Gentrification Versus Territorialisation: The Peri-Urban Agriculture Area in Beirut
This chapter is the result of a research project on the peri-urban area in Greater Beirut conducted at the Landscape Design and Ecosystem Management (LDEM) Department at American University of Beirut (AUB), and improved during the fall semester 2013–2014,
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Gentrification Versus Territorialisation: The Peri-Urban Agriculture Area in Beirut Maria Gabriella Trovato, Nadim Farajalla, and Orazio Truglio
Abstract This chapter is the result of a research project on the peri-urban area in Greater Beirut conducted at the Landscape Design and Ecosystem Management (LDEM) Department at American University of Beirut (AUB), and improved during the fall semester 2013–2014, LDEM design course titled ‘Site design in urban context.’ The research explores the potentiality of landscape approach using urban agriculture as a sustainable strategy capable of reconstructing brooked identity and territorialised marginalised people. Could the use of urban agriculture in Beirut play a role in the break off gentrification process? Real estate is a major driver of the economy in many countries of the Middle East, as in other developing nations. It is one of the main barriers to the development or implementation of zoning and planning regulations that would make urban agriculture more than a fortuitous and temporary use of space (Zurayk 2010). Moreover, A-line Raad argues that Lebanese urban society is now undergoing a paradigm shift in social thought and action towards valuing heritage, public space, social cohesion, and accessibility to leisure and cultural activities recognising that these factors can enhance urban liveability. The peri-urban greater Beirut area was chosen in the design course as a case study to explore, while designing, the potentiality of the landscape approach in addressing the multiple features of those areas. The gentrification process in Beirut was identified as one of the drivers of the city development causing de-territorialisation and incongruous land use coexistence. Keywords Landscape strategy • Nahr Beirut • Lebanon • Urban Agriculture • Real estate • Peri-urban landscape
M.G. Trovato (*) • N. Farajalla FAFS – Landscape Department, American University of Beirut Bliss Street, 11-0236, Riad El-Solh 1107-2020, Lebanon e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] O. Truglio Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts – ALBA, Beirut, Lebanon e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2016 B. Maheshwari et al. (eds.), Balanced Urban Development: Options and Strategies for Liveable Cities, Water Science and Technology Library 72, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-28112-4_29
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Introduction Background
Beirut is a cityscape of residues, remains produced by the uncontrolled use of the land; landscape of juxtaposed fragments that have lost value and collective identity. The phenomenon is in part related to the urban sprawl, the unplanned, uncontrolled spread of urban development into areas adjoining the edge of a city, and in part with gentrification, the increase in ground rent and the construction of high-rises for wealthier people. Sprawl and gentrification are, in Beirut, directly linked to the real estate power and the neoliberal politic, whereby land and landscape are conceived as resources to be used for economic profit, ‘colonised’ for the enjoyment of a fe
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