**5.2 Private public partnerships opportunities and limitations**

As said earlier, the municipal vision was to be achieved mainly by a large development project on the war demarcation line at the heart of the old locality central neighbourhood. However, only a few actions were executed. The fact is an essential perquisite to the project was the resolution of the displaced and squatters issue in the area where the project was to be developed. But the resolution of this issue lagged to different political and technical administrative reasons. This provoked a large crisis for the development project that was aborted aggravating an already existing trust issue9. So, as of 2000, the municipal actornetwork decided to redeploy its project elsewhere in Chiyah. And it chose to do so on the far east of Chiyah, "deep" in Aïn AlRemeneh.

Here, we saw the development of a large continuum of public spaces, gardens, sport terrains and a large socio-cultural and sports centre in construction. These projects developed by the municipality in this area articulated with other projects, like the different facilities of a parish church, other private sport terrains, some restaurants with kids' playgrounds. In this area the municipality worked in close collaboration with the Maronite parish and its coalition of associations, as with a local shop owners' association. The main cooperation was on the complementarity of activities and the boosting of the attractiveness of this area through the organization of several festivals and other manifestations.

It is the incapacity of the municipal actor-network to "interess" and "enrol" Chiyah West that blocked the first municipal development project in Chiyah. Only, in the case of the souk in Chiyah West, a strong collaboration with the shop owners' association of the souk allowed a partial integration of the place in the municipal project. In opposition, the second development project, the area to the east of Aïn AlRemeneh was still in construction and attracted a large number of dense apartment buildings projects aiming for middle-class buyers. This new population, interested in the promise of green public spaces, as the nearby shops, local investors and the coalition of the Maronite parish associations, interested in the activities and the clientele such spaces would attract, all backed the project.

<sup>9</sup> As the deputy mayor confirmed to us in an interview (2006): "nobody wants to live on a demarcation line".

the population and the different local groups. The other is more strategic and related to the overall development of a city or a locality. It is based on the assumption that a positive vivid image of the locality could boost dynamic of private initiatives in the locality and attract new investments to it. It is urban planning without planners, a setting where image building will suffice for the development of a city or a locality. Governance and management on the other hand become central. However, this should not be confounded with the collaborative urban planning approach (Healey, 1997) based on Habermas communicative theory. We can see here a genuine effort to include local actors in the municipal actor-network dynamic, but only in an enrolled position. Though municipal actor-network leaderships may refer to these activities as participation, as in the three sample cases, they are more likely top-down information displays. There's no room for debate in these strategies. As propaganda and legitimation tools, these marketing tools are effective. They've positioned the municipalities in the local representations as major dynamic actors in the localities. However, they don't seem really to serve in getting local actors into the municipal actor-network. This is done

As said earlier, the municipal vision was to be achieved mainly by a large development project on the war demarcation line at the heart of the old locality central neighbourhood. However, only a few actions were executed. The fact is an essential perquisite to the project was the resolution of the displaced and squatters issue in the area where the project was to be developed. But the resolution of this issue lagged to different political and technical administrative reasons. This provoked a large crisis for the development project that was aborted aggravating an already existing trust issue9. So, as of 2000, the municipal actornetwork decided to redeploy its project elsewhere in Chiyah. And it chose to do so on the

Here, we saw the development of a large continuum of public spaces, gardens, sport terrains and a large socio-cultural and sports centre in construction. These projects developed by the municipality in this area articulated with other projects, like the different facilities of a parish church, other private sport terrains, some restaurants with kids' playgrounds. In this area the municipality worked in close collaboration with the Maronite parish and its coalition of associations, as with a local shop owners' association. The main cooperation was on the complementarity of activities and the boosting of the attractiveness

It is the incapacity of the municipal actor-network to "interess" and "enrol" Chiyah West that blocked the first municipal development project in Chiyah. Only, in the case of the souk in Chiyah West, a strong collaboration with the shop owners' association of the souk allowed a partial integration of the place in the municipal project. In opposition, the second development project, the area to the east of Aïn AlRemeneh was still in construction and attracted a large number of dense apartment buildings projects aiming for middle-class buyers. This new population, interested in the promise of green public spaces, as the nearby shops, local investors and the coalition of the Maronite parish associations, interested in the

9 As the deputy mayor confirmed to us in an interview (2006): "nobody wants to live on a demarcation line".

of this area through the organization of several festivals and other manifestations.

activities and the clientele such spaces would attract, all backed the project.

through other "incentive schemes" and usually through direct contact.

**5.2 Private public partnerships opportunities and limitations** 

far east of Chiyah, "deep" in Aïn AlRemeneh.

Analysing actor-networks is most interesting for understanding urban planning opportunities and limitations. On one hand, it shows that setting urban development projects is more complex than just a question of grasping opportunities and engineering complex coordination between different actors. It is first and foremost a reconfiguration of the existing relations and the definition of new ones, and that is a case-specific issue. In the case of Chiyah, early projects were an opportunity to develop different types of experiences that give the municipal actor-network a clearer idea of what it could or could not do. On the other hand, the case of Chiyah got us to concur with Rydin (2010) that it is by focusing on the sociotechnical objects of the systems urban planning aims to change that we can get the best grasp urban planning processes. In fact, sadly, the demarcation line issue seems clearly to be tenacious and difficult to enrol in a municipal actor-network. It even is itself capable to enrol different socio-spatial entities and powerful actors "profiting" from the demarcation line's actual state, in what we can call here the demarcation line actor-network10.

### **5.3 Urban infrastructures as a controversial issue**

The fate of the population of the informal settlements was the main issue in the controversy around the Elyssar development project in the west of the southern suburbs of Beirut. Though the project considered the construction of social housing for 3000 persons, this number was far below the actual number of inhabitants of these settlements. In the midnineties, the Shiite parties, Hezbollah and Amal, engaged in long negotiations with the prime minister, in order to introduce changes to the project mainly including more social housing, but with no success. In fact, the issue was treated in the frame of larger negotiations between these actors implicating other projects and political understandings. The confrontation led to a standstill of the project. This however had important consequences on the life of the population of these informal settlements who were not only facing economic and social tenuousness but also harsh environmental conditions. It was the latter that seemed to provoke the most serious problems pushing the municipality to intervene to unblock dangerous and untenable situation.

The municipal actor-network of Ghobeiri engaged in four other types of interventions in this zone, always under the banner: dealing with unacceptable situation. This is how it came to install a water infrastructure network to numerous households in an informal settlement, build a breakwater made of sandbags to protect another from high sea waves, organize an informal souk in a neighbourhood and launch a pilot waste sorting project in another. There is a gradual evolution in the cases. In the latter projects, urgency seems less pressing, and we see less unilateralism form the part of the municipal actor-network, other actors – like international development institutions – are getting involved.

<sup>10</sup> Among these actors we can identify political parties that built strong influence for themselves in the neighbourhoods along the demarcation line by claiming to defend these neighbourhoods. We can also identify a squatter population that fear displacement in the event of the resolution of the issue. And more importantly we have the central state that refused to engage in a project of large restructuring of the demarcation line – the study being offered by the Urban planning agency of the French region of Ilede-France – because the demarcation line is considered too much of a complex political issue!

Bricolage Planning: Understanding Planning in a Fragmented City 117

The question of "modernizing" the locality was central to Ghobeiri's municipal vision. "Modernization" in the representation of the municipal actor-network of Ghobeiri was mainly linked to the production of quality public facilities accessible to the population. Though Ghobeiri is a large locality with a population of more than 100.000 inhabitants, the aim of the municipal actor-network was to produce facilities that could serve at the level of the whole southern suburbs. The main obstacle in the face of this objective was clearly financial: where to get the money for such large projects? The municipal actor-network

All these projects necessitated first the availability of land owned by the municipality. But, trying to purchase a suitable terrain for a predefined project would surely get the sellers to raise the price. The municipality tried to get around this problem by creating its own realestates' stock. No particular project was linked to any purchase. At the same time, a portfolio of projects that the municipality believed representative of the priorities of Ghobeiri was defined and, sometimes, preliminary studies were commissioned to identify scenarios and costs. It was only at this moment that the municipality turned to different donors to finance one or the other project. These donors are usually keener to finance a project whose land and study are available, diminishing sharply the amount of their contribution. It was in this logic that the municipality managed to execute different facilities

The availability of land and its price have guided the constitution of the real-estates' stock. It made the whole process – as the municipality claims – quite an ad-hoc one. However, the municipality gradually became to identify more accurately the needs of the locality and the possible locations where these facilities should be constructed. In fact, it conducted a number of surveys to map the physical, economical and social situation of the locality. Consequently, it evolved from an ad-hoc planning approach to a more systematized one. Though we're in front of a project that do not speak its name: no such holistic strategy was acknowledged by the municipal actor-network and no documents referring to it were ever

The question of real-estate has always been central in urban planning. Speculation, in fact, could represent an important complement to infrastructures development, by financing retrospectively their execution through taxes – much of the urban development since Haussmann has relied on this logic. It can be also a major source of socio-spatial segregation. A lot of tools have been experienced in developed countries to control realestate speculation (Lacaze, 1995). Real-estates' stock building is a most common one. The wit in the municipal actor-network of Ghobeiri resides in combining this tactic with discreetness an active donor financing. It is a way to compensate the need of formal or informal private-

These experimentations of the municipality of Ghobeiri represent a corner stone for the generalization of the bricolage planning approach of the municipal actor-network if it was to

**5.3.1 Creating facilities through a public led strategy for real-estates stock** 

seems to have developed over the years a very successful strategy in this regard.

**constitution** 

produced.

public partnerships.

be deployed on a larger level.

with the intervention of different donors.

Despite the harsh attack of the Ghobeiri municipality on the Elyssar project, and behind it the central government, that shows that a "guerrilla urban planning" is not a confrontation approach through and through. There is room for conciliatory manoeuvre (Tait, 2002)11. The shrewd political diplomacy of the mayor of Ghobeiri made the central government intervene for improving urban services in an informal settlements, and the enrolment of the latter in the municipal actor-network of Ghobeiri12. It further created a precedent for more intervention by the municipality in Elyssar area.

In fact, the capitalization on experiment and generalization is done here through a track that includes different elements. The first is acceptance and recognition of the positive impact of these interventions by the local actors but also but also other actors on the national and international level. This is how international development agencies got implicated in assisting in some of these interventions. The second, is the gradual slide from a "guerrilla urban planning" oriented against Elyssar, towards an "informal settlement upgrading approach" (Abbott, 2002a, 2002b). This means that the confrontation with Elyssar was becoming less the dominant angle of approach, it was replaced by the construction of a bolder project: making a territory of an area in the southern suburbs of Beirut or what is usually called The Suburb.

The Suburb is Hezbollah's area of influence in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Hezbollah has a long implementation in this area and a very large and successful network of NGOs that has assured it large support. Hezbollah has also a long tradition of intervention as a construction and public works actor in this area. However, it is only recently – in the aftermath of the 2006 war with Israel – that the party got involved in urban planning per se with the project for reconstructing the southern suburbs. But even in the case of this project, we do not see an overall planning strategy for The Suburb, instead, a large series of buildings' reconstruction projects. In fact, the party has always maintained the absence of such a strategy and justified his interventions by the urgency of intolerable situations while condemning the withdrawal of the state institutions from their role.

The question of urban infrastructures is probably one of the most ancient and central tools in urban planning. Back in the 19th century, Haussmann used road infrastructures, mainly the tracing of the boulevards as a way of restructuring the whole city of Paris. In the case of Ghobeiri, this is particularly appealing: the project of metropolisation and reconstruction executed large road infrastructures contributing clearly to the separation of Elyssar from the rest of Ghobeiri. Through other types of infrastructures, lacking in the informal settlements neighbourhoods, the municipal actor-network of Ghobeiri tried to physically and socially connect these neighbourhoods with the rest of the locality, but at the same time slowly restructure the whole area. The infrastructures of inclusion could be see as a vector of this strategy, the development of public facilities is another.

<sup>11</sup> However, in an interesting reverse of the example of the urban planning officers of Tait's (2000) case study where they create a room of manoeuvre in executing urban planning directives, the mayor of Ghobeiri creates for himself a room of manoeuvre in contesting central government. He uses his statute of political player at the national level – as a former member of the leadership of Hezbollah – to access the political apparatus of the state and diffuse the confrontation.

<sup>12</sup> It is also appealing that the municipal publications do not mention the CDR project, presenting the resolution of the issue as the consequence of the municipality's involvement.

Despite the harsh attack of the Ghobeiri municipality on the Elyssar project, and behind it the central government, that shows that a "guerrilla urban planning" is not a confrontation approach through and through. There is room for conciliatory manoeuvre (Tait, 2002)11. The shrewd political diplomacy of the mayor of Ghobeiri made the central government intervene for improving urban services in an informal settlements, and the enrolment of the latter in the municipal actor-network of Ghobeiri12. It further created a precedent for more

In fact, the capitalization on experiment and generalization is done here through a track that includes different elements. The first is acceptance and recognition of the positive impact of these interventions by the local actors but also but also other actors on the national and international level. This is how international development agencies got implicated in assisting in some of these interventions. The second, is the gradual slide from a "guerrilla urban planning" oriented against Elyssar, towards an "informal settlement upgrading approach" (Abbott, 2002a, 2002b). This means that the confrontation with Elyssar was becoming less the dominant angle of approach, it was replaced by the construction of a bolder project: making a territory of an area in the southern suburbs of Beirut or what is

The Suburb is Hezbollah's area of influence in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Hezbollah has a long implementation in this area and a very large and successful network of NGOs that has assured it large support. Hezbollah has also a long tradition of intervention as a construction and public works actor in this area. However, it is only recently – in the aftermath of the 2006 war with Israel – that the party got involved in urban planning per se with the project for reconstructing the southern suburbs. But even in the case of this project, we do not see an overall planning strategy for The Suburb, instead, a large series of buildings' reconstruction projects. In fact, the party has always maintained the absence of such a strategy and justified his interventions by the urgency of intolerable situations while

The question of urban infrastructures is probably one of the most ancient and central tools in urban planning. Back in the 19th century, Haussmann used road infrastructures, mainly the tracing of the boulevards as a way of restructuring the whole city of Paris. In the case of Ghobeiri, this is particularly appealing: the project of metropolisation and reconstruction executed large road infrastructures contributing clearly to the separation of Elyssar from the rest of Ghobeiri. Through other types of infrastructures, lacking in the informal settlements neighbourhoods, the municipal actor-network of Ghobeiri tried to physically and socially connect these neighbourhoods with the rest of the locality, but at the same time slowly restructure the whole area. The infrastructures of inclusion could be see as a vector of this

11 However, in an interesting reverse of the example of the urban planning officers of Tait's (2000) case study where they create a room of manoeuvre in executing urban planning directives, the mayor of Ghobeiri creates for himself a room of manoeuvre in contesting central government. He uses his statute of political player at the national level – as a former member of the leadership of Hezbollah – to access

12 It is also appealing that the municipal publications do not mention the CDR project, presenting the

condemning the withdrawal of the state institutions from their role.

strategy, the development of public facilities is another.

the political apparatus of the state and diffuse the confrontation.

resolution of the issue as the consequence of the municipality's involvement.

intervention by the municipality in Elyssar area.

usually called The Suburb.

#### **5.3.1 Creating facilities through a public led strategy for real-estates stock constitution**

The question of "modernizing" the locality was central to Ghobeiri's municipal vision. "Modernization" in the representation of the municipal actor-network of Ghobeiri was mainly linked to the production of quality public facilities accessible to the population. Though Ghobeiri is a large locality with a population of more than 100.000 inhabitants, the aim of the municipal actor-network was to produce facilities that could serve at the level of the whole southern suburbs. The main obstacle in the face of this objective was clearly financial: where to get the money for such large projects? The municipal actor-network seems to have developed over the years a very successful strategy in this regard.

All these projects necessitated first the availability of land owned by the municipality. But, trying to purchase a suitable terrain for a predefined project would surely get the sellers to raise the price. The municipality tried to get around this problem by creating its own realestates' stock. No particular project was linked to any purchase. At the same time, a portfolio of projects that the municipality believed representative of the priorities of Ghobeiri was defined and, sometimes, preliminary studies were commissioned to identify scenarios and costs. It was only at this moment that the municipality turned to different donors to finance one or the other project. These donors are usually keener to finance a project whose land and study are available, diminishing sharply the amount of their contribution. It was in this logic that the municipality managed to execute different facilities with the intervention of different donors.

The availability of land and its price have guided the constitution of the real-estates' stock. It made the whole process – as the municipality claims – quite an ad-hoc one. However, the municipality gradually became to identify more accurately the needs of the locality and the possible locations where these facilities should be constructed. In fact, it conducted a number of surveys to map the physical, economical and social situation of the locality. Consequently, it evolved from an ad-hoc planning approach to a more systematized one. Though we're in front of a project that do not speak its name: no such holistic strategy was acknowledged by the municipal actor-network and no documents referring to it were ever produced.

The question of real-estate has always been central in urban planning. Speculation, in fact, could represent an important complement to infrastructures development, by financing retrospectively their execution through taxes – much of the urban development since Haussmann has relied on this logic. It can be also a major source of socio-spatial segregation. A lot of tools have been experienced in developed countries to control realestate speculation (Lacaze, 1995). Real-estates' stock building is a most common one. The wit in the municipal actor-network of Ghobeiri resides in combining this tactic with discreetness an active donor financing. It is a way to compensate the need of formal or informal privatepublic partnerships.

These experimentations of the municipality of Ghobeiri represent a corner stone for the generalization of the bricolage planning approach of the municipal actor-network if it was to be deployed on a larger level.

Bricolage Planning: Understanding Planning in a Fragmented City 119

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

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

a new spatial perimeter for municipal action poses the question of territorialisation.

of experimentation to produce tools that will serve at the municipal level.

In the light of the three sample cases, we identify here three central elements in the development of bricolage planning: the constitution of the "universe of instruments", the experience and the articulation to larger dynamics; and behind them all, the initial profile of

The universe of instruments is very important in the capacity of action of a municipal actornetwork. The main determinant of this universe of instruments is the problematization of the municipal question by the actor-network through the locality's identity and the municipal vision. Failing to present an inclusive locality's identity nor an ambitious municipal vision may represent an important weakness to any municipal actor-network. It

**7. Bricolage planning opportunities and limits** 

the municipal actor-network as explanatory variable.

### **5.4 Negotiating urban extensions through orientation schemes**

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

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 actors and flexible enough to evolve through the negotiations.

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 actornetwork together.
