Woke up this morning to a shocking sight-to see a huge billboard put up in the park that my window overlooks. This park runs through the middle of the busy Gamat el dwal el-arabia street and I have spent some lovely moments looking at the trees changing colour to mark the changing seasons. And now I will have this huge piece of steel and concrete obstructing my view! The billboard just came up overnight-in fact, even as I am writing this, work is going on to complete the installation of the billboard.
It saddens me to see that commercial exigencies always triumph-important things like having open and green spaces in an otherwise crowded and polluted city take a backseat! Whether it be Mumbai or Cairo, it is the same story-the lungs of the city systematically destroyed! And the voices, if any, raised in protest are muted or ignored. I just hope that this billboard is just a one-off thing and not a precursor to many of them mushrooming all along the length of the park. If that happens, it will be another step in the “concretization” of Mohandisseen.
Why, oh why could they not have planted another tree rather than this monstrous piece of concrete?
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