ABSTRACT
This chapter interrogates the practices of inhabiting and making of urban territories in Bar Elias in the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon. It argues that processes of displacement and urbanization have produced new forms of socio-spatial and housing practices across different scales. It discusses different spatial articulations of the dwelling landscape to analyse how displaced populations live in one of the most vulnerable localities in Lebanon. The ratio of refugees to deprived Lebanese in Bar Elias is at least three to one according to estimate. This chapter also highlights the process of ‘becoming urban’ to embrace the sensorium of the unfinished, the exceptional, the informal and the role of financial transactions in housing practices.
