The imaginaries of Beirut’s “invisible” solid waste

Abstract

This chapter explores the particular case of municipal protective walls built during the peak of the solid waste management (SWM) crisis in Beirut and Mount Lebanon (BML) in 2015, and revisits these walled-locations in 2018 while the crisis was ongoing. Walls were one tactic among others that emerged during the crisis. They addressed the unresolved crisis by forming a temporal pause, which protected against garbage hoarding. Over time, these walls projected an imaginary of a clean city, which affected people’s perceptions of urban public spaces, and the need to collectively counteract the crisis by refraining from indiscriminate garbage disposal. The chapter explores this imaginary and its relation to time, and examines the short-term or enduring social practices in public spaces vis-a-vis the garbage crisis. These practices are dynamic and are intertwined with the spaces and the garbage in them, leading to changes in spatial perceptions and experiences.