Co-producing Al-Masar Al-Akhdar: Methodological Investigations Towards Collaborative Urban Design

Abstract

Over the past decades, urban designers have increasingly adopted co-production as an approach that brings various dimensions of the "public," the state, on the one hand, and communities, on the other, to work towards an improved living environment (Pimentel Walker, Arquero de Alarcón, Friendly, Barbosa, Ribeiro de Souza, & Nobre, 2023). Yet, in divided societies, tensions within communities and across arms of the state challenge this possibility. These tensions were directly experienced in the aftermath of the Beirut port blast in 2020 when several projects that sought to introduce public space interventions, a critical element of any healthy post-disaster recovery (Al-Harithy, 2010; Vale & Campanella, 2005), were faced with strong resistance that ultimately led to their failure (Beirut Urban Lab, 2024). As a result, the contentious nature of the "public" undermined the possibility of recovery.

Building on this experience, and given that any intervention that seeks to upgrade public spaces would have to confront the reality of a highly divided city where the dominant rhetoric is antagonistic to public planning, distrustful of public agencies, and wary of whom a public space will attract to the neighborhood, the thesis began with the premise that the design of public spaces cannot be limited to adequate technical design considerations. Instead, urban designers and planners need to set processes that bring residents together and restore trust in the collective and the public agencies entrusted with protecting this collective, knowing that state agencies and communities are rife with unequal power relations.

The thesis articulates a co-production methodology for implementing Al-Masar Al-Akhdar, a 'latent' project in Beirut (Lebanon), with nearly a decade of collaboration between activists, professionals, academics, and city authorities. The project transforms the site of the projected Fouad Boutros highway into an integrated space for greening, soft mobility, and recreation that materially enables an improved urban life. The thesis's main argument is that co-production is not merely a process of mending divisions between state actors on the one hand and local communities on the other. Instead, it argues that co-production needs to involve mending across state institutions and community groups and between these conflicting interests. To this end, the thesis proposes, first, to integrate within the planning process a mapping of power and social divisions that inform co-production processes. The thesis further proposes to unbundle the co-production process, allowing multiple configurations of co-production that account for divergent power and interests between actors and institutions. Finally, the thesis confirms the recent attention to intermediation as a critical element of co-production (Deboulet & Lipietz, 2024). By identifying actors who have been involved in mediation initiatives (e.g., professionals, activists, advocates, academics), the thesis proposes multiple roles for these actors whereby power differentials are addressed through efforts at mediation that borrow from existing practices (e.g., awareness-raising, capacity building, coalition building, and advocacy). This step allows meditation for power and raises awareness about the possible climate and social interests attached to the project. The thesis is part of a larger project at the Beirut Urban Lab exploring the politics and possibilities of planning in contested cities.