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BEIRUT – To get to a park in Karantina, an impoverished neighborhood near that city’s destroyed port, two children recently had to climb an electricity pole and jump a spiked iron fence that stretches behind the park with trees and a jungle gym found is always closed.
It’s a story repeating itself across Lebanon, where people are suffering from an economic crisis and are desperate for air, but open spaces are often closed, scarce or reserved for those who can pay.
“There are hardly any public spaces in Lebanon. Public gardens are often closed and most spaces are either privately owned or you need a municipality permit to get in,” said Maggie Najem, who is fighting to keep her local beach in north Lebanon open.
The decline in public space in the country is a result of growing inequality in Lebanon and the power of private interests, exacerbated by political corruption.
Many had to resort to makeshift solutions. Near the park in Karantina, children have turned a parking lot into a playground.
“There is no real concern about where the children are,” said Aadnan Aamshe, a parent in Karantina. He said the park was initially closed due to coronavirus restrictions but still hasn’t reopened.
“Now the pandemic is over and this is the only public space for people around here,” Aamshe said, noting that older residents don’t have an alternative outdoor space: “Isn’t that the purpose of a public garden?”
Children have converted this parking lot into a makeshift playground near the Karantina closed-off public space in Beirut. (Video: Mohamad El Chamaa)
Mohammad Ayoub, who runs the Nahnoo public space advocacy group, says little has changed since he was a child in the 1990s, when he and his friends played in vacant lots “in every way they could.” Now, he added, all empty spaces have been turned into parking spaces.
Ayoub says he believes the situation has little to do with Lebanon’s financial crisis or the pandemic, noting that officials kept the city’s largest park, Horsh Beirut, closed for 25 years and only partially reopened it in 2014.
Rather, he blames policymakers, who he says have no interest in providing public services or investing in parks unless it involves building parking lots underneath.
A 2020 study by Lebanese university professor Adib Haydar estimated that there is 26 square feet of parking space per person in Beirut, as opposed to just 8.6 square feet of green space, well below the 97 square feet recommended by the World Health Organization.
Activists have taken matters into their own hands. After the demolition of a brewery in the once-industrial, now gentrified Mar Mikhael district, the site remained empty until GroBeirut intervened. The group planted trees and bushes and put up benches and transformed the site into what is now Laziza Park, named after the beer the brewery produced.
The owners of the property recently filed a lawsuit to evict the caretakers and permanently close Laziza Park.
According to Nadine Khayat, professor of landscape architecture at the American University of Beirut, improvised spaces often have a short lifespan: “The kids appropriate the parking spaces because they live in the area and can only use them until the owner gives up.” decides.” It is time for development and the children are losing their freedom.”
A similar dynamic exists on the Lebanese coast, where Ayoub estimates that 80 percent of nominally publicly owned land has been illegally privatized by beach clubs and resorts. For years, Najem feared this would be the fate of the Abou Ali public beach in northern Lebanon, a place she has visited almost daily since she was a child. Their fears were confirmed when construction workers with excavators showed up in April.
Abou Ali is a small sandy beach between private resorts. Since there’s no direct access to the beach, swimmers have to negotiate a slippery footpath along a vacant lot to get there. But that doesn’t stop her.
“Every day of the year the beach is packed with people from all walks of life and walks of life. That’s the beauty of it. This is public space,” said Najem. “They wanted to change all that.”
Abou Ali, a small stretch of beach in northern Lebanon, is public space, but to get here swimmers have to negotiate a slippery footpath on a vacant lot. (Video: Mohamad El Chamaa)
An investor who leased the surrounding properties hoped to lay claim to Abou Ali.
Locals and activists like Najem began mobilizing to save the beach. They turned to Nahnoo and quickly led a campaign against the land grab. After their efforts drew widespread attention, officials stepped in and halted construction.
It was a small victory in the midst of so many similar challenges. Two weeks ago, reports of illegal construction were reported on the beaches of Naqoura in southern Lebanon, where a US-brokered maritime border deal between Israel and Lebanon is prompting developers to keep an eye on shore areas.
There is also a debate, often fueled by prejudice, about who is allowed to use parks, swimming pools and other public spaces.
In April, footage of Syrian children swimming in a reflection pool in downtown Beirut dedicated to slain journalist Samir Kassir sparked a spate of racist abuse against Syrian refugees, prompting city officials to empty the pool.
Similar problems are hampering work on a pedestrian project in a blast-hit area near Laziza Park, one of the Lebanese capital’s busiest bar districts. Local politicians complained that widening the narrow sidewalks would eliminate parking spaces and that benches put in their place would attract “undesirable people”.
Battles like this between a weary public and more powerful private interests could go a long way towards Lebanon’s future, says Khayat.
“Public spaces are a place for people to gather,” she said. “The more you bring different people together, the more they will see the humanity in each other, the more we have a cohesive society.”
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