The Brooklyn Rail

War in Everyday Life: A Changing Street 

Walking along Jeanne d’Arc Street, a familiar north-south corridor linking the American University of Beirut to Hamra main street, something feels different. The shift is not sudden but gradual and accumulative. Almost imperceptible at first, the city has begun changing: in its atmosphere, its rhythms, the way in which urban elements interact with one another throughout space. At various intersections, where the street once carried a familiar, predictable life, there is a density of expressions, marked by fatigue, hesitation, and the uncategorizable effects of war. While families cluster along sidewalks and cars are scattered in every possible way, emergency provisions—like water tanks, generators, and other services—embed themselves in the urban fabric. Elsewhere in Beirut, especially in a particular southern suburban hub of Hezbollah, the destruction is more visible. Here in West Beirut it is refracted: the neighborhood holds together despite being transformed. What emerges is a dichotomy. As life continues, we witness how everyday routines persist, yet everything seems reconfigured. The street no longer simply connects urban elements; it absorbs, redistributes, and reorganizes them as if the neighborhood is a reflection of the war itself. What I encounter in this daily passage is not only the aftermath of displacement, but the continuous production of space under siege.

Since late 2024, more than a million people in Lebanon have been displaced at different moments of the conflict.¹ In a country of around six million, this scale of movements is equivalent to displacing over 57 million people in the United States, fundamentally altering how space is inhabited and organized.

The changes I observe do not only reflect the disruption of the old urban scene, they point to war as a mode of spatial production. What we are witnessing is not simply the presence of new tenants and new businesses, but the making of a different kind of space that is shaped by how people live, move, and organize their daily lives. The scattered cars, improvised services, and shifting uses of sidewalks are not random responses, they are part of a new system of life that is taking form.

War forces people to adapt quickly, and in doing so, it reorganizes how space operates: where people gather, how they circulate and what becomes essential for daily functioning. In that sense, what used to be a familiar urban environment is now constantly adjusted to new constraints and needs. War produces space because it actively reshapes relationships between people, infrastructure, and territory. It not only destroys what exists, it creates new spatial arrangements, often uneven, but real nonetheless. These transformations are not marginal; they are occurring within a territory of four thousand square miles, about half the size of New Jersey, where shifts in population distribution rapidly translate into visible changes in urban life.

A Repetitive Historical Production of Space

War as a mode of spatial production is not unique to the present moment; it is repetitive, accumulating across the different successive wars, each time reshaping Beirut’s spatial order. During the Lebanese Civil War of 1975, the city was reorganized with a territorial east-west division, often framed through sectarian lines but underpinned by deeper class and political fractures. What emerged was not simply a line of separation (the Green Line), but a new geography of movement, access, and exclusion.¹ At its peak, this division split Beirut into two largely segregated zones, with movement across the Green Line often restricted and even life-threatening, effectively partitioning a city of around seven square miles. In the sense proposed by Henri Lefebvre, space was actively produced: checkpoints, frontlines, and enclaves were perceived, lived and conceived in everyday life.³ This division also reflected, as David Harvey would suggest, a restructuring of urban space shaped by power and resource control under conditions of conflict; it’s about who can move where and access resources and services based on power dynamics.⁴

A similar dynamic unfolded during the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon, particularly in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Commonly referred to as Dahieh, this area has long functioned as a political and social stronghold of Hezbollah, characterized by dense urbanization, strong party-linked service networks, and a central place in both military targeting and post-war reconstruction. Destruction was followed by rapid reconstruction, often framed as recovery but functioning as a reorganization of space along new political and economic lines.⁵ Yet this production did not begin after the war, it was already underway during it. Displacement patterns redistributed populations across Beirut, temporarily reassigning functions to neighborhoods and infrastructures. Schools became shelters, public spaces became logistical nodes, and entire districts absorbed new densities. What appeared as emergency adaptation was, in fact, an accelerated transformation of spatial relations. Reconstruction later consolidated these shifts, embedding them into the built environment. Here again, war operated not only as destruction but as a catalyst for spatial production, aligning with broader logics of capital, governance, and territorial control. What unfolds today echoes these earlier events. The transformations observed along Jeanne d’Arc Street are not isolated; they are part of this accumulated pattern. War once again reorganizes movement, redefines use, and redistributes presence. Through repetition and accumulation, it becomes clear that war is not outside urban processes, it is one of the ways through which space continues to be produced.

Displacement as Spatial Reorganization

Displacement, in this case the repeated movement of hundreds of thousands from southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs all over Lebanon, is not merely the movement of people in search of safety; it is part of a broader reorganization of space. As Harvey suggests, spatial transformations often reflect underlying power structures, where movement across territory is tied to capital control, access, and future consolidation.⁶ During wartime, this becomes particularly visible. Populations do not relocate randomly. Their trajectories—where they go, where they are received, and where they are prevented from settling—follow patterns shaped by political, economic, and strategic considerations. Accordingly, displacement is a form of political spread across geography. As people move, they carry with them social networks, economic activities, and forms of presence that reshape their new location. Neighborhoods absorb new functions, densities, and meanings, while others are emptied, suspended, or transformed into sites of control. What appears as a humanitarian crisis is also a spatial process through which territory is redistributed and reorganized. In this sense, displacement actively redraws the map of everyday life. It is not only a consequence of war, but one of the mechanisms through which new spatial orders are formed.

This redistribution of people across the city is not detached from broader economic logics; it is deeply embedded within them. What appears as an emergency movement also participates in what Harvey conceptualizes as uneven geographical development, where space is continuously reorganized to absorb crisis and reallocate value.⁷ In times of war, this process intensifies. Certain areas become saturated with population and activity, while others are emptied, devalued, or rendered inaccessible. Several neighborhoods in Beirut absorbed significant influxes of displaced population, while large parts of the south and border regions have been partially emptied.

This unevenness is not accidental, it is part of how urban space is restructured under pressure. At the same time, displacement can be understood through the lens of accumulation by dispossession.⁸ As populations are forced out of their homes, land and property are detached from their original users, opening the possibility of future reappropriation, investment, or control. What is lost in one place may later reappear as an opportunity elsewhere. In this sense, destruction and displacement are not only endpoints, but transitions within a longer process of spatial reconfiguration. War, then, acts as an accelerator of these dynamics. It compresses transformations that might otherwise unfold gradually, forcing rapid shifts in land use, density, and urban function. The city becomes a terrain where value is displaced alongside people, redistributed through new spatial arrangements.

Everyday Adaptation: A Parallel Urbanism

These transformations raise an important question: where is the state in all of this? Its absence, or selective presence, becomes visible not through official statements but through everyday practices. In the changing neighborhoods of Beirut, what sustains life is not formal planning or public provision but a growing reliance on parallel arrangements that fill the gaps. As people move, they do not arrive empty-handed. Small businesses begin to appear, often opened by those displaced from other parts of the city. Many of these are opened by individuals displaced from the south or Dahieh, bringing with them existing economic practices and adapting them to new urban conditions.

A grocery shop, a coffee stand, a repair service: these are not only economic activities but ways of re-establishing presence. They adapt quickly to local needs, using whatever space is available: a garage, a sidewalk, a vacant storefront. In doing so, they reshape the neighborhood’s rhythms and uses. At the same time, access to services depends on DIY practices.⁹ Water, electricity, and waste management are negotiated through local networks rather than guaranteed systems, which is a main pattern in seeking opportunities during war. In a country already experiencing a prolonged economic crisis and infrastructure collapse since 2019, these parallel systems have become not exceptional but standard modes of survival. Residents rely on each other, on private providers, or on improvised solutions that operate outside regulation. What might appear as temporary fixes often stabilize into everyday routines. These practices show that daily acts of adaptation are micro elements in the process of war that makes it a mode of spatial production. In the absence of a strong coordinating authority, people reorganize their surroundings themselves. The result is a city that continues to function, but differently: more fragmented, more flexible, and shaped directly by those who inhabit it.

But if everyday life is organized through these improvised systems, what happens when this same logic extends beyond the lived urban fabric and begins to affect the material conditions of the environment itself?

War and the Production of Uneven Ecology

This reorganization of space also unfolds at an ecological level, extending the effects of displacement beyond the visible urban fabric. As populations move and settle into new areas, pressure shifts onto already fragile systems such as water, waste, air, and energy. Lebanon’s infrastructure, already strained by years of economic collapse and limited state capacity, struggles to absorb sudden increases in demand in areas receiving displaced populations. What might appear as environmental degradation is closely tied to the same processes that reorganize territory and everyday life. In this sense, ecology is not separate from the dynamics of war, but is part of how space is actively produced under its conditions. Drawing on the work of Mike Davis, these transformations can be understood as the production of environments structured by risk and uneven exposure.¹⁰ Displaced populations often concentrate in areas with limited infrastructure, where access to clean water, sanitation, and safe housing is already strained. Parallel solutions such as generators, water tanks, and waste disposal multiply, but they also introduce new vulnerabilities. Pollution, health risks, and environmental stress become unevenly distributed across the city. War, then, does not only reshape where people live; it reshapes the conditions in which they live. The environment itself becomes part of this spatial production, reorganized through displacement and adaptation. What emerges is not only a fragmented urban landscape, but a fragmented ecology, one that reflects the same patterns of inequality, control, and uncertainty produced by war.

As these environmental stresses accumulate unevenly through the different geographies of Lebanon in relation to war, the question to be asked is: who governs this unevenness, and under what overlapping structure of political stakeholders are these conditions produced?

War as a Mode of Production: Social Structure of Space

The relative weakness of the state in Beirut does not mean absence, but fragmentation. In Hamra, for instance, public institutions are present such as the municipality, security forces, and basic services, but they operate in parallel with other political actors: NGOs, political parties, and other services providers. These systems overlap rather than integrate, producing a field marked by asymmetry. Some political actors, mainly the SSNP (Syrian Social Nationalist Party) in Hamra, a political party with limited but visible presence in certain Beirut neighborhoods, operate and intervene on a limited scale, with modest resources and localized influence. Hezbollah, in the geographical hubs where it maintains extensive parallel institutions, extends across multiple domains, from welfare and infrastructure to security and territorial coordination. The political alliances of these two political parties, and the urban specificities of Hamra, explain why it has absorbed a significant share of displaced populations. The area’s social composition, mixed, relatively open, and historically less segregated, interacts with its urban form to create conditions of relative accessibility and perceived safety. The presence of ministries and institutions such as American University of Beirut further reinforces this role, offering safety during war. From the perspective of Pierre Bourdieu, Hamra can be understood as a structured social space in which different forms of capital—political, social, and institutional—are unevenly distributed and continuously contested, shaping both the positions actors occupy and their capacity to act within the city.¹¹

In this sense, displacement is not simply absorbed by the neighborhood; it is filtered and organized through these existing hierarchies, where access to housing, services, and protection depends on one’s location within this field of power. In concrete terms, this becomes visible in everyday life during war. A displaced family arriving in Hamra does not navigate the neighborhood as an empty space: finding an apartment, accessing electricity, or securing water depends on connections to local networks, building owners, or political intermediaries. Some residents rely on acquaintances linked to parties or NGOs to find shelter, while others negotiate informally with landlords or service providers. Two families arriving under similar conditions may experience entirely different outcomes depending on their social ties and resources. What appears as a spontaneous accommodation of displacement is in reality structured by these unequal distributions of capital, which quietly organize how space is lived and accessed.

Reconstruction: Resolution vs. Continuation?

From everyday war-scenes emerge a hope that every displaced person talks about: reconstruction. This concept must be addressed in relation to the stakeholders who already exist and overlap: If space is already structured through particular political dynamics during war, what then does “reconstruction” actually rebuild and for whom?

“Reconstruction” in Beirut rarely means a return to what existed before. It indicates, rather, the continuation of the same processes already set in motion during the war. The language of rebuilding suggests restoration, stability, and recovery, yet in practice it tends to produce a different city, one reorganized along new lines of power, access, and value. In this sense, reconstruction follows the same process as displacement and spatial change, where moments of crisis make it easier to reorganize space in ways that would normally be contested: When families are forced to leave areas like Dahieh, which has been repeatedly targeted and rebuilt across successive conflicts, becoming a key site where destruction and reconstruction cycles are most visible, and move into neighborhoods such as Hamra, apartments that were previously occupied, affordable, or even unavailable suddenly become part of a new market. Landlords may raise rents, divide apartments, or change their use entirely. At the same time, some residents cannot return to their original homes, which gradually shifts who lives where. Hence, destruction clears, displacement redistributes, and reconstruction consolidates. Together, they form a continuous process rather than separate phases. In Beirut, this has been visible across successive wars. Areas that are destroyed are not simply rebuilt; they are redefined. Property relations shift, densities change, and new forms of control emerge. The risk, then, is to mistake reconstruction for resolution. The visible act of rebuilding can obscure the deeper transformations that have taken place. It can normalize new inequalities, stabilize new territorial arrangements, and close off alternative futures. In this way, reconstruction becomes part of the same mode of production as war itself: not a response to destruction, but one of its outcomes.

If reconstruction fixes these new spatial arrangements, then how do they register in everyday life, beyond plans and policies?

My daily journey on Jeanne d’Arc Street becomes clearer during this ongoing war; the transformations observed at the early stages take on a different meaning. The scattered cars, the improvised services, the new businesses, and the shifting presence of people are no longer isolated details. They are part of a broader process through which space is continuously produced. What once appeared as temporary adjustments now read as the early stages of longer-term change. The street does not simply endure the effects of war; it absorbs and translates them into new spatial arrangements. Everyday life continues, but within a framework that is being actively reshaped. Seen from this perspective, the familiar becomes uncertain. The neighborhood is neither collapsing nor remaining the same, rather, it is being produced differently.

What emerges from these overlapping transformations is not a temporary condition, but a pattern that repeats and accumulates. War, in Beirut, does not simply interrupt urban life, it becomes one of the ways through which it is continuously reorganized. Displacement, parallel adaptation, environmental stress, and reconstruction are not separate moments but parts of the same process through which space is produced and reproduced. Yet this process does not lead to a clear or stable outcome. The city that is taking shape remains uneven, fragmented, and uncertain. What persists is not a fixed order, but a shifting set of spatial arrangements that reflect ongoing struggles over power, access, and survival. If space is indeed produced through these conditions, then the question that remains is not how Beirut will recover, but what kind of urban reality is being formed through repeated cycles of war, and who, ultimately, will be able to inhabit it.