Rabieh: A Model Residential Town in the Suburbs of Beirut

What is the "Rabieh" project?: In Beirut's northern suburbs, on the Dhour el-Choueir road, at an altitude ranging between 250 and 400 meters above sea level and at a distance of 13 kilometers from the heart of the capital, rises a fair hill sprinkled with pines, overlooking the lemon orchards of Antelias and the sweep of the blue Mediterranean... On this green hill there began, a little more than two years ago, a great building project — the first of its kind in the Arab countries — "the Rabieh Cooperative": a joint-stock company for the creation of a model town for permanent residence, laid out according to the principles of modern town planning and provided with sanitary, technical, and aesthetic requirements.

How was Rabieh founded? The idea began in 1951 as a dream that haunted a band of friends in Beirut; in 1953 the dream came true, and "the Rabieh Cooperative Company" was founded to work at bringing the idea into execution. The board of directors was formed under the chairmanship of Mr. Shukri Hanna Shammas — that devoted dynamo of a man, one of the owners of the Contracting and Trading Company. All the members of the board threw themselves into working with determination beyond all determination to overcome the many difficulties: buying the land and registering it, studying how it should be divided, securing water and electricity, and cutting roads. All these things have now been accomplished...

How was the land divided? The area of the land the company bought comes to about 850,000 square meters. The land prepared for building so far measures about 400,000 square meters, divided into 212 plots averaging 1,500 meters per plot; most of these have been sold and are being registered one after another in the names of their shareholder owners.

The bathing beach: On the shore facing Rabieh the company bought 12,300 square meters for use as a bathing beach, open to every resident of Rabieh who wishes to take part in it. This beach extends 300 meters in length, and its preparation for use will begin shortly.

Rabieh's public amenities: First come the cooperative stores and the municipal center, for which 6,000 square meters of land have been set aside in the middle of Rabieh, so that access may be easy for all. Likewise, 7,000 square meters have been allotted for the building of a club for recreation and amusement, of no less importance than the cooperative stores. The third of these important amenities is the project of the elementary school and the playgrounds, to which 10,000 square meters have been allotted. For these three centers the board of directors is studying, with specialists and engineers, modern architectural designs, that they may come out perfect in beauty and workmanship.

The company has set aside one patch of ground for housing the permanent workmen, and another for the quarries, which have begun producing building stone and rubble at low prices...

Regard for taste and health: So that Rabieh may be a model town, healthy and modern, the company has laid down building regulations defining the conditions the shareholders must follow in building their homes, so that these may harmonize with one another and be built in a manner that provides for comfort, taste, and public health.

Preparing for the start of building: During this year the company passed through an organizational period that was necessary to the progress and success of its work. To encourage the shareholders to build, the board of directors has decided to grant the first ten shareholders who begin building special facilities and free services; and it has invited a select group of architects to submit artistic architectural designs for houses of various sizes, to be displayed afterward at the Rabieh office, where they will be within reach of shareholders wishing to build.

This is in addition to the various material facilities whose execution the board is studying, in the hope that they will meet with response and encouragement from the shareholders, so that during the coming year the model town of Rabieh may arise — a sweet beauty-mark adorning all the suburbs of Beirut, and a distinguished innovation in building and society, whose sponsors deserve appreciation and thanks, and which itself deserves a special measure of attention, worthy of being carried over and imitated, not in Lebanon alone but in every other Arab country as well.

And the day the stone buildings begin to tower, vying one with another, and the gardens range themselves in utter harmony and ease, people will acknowledge what a debt — and what a great one — they owe this chosen band of men, and will credit them with a beneficent precedent and a decisive leap toward a glorious social and building renaissance...