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Since the 19th century, Beirut has known a spectacular development in its physiognomy as well as its morphology and its space extent. Each era has left its mark on the city, thus con-stituting territories inside which various visual messages delimitated ideological space. Presently, 13 years after the end of the war, Beirut has become a huge agglomeration and offers several faces. What are those faces?

This editorial introduces a thematic issue of Urban Planning on recent developments in Beirut, Lebanon. It emphasises the multiple crises the city has been undergoing for some time, which include an enduring political and economic crisis, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and most recently the devastating impact of the blast that happened in the port of Beirut on 4th August 2020. The editorial outlines the specific challenges resulting from these crises and addresses the concept of resilience, which is taken up by the articles included in this issue.

The problematics of the rewriting of the city is faced with the issue of permanent life and leisure places and it sets the debate back to the space practice, the identity of the places and the reconquest of a territory. An appropriate way to conduct a project handling patrimony and modernness based on the inhabitancy styles must be found. The example of Beirut, a city symbol of a past era, shows up as an observatory under gestation, bringing in question the role of the touristicity in front of the singularity of the place.