an eye for profit, it is a political entity looking for political capital.”51 Al-Dahiyya’s reconstruction, therefore, offers an important contrast to Beirut’s Down Town, and indeed an alternative vision of Lebanon’s future. While Hamra and Dahiyya represent very two very different “counterpublic” spaces in contemporary Beirut, should they be viewed as part of the city’s plural multicultural urban fabric or rather a symptom of its war-induced fragmentation? The question persists, to what extent and under what conditions can public spaces and civic centers live up to such grand and totalizing demands? Can and should we expect Beirut’s reconstructed Down Town to help diffuse Lebanon’s post-war divides? Scholars and practitioners remain divided on this topic. Scott Bollens (2007:233) in his book Cities, Nationalism and Democratization stresses the potential for urban interventions to facilitate “inter-group coexistence” and “societal peace building,” constituting a “bottom-up approach able to com- plement a top-down peace-making negotiations”; providing Barcelona as an example of cosmopolitan reimagining and Bilbao (a Basque city) as a case of communal consensus— building. On the other hand Varshney (2001), reflecting on ethnic violence in India, per- suasively argues that interethnic engagement in public spaces may be enough to maintain peace in small rural contexts but in postconflict cities “interethnic civic networks” are re- quired to withstand exogenous communal shocks. The issue perhaps is less to do with the construction of cosmopolitan “shared spaces” than with the creation of diverse publics that allow for the formation of cross-communal ties (sectarian/political/class) and associations. What remains evident from interviews with Lebanese youth is that there still exists a nostalgic longing for a dynamic center inclusive of class, sect, and political allegiance, freely accessible and embracing Lebanon’s tensions and contradictions. This desire is made all the more salient given the fact that Beirut is more religiously segregated now than ever before in terms of residency and educational patterns (Hanf, 2003; Khalaf, 2006; Nasr, 2003). The physical walls and boundaries have vanished but they have been replaced with subtler signs and codes, flags, graffiti, banners, and symbols that continue to impact how Lebanese youth perceive themselves, distinguish others, and inhabit their spatial surroundings. This is a dynamic kaleidoscope of changing social and identity markers: “no-go areas,” “confrontation points,” and “places/spaces of belonging and exclusion”; a “geography of fear” sustained not by artificial barriers but by “the psychology of dread, hostile bonding and ideologies of enmity” (Khalaf, 2006:122). Political, religious, economic, and family disputes can all too quickly become territorialized, resulting in spatial contestation, blockades, and violence, impacting how citizens negotiate or imagine Beirut’s streets and neighborhoods. As Yasmine, a final-year Law student, confides:

434 REMAKING BEIRUT: MEMORY, SPACE, AND THE URBAN IMAGERY

“On a recent bus journey I passed images of Nasrallah, Berri, Aoun, Jumblatt, Hariri. Each photo marked confessional boundaries; communities are defined by the boundaries and markings on their walls...the posters carry memories of war and identity, they make me feel different, I want to feel myself.”52 For Fouad, a 21-year-old student from the Shi’i suburbs of Dahiyya, latent hostility and sporadic violence remain embedded along historic battle-lines: “there is still a lot of fighting these days, particularly in troubled areas between Ain al-Roumaneh and Chiyah. There are annual street confrontations when Lebanese Forces fight Shi’a and Palestinians to commemorate the beginning of the civil war.”53 Other students refer to “trigger points,” such as rival football matches, university elections, speeches by political leaders, regional, and international events (i.e., the Dan- ish Cartoon protests on 5th February 2006) that mobilize sectarian sentiment and create tangible tensions on the streets of Beirut. It is important to note that while a majority of students often reject the concept of Beirut as a fractured city, their spatial patterns and familiarity with the city reflect economic and religious cleavages. As Rafik, a 21-year-old politics student from Hagazian University, astutely explains, “Beirut was shattered by war; I’m not sure the pieces can ever be put back together. But we survive, adapt, live.”54

CONCLUSIONS

Although Beirut’s weaknesses in reconstruction may be likened to the plight of many modern global cities, the consequences are rather more troubling. The rehabilitated center both embodies and extenuates Lebanon’s postwar failings: inequality, corruption, and segregation. Architect Esther Charlesworth (2004) critiques Solidere’s` “City as Heart” re- constructive vision that prioritizes an exclusive Down Town renaissance as a means of reviving a destroyed city-body to the detriment of a neglected and marginalized greater metropolis. Her “City as Spine” alternative suggests the need for a “dynamic and democratic” approach, wherein Beirut’s reconstruction is part of “a longer, sequential process based upon the gradual implementation of a number of small regeneration projects that, in time, repair and strengthen the social and physical backbone of both the city and its many communities’’ (2006:55). This urban critique clearly resonates with many Beiruti youth, frustrated and disenchanted by Beirut’s newly created “island of wealth” built amidst the debris of underplanned, underfunded, and disconnected suburbs and neighborhoods. Nevertheless, any attempt to remake Beirut remains dependent on the wider Lebanese state building project and the ever-changing geopolitics of the region. Intractable issues such as decommissioning Hizbullah, strengthening the Lebanese army, tackling the patronage system, equal provision of social and public services, defining bor- ders with Israel, and relations with Syria will continue to impact upon Beirut’s urban and social rehabilitation. Beirut’s recovery is similar to that of other divided cities within contested states that are subject to regional pressures and international interventions, such as Kirkuk, Nicosia, Belfast Mostar, and Jerusalem.55 Unlike Jerusalem, where the struggle is over contested national sovereignty (Israel and Palestinian Authority) and increasingly exclusive religiopolitical ideologies (Zionism and Islamism), Beirut’s battle lines are drawn over the nature of the Lebanese nation-building project and the elusive search for aysh mushtarak or “shared life” within the confines of Lebanon’s consociational arrangements (Haugbolle, 2010; Young, 2010).

435 CITY & COMMUNITY

The viability of Beirut’s rebuilt center therefore depends on providing a Lefebvrian “right to the city” for all its diverse inhabitants—with the recovery of public spheres and common spaces that allow for new forms of social engagement and encounter. As this brief study of Lebanese youth suggests, Beirut’s Down Town is offering a limited form of shared space restricted to those who can afford it and more recently those politically mo- bilized enough to contest it. While many youth feel marginalized and excluded, the city center still manages to evoke an urban imaginary littered with fragments of loss, tales of belonging and destruction, stories of former cosmopolitanism, and prospects of future hope. For the majority of interviewees access to the center will require the emergence of new forms of urban resistance, civic participation, and multiple and complex negotiations with the historic past, thus challenging Solidere’s` hegemonic vision and uphold- ing Lebanon’s fragile equilibrium. The next generation of Lebanese recognizes that national reconstruction requires a rebuilt urban fabric and collective remembrance, which balances narratives of loss and suffering alongside those of recovery and redemption. For human rights consultant Adrienne Fricke, Beirut’s postwar rehabilitation must move beyond erasure or sanitizing of the traumatic past, but include “educational and infor- mational programs that encourage continued civic participation and public discussion of Beirut’s urban and social history and the reconstruction efforts,” mobilizing negative heritage for positive didactic and psychological purposes, as well improving “the chances of consolidating a national Lebanese identity mediated through lieux de memoire of public spaces” (2005:177–8). Such optimistic proposals however must be measured against Lebanon’s continuing political instability, its illusive search for a consensual history of the war (Lebanon still awaits a unified history curriculum for schoolchildren), and the reality of competing war memory narratives that are still being contested and reappro- priated to suit political agendas, class interests, and sectarian discourses.56 Only a small minority of Lebanese youth believe that now is the time to “remember so as not to re- peat” (tindhakar wa ma tin’aad —Arabic proverb), while the majority still favor the distance and absolution offered by the “War of Others”57 conspiracy theory (the war was primarily fought by external forces on Lebanese soil), or indeed the denial and fresh beginning offered by selective forgetting and social amnesia. Beirut’s recovery must inevitably involve an acceptance of contested pasts and a reimagining of shared futures, moving beyond the nostalgia for the city’s cosmopolitan history to an everyday experience of social inte- gration and civic participation.

Notes

1 Concerning the reconstruction of Beirut, see Khalaf (2006) The Heart of Beirut—Reclaiming the Bourj; Kassir (2003) Histoire de Beyrouth; Jad Tabet (2001) Portrait de ville : Beyrouth; Peter Rowe and Hashim Sarkis (eds.) (1998) Projecting Beirut: Episodes in the Construction and Reconstruction of a Modern City; Angus Gavin and Ramez Maluf (1996) Beirut Reborn; Khalaf and Khoury (1993) Recovering Beirut: Urban Design and Post-War Reconstruction; and Friedrich Ragette (ed.) (1983) Beirut of Tomorrow: Planning for Reconstruction 2 This includes a series of interrelated events such as the targeted assassination of Lebanese politicians and journalists; sporadic clashes between March 8 and March 14 political coalitions; the Israel-Lebanon War of June 2006; and the Hizbullah takeover of Beirut in May 2008. 3 Access to Lebanese schools and students was granted through personal contacts with teachers and headmas- ters, and with the help of conflict resolution centers and local civil activists. These included activists involved with the Centre for Conflict Resolution and Peace-building (CCRP) based in Hamra, Beirut, and “Umam Doc- umentation and Research” based in Haret Harek, Dahiyya. 436 REMAKING BEIRUT: MEMORY, SPACE, AND THE URBAN IMAGERY

4 Lebanese political power-sharing arrangements are based on a historical “National Pact” (1943) that has been reaffirmed under the Ta’if Accords (1989) and more recently by the Doha Agreement (2008). It provides for a proportional sectarian quota of elected representations in Parliament, and a government structure made up of a Maronite Christian President, a Sunni Muslim Prime Minister, and a Shi’ite Speaker of the house. 5 The names of interviewees have been altered to preserve their anonymity but I include certain background demographics (age, religious background, class, political affiliation, and residency), when made available to me, to provide contextual depth to the narratives. 6 For a detailed analysis of the polyvalent nature of transgenerational memory of the Lebanon war, see Larkin (2010) “Beyond the War? The Lebanese Postmemory Experience”; Khalaf (2009) “Youthful voices in post-war Lebanon”; and Chrabieh (2008) Vois-es de paix au Liban –Contributions de jeunes de 25–40 ans a` la reconstruction nationale. 7 ‘Beirut: Ancient City of the Future’ is a motto used in Solidere’s` promotional literature. 8 These expressions are all titles of books and articles written on Lebanon. See, for example, Hudson (1968) The Precarious Republic; Gordon (1980) Lebanon, the Fragmented Nation; and Picard (1996) Lebanon: A Shattered Country. 9 Solidere’s` master-plan seeks to “subdivide Beirut city center into ten sectors, each with its own character; Involves the recovery of the public domain, with the installation of a complete modern infrastructure; Provides an urban design framework for new construction and for the restoration of preserved and historic buildings.” Specific projects include the excavation and restoration of Roman baths, Ottoman buildings, and Beirut’s old public markets. Solidere’s` webpage is found at http://www.solidere.com.lb 10 This law was defended on the basis that postwar reconstruction would be impossible due to the displacement, fragmentation, and dispossession that afflicted Beirut’s Down Town. In 1991 nearly 100,000 claimants competed for legal priority over a mere 1,630 parcels of land (Stewart, 1996:487). Solidere’s` take-over resulted in original landholders receiving 65% of the total number of Solidere` shares valued at $1.2 billion, while the remaining shares were sold to the Lebanese public. For further details on this process see Leenders (2004) and Gebara (2007). 11 This phrase was undoubtedly an ironic reposte to one of Harriri’s most well used development slogans, bina’ al-bashar wa al-hajar –“rebuilding people and stones.” Cited by Ciezadlo (2007) “Sect Symbols,” The Nation, 3 May. Available online at: http://thenation.com/doc/20070305/ciezadlo 12 Phrases and slogans from Solidere’s original master plan. 13 See Khalil (1999) “Angry Property Owners Accuse Solidere of Bribing Judges,” Daily Star, 15 October. 14Ohrstrom (2007) “Solidere: Vigilantism Under Color of Law,” Daily Star,6August. 15 This workshop had to be cancelled due to the volatile political situation that enveloped Lebanon during the summer of 2008. 16 This theater officially known as the Beirut City Centre building is more commonly known by the terms the “Bubble dome,” the “Blob,” and the “Egg.” 17 Wilson-Goldie (2004) “Beirut’s icon of modernist architecture set to be revamped,” Daily Star,July2. 18 See webpage: http://studiobeirut.org/thelostroom/ 19 References to Solidere` have been in the redevelopment projects in Damascus (Souk Saruja and Damascus Boulevard) and Amman (Abdali). 20 According to a 2010 report by the World Tourism Organization. For more details see http://www.unwto. org/index.php 21 Interview conducted on November 1, 2005. 22 Interview conducted on May 12, 2006. 23 The most notable example of this is Traoui’s (2002) Beirut’s Memory, which is a photographic survey of Down Town Beirut before and after Solidere’s intervention, which juxtaposes images from 1990 to 2002. 24 Interview conducted on December 6, 2005.

437 CITY & COMMUNITY

25 Interview conducted on September 19, 2005. 26 “Beit al-Madina to Recall Horrors of Civil War” (2008) Naharnet, 17 October. 27 Wheeler (2007) “Is Beirut ready for a memory museum yet?” Daily Star, September 14. 28Interview conducted on September 12, 2005. 29 Over 80 Lebanese bridges were destroyed during the Israeli summer 2006 offensive. 30 First interview conducted on October 25, 2005, and secondary discussion on December 2, 2006. 31 The full quote taken from Gebran Tueni’s speech on March 14, 2005—during a mass demonstration in Down Town Beirut, commemorating the death of Rafik Hariri: “I swear to God As a Muslim and a Christian To defend my dear country till the death And to stay united with my brethren (to stay muwahadeen) Until my last days on earth Defending my great Lebanon (al a’zeem).” 32 Interview conducted on October 10, 2005. 33 Interview conducted on October 13, 2005. 34 The South Beirut Souks opened in 2009 but for more details see http://www.solidere.com/souks2/ 35 From the IAmMyself.Me advertising campaign taken from the LeMall website— http://www.lemall.com.lb 36 O’Dowd (2008) “Belfast in transition: from “city of the troubles” to post-conflict consumerist city,”, Annual Conference of the Sociological Association of Ireland, National University of Ireland, Galway, 10 May. 37 Interview conducted on October 15, 2005. 38 Interview conducted on May 11, 2006. 39 Interview conducted on October 11, 2005. 40 Interviewed conducted on November 2, 2005. 41 For more on the Garden of forgiveness see Alexandra Asseily (1998) and Khalaf (2006:160–162) and the Solidere` website: http://www.solidere.com/garden/ 42 One third of the Horch is open to the public and this is composed of children’s play areas, municipality sports courts, and a car-park, often frequented by families having picnics. The remainder of the park has been closed by the municipal authorities since 1995 to protect the remaining pine trees and plants. For further discussion on the site see Fadi Shayya’s paper “Enacting Public Space History and Social Practices of Beirut’s Horch al-Sanawbar,” given at the 5th FEASC Proceedings AUB, 2006. 43 Interview conducted on March 2, 2006. 44 Nancy Fraser (1990: 67) helpfully defines Counterpublics as “Parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses. ...Counterpublics emerge in response to exclusions within dominant publics, they help expand discursive space.” 45 Interview conducted on November 1, 2005. 46 Cited in an interview with Sarah Irving (2009) “Action and Activism: Lebanon’s Politics of Real Estate,” Electronic Lebanon, 31 August. http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10732.shtml 47 Interview conducted on November 17, 2005. 48 Interview conducted on April 22, 2006. 49 Waad, or “promise” in Arabic, is a reference to a speech by Hizbullah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah made in July 2006 pledging to rebuild the devastated neighbourhood. Billboards at the reconstruction sites echoed the same sentiment “Al-Dahiyya will be more beautiful than it was before.” 50 See “Waad rebuilds 60 percent of wrecked homes in Beirut’s southern suburbs” (2009) Daily Star 17 Octo- ber. 51 Cited in Irving, “Action and Activism: Lebanese Politics of Real Estate.” 52 Interview conducted on September 19, 2005. 53 Interview conducted on December 19, 2005 in Beirut. An illustration of the recurring violence in this neighborhood, on October 6, 2009, George Abu Madi was killed during a street fight involving around 150 residents of Chiyah and Ain el Roumaneh. For a more detailed report see Sarrouf (2009) “Rage in Ain al-Remmaneh

438 REMAKING BEIRUT: MEMORY, SPACE, AND THE URBAN IMAGERY

after Tuesday night’s violence,” Now Lebanon, 7 October. Available online: http://nowlebanon.com/ NewsArchive Details.aspx?ID = 118492 54Interview conducted on October 13, 2005. 55 For a more detailed exploration of Divided Cities within Contested States see the series of working papers provided by the ESRC project “Conflict in Cities” – www.conflictincities.com and the interdisciplinary work of the Crisis State Research Centre – www.crisisstates.com 56 See Craig Larkin, Memory and Conflict in Lebanon:Remembering and Forgetting the Past (London: Routledge, forthcoming). 57 The “War of Others” concept directly relates to Ghassan Tueni’s, former head of the an-Nahar newspaper, work Une Guerre Pour les Autres (1985), which examines the role of non-Lebanese factions (Syria, Palestinians, Israel, US) and the Cold War dynamics on the civil violence which consumed Lebanon from 1975 to 1990.

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Rehaciendo a Beirut: Desafiando la memoria, el espacio y el imaginario urbano de la juventud libanesa (Craig Larkin)

Resumen Atraves´ de los siglos, la ciudad de Beirut ha mostrado una capacidad ilimitada para rein- ventarse y transformarse a s´ı misma como consecuencia de la migracion,´ las conquistas, el comercio y los conflictos internos. En las ultimas´ tres decadas,´ el centro de la ciudad ha pasado por momentos de violenta auto-destruccion,´ de renovacion´ comercial y, mas´ recientemente, de apropiacion´ como espacio de disputas nacionales a medida que las

441 CITY & COMMUNITY fuerzas opositoras llevan a cabo protestas multitudinarias y luchan por ganar espacio es- trategicamente´ importante. Aunque en investigaciones anteriores se han estudiado estos procesos de transformacion´ y los principales actores involucrados, se ha prestado poca atencion´ a la forma en que la nueva generacion´ de libaneses se relaciona con la reconstruccion´ de Beirut. Este art´ıculo se propone llenar este vac´ıoapartirdelaexploracion´ de como´ la juventud de la posguerra recuerda, imagina y se encuentra con su ciudad en terminos´ espaciales.¿ De que´ forma el panorama de reconstruccion´ urbana de Beirut con sus vestigios de guerra, sus reasentamientos y la transformacion´ de sus entornos afecta y nutre la identidad e interacciones sociales y las percepciones sobre el pasado? A partir del analisis´ de Henri Lefebvre sobre la construccion´ social del espacio (percibido, concebido y vivido) y la exploracion´ de las tensiones inherentes en el encuentro entre la juventud de la posguerra y el pasado como historia, memoria y legado, este art´ıculo presenta un imaginario urbano dinamico´ y complejo de Beirut. El analisis´ de lugares urbanos clave (Solidere’s` Down Town) y momentos significativos en el tiempo (la Intifada de Inde- pendencia) revela tres tensiones recurrentes evidentes en la forma en que la juventud libanesa interactua´ con la ciudad: dislocacion´ y liberacion,´ espectaculo´ y participacion,´ pluralismo y fragmentacion.´ Este art´ıculo busca motivar un debate mas´ amplio sobre el caracter´ de la recuperacion´ despues´ de la guerra y la construccion´ de espacios urbanos rehabilitados en el contexto del consumismo global y las campanas˜ de revalorizacion´ del patrimonio.

442