Participatory Spatial Intervention: How can participatory design and a diversity lens help address vulnerabilities in Bar Elias, Lebanon?

The Participatory Spatial Intervention (PSI) is a co-produced way to build capacity and generate knowledge through an experimental process aiming to have an impact on the sustainable prosperity of a locality. A physical spatial intervention is embedded in a participatory action-research process and becomes a catalyst for generating questions and activate local social processes. The PSI documented in this report has been implemented as an activity of the project ‘Public Services and vulnerability in the Lebanese context of large-scale displacement’ funded by the British Academy’s Cities and Infrastructure programme. This work took place in Bar Elias, one of the most vulnerable localities in Lebanon (UNHCR, 2015), which hosts a large number of refugees and vulnerable populations, and faces a lack of access to basic services and livelihood opportunities. Throughout the process, we adopted a reflective approach by documenting our learning. This report presents the process of implementing the PSI, its methodology, and our reflection as a way of sharing our experience of this collaborative research that took place between August 2018 and July 2019

Beyond formal and informal: Understanding urban informalities from Freetown

Freetown challenges, even more than other cities, entrenched categories of formal and informal. In this paper, the discussion on informality encompasses both the distinction drawn between informal and formal settlements, and between informal and formal economic activities. It is difficult to speak without using these terms given that they are so deeply part of policy discourses in the country by government and development agencies. However, when deployed as an analytical lens, they are demonstrably problematic. Drawing from the findings of a research project, this paper provides insights on what the activities and spaces referred to in policy as “informal” are and what this classification does. It reveals the political use of the term informality, arguing that it is wrong to frame informality as belonging to the poor and challenging the idea that formality and informality are clearly distinct spaces or economic activities in the city. It also demonstrates the fundamental contribution of what policy makers call “informal” to the wellbeing and development of cities, by providing what the state and the “formal” sector are unable to provide: employment and social protection, particularly important for the post-conflict Sierra Leone context. The paper calls for a deep understanding of the contributions of the livelihoods of the residents of informal settlements and a change of criminalisation policies that undermine them

Participatory design and diversity: Addressing vulnerabilities through social infrastructure in a Lebanese town hosting displaced people

In a fragmented society, we argue that action-research and participatory design can build the capacity for intra-city dialogue across the different dimensions of identity of local residents. However, traditional participatory processes are often unable to deal with internal diversity, particularly when there are pre-existing conflicts. Using a collaboration between two universities, an NGO, and local residents in Bar Elias (Lebanon) as a case study, we demonstrate how the development of an intersectional methodology sensitive to social diversity can contribute to individuals and groups of residents developing an “aware participation” in city-making and in setting the vision for the city. Bar Elias was a small agricultural town until its population significantly increased with the arrival of people displaced from the Syrian war, and hosts Syrians, Palestinians, and Lebanese but presents spatial segregation. As the main site used regularly by all groups, the entrance road to the town was chosen as the site of the action-research and participatory design to plan and implement small-scale social infrastructure enhancements which could help address a number of vulnerabilities faced by different groups of residents. By analysing the process of implementing this participatory spatial intervention, the chapter argues that the outcome of the process was more than the physical infrastructure intervention; the process built a human infrastructure made of residents of the city with different identities who have been able to participate in and initiate city-making processes that have taken into account and analyse a diversity of needs and aspirations. Through the process, residents were able to exercise a new kind of participatory urban citizenship that transcends the limitations of traditional national citizenship

The social regulation of livelihoods in unplanned settlements in Freetown: implications for strategies of formalisation

This paper questions strategies of economic formalisation which prioritise the extension of state regulation as a means of extending access to labour protection and social protection. It draws on a research project on key livelihood systems and their associated governance arrangements in three unplanned urban settlements in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Our analysis of these fishing, and sand and stone-quarrying livelihood systems highlights the collective systems of regulation of these sectors by a range of different state and non-state actors. Reviewing the contributions of these various arrangements we suggest that, instead of focusing on formalisation as pursued primarily through the extension of state regulation, it is also crucial to explore means of working with the (informal) social arrangements through which these livelihood systems are governed