Recovering Beirut

This volume is an outcome of a workshop on 'Lebanon's post-war reconstruction' held at MIT (Fall of 1991) to explore the role of urban planning in the rehabilitation of the country's devastated institutions and infrastructure. All chapters converge on an overriding prescriptive how to rearrange common and public spaces in order to create conditions germane for peaceful and creative coexistence among groups embittered by years of protracted hostility.The original and path-breaking contributions will deepen and enrich our understanding of the impact of protracted strife on redrawing the country's social geography and in the redevelopment of its spatial pattern and infrastructure.Topics covered - ranging from the nature of incipient territorial identities, housing crisis, reconstituting the Lebanese economy, to hopes and visions of architects and entrepreneurs - should also inform issues of post-war development in other fragmented plural societies.