Urban Regeneration of the Port of Beirut

On August 4, 2020, a massive explosion in the Port of Beirut devastated the city, killing at least 200 people, wounding thousands, and displacing around 300,00, injuring over 7,000 others, causing US$3.8-4.6 billion in material damage. (World bank, 20 The onset of COVID-19 exacerbated an already severe financial crisis that was already affecting Lebanon. The explosion exposed the instability and inconsistent development plans of Beirut. This thesis looks at how the explosion affected Beirut's social, economic, and urban settings, with a focus on the city's destroyed port. It also looks at how the aftermath was managed and how private organizations played a crucial role in restoration efforts. In the months that followed, several plans and proposals—many with foreign and international sponsorship—were made to imagine a future for the Beirut Port and its immediate surroundings that would place more of an emphasis on development than on recovery and preservation. To provide the divided city of Beirut with a redevelopment and reconstruction geopolitical and local policies for the port of Beirut, the study is organized by the findings from the literature, which also provided a framework of the fundamentals of successful urban regeneration policies. The evaluation focuses on the long-term implementation of urban policies as well as their logic, impact, and effectiveness. Besides that, it specifically examines and compares successful examples and frameworks in other cities and similar context cities in history with urban/social disruptions, evaluates current planning initiatives, analyzes the case study of the recent World Bank report on reforming Beirut port, and conducts interviews with local stakeholders. The masterplan proposal at the end of the thesis tests the feasibility and clarifies an application of the research conclusions and gives guidelines for local actors and future vision that can improve the city of Beirut holistically.