Category: Right to the City
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The Forced Disappearance of Street Vendors in Beirut
On a sunny November day last year, a street vendor ran panickily down Beirut’s Corniche, pushing his cart, laden with corn and cotton candy, and crying out in agony. He was being chased by three police officers, who eventually caught and cuffed him. A little more than a year earlier, in June of 2021, a… Read more
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Moving in Lebanon is a luxury, only public transport is the solution
On one of the walls in the Gemmayze neighborhood of Lebanon’s capital Beirut, “Retrieving Beirut” is written, and below it is a drawing of a taxi car. The writings on Beirut’s walls call attention to the indispensability of mobility, secured through the network of taxis and buses/vans, in “retrieving” the city back from the grips of an economic and political… Read more
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Public responsibility for public transport in Lebanon
Near the old lighthouse in Beirut stood a barefoot boy, no older than 10 years and in denim pants that were far too short. He was trying to hail a shared taxi, popularly known in Lebanon as a service. When a taxi car finally approached, he ran to it, his feet numb against the ruggedness of… Read more
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Uganda’s street vendors need a working regulatory framework
Irene, a 56-year-old Ugandan, sat on the side of the road in a colourful dress, attempting to sell biscuits and candies to the empty street in Kampala. In efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19, people in the Ugandan capital have been confined to their homes since March 2020, rendering streets deserted and street vendors… Read more
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The Pull Out Of The Poverty Trap
One warm afternoon in the historic Chawkbazar neighborhood of old Dhaka in Bangladesh, Shawkat, a 55-years-old rickshaw driver, was resting on the side of a road after hours of pulling his rickshaw in the day’s insufferable heat. On the other side of the road, a ten-year-old girl was standing with a toddler in her arm,… Read more