Development disorder

It has been 20 years since the end of the war, but we still haven’t seriously started reconstructing the country,” said Serge Yazigi, head of the Majal urban observatory, part of the urban planning institute of Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts at Balamand University. Beirut may be in the midst of a construction boom, but the lack of a coherent, concerted vision of how Lebanon’s capital should look,  function and grow leaves urban planners like Yazigi shaking their heads in dismay. Cities the world over face the challenge of rapidly urbanizing populations, particularly in developing countries, which often lack a strategy or effective policy to direct their growth down a sustainable path. In the case of Beirut, this problem has been compounded by an almost unmatched exposure to devastating conflict. Low standards of living in the city’s numerous “informal settlements,” rocketing property prices, the absence of public transport, traffic congestion, environmental