Beirut art collective Dictaphone Group is combining activism with show-biz in a fight to preserve Lebanon’s public spaces. Their series of interactive performance pieces is inciting hipsters and historians to join up in protest of Beirut’s unbridled development plans. Tension is never far below the surface of the capital’s staunchly secular social scene. Tagged as the […]
In a Middle Eastern city with paltry green space, residents gather to object to new development that will destroy one of their few public parks. Sound familiar? Spin the globe, but this time stop at Beirut in Lebanon.
Pity the paper book. Libraries everywhere are closing due to lack of funding and tepid public support, and e-readers are luring people away from bookstores. Big-box bookstores tried, but they couldn’t replicate town libraries: vital public spaces where inter-generational interaction can freely occur between all economic strata. There are occasional glimmers of change. Last October, […]
Horsh Beirut is not the only public space that has been hijacked from the residents of Beirut. In the years since the war, most of the sandy stretches along the Mediterranean Sea have been usurped by wealthy developers, who – according to Abir Ghattas – have forgotten that Beirut’s beaches belong to everyone. These private resorts […]