Filling Every Gap : Real Estate Development in Beirut
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/14880/filling-every-gap_real-estate-development-in-beiru
Sur Jadaliyya Cities, l’histoire détaillée d’une spéculation immobilière, et ce cela veut dire pour les dynamiques urbaines
A noter, encore une fois, que cela implique la famille Hariri...
Beirut usually conjures up images of conflict, tension, and warfare. While it is certainly not immune to these dynamics, media reports tend to overemphasize these aspects, just as their obsession with the city’s famous nightlife and glitzy shopping districts pays disproportionate attention to the lifestyles of rich tourists and the elite. This threatens to obscure a day-to-day process that has, in my opinion, a far greater impact on people’s lives and the livability of the city: the continuing large-scale construction boom affecting area after area, tearing down building after building, and replacing them with high-rise structures affordable only to upper middle-class and expatriate Lebanese. Surely, political tensions have abated construction activity somewhat, but after every crisis it has picked up with even more vigor, and indeed many developers used the lull in sales as a speculation tool, buying when the land is cheap and selling when the market picks up again (Ross & Jamil, 2011). Hence, the current slump in investment should not distract from the major changes occurring in the city’s built environment. Indeed, even though the market has currently stagnated, major projects are going ahead as planned.