merchimerch (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
merchimerch) wrote2005-04-26 06:25 pm
merchimerch) wrote2005-04-26 06:25 pm
(no subject)
Well it seems that half my mahalla (neighborhood) has no electricity and the other half has no hot water. I'm on the no-hot-water side, so I supposed I should be grateful. I wonder if this is what the US is going to be like in a decade or two if all the energy crisis/peak oil theories are right.
Anyway, here are some non-music-realted fieldnotes for once:
Enclosure and regulation of the market:
For the past week or so, work crews have been out enforce re-routing traffic around the city so that they can re-do the tram routes and turn two sections of road into gardens. The two sections of road that will now be permanently closed are the section of Sharif Rashidov between the Monument to Manliness and the Firemen’s Hall (it runs parallel to the Turkiston Concert Hall). The other section that they’ve eliminated is the road that ran from the Cosmonaut metro station to Tsum, the Soviet-era central store. Along that road there used to be dozens of stalls selling books. Now both roads are filled in with dirt and side walk and have saplings planted.
I’m sure that the government is advertising this change as development and city beautification. In reality it has completely messed up traffic flow in Tashkent by closing a section of 2 arterial roads.
I got a chance to walk down the section of former road/current park on my way to Tsum today. All the book kiosks are gone! A few vendors had their wares spread out on cloths on the ground, but most are nowhere to be found and there is a new building being constructed that is made up of rows of what I assume will be little shops, and the sign on top of the building says “Books” in English, Russian, and Uzbek. This looks remarkably like what happened at the Oloy and Chorsu bazaars. They tore everything up and build enclosed stores in order to make vendors pay rent and double taxes. This mostly resulted in disgruntled consumers and a thinning out of vendors because few of them could pay taxes again, and then rent. I think this will be especially true for the books sellers, since many are disenfranchised Russians that are selling off their personal libraries to survive. Others are vendors who are helping the disenfranchised sell off their libraries.
This whole issue of enclosure, “rebuilding,” and taxation is quite saddening. It reminds me of 17th (at least I think it was 17th century, it’s been a long time since I took a history class) Britain with the enclosure act to drive squatters off the land and reap more taxes. I’m sure the analysts in Western think tanks will see this development as a positive move toward privatization and free market. Ugh.
Anyway, here are some non-music-realted fieldnotes for once:
Enclosure and regulation of the market:
For the past week or so, work crews have been out enforce re-routing traffic around the city so that they can re-do the tram routes and turn two sections of road into gardens. The two sections of road that will now be permanently closed are the section of Sharif Rashidov between the Monument to Manliness and the Firemen’s Hall (it runs parallel to the Turkiston Concert Hall). The other section that they’ve eliminated is the road that ran from the Cosmonaut metro station to Tsum, the Soviet-era central store. Along that road there used to be dozens of stalls selling books. Now both roads are filled in with dirt and side walk and have saplings planted.
I’m sure that the government is advertising this change as development and city beautification. In reality it has completely messed up traffic flow in Tashkent by closing a section of 2 arterial roads.
I got a chance to walk down the section of former road/current park on my way to Tsum today. All the book kiosks are gone! A few vendors had their wares spread out on cloths on the ground, but most are nowhere to be found and there is a new building being constructed that is made up of rows of what I assume will be little shops, and the sign on top of the building says “Books” in English, Russian, and Uzbek. This looks remarkably like what happened at the Oloy and Chorsu bazaars. They tore everything up and build enclosed stores in order to make vendors pay rent and double taxes. This mostly resulted in disgruntled consumers and a thinning out of vendors because few of them could pay taxes again, and then rent. I think this will be especially true for the books sellers, since many are disenfranchised Russians that are selling off their personal libraries to survive. Others are vendors who are helping the disenfranchised sell off their libraries.
This whole issue of enclosure, “rebuilding,” and taxation is quite saddening. It reminds me of 17th (at least I think it was 17th century, it’s been a long time since I took a history class) Britain with the enclosure act to drive squatters off the land and reap more taxes. I’m sure the analysts in Western think tanks will see this development as a positive move toward privatization and free market. Ugh.