The drive to preserve Beirut’s architectural heritage is a worthy cause. Within limits, that is.
After the conclusion of the Civil War, activists mobilized and re-mobilized, vowing to protect rapidly disappearing treasures of the past. Their campaigns have had highs and lows; at present they’re supported by the minister of culture, who is halting the demolition of the buildings slated to give way to a modern replacement.
It appears to be a cut-and-dried tale; noble activists and caring government come together to do something positive. The problem? The minister represents something called the Lebanese state – a state that has failed to come up with a treatment for the issue beyond the knee-jerk reaction of “don’t destroy.”
We are promised a law by Parliament that will provide facilities and incentives to owners to maintain their old homes. But we’ve been hearing these promises for more than a decade, since the initial frenzy of postwar reconstruction wore off, and people started noticing that beautiful old buildings were disappearing. Still no comprehensive law.
To preserve our architectural heritage, we must enact several items – compensation for owners, tax breaks, and a whole range of tinkering with how we govern the way we build. Not a one-dimensional freezing of the status of a property that might be unsafe, and is probably losing money.
Owners must be induced into doing the right thing with their properties, whether that means tearing them down, keeping them, or creatively upgrading them.
Our zoning laws might, for example, require construction to include 40 percent stone in a building’s exterior. This might have made sense when such materials were plentiful and relatively inexpensive, and when fewer homes were being built.
Today, encouraging people to use so much stone means an incentive for local quarrying, and we end up destroying the mountains of which are homes are supposedly an integral part.
The houses of yesteryear are worth keeping, but it’s unfair to the building owner if his neighbor’s empty lot brings a fortune in development money, while said building owner is penalized for maintaining his older structure, just because grandfather built it there.
A modern law can propose hybrid solutions: a subsidy to maintain the exterior the way it is, and incentives to modernize the interior, and take advantage of modern economic opportunities.
We aren’t saying don’t preserve the past. But true preservation means hefty compensation, real facilities and creative initiatives; otherwise, we’re just punishing the building owners with our usual one-dimensional measures.
Jamil K. Mroue, Editor-in-Chief of THE DAILY STAR, can be reached at jamil.mroue@dailystar.com.lb