Tag: gentrification

Beirut dreaming

Beirut dreaming

Note: I wrote this post in early 2020–as a revolution was unfolding in Lebanon–as a way of keeping record of thoughts and photos from the time I’ve gotten to spend in Beirut particularly in the last five years. Then I sat on my hands not knowing whether I should be another white person with super unique reflections about the Middle East (somewhat endearing because probably a total of five people will read this post), then the pandemic started and everything feels irrelevant and pointless anyway, so here we are. It’s hard to see how the economic crisis that was already engulfing Lebanon is going to do anything other than deepen catastrophically with Covid-19.  Still, I hold out hope that in Lebanon as with everywhere else, the pandemic will allow us to lay a foundation for a different kind of world.

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When I found myself with some spare time on my own in Beirut in 2013–the first time I visited as an adult–I grabbed one of those old-timey paper maps and set off walking. Starting in Hamra, I was aiming for the spot on the map labeled ‘Beirut souks’. I imagined–in what can only be described as a flight of orientalist fancy–that this must be the traditional souk (marketplace) that can be found across Middle East cities from Palestine to Morocco, where residents of all kinds gather to buy anything from vegetables, sweets and soap to clothing and leather goods, in a colorful cacophony of sights and smells and [insert remainder of Orientalist fantasy here].

When I arrived at ‘Beirut Souks’ I was incredibly confused to find what appeared to be a high-end shopping mall boasting fashion boutiques from Prada to Tommy Hilfiger. I realized I had forgotten the tiny detail that most of downtown Beirut was obliterated during the civil war of 1975-1990, and the original souk was at the heart of that obliteration. After the war, the destruction of the downtown area was used as a pretext to implement a very particular regeneration plan under the tutelage of Solidere, the company of then-prime minister Rafic Harriri. Rather than rebuilding the souk as it had been before, most of the previous residential and commercial tenants were pushed out to make way for global brands and wealthier tenants, ensuring the downtown area became one geared mainly toward the wealthiest residents and visitors.

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Beirut ‘Souks’ (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

I’ve since had the privilege of visiting Beirut yearly over the past five years. I’ve come to understand that downtown Beirut exemplifies conflicts over ownership and the failure of particular urban dreams that are visible across the city. While the downtown area may have once felt like a glitzy regeneration scheme, much of it now also feels like a ghost town, with numerous abandoned storefronts. Part of this is due to enforced security and road closures because of the nearby Lebanese parliament, but it must also surely reflect the failure of such an urban model to actually respond to residents’ needs.

Downtown ghost town

Across the city, power struggles are visible in the contrast between modern new-build projects and the staying power of older, often deteriorating buildings. Beirut retains a large number of beautiful (imho) old buildings exhibiting various architectural styles, sometimes many at the same time, such as traditional Lebanese architecture along with French art deco. Many of these structures are deteriorating and/or completely abandoned. Some were abandoned during the war and the owners never returned; because of Lebanese inheritance law and a lack of an eminent domain policy (if I’ve understood correctly), if the owner is not identified then the building cannot be touched. Some buildings have arguably deteriorated due to the old rental laws, which froze old rental contracts after the civil war. These helped to safeguard social diversity in historic neighborhoods, but in the absence of the state ensuring affordable housing options, the crumbling buildings are now luxury development opportunities waiting to happen.

A mixture of many architectural styles

At the same time, shiny new high-rises and luxury developments are springing up everywhere. The speculative nature of urban development is obvious: loose capital floods in, apparently a large portion from the gulf countries, leading to luxury apartment developments, which often then sit there empty, as the point was never to house people but to park money.  Such buildings would perhaps not seem so egregious if it weren’t for the fact that most of the city’s poorer residents–including hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees–have been relegated to overcrowded and unsafe housing, refugee camps or homelessness.

High-rises and new architecture contrast with old and sometimes crumbling buildings

In other parts of the city, disputes over ownership have stopped any redevelopment plans in their tracks for years. The most obvious example is perhaps the old Holiday Inn, open for a year before it was ransacked in the civil war and taken over by various militia groups (today, the Lebanese army has a base there). While many residents and developers alike want to see it demolished, it remains standing so many years later, pockmarked by bullet holes and explosions. The only thing competing interests could agree on was to take down the Holiday Inn sign, to appease the anxious hotel chain.

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The old Holiday Inn (photo by Gregor Rom)

Elsewhere, in a quiet corner of Mar Mikhael, an increasingly trendy and gentrifying neighborhood historically important to Beirut’s Armenian community, I saw the old Laziza brewery being bulldozed in late 2017. A huge pit was carved out to make way for yet another block of luxury apartments. But in the middle of the whole thing there lingered an old yellowed building, apparently unable to be torn down because the owners have not been found. I don’t know how the new development went forward, if it did go forward, whether developers demolished the building anyway, or simply built around the structure leaving an old building of traditional architecture to spoil the planned modernist landscape. (Beirut residents might know what became of this stubborn outlier.)

The old Laziza brewery, and the surrounding block which was demolished except for a stubborn yellow building.

This is my first new year in five years not spent in Beirut and I’m in no position to properly comment on the incredible revolution unfolding in Lebanon, that began in October 2019. Suffice to say I was not expecting it, considering that there always seemed to be so much apathy towards politics in Lebanon–understandable considering the decades of corruption that have meant that seemingly simple things like continuous electricity and reliable trash collection have never been guaranteed.

But now the streets are being taken over with protests and occupations (and in classic Beirut tradition, epic dance parties) demanding an end to corruption and a more democratic political system. The movement has been reclaiming the city’s privatized spaces. A different dream is emerging. In this moment, it seems possible that maybe Beirut’s glitzy exclusive buildings and enclosed spaces are not a harbinger of the future but will become, like the crumbling Holiday Inn, a relic of the past.

For further exploration:

Ronnie Chatah’s walking tour is one of the best things I’ve done in Beirut and is where I learned many of the things in this post. Hopefully the tours will be up and running again soon: https://www.bebeirut.org/walk.html

Citylab: Beirut’s Protest City is a Rebuke to the Privatization of Public Space: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/10/lebanon-anti-government-protests-beirut-martyrs-square/601180/

Article about the flattened Laziza brewery and planned luxury apartment project: https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/24/farewell-lebanon-s-first-brewery-beer-beirut/

Gregory Buchakjian is a Lebanese artist who photographs and documents abandoned buildings in Beirut, whose work has been exhibited at the Sursock Museum and elsewhere : http://www.buchakjian.net/installation/abandoned-dwellings-inventory/index.html

Aljazeera documentary on the Holiday Inn and Lebanon’s civil war: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DTGFcjRrQ4&t=635s

Recent Vice video about Lebanon’s economic crisis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHiuyUiUAp8

“What it’s like to get kicked out of your neighborhood”

It really seems like talk of gentrification is everywhere lately. It may be that I’ve just been paying more attention to it, but I think if you live somewhere like London or San Francisco, it’s pretty hard not to notice the changes taking place. It was cool to see a video like this on a mainstream site like BuzzFeed, of a former Mission resident, Kai, who has been evicted from two different homes in San Francisco. While it doesn’t go too deep into the structural causes of gentrification, it does highlight the massive displacement of black and Latino communities in San Francisco, as well as the California policies that have facilitated this. Kai comments on the way the city is segregated by race and class and notes, “the wealth is directly related to people’s displacement from their homes”.

The topic of gentrification was even addressed in a recent Saturday Night Live sketch, which I think brilliantly comments on the intersection of gentrification and race. Why is it so funny to see black men on the corner discussing spin class and the new artisanal mayonnaise shop around the corner? Maybe because we know deep down that the supposed positive effects of gentrification (if 8 dollar mayonnaise can be considered a positive effect) rarely benefit anyone other than white, middle- to upper-class residents.

As (hopefully) more and more debate about gentrification unfolds, I really hope we see fewer people claiming that this is an inevitable process or that, you know, “it’s really all the hipsters’ fault”. We need to dig further into how our current economic system encourages eviction and displacement along race and class lines.

A walk through Haggerston in London’s Hackney

Haggerston is a neighborhood in the London borough of Hackney, which is classified as one of the most deprived areas of the UK. It is also a rapidly changing area as property values rise in conjunction with the “regeneration” of East London, especially since the 2012 Olympic Games were hosted very nearby. This walk was a preliminary mapping exercise that is part of a university project centering on East London.

The route of my walk:

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The London boroughs are huge and so this did not necessarily cover that much ground, but there were still many observations to be made. Most of my Hackney knowledge thus far is based around Hackney Road, which bustles with the sounds of cars, buses, the occasional siren. Veering away from there, however, I was surprised by just how much of Hackney seems to consist of housing. There are a large number of council estates (Britain’s form of social housing), but these have turned increasingly into privately-owned flats in recent years. Hackney was part of London’s urban sprawl in the 19th Century, home to a growing working class that fueled the city’s industry. Hints of the area’s history and current “regeneration” are quite evident when walking around, especially as estates and buildings with boarded-up windows, along with construction sites, are commonplace.

Right on the border of Hackney and Tower Hamlets, this old children’s hospital has been set for demolition and much of the community is in disagreement about the housing development that is to replace it.
Entryway to children’s hospital.
Walking down Hackney Road, the border street between the boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets.
Unfortunately-named casino.
The shell of a building, common sight in the area.
Barrier hiding construction on southside of Hackney Road.
A brand-new estate agent’s office.
Street art on Cremer Street.
Russell Brand in Hoxton.
The overground near Hoxton Station, opened in 2010 to connect Hackney to South London.
Old and new: St Chad’s Church, built 1868, next to a housing estate. The church was described as “part of the massive Victorian effort to bring the workers of East London into the Anglican Church.”
Leaving the noisy bustle of Hackney Road, Appleby Street is utterly silent. I come across a community garden.
Following the sound of a crane at work, I come across a major site of redevelopment in the area. The future “City Mills” will consist of privately-owned apartments.
Playground with demolishing buildings behind.
Flyer posted in the playground.
Though I don’t know for sure, the planned apartments are unlikely to be affordable for working-class Londoners.
“Regeneration” means mobility and better connection to London’s commercial centers.
A “revived” community…is the current one passed out/dead?
Süleymaniye Mosque, opened in 1999, on Kingsland Road. Built with Turkish funding, it includes a function hall, a school and a canteen.
On the other side of the future City Mills site, Laburnum Street.
Haggerston Baths, which have been long closed. The building was supposed to re-open as a community pool but hasn’t due to lack of funding.
A newer building on Queensbridge Road, apparently a mix of private and socially-rented housing, as well as workspaces.
Regent’s canal, which was a commercial waterway until 1950.
An abandoned warehouse with the new boat-like structure of Bridge Academy behind. The school, built in 2008, has won awards for its design, which attempts to provide adaptable classrooms and to deter bullying.
An abandoned lot on Dunston Road.
The Haggerston Estate, which has been due for redevelopment for a few years. An artists’ collective has put up photos of former residents over the boarded windows.
Another angle of the estate with another City Mills site in the background.
A football field off Pownall Road.
Broadway Market, an increasingly gentrified street, where a number of business owners have had to close up shop and move elsewhere.

The route of my walk was random, but afterwards I gained further information about some of the structures that I saw from this document, published by the Hackney Society: http://www.hackneysociety.org/documents/Highlights_of_Haggerston1.pdf

East London

London is a city I still can’t quite put my finger on. Mainly, it’s so enormous that it seems impossible to try to think about it as one solitary entity. I am always shocked by how long it takes to traverse the city on bus or underground, making me evermore grateful for how everything in Paris is relatively close in comparison (people still get lazy in their respective quartiers, but it doesn’t usually take more than 20-30 minutes to cross the city on public transport.) And unlike Paris which has a definitive boulevard péripherique, London has no clear borders. It’s easy to tell that people aren’t always sure whether a certain neighborhood is in or outside of London. Perhaps it’s “outer London”? Not that it really matters. Though I do think that because of its much higher population and the gigantic, nebulous land area that London inhabits, certain neighborhoods can appear much more distinctive when traveling between them. In Paris it’s often just a matter of turning a street corner to find a completely new socio-economic/demographic/cultural makeup; in London you may have to travel farther, but the feeling of coming across a world-within-a-world is more apparent.

The world of central London has often left me a little at odds. Parts seem too commercial, like Times Square, or too bourgeois, like Paris’ Opéra quarter. The national monuments just don’t strike me with the same unapologetic romanticism as they do in Paris. I was eager to find neighborhoods a little off the beaten path that might interest me more. So last time I visited, Gary and I looked for something a little different to do on a (yep) rainy day and settled on a free “alternative” tour of East London. We braved the lightly sprinkling rain as our guide showed us old markers in the road that serve as the border between the City of London and East London (another system of borders I still don’t understand) and off we went to explore Brick Lane and the surrounding area. Besides being the site of what is probably the highest concentration of curry houses in the world, this neighborhood has been home to many different groups and immigrant communities. For one reason or another, it has also served as a chosen canvas for the incredible work of local and international street artists.

The Brick Lane Masjid, or mosque, is a perfect example of East London’s layered mulit-cultural history. Built in 1743 as a Protestant chapel for French Hugeunots who had escaped persecution in France, it was later adopted as a synagogue for Jewish refugees and finally as a mosque for the growing Bangladeshi community.

We saw a few pieces by a Belgian artist named Roa, who primarily paints giant black-and-white animals on the sides of buildings. This recent and particularly haunting piece is in color, though. Gotta wonder if he’s a vegetarian.
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