The current strategy of increasing road width so as to reduce traffic congestion is not any different from loosening your belt to fight obesity.
Chuck Marohn at strongtowns.org eloquently describes the difference between a road and a street. Most people use the terms interchangeably, but it’s important to understand the distinction. Above we have roads. They’re designed specifically to allow vehicles to travel as quickly and efficiently as possible between two places. A road is entirely about getting from Point A to Point B. Period.
In contrast, these are streets – some as narrow as six or seven feet across. Streets are a platform for building value through economic and cultural activity. People live, work, and socialize along a street in a way that doesn’t work at all on a road.
Vendors attempt to conduct business on the side of a road, perhaps with some limited success if there’s enough congestion to slow the vehicles down. But it’s just not a great environment for commerce.
Pedestrians and cyclists don’t do well on roads either…
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A revealing perspective on the Historical Development of Kampala City
A short while back I received a message from a young fellow called Benard Acema, requesting that I run an article here on this blog under my own pen name because the content suited me (or words to that effect).
I automatically thought, “Er…no!” but kept an open mind as decency would require, and encouraged him to email the content.
I was both flabbergasted and flattered, and by the time you are halfway you will understand why.
Here it is, by Benard Acema, with only a few mild alterations made since I first received it:
Kampala’s Racist Design and its Mental Effects on Ugandans Today
When politicians blame Uganda’s problems on Colonialism, most Ugandans especially the young people will inevitably (with immediacy and precision) sneer at such “old peoples” comments and say how these politicians simply have failed to move on and are blaming their failures on a “long ago”…
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My name is Frederick Mugisa, and I am from Uganda.
My professional background is in Urban Planning. For the last 5 years, I have worked with an NGO called ACTogether Uganda, an organisation working with communities of people living in slum areas of cities in Uganda. I have skills in GIS mapping particularly in using computer software programmes like; ArcGIS and Quantum GIS (qgis). My other interests in life include; reading and sharing the Word of God, listening to music and dancing to it and randomly sketching stuff.
A FEW months ago I was at an event in the Parliament of Uganda during which warnings were issued against participants making their way into the August House without first clothing themselves smartly in ‘official’ attire.
Official attire, according to the honourable gentleman who reminded everyone of the rules of the House, included a necktie for men. The Parliamentary Rules of Procedure, however, do not actually require us to wear neckties but people get kicked out every day over this lack of ‘smartness’.
Just to be clear, the Dress Code listed under Section 73 of Part XII of the Parliamentary Rules reads as follows:
The incident returned to me last week because of the number of people in Kampala who were unlucky enough to be robed in what we call ‘Graduation Gowns’ on the days when it didn’t actually rain or get so cold for the black robes to be…
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The Old taxi park in Kampala is arguably one of the places that attracts the most people; the reasons for this seems obvious but others are subtle... so what really makes a space people-friendly?
A busy market place located right under the calmness of an open space or park in the middle of the city? Yes. That is right! The Palika Bazaar in the city of New Delhi is a popular market located underground.... Continue Reading →
Thoughts of the Urbi et Orbi 