Bourj Hammoud Project 2021–2031: Together for a Better Present and Future
A Vision Matching the Territory’s Challenges
The Municipality of Bourj Hammoud, Lebanon, is driving a sustainable urban renewal strategy that rises to the multiple challenges of its territory. It is shaping the prospects for a better future for its residents by initiating the dynamics and levers for transforming the area. First, imagine and then begin to build—the city of tomorrow: towards an eco-city, a city for all, a productive city.
Until the early 20th century, the site of Bourj Hammoud primarily consisted of agricultural and marshy areas, dotted with sporadic human settlements. After 1928, Armenian refugees who had survived Ottoman persecution began settling in the region, establishing compact, grid-like neighbourhoods. Each of these was originally populated by people from the same village, from which the neighbourhood derived its name.
After 1945, some of the population returned to Armenia, while new immigrants—drawn by the economic opportunities of Lebanon’s capital—arrived from distant rural areas. Bourj Hammoud began to attract populations from the south, primarily Shiites and Palestinians, who settled mainly in the south-eastern part of the city (Nabaa). In the 1960s, it saw an influx of Armenians from Syria, particularly from Aleppo, who established numerous small businesses.
Between 1975 and 1995, the city experienced significant demographic shifts due to ongoing rural exodus and the various Lebanese conflicts—civil and regional—of the period. This led to the first major waves of displaced populations from war zones (Armenians, Christians, and Shiites). The resulting population boom transformed Bourj Hammoud, a century after its founding, into one of the most densely populated residential areas of Greater Beirut. The population of this thriving commercial, industrial, and artisan hub was then estimated at (…) inhabitants.
Over the following three decades, two new Lebanese-Israeli conflicts—in 2006 and since 2023—as well as the Syrian war since 2011, triggered further mass displacements, with approximately (…) people arriving in the past year alone. These movements have placed considerable strain on living conditions, future prospects, resources, and the urban environment of Bourj Hammoud.
It is interesting to consider Bourj Hammoud in the context of its dual urban and metropolitan relationship, which grants it a unique, both positive and negative role.
On the eastern flank of Beirut, Bourj Hammoud extends the Lebanese capital’s port line and its heavily polluted waterfront, where industrial zones, a fishing port, and a vast open-air landfill succeed one another. The landfill is a stark example of the role long imposed on Bourj Hammoud by national and metropolitan authorities: as a receptacle for harmful infrastructure and facilities pushed to the outskirts of the capital.
One feature holds particular significance: the surface highway system. On one hand, it undeniably positions Bourj Hammoud as a metropolitan crossroads, a powerful logistical and economic hub, particularly with its long-standing, highly developed productive, industrial, and artisan sectors. On the other hand, this connectivity comes at the expense of a city centre fragmented by traffic arteries, including links to the southern, northern, and eastern suburbs of the capital, as well as the international Beirut-Damascus axis through the Bekaa Plain.
The city comprises nine neighbourhoods: Shatiq-al-Bahri (coastal area), Dora, Haret-Sader, Marashe, Nor Adana, Nor-Sis, Mar-Doumit, Nabaa, and Ghilane.
A Collaborative and Participatory Approach to the Project
International Cooperation with a Dual Dimension
Initially launched as part of a France-Lebanon decentralised cooperation programme led by the MEAE, the strategic development project for Bourj Hammoud was originally conceived within this single framework.
Under this initiative, the Municipality of Bourj Hammoud was to benefit from technical support provided by the AVITEM-led group, as well as from the feedback and experiences of the French local authorities that are members of the association. However, the open and participatory project dynamic developed from the outset could hardly ignore the various international cooperation and assistance initiatives already underway in the area.
Conversely, key external actors such as UN-Habitat and UNOPS did not hesitate to express their interest in the approach taken by the municipality, supported by AVITEM. This approach offered new frameworks for coherence and planning that aligned with their own programmes. Formally, this partnership convergence was naturally achieved through a Steering Committee, which facilitated information sharing among the various project stakeholders, collaborative adjustments to certain strategic visions, and other operational project perspectives.
Planning in Times of Crisis
Over the past half-century, periods of peace and prosperity in Lebanon have unfortunately been rare. What dominates the country’s recent history, reflected particularly in Bourj Hammoud, its population, and its municipalities, are crises. Political, social, and sectarian crises; economic and ecological crises; local and international crises, all have had considerable and lasting impacts on the population, the city, and public authorities. And then there are the wars, with their trail of fear, physical and psychological harm, the disintegration of families and society, and the resulting exacerbation of other crises, new population displacements, and refugee movements.
The “Bourj Hammoud 2021–2031: Together for a Better Present and Future” project, whose very title sounds like a challenge in these times, was deliberately launched despite the acute economic and financial crisis. It has since been overtaken by regional conflict and the Syrian crisis.
The initial initiative might have seemed paradoxical from an external perspective. However, it was not, for two reasons. First, from the municipality’s political standpoint, there came a point when it was necessary to attempt to take control of the city’s trajectory and evolution. Second, the philosophy of the strategic project was simultaneously focused on providing concrete solutions to current issues, those that directly affect the population, while also attempting to build a more sustainable future. This forward-looking perspective is harder to grasp when anxiety about the next day dominates.
The outbreak of a new conflict took Bourj Hammoud by surprise and hit it hard, perhaps because the scars of previous conflicts had not truly faded. And yet, the municipality chose to continue developing the strategic project to its conclusion and to prepare its operational implementations, as far as materially possible, based on the previously established principle. As long as the project connects its responses to both the present and the future, it is legitimate to build and implement it for the benefit of the population and their future.
Two Phases in the Development of the Strategic Project: L’Atelier and La Fabrique
The development of the “Bourj Hammoud 2021–2031: Together for a Better Present and Future” project was initially structured into two phases: L’Atelier (2021–2023) and La Fabrique (2024–2025), the latter still ongoing. The COVID-19 health crisis and recent regional conflicts have certainly impacted its progress, but the project has never been fully interrupted thanks to the determined commitment of all stakeholders.
L’Atelier and Priority Commitments
L’Atelier focused on establishing a solid foundation for the project through a shared diagnosis with local stakeholders, particularly economic actors, followed by the collective definition of the fundamental orientations for the future urban strategy. The partnership dynamic between the Municipality of Bourj Hammoud, the international cooperation technical group led by AVITEM, and the local development stakeholders was built through continuous bilateral exchanges between the first two parties, as well as significant opportunities for civil society engagement, such as consultative workshops under the “Open Forum” and thematic webinars.
Quite rapidly, and by consensus, three key areas of concern emerged:
- The primacy of an ecological transition that offers future solutions rather than generating constraints;
- The imperative of social cohesion and a general improvement in living conditions through enhanced integration and social diversity;
- The desire to revitalise the productive and circular economy, particularly in the artisan sector.
These three political anchors of the strategic reflection were formalised in an initial document, the Preliminary Draft, and synthesised in a tripartite formula: an eco-city, a city for all, a productive city.
Four Priority Commitments
Aware of the ambitious scope of this action framework, but without denying its necessity, the stakeholders immediately worked to translate each of its components into four priority commitments and their operational implementations.
All of these reflect the intrinsic concern of Bourj Hammoud’s strategic project to avoid separating responses to immediate needs from structured long-term developments:
- Rehabilitation of the Old Centre
The revitalisation of the city centre focuses on three interconnected areas: reinvesting in and enhancing public spaces within an exceptionally dense urban fabric, developing alternative models of affordable housing, and revitalising the commercial and artisan sectors. For the latter, discussions are underway on the productive use of public spaces, and an operational project for a House of Arts and Crafts of Greater Beirut has been launched. - Production of Renewable Energy
The energy crisis plaguing Lebanon has direct repercussions on daily life: frequent electricity shortages, pollution from fossil fuel generators in the informal sector, etc. The goal is to reorient the local economic sector towards renewable energy production and ensure an ecological and economic transition while integrating the constraints of the national framework. - Sustainable Waste Management
Faced with a critical urban and environmental situation regarding household and industrial waste management, the aim is to ambitiously prioritise an ecological approach through localised systems for collection, treatment, and recycling within a circular economy. - Water Management and Renaturation
In an urban context as dense, artificial, and polluted as Bourj Hammoud, the goal is to comprehensively rethink rainwater management through renaturation, absorption, and filtration, while simultaneously combating the urban heat island effect.
La Fabrique: Strategic Plan and Operational Implementations
La Fabrique is a phase dedicated to the formalisation, political validation, and deepening of the strategic and priority orientations defined in the Preliminary Draft. It is characterised by:
- The organisation of an International Urban Planners’ Consultation, where the winning team—the (APM) Architecture & Associates agency, in partnership with Lebanese designers Serge Yaziki and Salim Abou Risk—will be tasked with spatialising the final Strategic Project and defining the programmed priority projects.
- The production of several strategic and operational documents, including: Strategic Urban Renewal Plan, Pre-Operational Programme, Charter of Public Spaces, Open Data Technical Platform…
Strategic Plan
The Strategic Plan materialises all the fundamental components of the city, ensuring their coherence and physical integration within the municipal territory and at the metropolitan scale. It also outlines the main stages of transformation over the next decade.
The Strategic Plan will be particularly concretised in the Pre-Operational Programme, a programme of actions specifying the short-term implementation modalities of the first operational projects (governance, financing, programming, timeline). It will also solidify the four priority orientations: the rehabilitation of the old centre; waste management; water management and renaturation; and renewable energy production.
Charter of Public Spaces
Produced with the support of local universities, the Charter aims to establish frameworks for the evolution of Bourj Hammoud’s public spaces (roads, squares, promenades, parking areas, etc.). It seeks to rethink their uses, comfort, and safety from the perspective of ecological transition (combating climate change, water and waste management, renaturation, etc.).
Open Data Technical Platform
The creation of the Open Data Technical Platform for the Municipality of Bourj Hammoud addresses the crucial need to base strategic reflections and operational processes on a comprehensive and up-to-date statistical and cartographic knowledge base of the city’s urban realities. Beyond the project phases, the geolocated computer database will facilitate the coordination of projects and interventions by the city’s technical services, as well as all urban planning professionals and organisations.
The International Urban Planners’ Consultation
Launched in April 2023 by AVITEM, the International Urban Planners’ Consultation was aimed at multidisciplinary teams (urban planners, architects, landscape architects, ecologists, and hydrologists). Its primary objective was to give tangible form—through a set of deliverables—to the Strategic Plan, by articulating and spatialising its orientations, particularly the priority ones, and defining various operational project implementations.
The (APM) Architecture & Associates agency, leading a Franco-Lebanese multidisciplinary team, was selected following deliberations by a jury composed of elected officials and technical experts from several member authorities of AVITEM.
Starting in July 2024, (APM) Architecture & Associates provided a number of complementary analyses to those already developed locally, along with methodological proposals. Their initial reflections were developed across various territorial and urban scales, from the broadest metropolitan level to the most restricted, such as a selection of demonstration blocks (basic building blocks of the urban structure). It is at these different scales that the thematic orientations of the project, particularly the four priority orientations, are structured, and where their interactions and cross-cutting interpretations are organised.
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