Emergence of an aero-city: path dependency and ‘internal’ dimensions in BEY/Beirut from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries

Abstract Examining the early post-colonial Beirut International Airport (BEY), we make two arguments. First, BEY had the potential to become the Middle East’s largest airport only because from the mid-1800s Beirut, which had a large maritime port, had been the Arab East’s global cultural, commercial, communications and transport hub, which created a path dependency. Second, BEY deepened Beirut’s regional-global role throughout the 1960s, making it an aero-city piggybacking on a port-city. We explore four dimensions. First, in urban planning, the government was exceptionally interventionist where BEY was concerned; second, BEY’s construction triggered sociopolitical conflicts; third, BEY intersected with Palestinian and Lebanese unskilled labour flows; and, finally, air-travel, including tourism, affected Beirut’s cityscape deeply yet unevenly.