ASSESSING THE PUBLICNESS IN NEOLIBERAL WATERFRONT DEVELOPMENT: BEIRUT POST-WAR MARINAS COMPARED

Abstract

Since the 80s, many coastal cities around the world have invested in high-end marina developments. Despite a claim that such marinas can act as public amenities, these marinas have been criticized as a market-led development type that ‘privileged economic interests and consumerist citizenship over community interests’ (Boland et al., 2017 after MacLeod, 2011 p. 2).

In this thesis, I investigate the ability of marinas developed in post-war Beirut to act as public venues, especially, after the newly established ownership pattern has abstracted them to a sum of privately owned lots. “Public” here refers to the practice of space unrelatedly to land property, codification, and regardless of legal, ownership and governance statuses.

The thesis takes for case study the marinas of (a) Beirut Marina- Zaituna Bay and (b) Dbayeh Marina-Waterfront City. The thesis aims to analyze and compare the “publicness” of these marinas, looking at the impacts of urban policies, design approaches, and governance /management mechanisms in balancing between private interest and public profit.

The thesis adopts the Varna & Tiesdell star model to assess publicness and measure open spaces quality. The model takes ‘five meta dimensions’, namely ownership, control, civility, physical configuration, and animation. While classic models limit the understanding of “publicness” to property ownership, the Star Model hybridizes public and private by blurring boundaries and hence developing a more flexible definition of public space (Varna & Tiesdell 2010). The thesis extends further the indicators by accounting for informal practices as an integral part of the control, levels of civility, and introduced animations in the analyzed spaces. The selected tool will dissect the layers of publicness into a matrix that classifies spaces from least public to most public, measuring the level of publicness in each dimension and converging towards a more precise classification of public space based on the set of formal and informal indicators.

The thesis finds that despite a relatively similar ownership model, the two marinas studied in the thesis have very different levels of publicness. It shows that Zaituna Bay has achieved a much higher level of publicness most notably the outcome of its design, connectivity, and its management policies. Conversely, the thesis shows that the exceptions that were introduced by public policymakers during the development process of these marinas undermined in both cases their public nature. In conclusion, the thesis aligns with Varna & Tiesdell’s discourse on ownership as being insufficient to measure publicness, centering design approaches (physical configuration) and management strategies (control, civility, and animation) as basis to maximize publicness through boosting different forms of access (visual, physical, financial, cultural).

The thesis contributes knowledge towards the articulation of proper urban policies, strategic design guidelines, and responsive governance mechanisms to maximize access and promote public benefit when Public Private Partnership approaches are adopted for waterfront marina developments.