**6. Scaling up networks to foster their stabilization**

All three municipal actor-networks are facing important political challenges imposed by changes on the higher levels of government. The political situation on the national level that led to the municipal elections of 1998 is no longer what it was. As of 2005, the high political polarization on the national level has its consequences on the local level, where parties chose to move towards more aggressive local strategies to enrol municipalities and NGOs in their own networks. This pressure is destabilizing some of the municipal actor-networks, and local actors acknowledge the limits of municipal action. Some major issues, mainly economic issues, could not be dealt with on the local level. Scaling up begins to seem as a way to stabilize the municipal actor-networks and capitalize on decade-long experimentations.

In the north of the municipal perimeter of Furn AlChebbak we can find a very large green area that is still exploited as an agricultural area due to zoning regulations that protect it against urbanization. This area is one of the rare large real-estates stocks in the central areas of the Beirut agglomeration. Clearly it is keen to attract developers who are pressing for a change in its zoning regulations. The municipal actor-network is facing a more serious challenge in dealing with this issue. The leadership of the municipal actor-network had always maintained the need to protect this area as a green lung in a very densely urbanized zone. Today, a reflection on the future of this area was initiated in order to face the pressures. As the municipality lacks powerful leadership and control over its territory, these

Thévenot's (1995) defence of the Plan as an important communicative tool makes sense here. What a master plan tool offers is less a prospective perspective but a large contribution to the stabilization of a complex and fragile governance. The actors around the table do not represent a common front and have different agendas, however, none could get to implement his one by himself. Negotiations are here central, the approval of all the actors around the table is necessary for the development of the project. Orientation schemes are excellent tools in this sense; they're general enough to gain the largest adhesion from the

In our sample case, the future of this area is crucial for the Furn AlChebbak municipal actornetwork. On one hand, a number of notables at the centre of the actor network are landowners in this area. On the other hand, whatever development is put on rails in this area will have tremendous impact on the rest of the locality. For investors, the development of the area represents lucrative but also important long-term investments. As for the central government authorities, this area holds strategic importance. Whatever the compromise that gets out of these negotiations, all actors around the table want assurance that their concerns will be taken in consideration and that all the parties will respect their engagements. The role of the master plan is to provide some guarantees for all actors. Market is pushing towards an important intervention of the municipality and the directorate of urban planning to allow greater development, but, the issue implicates number of notables and family clans in Furn AlChebbak and might destabilize established alliances holding the municipal actor-

All three municipal actor-networks are facing important political challenges imposed by changes on the higher levels of government. The political situation on the national level that led to the municipal elections of 1998 is no longer what it was. As of 2005, the high political polarization on the national level has its consequences on the local level, where parties chose to move towards more aggressive local strategies to enrol municipalities and NGOs in their own networks. This pressure is destabilizing some of the municipal actor-networks, and local actors acknowledge the limits of municipal action. Some major issues, mainly economic issues, could not be dealt with on the local level. Scaling up begins to seem as a way to stabilize the municipal actor-networks and capitalize on decade-long

**5.4 Negotiating urban extensions through orientation schemes** 

discussions have been oriented towards the adoption of a master plan.

actors and flexible enough to evolve through the negotiations.

**6. Scaling up networks to foster their stabilization** 

network together.

experimentations.

The creation of Unions of Municipalities is the main instrument for such a stabilization through up-scaling. Two unions in these suburbs were created as of 2007, one including the municipalities of the southern suburbs and the other that of the south-eastern suburbs. The unions represent an important (re)problematization of the municipal issue. The definition of a new spatial perimeter for municipal action poses the question of territorialisation.

In the case of the southern suburbs, there was an existing territorialisation going on through Hezbollah's construction of The Suburb. Though the municipal actor-networks of the southern suburbs – controlled by the same party – defended a claim on their municipal perimeters, they didn't have the same attachment to it as in the case of Chiyah or Furn AlChebbak's municipal actor-networks. Their territorial reference was always The Suburb. The creation of the union here was then in the continuity of the municipal actor-networks efforts of the last decade. It built on their experimentations. The creation of the union is an effort to fusion the different actor-networks in a larger one working at the scale of the southern suburbs and responding to issues that the municipal level is incapable to tackle; one of these issues being the place of these suburbs in the larger metropolitan development.

The case of the union of municipalities in the south-eastern suburbs is largely different. Local family clans here control the different municipalities and have strong attachment to their localities and their autonomy. However, as of 2005, they're faced by the imminent danger of destabilization and marginalization by the political parties on the national level. The creation of this union is somehow a formation of a cartel that can give weight to these local actors and put them on the negotiation table for a better articulation of these suburbs with the rest of the agglomeration. The real challenge here is how to give consistency to a body lacking clear leadership and identity. In fact, the union here does not coincide with any significant reference to the municipal actor-networks and remains open to new memberships. This leads to the difficulty of constructing a convergent vision of what the union should be and what it should do, that would mobilize actors and help merge the different municipal actor-networks. Consequently, in opposition to the union of the southern suburbs, no territorial systemic planning approach defining complementarities is actually possible. Building on previous experimentations is also difficult since these experimentations for the majority were case-specific. Nevertheless, these municipal actornetworks are trying to engage in common reflections about issues they identify as priority and that touch them all, like youth and education. Here, paradoxically the union is a space of experimentation to produce tools that will serve at the municipal level.
