In the shadow of planning? :economic and communal interests in the making of the Shemlan master plan -

Abstract

This thesis argue that in religiously mixed areas of Lebanon, planning practices reflect the tension between two competing claims to land; its economic value as a real estate asset and its communal value as a marker of religious territorial enclaves. As a result, tools of planning such as the master plan are used operationally by contending groups of actors to serve simultaneously their interests to maximize capital gains reaped from (current or potential) property transactions, and to help shape territorial enclaves in a context of religious tensions. These modalities of action are imbricated in power politics, often in violent ways, and together help subvert planning away from its original objectives of rationally regulating the built environment. I examine the town of Bayssour as a case study and retrace the making of the its master plan (1998-2013), part of a larger planning effort to institute land-use regulations for the region where this town is located, the “Shemlan area” which includes eight neighboring localities among which Bayssour. The findings of the thesis point out to three themes. First, the findings corroborate earlier work by urban scholars about the ways in which planning is used as a tool of territorial management in the name of contending goals: maximizing individual economic interests in land, and protecting the communal religious homogeneity of territories in a context of tensed sectarian struggles. Second, the findings show that throughout the planning process, an emerging discourse on environmentalism is recaptured and used to alternative ends, such as placing certain geographies under close scrutiny and facilitating land use changes which make the construction of these spaces significantly difficult. Third, the findings support the claim that a proper understanding of how planning works needs to weave the informal practices of government with the formal ones. Planning operates through the imbrications of the formal-informal, and TO provide the flexibility for some practice