Counter Spaces for Urban Violence in Mediterranean Cities: Martyres Square

In Beirut and Tripoli

Incomplete Thesis/Individual Project 2022

Location: Beirut, Lebanon

Design Proposal: Razan F. Elmrayed

The coastal regions of Beirut and Tripoli are both historically politicized spaces, marked by colonialism, fortifications, and warfare. Modernization periods within these contexts often prioritized economic development exclusively in the coastal regions, perpetuating an uneven geographical development and subsequently unequal distribution of resources, and producing a coastal geography that is largely influenced by sociopolitical unrest. A critical spatial analysis of geopolitical urban violence in these two different cities along the stretch of the coastline, could shed light on the shared and often conflicting basis of spatial oppression and violence in Mediterranean post-colonial cities that informs a wider discourse in urban violence that has transformed the interface of these cities into tools of instilling fear and oppresiion . Ultimately, correlations could be drawn from both cases, not so much as to amplify similarities but to stress an underlying operative relationship that shapes urban violence in the Mediterranean region.

In the following study, methodology takes precedence throughout the formulation of a hypothesis and in identifying and analyzing urban problematics. The study seeks to establish theoretical grounding that is rooted in mapping as a performative tool for testing hypothesizes, mediating contexts and generating relations between the essential geography of the city, its internal structural logic, and the ingrained social narratives that translate into urban violence and vulnerability.

Urban violence and vulnerability translate in the city through the degree of access and exposure to urban resources, transitory links, social belonging and urban ecology. The research seeks to identify where and how these aspects of the urban occur spatially and temporally in a polarized manner. Through the agency of walking across pathways defined by pre-determined situations, of which are characterized by geographical, spatial or social constraints materializing through notions of extreme violent and vulnerable pluralities. These situations are superimposed against the top-down structure of the city to establish a generative discourse for the city in which dominant political underpinnings are revealed and contested through mapping. As Corner argues “To contest and destabilize any fixed, dominant image of the city by incorporating the nomadic, transitive and shifting character of urban experience into spatial representation”.

Martyrs Square

Tripoli, Libya

Martyrs square in both case studies represents a space of exposure, a tool used by people and the government to convey narratives and proclaim rights. Urban violence occurring in Martyrs Square as a social space is one that serves to suppress and silence. This calls into question the temporal dimension of urban violence, as a singular event that either generates prolonged spatial repercussions to the point where such repercussions become an identity as observed in Beirut. Or as in the case of Tripoli, it conveys an alternative narrative in which the spaces surrounding the square are kept public and yet, in times of political tension the square and the highway are blocked and entirely militarized. Demonstrating that former forms of violence are not directly observed through state intervention however space is reformed by the state to anticipate future violent uprises

Space as an Antcipatory Tool for Urban Violence

In this thesis my goal is to use space as a tool of analysis to document forms of violence across the coastline to create synergies between both case studies and ultimately to amplify people’s responses to violence through design interventions. Accordingly, identified five localities along the coastal highway of both case studies that provide an opportunity for theorizing urban violence in a shared discourse and for articulating space in relation to it.

Martyrs Square Beirut, Lebanon

Martyrs square in both case studies represents a space of exposure, a tool used by people and the government to convey narratives and proclaim rights. Urban violence occurring in Martyrs Square as a social space is one that serves to suppress and silence. This calls into question the temporal dimension of urban violence, as a singular event that either generates prolonged spatial repercussions to the point where such repercussions become an identity as observed in Beirut. Or as in the case of Tripoli, it conveys an alternative narrative in which the spaces surrounding the square are kept public and yet, in times of political tension the square and the highway are blocked and entirely militarized. Demonstrating that former forms of violence are not directly observed through state intervention however space is reformed by the state to anticipate future violent uprises