The Greening Discourse

Cities in the Mashreq ¹ are growing fast, harboring an increasingly large share of the population of these countries. It is estimated that by 2030, 90 percent of Lebanon’s population, 80 percent of Jordan’s population and 70 percent of Iraq’s population will live in cities (UN-HABITAT 2012). Capital cities in the region shelter a growing portion of these countries’ population, for example, 45.5 percent of Lebanon’s population live in Greater Beirut. Cities in the Mashreq are also expanding spatially. The urban footprints of Beirut, Baghdad and Damascus have grown several times over from the historic, nineteenth-century cores, respectively, 375, 73 and 15 times (Figure 6.1). More significantly, the scale and pattern of urbanization has changed. “Regional agglomerations” and “urban growth corridors,” the emerging trend, ² is transforming not only the spatial and socio-economic structure of cities, but undermining the relationship of city and outlying region. Political instability is partly responsible ³ but also collapse of the welfare state, economic liberalization and partial integration into global systems. The rise of neoliberal politics is another influence, one that is widening the disparity between the rich and the poor. The spatial embodiment is a “segregated city” with exclusive, gated communities on the one hand and on the other informal, substandard squatter settlements. Excluded spatially, marginalized economically, the urban poor, rural migrants and internally displaced, appropriate open landscapes at the edge of the city and aggravate the environmental challenges. ⁴ Additionally, destruction of open landscape in the urban periphery diminishes opportunities for the encounter with nature at a time when urban population densities are increasing and the quality of urban living declining. Civil uprisings of the “Arab Spring” are in part a reaction to poor living conditions in cities and prevailing social injustices.