The Sassine Square in Beirut was once a place where people used to meet and spend time together. Now, it’s more of a commercial area that is not nurturing the social lives of Beirutis as much as it did before. Sassine square is a good residential area since it contains schools, a place of worship, a mall, and stores. However, there are many flaws in this location that are preventing this square to be friendly for pedestrians. For instance, the sidewalks are narrow. Also, there are many illegal parking spots, electrical poles, and billboards. For that reason, there’s a project that will develop Sassine Square. It will be expanded to reach an area of 5,080 square meters. This project aims at giving people one of their basic rights which is having a public place where they could walk and socialize. In fact, the planning of this project started in 2005. The office of architecture and engineering consulting «QED» studied the whole concept. The renovation will include Sassine Square as well as the following neighboring streets: Furn Al Hayek, Adib Ishac, Elias Baaklini, Sioufi, Al Ghazal, and Al Iskandar. As you may know, the sidewalks in Beirut are narrow so walking there might not be very pleasant. So the upgrade of Sassine square will feature larger sidewalks that are 2.4 meters wide making them meet the international standard. This project will use LED lights. In addition to that, a lot of electric poles will be replaced by smart poles that are multifunctional. This development, which will start in 2018, costs 10 million dollars. The Municipality of Beirut will cover the costs. The work will take up to 2 years.
