The North Bassatine Master Plan: An Application of the Sustainable Metabolism Framework in Tripoli, Lebanon

Abstract

As cities are growing at a fast rate, resource needs are expected to intensify (Musango, Currie, and Robinson, 2017). Thus, it is of high importance to analyze the way cities grow (UN Habitat, 2016) in order to understand growth’s repercussions on the natural environment. In Lebanon, planning growth relies on outdated tools, such as master planning and zoning. As a consequence, urban sprawl is observed in multiple cities. In addition, natural landscapes and agricultural lands are continuously deteriorating and disappearing. In order to mitigate the negative effects of relatively needed and inevitable growth, an alternative approach to planning and designing cities should be developed. One planning framework that aims to achieve the latter is urban metabolism, which is an approach used to develop sustainable cities. Adopting an urban metabolism approach to planning and design leads to taking advantage of existing city resources, morphology, and socio-economic structures for the city development and protection of its natural environment. This thesis argues that an urban metabolism approach to sustainability is key to responding to main challenges cities face today caused by rapid urbanization. It addresses the gap of the urban metabolism’s concept in spatial planning by developing the sustainable metabolism framework, which elaborates a set of principles and design strategies to implement through the development of four typologies of metabolic areas. The sustainable metabolism framework is tested on the North Bassatine district located in Tripoli, Northern Lebanon. An urban design intervention in the North Bassatine showcases an alternative scenario where the manifestation of metabolic areas shapes a new urban development based on metabolism and sustainable principles.