URBANization.org
the Urbanization seminar focused on the analysis of urban change dynamics and the complex nature of cities around the world. For this, different types of streets in different cities where chosen and documented using predefined tools and templates.
Country: Lebanon
Type of Street: Touristic
TYR – Jaafariyah street:
Jaafariah Street in Tyre, surrounded by two archaeological sites and the city cemetery marks the exit of the old town towards the modern Tyre. A pedestrians street separated from the main one has also been refitted near the houses and includes a museum and a library (CLAC).
JOUNIEH – Sea Side Souk:
The Sea Side souk street in Jounieh Lebanon had always been a very popular street for the shops, old houses and the acces to the sea (almost all private acess nowadays), it is a major axis in Jounieh that helps suck the traffic of the big highway cutting through the bay.
Analysis:
Both streets are narrow, has a one way direction street, Jounieh’s municipality has made further effort concerning urban furniture, considering the importance of that street, while in Tyre you can find three kind of Lighting poles, some very old mounted on top of electric poles, some that came later with the CHUD project and finally lamps with solar panels installed less than 2 months ago (February 2018).
Both has an amazing surrounding, but it is never given importance. a wall hides the archaeological site in Tyre and in jounieh you can pass by the road unaware that the sea is less than 30m at your right.
Our goal would be to reconnect the street with it surrounding, giving a more specified space for the pedestrians and limiting the one for the cars. In the case of Tyre, the pedestrians street is disconnected from the main street, creating a very pleasant place to walk but also not very active. In Jounieh the sidewalks are next to the main street but the street is clearly more car oriented.
Proposal:
In jounieh one solution would be to create a separated walkway for pedestrians and bikes, adopting the strategy used in Tyre, but the difference is that creating this separate “lanes” in jounieh would give back their glory to the little connecting pathways between the building and would invite the people to go by the sea. (Of course n a scenario where we imagined the beach area is given back to the people instead of private resorts).
Touristic Street Lebanon–Tyr/Jounieh is a project of IaaC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia developed at Master in Advanced Architecture, MAA 01 in 2017 – 2018 of the Seminar Elective SE.3 Urbanization.org by :
Students: Francois Nour, Rim Youssef
Faculty: Vicente Guallart, Honorata Grzesikowska and Marta Mila