How urban development can be a sparkle for revolution

As Tunisia's leader Ben Ali fled, many Libyans were occupied with local government meetings, where, at least in theory, decisions about local problems are made. The proceedings of one such meeting in a remote western corner of the country, broadcast on Libyan television, were an improbable spark.

Postcard from Tripoli

The Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi has a habit of attending such meetings, dropping in unannounced at local halls. But when he arrived at this particular meeting in western Libya, the discussion quickly shifted to a rather difficult subject. A member of that local council pointed out that many people had no place to live.



Col Qaddafi appeared angered, not that the issue had been raised, but that apartments he had personally ordered built were still unfinished. Many young Libyans were waiting, living in miserable conditions in some cases. On live television, he responded: "Go and take those apartmentsBut it wasn't just the occupants of those units who responded. Hours later, hundreds of young Libyans invaded and occupied apartments, mostly unfinished, across the country. Many young Libyans lacked housing as a result of international sanctions against the country and the government's long-term freeze on projects that required major expenditures. But when sanctions were lifted, something had to be done and there was no one left to blame. When the country embarked on massive building projects, officials could not deliver. Corruption and mismanagement prevented the majority of developments from being completed.

Overview Bab Tripoli

Here a project of a Turkish company (I am always astonished by the Turks who really work worldwide) called EMSAS. Probably they stopped building and evacuated their staff allready long ago. The project Bab Tripoli is big, building mass housing of one type (no 16 ?) of building into urban quarters. The about 2100 appartments were supposed to be ready in the autum of this year. See for yourself how it was supposed to look. I wonder what happend now, did people really started to live in those halvely built constructions?

Mass housing is about the numbers

Building stage or final stage?

Anyway the proffesional urban design community (world wide, also us in Holland) can expect in all those new democratic arabic countries a lot of new work when their cities and people want to expand democratically with 'open' cities and maybe even 'slow' urban development giving chance not only to government companies, big developers and builders but also just to families or small builders.