Community‐driven neighborhood planning on municipality owned parcels and residual spaces within Municipal Beirut.

As cities struggle to adapt to the changes in society, culture, technology and the economy, new types of urbanism intriguingly manifest themselves as necessary tools for its re-naturalization. Today’s understanding of re-naturalization has shifted from the traditional focus on squares, parks and pavements to a broader concept that recognizes the value of less formal leftover spaces and the daily interactions that occur in them. It is through this manifestation and the emergence of a more dynamic, flexible or adaptive urbanism, that the city could become more responsive to new needs, demands and the preferences of its users. Within the context of a growing urbanization on a territory that can no longer accommodate such growth, and the lack in open and public spaces to respond to users’ needs, municipal Beirut finds within its realm an urban resource that can no longer be ignored. This work is an inquiry into the role of publicly owned parcels and leftover space and more specifically municipality owned parcels, regarding their values and potentialities for the re-naturalization of the city, based on their contribution to the public realm.
This studio builds on a review of approaches towards the concept of appropriation of urban space and leftover spaces, focusing partly on temporary use as a specific mode of using spaces. This research examines the specificities of municipality owned parcels and leftover spaces and the role they could play in relation to urban strategies for Municipal Beirut. Currently, the Municipality of Beirut owns 1154 parcels within Municipal Beirut, for a total of 1,215,100 m2, the smallest parcels being 1 m2 and the largest one being 378,595 m2 (Horsch Beirut). This urban resource is currently either vacant, residual or illegally built with uses ranging from sidewalks, right of ways, parking spaces, non-constructible parcels, gardens, and other (data provided by Municipality of Beirut-2022). The Municipality puts those parcels in two distinct categories: under 100 m2 and above 100 m2.
Building on work initiated by the IESR (Institute for Environmental Studies and Research) as well as Aouad’s research, the planning regulations would require adjustments to the requirements and implications of a situation where programs assigned to these parcels can contribute to better urban life. Through the collection and the analysis of data on publicly owned parcels in all the study districts of Beirut Municipality, recommendations for urban strategies, urban operations, tools and temporary use programs will be developed. 
Moreover, cities that are major contributors to “Greenhouse Gas” emissions should embrace a low-carbon economy and should seek to mitigate and adapt to climate change. To make Beirut less fragile, it should be a “resilient city” and to achieve this main objective we should start from the small streets of Beirut (Quartier), aiming to cover the whole city