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Download PDF The government did not allow international human rights lawyer William Sloan to hold press conference in Dhaka on February 22 as he came to Bangladesh on a tourist visa, a home ministry release yesterday said.
It said Sloan had told immigration officials on arrival at Zia International Airport on February 16 that he was very interested in seeing different paintings. As a tourist, it was only logical for him to see different paintings according to the country’s law.
“But without doing that, Sloan, also president of Canada chapter of American Association of Jurists, attended dinner with lawyers, gave interviews to private media and also held meetings with politicians as well as university teachers though he was asked not to engage in such activities,” said the release.
A foreign tourist could deliver speech on a country’s political and sub judice matters. “For that reason, the government did not allow Sloan to arrange press conference on February 22 at Sonargaon Hotel.”
During his visit, the HR jurist had spoken about the political detainees here, including former prime ministers Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia.
February 25th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
The ground floor: for parking or for people?
Maruf Rahman
marufrbd@yahoo.com
Traveling through a section of Dhaka recently, I noticed an interesting phenomenon. A new building, going up on one side of the road, was true to the new theory and rules of construction: the ground floor is left empty and open, for parked cars, while the upper floors are meant for people (homes, workplaces, shops, etc.). On the other side of the street were existing buildings, with the ground floor occupied by shops, and dwellings above. Despite the poor condition of the footpath, many people were outside, walking and milling about. The street was lively, with much to see and look at.
As I continued along, I passed other new buildings where the ground floor is occupied by car parking. Anyone wishing to access a service along that portion of the street must first climb up at least one flight of stairs. A popular restaurant spans the 2nd and 3rd floor of a building, while a handful of cars occupy the ground floor—and of course still spill out over the footpath. When we discover that simply vacating the ground floor for car parking isn’t enough, then what—will we keep moving higher and higher up, giving more and more space to cars? Will we build expensive underground parking lots for cars, even though we can’t provide affordable housing for all our people?
I thought about my own situation, in a ground floor office with a constant flow of visitors. The ready access to the street makes it inviting, and those visitors are the lifeblood of our work. I thought about the people I know who live or work on the ground floor, and the shortage of housing for different people’s needs, and the current trends to shift people to the upper levels and reserve the ground floor for parked cars. Where would we all go, if we are evicted by car parking?
In shopping malls and in multi-storey buildings, the shops on the lower floors command the highest rents. When people walk, they don’t look up; they observe what is at their level. The ground floor is of great commercial importance, because it is the most visible and the most accessible. People will only notice upper-floor shops and businesses if they make an effort, and a further effort is required—even if there is a lift—to access them. They will never attain the easy flow of those on the ground floor. Why give our most valuable commercial real estate to cars?
When we live on the ground floor, or on a lower floor, it is easy for us to go in and out. If we return home and discover we have neglected to buy milk or eggs, we can easily go out to the neighborhood shop. We can visit others, or partake of the street life. When we live high up in an apartment building, the prospect of waiting for the lift, and riding it for many floors, is often enough to convince us to stay home in front of the TV rather than venturing back out again.
Further, when the ground floor is occupied by parked and moving cars, there is little room or safety for those on foot. Even on the footpath, we must always be on the alert for cars driving onto the footpath to park, or over it to access a building. As we walk along, we see not shops or restaurants, not signs of human life, but rather parked cars. Rather than interesting and lively streetscapes that give us incentive to walk—and inspire affection for our surroundings—we face steel and cement. When we enter buildings, we pass not through doors meant for people, but through parking lots full of cars.
In parks and empty lots, people seeking recreation and enjoyment must vie for space with the cars. We begin to suspect that the city was created not for us, but for our vehicles. We are encouraged to cross streets underground or by bridges, because the street level is for cars. We are told that our problems will be solved by building public transit—below ground. Our housing, shops, restaurants, and workplaces are shifted to the upper floors. As human life at ground level gives way to cars, we begin to feel that we are the invaders of the city, and it is cars who fully belong. Certainly this is evident on many streets, where people are prevented from crossing by barbed wire, giving a prison-like environment to our streets and a very clear message to those on foot.
But as we give more and more of our space away to cars, as we retreat further and further from the streets and the street level in order to make space for cars, perhaps we should question how much we gain, and how much we lose, by doing so. One thing should be clear by now: there can never be enough space for cars. However much we give them, they will always demand more. No city has solved its traffic or parking problems by building more roads or providing more parking; demand always outpaces supply.
But those cities who have reversed the trends, and actively taken space away from cars and given it back to people, have discovered that, ironically, their parking and congestion problems actually lessen. When people can no longer easily park for free throughout the city, they question the need to take the car for short trips. When there is less space on the road for cars and more for pedestrians and cyclists, more people walk and cycle. When we reassert that the streets are for people, people regain the streets—and the city.
Perhaps it’s all a bit like the schoolyard bully. He demands lunch money from his peers, and they hand it over. He and his friends take over the yard, and send everyone else into a corner. The more you give him, the more he takes. How can we make him stop? Isn’t he ever satisfied? Then one day, the other kids get together and take him on, and he relents. The kids again get to spend their lunch money on themselves, and play freely in the yard. They look at each other, and shrug, and laugh: how could we ever have been so foolish, to think that he would become satisfied and stop demanding more? And now that we are back in control, enjoying what always should have been ours, we are never going back! We will reoccupy the ground floor, reoccupy our cities, and only give to cars what extra space we can afford to give away, without losing our rights, our footpaths, our streets and the most essential parts of our buildings.