A modern neighborhood for prosperity. The case of the International and Permanent Fair of Lebanon in Tripoli by Oscar Niemeyer

The name of Tripoli comes from TRI POLIS, three quarters each separated by walls, coming from three different inhabitants. Tripoli is a historic town of the Mediterranean coast of the Levant, in the actual Lebanon. The crusaders had a permanent presence on the Levantine coast between 1099 and 1289. During the 14th century, the Mamlouk from Egypt made of Tripoli their third biggest central city and provincial capital, after Aleppo and Damascus. The county of Tripoli hosts until today the fortress of Raymond de Toulouse as witness of this past. Under the Ottoman Empire that lasted over 400 years, Tripoli was an important chief town called Elayet (Governorate) with its active port of El-Mina. In the 19th century, before the end of the Ottoman period and during the new age of westernization, Tripoli was downgraded to a Sanjak centre under the Vilayet of the modern Beirut. In 1906, during the Late Ottoman period the German Karl Baedeker published for wealthy travelers the cartography of Tripoli and El-Mina coastal town. The majority of the fertile plain in between were for orange groves, a commodity that existed before the arrival of the British and French. In 1909, a road to Beirut was opened during the last decade of the Ottoman rule. The new town retained this status until the British forces took the Levant in 1918. A year later, the transfer of power to the French led to the creation of the State with extended frontiers under the name of the Greater Lebanon with Beirut¹ its capital at 85 km South of Tripoli. The French remained until 1946, three years after the signature of the National Pact and the independency. During the cold war, in 1958 an armed conflict between the Arabists, who wanted to join the newly proclaimed United Arab Republic of Abdel Nasser, and the Lebanists exploded in Tripoli. The intervention of the US Marines was requested from the Lebanese president Chamoun to put end to a six months of internal conflict. After this first civil war and in an unstable Middle-East, the newly elected President Fouad Chehab worked during his six years mandate to constitute a modern Lebanese state. His objective was planning through development all parts of the country, starting with the second largest city in Lebanon, Tripoli. The great number of consultants to help in realizing this mission were mainly European experts. They had to deal with a society traumatized by centuries of dominations and wars, divided internally by confessions and inequalities. The President Chehab hired in 1959 Father Lebret director of the largest public research organization at the French national center for scientific research (I.R.F.E.D.) to assist the State in the study of the territory and its population. Lebret had a humanistic approach to development: « …le développement doit être intégral c'est-à-dire de tout l’homme et de tous les hommes… » ¹ following Professor François Perroux theory. Tripoli was studied with a view to its social structure which was to be provided by neighborhood analyzes. In the same period, Lebanon unconsidered as an under-developed country was open to Modernity. Its Capital Beirut had started to fill its spaces with concrete constructions, what about Tripoli? ¹ from Mission IRFED LIBAN. Etude préliminaire sur les besoins et les possibilités de développement au Liban 1959-1960