Marco legal

Th e hegemony of the private automobile is another dimension of privatiza-tion in Beirut’s built and physical landscape. Beirut’s public tramway lines, which fi rst appeared in the early twentieth century, were dismantled in the mid-1960s to allow the ever-increasing number of automobiles greater free-dom of movement. Th e disappearance of the tramway in the 1960s was fol-lowed, later in the 1980s, by the demise of rail transport, which had aided in

the shipping of freight from the port of Beirut.³⁸ Th ese changes in the trans-port scene only intensifi ed vehicular congestion in a city that had already been described, in 1963, as having “a very acute traffi c problem caused by the increase in the number of cars and the small number of new streets”

(Riachi 1963, 111). Once championed as a boon to the country’s tourism sector,³⁹ cars were, by the 1960s, thought to detract from the pleasures of visiting Beirut so much that the special Tourist Brigade of traffi c policemen charged with fi ning drivers for the misuse of their horns was formed.⁴⁰ Th is was a time many consider to be Beirut’s golden age, when the city att ained the moniker “Paris of the Middle East.” Beirut became in the 1960s not only a fashionable destination for European and American jetsett ers and a city of pleasure for those seeking the sun and nightlife but also the literary, pub-lishing, and entertainment capital of the Arab world. As the end point of the Trans Arabian oil pipeline, the city had begun to benefi t from its links with the newly oil-rich Gulf. But it was also an increasingly congested city, one whose population doubled between 1955 and 1965. By 1973, the bus played only a minor role in gett ing people around, as most daily journeys in the city were completed in passenger cars.⁴¹ By the 1970s, then, Beirut had developed an urban culture dependent on cars.

When I spoke with people about the roots of the city’s traffi c problem, they oft en commented, “there are too many cars” and “there is not enough good public transportation.” Th e Ministry of Public Works and Transport estimates that about three million daily motorized trips occur in the Greater Beirut area with trip mode split among private cars (68 percent), shared service taxis and private taxis (15 percent), minibuses (11 percent), and buses (6 percent).⁴² Complaints I heard about buses in particular always had to do with their low frequencies, slow and variable and unreliable travel times, and poor geographic coverage, as a traffi c-policy report also found (Aoun et al. 2013, 53). Maya, a young woman in her early twenties, told me that when she took the bus from near her home in the northern suburbs to her high school in Ashrafi eh, she did not mind that it took so long. “I would just bring my books with me and study the whole way, so it wasn’t so bad.

But it was so slow, I can see why no one wants to take the bus!”

Congestion not only is produced by Beirutis’ reliance on passenger cars but is also an outcome of the city’s narrow roads and lack of underground parking. In summer 2013, in a sign that the traffi c had only worsened since my last stage of research in 2010,⁴³ service drivers oft en refused to take me

as a passenger when my destination was in an area where they anticipated heavy traffi c. Or, they would ask me to pay service-ayn—a double fare.⁴⁴ To get where I needed to go, I oft en told service drivers a destination that was close to where I was going but on the periphery of a very high-density corridor—awal Hamra (at the beginning of the Hamra neighborhood) instead of just Hamra, for instance—so that the driver would agree to take me. Th e city’s vertical expansion, through the development of high-rise towers, has only exacerbated the problem by increasing the number of city residents (with cars) per unit area of land and reducing the number of vacant lots that can be used for parking.⁴⁵ Although a new law mandates that new buildings provide underground parking for their residents, it is doubtful, as architect and urban planner Gregoire Serof conveyed in our interview in 2010, that this law is being strictly enforced. Congestion caused by irregular modes of on-street parking—double and even triple parking are common—further reduce road space and hinder vehicular movement.

According to the Ministry of the Environment, in 2001 the average vehicle speed in Greater Beirut was around 20 kph (12 mph), and free-fl ow travel time was typically doubled or tripled because of delays (Aoun et al. 2013, 53).

Th e traffi c of private cars not only contributes to the feeling, as one respondent put it, “that there is no place to breathe” but is also a key feature of Beirut’s privatized urbanism. Together with the takeover of public space by cars and state disinvestment in public transportation, there is a lack of free and open public spaces—playgrounds, sanitary public beaches, desig-nated sports areas—that enhances the everyday experience of congestion in the city. Residents use the Corniche, a fi ve-kilometer seaside boardwalk, like a park. In the cooler morning hours, when the air is clearer before the onset of traffi c, it is a pathway for fi tness walkers and joggers. On warm eve-nings, the Corniche becomes crowded with leisurely amblers of all genera-tions, with others perching along the promenade with their argilehs (water tobacco pipes) and deck chairs in a circle. But parks in the sense of green areas that off er trees, distance from traffi c, and safe play areas for children are scarce.

Th e largest green space, a lush landscape of pine trees known as the Horsh (forest), has never fully reopened to the public since its restora-tion aft er the protracted civil and regional war that ended in 1990. While a nascent movement to enhance existing gardens and green spaces led by NGOs and private foundations is pressuring the state to build new

parks,⁴⁶ the city in fact looks like it perhaps will become less, rather than more, green in the near future: in June 2103, the municipal government announced plans to demolish—and later replace parts of—a park known as the Jesuit Garden in Geitawai, a neighborhood of winding, narrow lanes on the eastern side of the city, in order to build a parking garage. Vigorous

Figure 1.4. Th e Corniche. (Photo by author.)

protests against the project ensued and, as of this writing, have led to its delay as the municipality undertakes an environmental impact study it says will be reviewed before a decision is made about moving forward.

Th e state’s emphasis on establishing more parking rather than parks and its leaving the creation of a more effi cient bus system at the bott om of the list of priorities shape not just the urban landscape but also how people live. Air and noise as well as environmental degradation threaten residents’

health and quality of life.⁴⁷ Th e cityscape’s consumption by the car also threatens civic life, as a decline in parks and public spaces reduces opportu-nities for diff erent groups of people to come into contact with one another.

As was the case in the 1960s, when the tramway was eliminated, state agen-cies in Lebanon today continue to support transformations of Beirut’s built and physical environment, like the construction of multilevel parking garages and new highways, to accommodate the private car.⁴⁸