Post-conflict reconstruction and citizenship agendas: lessons from Beirut

Abstract

How does post-conflict reconstruction embody citizenship agendas? By emphasizing the intersections between urban planning, architecture and political community in Hizballah's reconstruction discourse following the 2006 war, this article explores the articulation of such agendas in the historical production of urban space. The first section explores the denial of urban space and membership in the political community to Lebanon's Shi'a in the reconstruction of Beirut following the 1975–1990 civil war. The second section introduces Harat Hreik and the struggle over its reconstruction as resistance, on the part of Hizballah and its cadres, to this exclusion. The party's approach, anchored in an innovative not-for-profit NGO, ‘The Solemn Promise Project’ (Mashru' Wa'ad al-Sadiq), asserted the claims of its constituency to a place in both the city and the nation over considerations of profit. This citizenship agenda, inclusionary in sectarian terms, however, entailed its own set decidedly class-based inclusions and exclusions.