Beyrouth360.– First I would like to have a quick bio about you, I prefer to have it from you in case you feel like highlighting something in particular about your background/path.
Peter Harling.– I’ve known Beirut since 1998. I first visited the city while based in Baghdad: I came overland, through Amman and Damascus, which was quite the journey at the time. I was blown away by the views of Beirut as you wind your way down from Mount Lebanon, through Aley. I settled here in 2005, and lived through the war the following year, before work took me to other places. In 2014, I moved back to Beirut and became an “entrepreneur”, in the sense of founding and running a local organization: the research center “Synaps”. That experience enriched my understanding of the city tremendously, by rooting me within both its absurd bureaucracy and its ever-enterprising people.
Beyrouth360.– How does Beirut compare with other mediterranean cities?
Peter Harling.– Beirut is built on the Mediterranean and yet, bizarrely, it is not Mediterranean in character. Unless you head out of the city or go right onto the corniche, it’s quite rare to see or feel the sea. There isn’t much wind, there are no gulls, and the port isn’t a center: It’s an industrial no-go-zone.
Unlike other Mediterranean cities, Beirut’s ancient history is mostly invisible: Its sprawling Roman past is almost entirely built over. Its scenic crusader castle, which overlooked the port until the late 19th century, is now an overgrown ruin, hidden from sight in between buildings. Part of this has to do with real-estate speculation. But such speculation is made possible by the fact that most Lebanese aren’t very interested in such aspects of their patrimony. For instance, few would care to know that Lebanon was an integral part of the Fertile Crescent or that it had deep ties with ancient Egypt. People focus instead on a Phoenician ancestry, but more as an idea than as a tangible heritage: Beirut’s Phoenician layer has been bulldozed like much else.
To detach from the Arab world
In theory, this Phoenician ascendance should give Lebanon a very Mediterranean outlook, given the extraordinarily rich history that it shares with a Phoenician Maghreb, Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain. In practice, however, Lebanese invoke this part of their lineage not to deepen their belonging to a broader Mediterranean space, but simply to detach themselves from the rest of the Arab world, to state a distinct and unique identity.
For the most part, Beirut likes to style itself as a global emporium, where the best of anything available anywhere in the world is for sale. People of means aspire to an architecture and a style of life that is inspired by their experience in the Gulf. It manifests through vast apartments within glass towers that function like expat compounds, an archipelago of entertainment hubs that center on consumerism rather than culture, and huge cars to connect the dots. There are many other facets to Beirut, but these are harder to see, eclipsed as they are by this imported identity.
Even the beautiful trees that line Beirut’s streets are symptomatic of a globalized urban fabric: the blue jacarandas from South America, the tentacular Asian ficuses, the red bursts of the African flamboyant, the eccentric Australian bottle trees, the Indian lilac, and so forth. Only if you pay attention, will you find a wealth of more indigenous species: Mediterranean cypresses inside the cemeteries, carobs within Horsh Beirut, and Levantine pines around the racecourse. Plants tell us the story of a city whose more authentic, intimate sides are always the most difficult to reach.
Beyrouth360.– Beirut and the concept of happiness. Sad fact: Lebanon is one of the most unhappy countries in the world, ranked 145 out of 147 countries in the new World Happiness Report for 2025, released on March 21. What makes this country and its capital one of the most sad places to live in the world ?
Peter Harling.– Happiness is elusive enough to make a worldwide ranking a dubious undertaking. That said, even anecdotal observations suggest a lot of sadness in Beirut in recent years. Since 2019, the city has weathered a seemingly endless string of crises, big and small: financial collapse, a disappointing popular uprising, covid, the devastating port explosion, the fizzling out of the electricity grid, heavy fighting on the streets, all the way to the extension of the Gaza war to Lebanon. Throughout, residents faced other, less visible problems, such as medication shortages and frequent school closures. Challenges piled up beyond most people’s capacity to cope. As a result, the nonchalance that traditionally offsets Lebanon’s struggles was less and less in store. Where it did manifest, it felt forced, almost morbid.
I think it is a mistake, however, to blame the crisis and stop at that. Lebanon has long been a place where pleasure tends to be a performance, a public statement. It is often costly, competitive, codified, constrained. At times, Lebanese seem to party so hard as to leave little space for simple joy.
It would be another mistake to judge, of course. Life in Beirut can be punishing. Small, obvious things require way more effort than they should. Water, electricity, and other basic services are anything but a given. Driving around is an obstacle course, just as walking is. Because everyone is constantly under pressure, too many casual interactions fall somewhere in between mildly unpleasant and bruising. So pleasure is something you fight for, protect, assert, snatch from the jaws of the city. Beirut is full of energy, but in truth much of that energy is aggressive.
Once I set out to find local artwork to perk up the office, precisely because the atmosphere around us was so tense. I wanted something both Lebanese and uplifting. I found many beautiful things, but thematically everything was either grim, nostalgic, cliche, or a mix of all the above! In the end, I had to give up. This quest says something about the spleen that permeates the city, so much so that residents often choose not to see it.
“Urbanism is extremely political”
Beyrouth360.– Urbanism in Beirut. In the absence of urbanism may be getting in the way of this feeling of belonging, and maybe of citizenship ?
Peter Harling.– Urbanism is extremely political: It is the expression of a collective project. When authorities organize a city, they define not just where people will live and work, but how they will interact. In Beirut, there are traces of three centralized visions that shaped the city: late-Ottoman modernism, French imperialism, and a short-lived period of state building post-independence. With the civil war, informality took over. Starting in the 1990s, this rule of “informality” spread to the private sector, which builds with no concern for whether a unit fits into a neighborhood, meets social needs, or overloads the local water and electricity grids. More recently, civil society has jumped in too, through laudable local initiatives that nonetheless contribute to this spontaneous, bottom-up, chaotic development of the city.
This state of affairs is a very political statement in its own right: Increasingly, Beirut makes clear that laws will not be enforced, that public space will disappear, that everyone must ultimately fend for themselves. The city seen from above is almost a caricature: Every single household has its own watertank, which also means that each and every household will truck in water as and when it needs it. This is the most inefficient and costly solution possible, and it also comes with risks, in terms of contamination, absent any quality control. Yet, since the civil war, individual fixes are the rule, in a society where almost everything has been devolved to the household level.
The recent collapse of Lebanon’s economy has translated into a crisis of this hyper decentralized model. Before 2019, a heavily subsidized national currency artificially boosted the purchasing power of Lebanese, enabling them to cover the additional costs implied by the lack of public services. They could buy electricity from the local generator, use only cars for transportation, resort to domestic workers for nursing, enroll their children in private schools, and do all this almost thoughtlessly, as if it was the natural state of affairs. Today, however, people pay the true price of individualism, which is exorbitant.
Part of the problem comes from the fact that a large number of residents of Beirut feel little connection to the city. Many aren’t registered to vote there, for example. They live in the city because it concentrates so many of the country’s schools, jobs, and administrative services. But they constantly commute to residential compounds or family homes in “the village”, which is where they feel they belong. Much of the business and political class behaves likewise: They entertain a pied-a-terre in the capital but the stakes are elsewhere. This is very unusual, because capitals typically produce elites from within. In Lebanon, such encroachment contributes to a parasitic, predatory mindset that ultimately hurts everyone.
Each neighborhood has a unique character
Beyrouth360.– According to you, what does it take to feel that we belong to Beirut? Isn’t this city too aggressive and unfriendly in reality ? Is there any safe place for its citizens ? Beyond the glitz, what are the more homely sides of Beirut ?
Peter Harling.–Although Beirut as a city lacks cohesion and a clear identity, its neighborhoods are the opposite. Each enjoys a distinctive architecture, social fabric, and sense of self. It isn’t always obvious from just driving or walking through: Many areas have a lookalike mix of recent residential developments and run-down remnants from before the civil war. But the more time you spend in a place, the more you notice how much history, politics, class, and sect give each of them a unique character, which long-time inhabitants are fully aware of and take pride in. People may not be “from Beirut” but many are “from Khandaq”, or Jeitawi, Qoreitem, and Chiyah.
Indeed, if Beirut can feel impersonal, that changes on the neighborhood level. For better or worse, a lot of people know each other in any given area. These interactions produce their share of friction, of course, but also extremely inspiring forms of solidarity, which tend to be invisible. For instance, destitute old people are collectively cared for by neighbors, who check in on them, provide food daily, even fundraise for medication if need be. Social relations are so dense that the very concept of homelessness in Beirut is almost unthinkable: There are some kids on the streets and much distress and poverty indoors, yet no one is completely isolated.
The real “landmarks” are similarly intimate and lowkey. Beirut isn’t defined by its glittering towers and state monuments, but by the bouza or manouche joint, the trusted shop for vegetables or meat, the guy on call nearby to fix this or that. Each person has their own mental map of a city that works for them, from which they blot out as many sources of frustration and aggression as possible. This is a Beirut “made safe” by daily routines, familiar itineraries, preferred suppliers, and old friendly faces.
Such maps are naturally restrictive, which is a pity because Beirut happens to be a rare capital city on a very human scale. It is surprisingly safe. In size, it is entirely walkable, although few people would make the most of that. A curious resident can, in principle, get to know and enjoy every little part of it.
Beyrouth360.– Do you see Beirut in the future as a cultural/social hub and is it possible to dream about a neutral regional capital that can export know-how and culture instead of making war headlines in the media?
Peter Harling.– Beirut has enormous potential. Culturally, there is no shortage of talent, topics, and institutions even. However, too many people conveniently like to believe that the main obstacle to fulfilling Lebanon’s calling is regional instability. Rather, Beirut suffers from serious, self-inflicted handicaps, which are all the more harmful that they go undiscussed.
The first, to put it brutally, is pretension. Beirut’s claim to civilization, sophistication, creativity, genius even, often gets in the way of expressing such traits. Accordingly, it glorifies the past at least as much as it neglects it. It takes such pride in its cuisine that it makes no effort to update it. Lebanese love the notion that they “invented the alphabet”, yet remarkably few still read books. Little is left of the country’s handicrafts, and much of that is either mediocre or spectacularly overpriced, or both. The hospitality sector has weak services by international standards, despite high prices. Some truly wonderful museums open only at hours that suit their employees. Excellent cultural institutions display sporadic programming, which itself exists only thanks to foreign funding.
In short, cultural excellence doesn’t sit well with the country’s current economic model, which is based on instant consumption, an absentee state, and a highly opportunistic private sector. Ultimately, bringing Beirut’s potential to bear in this field will imply investments, a long-term vision, and rekindling the public’s interest for more than pretenses. Private philanthropy may play a role, but public policy will be key.
Oligarchies are fostered
Another major problem resides in Lebanon’s overall tendency to foster oligarchies. This is true in most corners of the economy, where big players divvy up resources between them to avoid genuine competition. But this monopolistic, rent-seeking reflex extends to the cultural and intellectual landscapes too. Each sector–say tango, or jazz, or publishing–tends to be dominated by one or two figures only. Even academics stay clear of each other’s topics, preventing the formation of a field of study. This ends up being impoverishing to all. There are plenty of brilliant people in Beirut, but they would gain from operating in a more competitive market.
Beyrouth360.–What makes Beirut beautiful, despite its scars old and new?
Peter Harling.– Beirut is full of magnificent vistas, though not in conventional terms. To me, the beauty of Beirut is precisely in how it juxtaposes things that don’t theoretically belong together: an old house, surmounted by a potholed building, overlooked by a glittering tower, with a glimpse of a parched or snowy mountain in the backdrop. This ever-intriguing medley is perhaps what makes Beirut so alluring when landing at the airport, which is itself almost impossibly wedged within the city, or during the spectacular drive down from Mount Lebanon. Everything is so agglutinated, in ways one can only want to parse.
My take would be very different from most residents, however. For many of these, Beirut is implicitly shaped by three models of success. The first is the city’s elites of the late 19th century, who lived a lavish life of commuting between their villas in the capital, their summer abodes in the mountains, and stylish vacations abroad. Today, the middle class itself stakes a claim to such a lifestyle, starting with domestics at home. The second is the boom economy of the 1950s, mostly based on oil from the Gulf, which at the time transited to Western markets via Tripoli and Zahrani. This is the era where Lebanon’s car culture, energy binging, and rent mentality were all forged. And the third is expatriate life in the Gulf itself, which was repatriated by returning Lebanese after the civil war.
Beirut is “full of colors”
“My Beirut” is pretty much everything else. I like how fancy areas will go empty whenever there is a day off, making the city and its streets far more livable than during work days. I like the popular neighborhoods that have a secluded, village-like feel. I like how janitors grow fertile gardens in pots, on parking lots, or in between buildings. I like the many wild plants of Beirut: the fig trees that fill implausible gaps, the ricin that populates abandoned plots, the caper bushes that hang from cracks in old walls and bloom with the most beautiful flowers ever. I like how even the city’s natural underground can be felt on the surface: Most of Beirut originally was either a dune or a swamp, which still manifests in its pine trees, on one side, and its reeds, on the other. In between, there are patches of that rich ochre soil that is so typical of Lebanon’s farmland.
Beirut to me is a textured city. Abrasive, certainly, but also full of sound and light. It’s full of colors too, if only thanks to a profusion of bougainvillea that bring in year-round dashes of purple, red, pink, orange, yellow. Yellow is perhaps the color that defines Beirut to my eyes. It lives in that elegant limestone which was brought down from Mansourieh to build the city’s core: the American and Saint-Joseph universities, the municipality, the national museum, and so forth. That vibrant material made the city’s landmarks but, if you pay attention, you’ll see that it lines many of its sidewalks too. This sums up Beirut for me: a place whose beauty may just as well reside in grandiose facades as it may lie more discretely at your feet.