Revolt in the 'Square': Spatial Modelling of Urban Stability in Modern Cities New insights and approaches for preventing conflict and violence

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Urban revolutions have been envisaged as hybrid, unpredictable and somewhat incidental in the political arena. In some cases, political instability, mass protests, riots, revolt erupts as a reaction to a particular event, while in others it gathers momentum over a period of time and following a sequence of progression and acts of dissidence in the public space. This project aims to explore, map and visualise patterns, modes, and state of development of urban unrest in Beirut Martyr Square during three major pretesting events (2006, 2011 & 2015) to develop a Spatial Model of Urban Stability (SMUS). Using five indicators of urban stability that involve socio-economic, political and spatial factors, a 10-point scale of urban unrest will be designed to trace and understand, through time and space, patterns of spatial unrest in Lebanon during this period. The project will reconstruct historical events and narratives and use spatio-temporal analytics to relate frequency of acts of dissidence to the social-political and economic condition of that time. This approach could later be applied to other cities/contexts facing situations of conflict and revolt. Analysis of causes of conflict and its damaging consequences on local communities and their cities are generally presented from a one sided point of view which is governments and authorities in charge of maintaining order and law. But in this work, we aims to bring and present another side of the narrative and other viewpoints of other players witnessing these incidents (NGOs, communities, Political analysts etc) in order to avoid biased analysis and move towards more reliable predictors of stability. The SMUS will enable analysts, decision makers, planners and activist groups to trace and reflect on previous practices, pattern of escalation, time span of revolt or unrest through intelligible visual maps and supporting datasets. The project will also enable policy makers to consider the economical and physical disturbing effects of such patterns and actions of unrest not only on the city's future development, but on the local communities living facing massive drop in providing minimal infrastructure services e.g. waste management problems. We plan to run interdisciplinary and interactive workshops in Beirut and Belfast to bring together a multidisciplinary team including the humanities and social sciences. This project seeks to generate data that can enable governing authorities as well as non-governmental actors to engage in conflict prevention to prioritize a systematic approach to the collection of information on how urban spaces such as public Squares becomes sites of conflict from protest. The project will allow such information to inform policies and support community stakeholders to an understanding of what might be done to allow protest but prevent conflict in such important public spaces. The project will explain indicators of unrest and the viability of statistical information derived from credible governmental/international agencies and independent NGOs in Beirut, along with spatial patterns of movements and occupation. This will enable unrest actions to be verified and analysed in line with changing political situations in the pilot case study city. This project will be supported and facilitated through a series of workshops and focus groups, visual displays and a conference to effectively communicate the findings to policymakers and maximise the potential for impact, through advocacy for the adoption of implementable measures that increase opportunities for protest without conflict.