Cosmopolitan Heritage? : Post-War Reconstruction and Urban Imaginaries in Sarajevo and Beirut

Abstract

The chapter discusses the challenges of reconstructing cityscapes featuring heritage of multiple groups after conflict and urbicide. The two cities discussed are Beirut and Sarajevo, which share the urban imaginary of a cosmopolitan past with Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities living side by side, followed by long years of urban warfare and segregation, and then by contested processes of post-war reconstruction. The chapter examines how war and reconstruction have challenged the cosmopolitan imaginary of the two cities. First, it discusses the emergence of this imaginary, while analysing the correspondence of the spatial and social histories of Beirut and Sarajevo. Second, it examines the destruction of cosmopolitan heritage during the recent wars, discussing its conceptualization as urbicide. In a third section, the focus is on the process of post-war reconstruction, contrasting the two cities with regards to their different approaches on memory of war. The chapter analyses the tools of urban reconstruction, the uses of ‘intentional’ architecture, urban memory and monuments in reshaping the cityscapes. Moreover, it reflects on how the cosmopolitan imaginary of the pre-war populations is challenged by the presence of mostly rural refugees, perceived as antagonistic to cosmopolitanism by the former, leading to “exclusionary cosmopolitanism”.