Addressing fear in public spaces : design solutions for the Ramlet El-Bayda park -

Abstract

Despite wide consensus on the importance of public spaces for city dwellers’ social lives as well as their physical and mental health, popular discourses and journalist reports reflect a growing demonization of public space in many cities around the world. This is because fear is increasingly associated with representations of the ‘public’ in many cities across the world. Fear is typically described to stem from terror, crime, or threats posed by “other” social groups. It could also be a fear of certain activities deemed “immoral” or dangerous (e.g. drugs, sex), fear of “political talk” that can lead to violence, fear of vulnerability vis-à-vis the appropriation of space by an “other” who would make it a political territory. This thesis takes up the challenge of addressing “fear from public space.” More specifically, the thesis seeks to understand how fear of public space is constructed around specific public spaces and second, how urban design strategies and interventions can be developed to respond and counter this fear. To this end, the thesis took up a case study in Beirut, the Ramlet el-Bayda park, a site that reflects well the dilemma between on the one hand, a “feared public space” and, on the other, direly needed shared spaces. Largely disconnected from residents living in its surroundings, the Ramlet el-Bayda park elicits fears and avoidance among the majority of its neighbors. This fear is doubled by the proximity of militarized security bodies and the abandonment and deterioration of its spaces, given the Municipality’s neglect. The thesis was conducted in two phases. First, a comprehensive analysis of the public space and its relation to surroundings. It concluded that fear was mostly the outcome of (a) a physical morphology that conceptualized the park as a self-standing, independent object separate from its surroundings, (b) vehicular mobility and wide streets physically separating the park, (c)