And i came right here, to the physical, mental and symbolic border between east and west during the civil war, the former green line. My journey in beirut starts here. Where does one even begin to discuss the urban challenges facing the ancient city of beirut . Even though the civil war ended nearly 30 years ago, its repercussions have left permanent scars on the city. The bloody conflict that plagued lebanon from 1975 to 1990 killed some 145,000 people, severely injured more than 100 000 and displaced over a million. It essentially brought the country to its knees. The power struggles that led to the war are deeply rooted in complex and everchanging alliances. Its not simply a sectarian conflict. Regardless of the cause, citizens were held hostage as bombings and bullet fromnipers wreaked havoc across lebanon. Beirut took centre stage, acting as a dividing line between muslims and christians. Even though p and reestablish itself as a thriving capital, its difficult to say how long peace will last. Many of the people linked to the civil war are still tied to the government in one way or another. So the fight for power is far from over. But citizens are tackling their problems one day at a time, as one must in beirut, despite the precarious cracks in the pavement and in their politics. The man, the myth, the legend. How are you doing brother . Good to see you. And you. Good. Welcome to beirut yeah, thanks. So filming here, ahead of the shoot, theres a lot of permits we needed, there are sensitive topics that were not supposed to discuss, and we had to have a list of who we were going to be interviewing. And we were told not to put you on the list. Its too bad, right . They should view me as the best tour guide of the city, but you know, theyre losing this great resource by blacklisting me because they dont want to hear the true story. Habib battah is an independent journalist who has been covering lebanon for national and International Media outlets for years. He is viewed by local and outside observers as someone who digs up the truth in the midst of chaos. He now runs his own news blog, publishing reports on beirut that national Media Outlets would rather bury. Were right now in martyrs square. Were in one of the most historic parts of beirut. It was a place that was of great importance in the 1960s and the 1950s. It was a great gathering point for the city. These streets would have been packed with people. It was the real hub of the city. Today, its kind of like a highway. So when the war ended, there was this idea to rebuild the city. And the idea was we had a billionaire, prime minister, who was a big real estate developer. Oh funny that sounds familiar. And he basically took over the government of the country. He populated all of the government institutions with his staff, so the managers of his companies became the heads of government institutions for reconstruction. Their slogan was building the finest city in the middle east. So what fine meant was expensive, unaffordable and really keeping the rest of the city out. Under solidere, the former prime Ministers Development company, heritage buildings were destroyed, making way for new developments. Suddenly, politicians had Carte Blanche to do whatever they wanted. And so they did. They created a modern, glossy downtown by expropriating homes and small businesses. And what happens when politicians suddenly and miraculously become developers . Grocery stores are converted into highend restaurants, apartments are sold off to oil magnates and wealthy expats. In short, the social fabric of an important economic and cultural district of beirut was robbed of its integrity, and its livability. The country of lebanon went from wartorn country with some resources to being one of the most indebted countries in the world. Yeah. It doesnt even provide electricity, water, garbage collection, sewage treatment. Its flushed straight out to sea. Theres no treatment of that. And the reason why we cant provide basic Services Like electricity, water, etc. , is because the government has no revenue. All of the governments money basically goes to our paying for this debt of reconstruction. So people are living on scraps, literally, in this country, while these billionaires are erecting these towers of grandeur with the worlds most famous architects. And this pristine, shiny downtown with highend shops and slick architecture is anything but lifesized. Not only does it look like any other place in the world where rich developers have had their way, but pedestrians and tourists are being policed by security guards at every turn. We were indeed stopped several times while filming. In this part of town, the message is clear unless youre paying to be here, keep out. Were just kind of lingering in the heat here because were not allowed to film on this street. Ive been harrassed, ive been detained, ive been stopped many times in this city centre, and to the point where i dont really feel comfortable in this city, being a journalist and trying to document things because they really dont want that kind of thing. Yeah. When they finally let us in, it became immediately apparent why they were trying to keep us out. They dont want you to see actually that this city centre is largely empty, its largely going bankrupt. Billions were wasted here. They dont want you to look at all the empty shops. They price people out of even imagining coming to this part of downtown beirut. This part of beirut is not for the majority of the population. They dont feel at home. They dont feel welcome. Because if you have a family of five, lets say, and you come to one of these restaurants, you wont leave without spending a couple hundred dollars. Thats right. Thats half the minimum wage of the country. So things just closed overnight. I mean, look at all of these empty places. Yeah. You cant even keep track of the openings and closings. There was a starbucks here. There was also a mcdonalds up here. They have taken out the mcdonalds sign. And for a mcdonalds and a starbucks to close, i think thats a rare thing. Yeah. And that really shows you the level at which there is no business down here. There are more pigeons, really, than people on the average day here. Yeah, there are. What about the rest of the city . I think that this was the first major real estate project in the country after the civil war. And after this project got started, it influenced a lot of similar projects in other parts of the city, and again, its the same kind of concept. Its the kind of neoliberal capital. Its the idea of lets just keep pouring lots of money into the city and try to attract foreigh capital instead of actually serving the people who live here. No crosswalks. Yeah. No. Nowhere, dude. So, really not built for people. Its built for cars. Many of these new developments are being built on top of historical treasures. Refusing to stand by and watch the destruction of his history and his culture, habib took it upon himself to expose what was happening. To the public. I had always heard that so much archeology was destroyed in beirut. And ive always seen these sites being excavated with no information to the public, and i took it upon myself to start investigating this topic. And once i started to dig deeper and found out that theres actually a lot of it thats been destroyed, then i started to ask more questions and wanted to document this. So what ive started doing lately is whenever i see a construction site going up, i make it a point to try to get some images of that excavation. And so i do this work now to create a Public Record of the many excavations in beirut, so that someday we can come back and ask what happened to those ruins. We cant hold them accountable if we dont know what were holding them accountable for. Jean duval, a very famous french architect wanted to build this grandiose tower and a mall, as if we didnt have enough malls and hotel towers in this city. But when they were doing the excavation, they found really important ruins here. Were going to try and get a look. Do you want to try that . Lets do it. Its o. K, guys. Its clear. Its clear. Lets go. Lets go now before. Come. So this would have been a huge mall complex if jean duval had his way, and the investors behind him. This whole side is really, could be a wonderful site where people could come here and explore, and learn about the many Different Levels and stages of the history of this really troubled city. But as can tell, the site is closed and we have to beg for access and it looks like any minute now hes going to bounce and ask me to stop talking. Youll find these fences hiding ancient ruins all over the city centre. Had things been done correctly, with archeological digs and careful preservation, the real estate ambitions of developers would have been kept in check. But no, no, no, why save historical artefacts when you can slap up more condos and skyscrapers. Thats one of the greatest ironies here. Its that this project is called the landmark, saying that their hotel will be as important as these world wonders. Youre destroying roman ruins to make and compare yourself to rome. Its kind of ridiculous. Holding Developers Accountable for their actions isnt only about preserving history. Its a way to reveal the truth about the way the city is mishandling development. And it clearly points out that beirut doesnt only belong to them. It has stood here for thousands of years, despite war, invasion, bombings and bullets, but without citizens like habib, it will not withstand the greed of modern development and corruption. Fortunately, habib is not alone in his fight. Its a very lively activism scene that are creating collectives and initiatives whether its for making the city bikeable or actually making the city more affordable, questioning really wasteful projects, and its become a very embattled city, i would say. What they got away with down here, 20 years ago, that cant happen again today. Today, every new project is contested. There are facebook pages that start about a building thats going to be torn down. Theres a new issue, issuebased, issuefocused politics that are happening in beirut right now and its a very exciting time. From corrupt politicians controlling the Real Estate Market to a garbage crisis that crippled the city, beirut needs cleaning up. And one man is devoted to doing just that. If you came here three years ago in the summer of 2015, you would have seen trash all over the place because the trash Collection System collapsed. So we had a major landfill and the People Living around that landfill said enough is enough. You cannot bring garbage here anymore. And we had no plan b. The trash stayed in the streets for one whole year. For a year . For one whole year. Engineer Ziad Abichaker runs Cedar Environmental, a sorting, composting and recycling business that aims to reduce the volume of waste across lebanon. Unfortunately, we still landfill 90 of the trash of beirut. 90 . Yes. Where do you start tackling an issue that huge . Weve been. You know, weve been haggling with this for the last 30 years. Telling them listen. Eventually, you will run out of space. You need to implement an integrated plan where you start sorting at source. You build recycling facilities, sorting facilities. Most of our trash is food waste, so its compostable. These panels are made from plastic bags and disposable plastics. Right. And then the planting media is red soil mixed with compost, and compost came from our food waste. Yeah. If we put in a small Waste Management system, we can turn the city green. Ziads work is changing the way beirut treats and manages its trash. Check it out. With a zerowaste objective, his company is creating all sorts of ideas to transform trash into something useful. Among the most successful projects are these ecoboards. Made out of recycled plastic bags, they can be used for planting flowers and even food. We have the equivalent of 10,000 supermarket bags giving you parsley. Yeah. And now, theyre going to start giving you lettuce. Thanks in part to ziads work, beirut was able to turn things around at a remarkably fast pace since the 2015 crisis. And that is inspiring. The level of environmental awareness has skyrocketed right after the garbage crisis because people saw that, you know, this is whats been going on with our garbage for the last 20 years, and now all of a sudden, we have it in the streets. Im going to pick that up. Youre always. Youve got this radar, dont you . So, then. Were here. We decided that were going to put our ecoboards to another use. So these are the boards. This is the cover. And we got the private sector also to chip in and assume responsibility for the waste that they generate by selling. Thats the beer company sponsoring this one. Thats the National Beer company, exactly. And this is our National Mineral company. And theres bank audi down there. Yeah. This is a bank. No, no, no im just kidding. O. K. Here, its full. Put it from the side. On the side. There you go. We used to pick them up once a month. Yeah. Then, it got to three weeks. Every three weeks. Now, were down at every two weeks, and as you see, i think very soon, its going to become once every 10 days. Right. How many of these stations are there around the city . 14 now. 14. Yes. We have 14 stations where people can bring in their recyclables. Let me be clear the city has done nothing to improve Waste Management. Thats just the type of attitude that keeps cities stagnant. Luckily, citizens here dont tend to see eyetoeye with their government on, well, just about every issue facing their city. Best view from a recycling facility ive ever seen. So ziad and his company Cedar Environmental found their own way to finance their activities corporate sponsorship, sale of converted material, and contracts with smaller municipalities surrounding beirut. They now run 11 recycling facilities in lebanon. Imagine what theyd achieve if the city and the country actually got involved. This is a zerowaste facility. We dont throw away anything. We dont burn anything, and we keep track of everything that comes in and everything that goes out. Everything. On an average year, we do about 450 tons per month. Wow. O. K. Of everything that comes in. And nothing is thrown away. Keep that in mind. Yeah. So whats wrong with the city of beirut . Why are they not jumping onto this very obvious recycling train . Its way too many parameters. One of them, yes, i will not mince my words. One of them is political profiteering. O. K. Landfill gives you land, supposedly, where you can build on. Its more lucrative than putting back recyclables into the recycling industries. So, its an amazing project. Respect that you built all this up. Thank you. But, i mean, one man doing all of this, and you have the whole country of lebanon. How do you take it to the next level . Were just showing the way, so people know that first of all, the Waste Management file is not hopeless, that we can solve it if we have the right perspective, and of course, one man cannot solve the whole problem. Its going to take at least 40 to 50 initiatives doing two or three facilities like this for the whole country to be safe from the Waste Management crisis again. Fixing beiruts garbage problem is a top priority, but lets not forget about that other, less visible but nonetheless massive, urban environmental issue air pollution. Cars dominate beirut, and traffic has created a transportation crisis that is only getting worse due to bad roads, an increasing number of cars, and a virtually nonexistent Public Transportation system. The solution, as we should all know by now, is quite simple more bikes. The power of cycling on a social level, on an environmental level, on an economic level is enormous, and its trying to get people to start seeing the bicycle as a means of transportation, as a means of creating a sustainable city and were starting really from scratch, because its really hard to move towards getting people to see the bike as something they can use in their daily lives and as something that can contribute to the city positively. The young men and women here are part of chain effect, an organisation that promotes cycling as a sustainable and convenient mode of transport. Through street art, public interventions and community projects, these guys have launched a citywide conversation about transforming urban mobility. The power of murals is that youre really speaking to the city. Youre talking to people who are driving, who are in the process of moving around about mobility. And its so much more powerful to do that in the streets, and youre also democratizing access because youre reaching the poor, the rich, the immigrant and the nonimmigrant, everyone at the same time, by choosing the locations in the city that youre painting on. Its open access. You see, we get a lot of responses from different people. Some people do change their lifestyles after they either see us painting or they participate in an event that we organize, or if they hear us do a talk somewhere, they tell us o. K. You really changed the way i think. Im going to try and go to work by bike and commute by bike. And some other people have opposite reactions. Sometimes, they would tell us are you trying to kill me . Look at how crazy people are here, how they drive, its impossible. Look at how many potholes we have, how many. Whatever. They keep looking at the negative side and we keep telling them guys, beirut is a tiny city. Its really tiny. The streets are narrow. Its always congested. I mean, speed is the main reason why people have scary accidents. Here, its impossible to happen because peoples cars cannot go fast. Yeah. Some people might argue that it just isnt possible to navigate a bike through beiruts traffic, that its unsafe because of the potholes. But ive seen traffic, and weve all navigated around potholes, so i would say that some people are just plain wrong. And lazy. Of course, when theres a lack of infrastructure, theres a higher risk of road crashes. But wait more cyclists would mean fewer vehicles on the road. And then citizens could push for protected bike lanes. Rome wasnt built in a day, and beirut wont be rebuilt overnight. But you have to start somewhere. Is this it . This is it. Wow. O. K. Its going to be a mural on the entire building . Its going to be. We have like a huge biker poster thats going right in the middle over there. How many murals have you done . Weve done 31. 31 yeah. Wow. How do you measure the success of a mural like this, and a message . Well, to tell you the truth, its difficult to measure anything here in lebanon, because theres no actual statistic being done on anything. The only success that i see is actually when we meet people in random places and they ask me what i do, and i tell them im part of the chain effect and we do these murals around beirut. And they say yeah i saw them. The ones about bicycles. So this is the only way i know that people actually saw it, but i dont know how many changed their lifestyle because of it, but we do along the years that people are cycling more. I see it on a daily basis. Chain effect spreads the gospel on cycling through communityoriented events like bike to work day, and by petitioning the government to make changes to the infrastructure. So were going to write [speaks arabic] which means beirut is more beautiful by bike. And although its a message weve already written before, we havent done one here yet and its always nice to do it in new areas of beirut, so new citizens can see it and feel like its something they are a part of. Where do you go from here . How do you scale up . Do you start getting more seriously into hardcore lobbying the government and the municipality . Where do you go from here . Weve already started lobbying in a way. I think thats the second step. We need to keep doing awareness on the street because we need to get people. Its a twoway thing lobbying but also getting people to be interested in cycling and understand that its doable in a city like beirut. We have to, i think, work on both streams and tandem. Dont get me wrong, tackling cycling in beirut is a challenge. But as i try to get across the city on foot, i realize that before its citizens can learn to ride bikes, they may need help on an even more fundamental, pedestrian level. It is absolutely bizarre to walk around this city. Just the structure of it. Sidewalks are there, then they disappear, super tall curbs and then none at all. This is an Obstacle Course for somebody like me, somebody whos ablebodied, but for the mobilitychallenged, for the elderly, this is an extreme sport. Hi hey hi mikael. How are you doing . How are you . Good. Good to see you. You too. Welcome to jeanne darc street. Thank you. Its a street that we chose, at the American University, to provide a modern, pedestrianfriendly street in the city. As a way to give back to the community, Mona El Hallak and her team at the American University of beirut developed a project called neighborhood initiative. Together, they transformed the street just outside the campus walls by creating wider sidewalks, adding benches and improving green spaces for public enjoyment. But thats not all mona does, not even close. Born and raised in beirut, mona was only seven when the civil war broke out. Through education, activism and design, she now works relentlessly to improve her beloved city. O. K. So architect, urban activist, urban design initiator, and now youre sort of muscling your way into politics. Whats up with that . I mean, ive been, all my life, trying to preserve heritage buildings, to preserve our natural coast, to look into Housing Alternatives for affordable housing, work on Waste Management, so by default, im doing what the politicians should do, right . Mona is part of a unique political collective called beirut madinati, which recently ran for office on the municipal level. Comprised from a diverse range of citizens from artists to teachers, the collective is a local Movement Born out of lebanons Waste Management crisis. Beirut madinatis main goal make beirut a more liveable city. Beirut madinati literally translates to beirut, my city. My city. My city. All right. And the program had the points that everybody wants housing, green spaces, public spaces, access to jobs, Waste Management, proper governments. All the normal stuff. Normal stuff, but nobody has addressed them at the municipality at all. But finding a way into the government in lebanon isnt just a matter of climbing the political ladder. From the municipal to the national level, every party is divided along religious lines. That, however, is not the case with beirut madinati. So, its also the first nonsectarianbased electoral campaign. Thats what beirut madinati was pioneering in. We found the right people and we just wrote our list. Everybody thought that we wouldnt get anywhere. We got 33 of the votes. Wow. And that was huge. But of course, we didnt get into the council, because its a majoritarian law. You either get everything or you dont. But at the same time, we asserted that change is possible. Yes, if you go and vote, you have a voice, you can voice your opinion in this city, because the main problem in beirut is that people dont believe they can change anything anymore. Creating a new Political Movement is crucial, but mona also believes that the way to give the city a Brighter Future is to learn from the past. Although beirut has lived through a brutal civil war, there is no memorial. And the conversation about what has happened has been stifled. Until mona began speaking up about it. For the last 20 years, she has headed a campaign to save one of the few remaining heritage buildings from demolition and convert it into a civil war museum. This is beirut, the barricade building that stood as a fighting position from east beirut to west beirut on the green line. Yeah. There are bullet holes. Look at that. Every bullet hole has been fired between 1975 and 1990, from one part of the city to the other, trying to prohibit the connection between the east and west of the city. Thats the only public building in lebanon that has preserved the traces of the war that, until today, has no history book written about it. You know that we dont teach the history of the civil war in our schools. Really . Its already been 29 years since the end of the civil war. The children. My boy doesnt know anything from the history books. And you know, people want to talk, but we never gave them the chance. The city never asked for a reconciliation. While mona was successful in saving the building from being destroyed, the campaign to create a Permanent Museum for the public is ongoing. And the battle isnt won until beirutis have a space in which to commemorate and confront their past. This is what we call the centre hole, triplearch centre hole, traditional lebanese house. This was really one of those bourgeois highlife buildings in beirut. Its unlike any building. So the snipers built these snipers nests. Of course. O. K. Im going to walk you into the first sniper position. Inside this area, this was the safest room in this building during the war. So when it was really, really, really heated up, they came here. Theres one sniper, the second and the third. So you can see how he saw the city. Oh yeah. You can see the inaudible . Yeah . Now, you can kill someone. The minute i entered here in 1994, i saw this tile and the memories of the war came back like this to my mind because this was the tile of the bathroom where we hid throughout the war, and the bathroom was the place where you hid, the interior ones, because it didnt have windows. Yeah. So sometimes, we were 30 people in a bathroom as big as this one. Wow