Lebanon unsettled:the spatialities of the October 2019 uprising

The October 2019 uprising was unprecedent in its geographic scale, its three-month duration, and for the numbers of demonstrators that participated in this revolt. One of the most remarked upon aspects of the October 2019 protest by scholars and analysts is the revolts geographical spread and depth. The significance of the October 2019 revolt has frequently been framed by its ‘decentralised’ geographic pattern. But I contend this does not accurately analytically comprehend the socio-spatial dynamics of the eruption of protests in this moment. The central public squares of Beirut, namely Martyrs’ Square and Nejmeh Square, were, as is traditional, the centre of gravity for the protests. The eruption of large-scale simultaneous protest beyond the metropolitan core of Beirut – including along the Daoura highway (in Jel el-Dib and Zouq), Tripoli, Saida, Nabatieh, Bekaa, Baalbeck and Zahle – was however, unique. In this paper, I argue that rather than ‘decentralised’, October 2019 should be understood as characterised by a hierarchical diffusion. This hierarchical diffusion was underpinned by, and an outcome of, processes of urbanisation that have accelerated over the past thirty years. This paper situates the October 2019 revolt within these broader processes to understand the patterns of protests that exploded on to the streets in this period.