Haphazardly changing street names in any city distorts history and is an attempt to reshape its collective memory. On April 3, a nearly mile-long avenue that runs from Zaitunay Bay to Minet el-Hosn along Beirut’s spectacular Mediterranean seafront was officially renamed after Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud.

Lebanese politicians take great pleasure in renaming streets around the country after themselves and their benefactors, and this trend has only increased with the convoluted nature of the country's confessional system after the end of the civil war. Adjacent streets in downtown Beirut were named in the past two decades after the late Saudi King Fahd, former French President Jacques Chirac and former Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.

However, King Salman Avenue is symbolic for several reasons. It’s the only seafront in downtown Beirut that allows pedestrian public access; the rest was shamelessly sold to private resorts. It is surrounded by streets with historical significance named after Lebanese independence figure Emir Majid Erslan; Egypt's modern literary movement pioneer Ahmed Shawki; Mount Lebanon Emir Fakhredine, who was the first to shape downtown Beirut in the 17th century; and former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, who was assassinated in 2005. If you stroll downtown Beirut, there is a story for each street that any taxi driver old enough will tell you in a lamenting tone.

However, there have been efforts in the past three decades to distort the Lebanese capital’s urban memory by spearheading a reconstruction project (Solidere) that included a random approach to reshaping and renaming streets. The old popular market in Bab Idriss was replaced by upper-class boutiques and restaurants that remain mostly empty, waiting to be filled with Gulf tourists. Hariri wanted Lebanon to be part of the Western promise of the 1990s, the promise that resolving the Arab-Israel conflict could lead to new dynamics in the Middle East. The Lebanese economy has been built since on the idea of becoming a regional hub for tourism and services. Hence, when Saudi tourists boycott Lebanon, the impact on the Lebanese economy is significant.