Friday, April 26, 2013

Urban Amnesia

By Ali Al Yousifi
About a month ago, Kuwait came under a heavy sandstorm. Just like any other sandstorm, visibility dramatically decreased, so much so that the tops of skyscrapers started to fade into blank greyness. Looking across Kuwait City revealed a view with buildings ominously disappearing into the dust.

It was as if the dust was slowly erasing our urban landscape. I felt that I might wake up the next day and find that Kuwait City’s skyscrapers have vanished into thin air; maybe all I’ll find is a desert, a blank slate that we’ll have to rebuild all over again.

           But would that be a bad thing?  What if the next sandstorm did take all our buildings with it, would we rebuild our city better? Are we proud of what we already built? Do we want a chance to start over? If this idea of completely rebuilding a functioning city seems strange, it shouldn’t! Because Kuwait already did that in the 50s and 60s. We completely destroyed our mud city and built a concrete city.

Can we do that again? Do we want to?






1 comment:

  1. خالد الفالحMay 13, 2013 at 12:28 AM

    احياناً كثيرة أجدها فكرة رائعة على أن تبقيها روعتها في خانة الأفكار فقط!

    ReplyDelete