Urban Concentration in Lebanon: The Need for Urban Observatories

Abstract

Urbanization has become the norm of life of the twenty first century. It requires serious planning that feeds into decision making, which in order to be effective, must be based on consistent data collection of development indicators. Urban observatory provides an excellent technology to make use of the data and visualize it in a way that allows tracking the development process. This paper highlights urbanization in Lebanon and the challenges it faces. The paper shows that poor data collection in Lebanon and the lack of serious plan to calculate, monitor, and improve urban indicators put the future of urban quality of life in Lebanon at risk. The paper uses as a case study in Lebanon, the Tripoli Economic and Development Observatory (TEDO). Using original visual maps from TEDO, the case shows how urban observatories can be used to detect critical problems and their underlying causes and how they help in delivering effective solutions leading to better sustainability assessment.