As Komitas grinds to a halt because of ill-devised road works and other municipal “development” all underway at the same time despite the disruption it causes, Zarchka at Life Around Me reports that construction in another part of the city has now been stopped. The reason? Well, plans to build an underpass under a road in the center hit a snag. Quite a big one, actually. More precisely, the Yerevan Metro.

This is kind of a continuation to the post on Oneworld Multimedia blog about the construction mess in Yerevan and alleged money being spent on digging deep needless holes as if for constructing subways, although the rumor has it that “…the construction is being done now so that the authorities can spend as much money as possible in the shortest amount of time and siphon off much of it…”

However, this allegation may turn out to be true especially when the huge hole dug along Khanjyan street at Khanjyan and Tigran Mets intersection is now filled back.

What I got from talking to some people, no subway will be constructed there as one of the reasons I was told was that only after digging deep into it they found out that the metro passes under that area!

Almost funny, if it weren’t that sad. How on earth could they not take into consideration the fact that they might stumble upon the underground, especially when by simple logics one may presume that the line from Hanrapetutyan Hraparak to Zoravar Andranik stations should pass right under that area!!?? Didn’t they bother to shoot a glance at the metro map before starting their destruction??!!

If that’s not the case, then I wonder, what is a logical explanation for laying a double layered asphalt along Khanjyan street, then digging it deep, then filling it back??

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Berd, Tavoush Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2004

Although no Armenian bloggers — including myself — appeared to specifically mark the occasion, yesterday was Blog Action Day. According to the official site for the action, 15,000 blogs communicated environmental concerns to 12 million readers. This also included companies such as Google and organizations such as the United Nations. For Blog Action day, those bloggers interested were requested to:

1. Publish a post on their blog which relates to an issue of their own choice pertaining to the environment.

For example: A blog about money might write about how to save around the home by using environmentally friendly ideas. Similarly a blog about politics might examine what weight environmental policy holds in the political arena.

Posts do not need to have any specific agenda, they simply need to relate to the larger issue in whatever way suits the blogger and readership. Our aim is not to promote one particular viewpoint, only to push the issue to the table for discussion.

2. Commit to donating their day’s advertising earnings to an environmental charity of their choice. There is a list of “official” Blog Action Day charities on the site, however bloggers are also free to choose an alternate environmental charity to donate to if they wish.

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It’s not often that Armenian bloggers write on the same subject at the same time, but once in a while it does happen. Even then, when the same conversation does occur in the Armenian blogosphere, it’s usually about the same thing — Genocide Recognition or (drum roll, please…) customer service in Hayastan. Blogian set the ball rolling in August.

While in Armenia earlier this month I could not but dislike the bad customer service almost in all cafes and restaurants […]. In the gorgeous Astral cafe, for example, during our third visit my friends and I had to leave it because no one approached us to help in 30 minutes. In Jazzve, another famous place, I had to ask the manager to send a waiter to help us. And on Princess Marianna, a ship-cafe in the Hrazdan gorge, I had to give “tips” on how to be nice to customers to their waiter. And I’d better not talk about the funny waiters in Harsnaqar resort at the lake Sevan.

It feels like waiters in cafes are about to start a fight with you.

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Following the collapse of a high-rise building in Baku, Carpetblogger has an interesting post quoting from an interview with Soyun Sadikhov by the Russian Trend News Agency on the construction boom in Azerbaijan’s capital. Well, I say interesting, but perhaps I should say alarming — and not least because the same issue probably apply to Yerevan as well where similar criticisms have already been voiced about the largely corruption-driven development downtown.

When a construction boom began in Baku, when I saw the process of this construction and the specialists engaged in this, I understood and relayed my fears that this type of construction has no future. That is a real communal grave….I saw that they made use of very low-quality reinforcements. The reinforcements being used in Baku absolutely do not correspond with the seismic conditions of Baku. […]

[…]

You know, I very often visit Baku and observe the ongoing changes. As for this mass and low-quality construction, I have said it many times and I still insist that a huge communal grave is being built in Baku. Baku city is being built without a general plan, and without expertise. In the chase for money and profits people forget to think of how people will live in these buildings.

How can one construct a skyscraper without taking into consideration services issues?! A lot of buildings are being constructed in the center of the city, but there are no new services. Nobody deals with construction of new sewerage, drainage, or water-supply systems. At a location, where previously a five-story building containing 100 families built during the USSR stood, now a twenty-two-story building is being constructed, but all the services remain the same. That is absurd. Is it so difficult to understand that a new building means many more dwellers, so new larger sewerage pipes and drainage is required? One cannot construct buildings without preliminary reconstruction of services.

[…]

Again I want to say that the guilt of this irresponsibility lies with the construction companies and their heads, employing such pseudo-labourers. Greed and cupidity of construction organizations, officials, investors financing such construction is what now happens in Azerbaijan. Such construction should be immediately stopped and measures should be taken to prevent the construction of communal graves for Baku residents. It would be better to construct less but with high quality.

The full post is here.

The construction boom has hit the capitals of all three Republics of the South Caucasus, and each country, although to a lesser extent in Georgia, significant concerns have been raised regarding the entire process in what is often corruption-driven urban development. In Yerevan, for example, architects, seismologists and environmentalists are deeply upset by the anarchic construction of the new Northern Avenue which many allege breaches the law, construction standards as well as human rights.

In May 2005, one person died on the controversial Yerevan construction site, and the BBC today reports that a high-rise building under construction in Baku, capital of the Republic of Azerbaijan, has collapsed. Workers on the construction site have died.

Baku city prosecutor Aziz Seidov told reporters that initial evidence pointed to shoddy construction work as the cause of the collapse.

High-rise buildings are springing up across the Azeri capital, thanks to a construction boom fuelled by the oil industry.

Local media have said that much of the construction is of a poor and in violation of safety standards.

They also say developers bypass building regulations by bribing corrupt officials.

Baku mayor Hajibala Abutalybov told the Reuters news agency the building that collapsed was being built without official permission.

The head of the construction company and another company executive have been arrested, Prosecutor-General Zakir Qaralov told the Associated Press news agency.

In what is an incident that should raise concerns here in Yerevan, where I doubt buildings are built to any higher standards than in Baku and where construction is also often illegal, Ria Novosti reports that the death toll now stands at 14. It goes without saying that the accident in Azerbaijan should result in actions against similarly sub-standard constructions in Armenia.

Environmental Protest Action, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007

Yesterday saw another environmental protest held in Yerevan. Actually, although they are staged from time to time, they’re not so frequent it has to be said — probably because few people here actually think about such things. Despite respiratory problems and air pollution being on the rise, the number of green areas in the capital continues to decline usually to make room for some monstrosity of a building or cafe belonging to a corrupt government official, their relatives or business partners.

The announcement of the protest, which I posted on Wednesday, read as follows:

We are against all the actions which cause ecological disaster in our city. The greediness of our “elite” is beyond measure. The construction business has purposefully destroyed the green areas and the historical and cultural monuments of the city for the latest decade, turning it into an asphalt-concrete desert.

Yerevan residents intensely struggle for the green areas near the houses, yet women and children face the attacks of the police and other armed forces.

It is the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. Emergence of a huge foundation pit for construction in Opera garden by the Swan Lake became culmination of negligence and arbitrariness toward the ecological and cultural environment and toward public opinion.

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Via The Armenian Observer, news of another environmental protest. Given increasing concerns about corruption and environmental destruction surrounding what the municipality calls “urban planning,” but which the rest of us call criminal negligence and abuse of power for personal gain, the event sounds interesting.

Dear Fellow Citizens,

Public Ecological Coalition invites you to participate in an open-air press conference and action to be held
on Thursday, July 26, 2007 at 6 pm, in the Opera garden area by the Arno Babajanyan Statue.

We are against all the actions which cause ecological disaster in our city. The greediness of our “elite” is beyond measure. The construction business has purposefully destroyed the green areas and the historical and cultural monuments of the city for the latest decade, turning it into an asphalt-concrete desert.

Yerevan residents intensely struggle for the green areas near the houses, yet women and children face the attacks of the police and other armed forces.

It is the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. Emergence of a huge foundation pit for construction in Opera garden by the Swan Lake became culmination of negligence and arbitrariness toward the ecological and cultural environment and toward public opinion. After the representatives of the coalition set up a clamor, the construction seemed to be suspended. However, all the efforts to find out who embarked upon the construction and what should be built there were doomed to failure.

The authorities even promised to fill in the foundation pit that “belonged to nobody.” Let us help them.

All interested individuals and organizations are welcome to join the action by gathering near the pit at the abovementioned date and time. Please also bring “a handful of soil” with you to fill the pit. Let it be our contribution in the struggle against illegal construction business.

The event, followed by a press conference, will bring together prominent public figures.

Your active participation will determine the future of our city.

Public Ecological Coalition of 32 Organizations

Komitas, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007

You read about it first in the blogosphere here, here, here, and here, and now the mainstream media is starting to cover what many consider to be the anarchic, ill-thought out and incompetent attempt to redevelop Yerevan and ease some of the traffic congestion that has made living in in Yerevan something of a nightmare for pedestrian and motorist alike. Armenia Now backs up these concerns by reporting that there are environmental concerns about how the construction work is being carried out as well.

Although the zoning plan for Yerevan’s Kentron (central) community is still under discussion, it has already got off the drawing board causing an uproar among experts.

“The zoning plan for city center is being implemented with violation, since work began before the plan was approved. Even if it was the best tree-planting project for the center, all the same it was to have been gotten underway only after approval,” Sona Ayvazyan, an environmental expert for Transparency International Armenia, says.

[…]

Yerevan Project Institute Director Gurgen Musheghyan tries to give an answer to the issues raised by the environmentalists. He says this way a whole free area will be spared.

“The number of cars has increased in Yerevan so much today that traffic is in a paralyzed state, people stand in traffic congestions for hours. Taking into account these problems, we have decided to put the river Getar flowing through one of the city’s central thoroughfares, Khanjyan street, into a tube in order to broaden the street and allow the freed space to be used,” Musheghyan explains, angering environmentalists even further.

“There is no country where a natural structure, a river, would be shut in order to lay a transport route. Furthermore, now they envisage putting the polluted water of the Getar into tubes. And it is simply inadmissible to put polluted water not having contact with air into a closed space, taking into account the fact that the Getar was not only a water facility, but also vegetation and verdure,” says Environment Legal Protection Center chairwoman Aida Iskoyan.

According to Iskoyan, a traffic regulation program could have been developed without the proposed plan.

Khazhak Drampyan, who was Armenia’s motor transport minister in the Soviet times, also criticizes the tactics of the city authorities.

“Almost in all European countries minibuses are replaced by other means of public transportation, such as tram, bus. The number of underground stations is increased in order to keep air pollution low and relieve the traffic on the roads. But the opposite is being done in Yerevan today, since the owners of minibus services are from within the authorities and have handsome profits from their operation,” Drampyan says.

[…]

Independent experts, however, think that expecting such results in condition of widespread unauthorized construction is, to put it mildly, unrealistic.

“We do not see the mechanisms for the realization either of the master plan or the project. If our local authorities were able to manage the city properly, then today there wouldn’t be cafes at the expense of green areas. And what is happening at the crossroads of Khanjyan and Tigran Mets streets today? In the hottest spots of the city several subway passages are being dug at a time, turning traffic into a real nightmare, in the case when everything could have been done with proper calculation,” Armenian Botanical Association Chairwoman Marina Oganesova says.

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Mesrop Movsesyan, A1 Plus Director, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007

Today marked the fifth anniversary of the closure of A1 Plus, Armenia’s only alternative TV station that was taken off the air in the year preceding the 2003 presidential and parliamentary election. Every year some kind of event is held to mark the day, but even though its continued absence from the airwaves concerns many international bodies, it seems as though the station is still no closer to resuming broadcasting.

Although critics argue that it was more opposition than independent, the broadcast media is now totally controlled by the authorities without A1 Plus around. Attempts to get hold of a new frequency have failed in what appear to be less than transparent and impartial tenders, and A1 Plus’ case is being heard by the European Court as this BBC report from early last year reports.

In April 2002, the Armenian government took A1+ off the air.

The TV station, which was the most popular independent news channel at the time, has since reapplied ten times for a licence to broadcast. Each time it has been refused.

Three years ago, A1+ took its case to the European Court of Human Rights. A two-year investigation followed.

[…]

When the A1+ signal died, almost four years ago, thousands gathered on the streets of Yerevan to protest.

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The Armenian Tree Project (ATP) is planning to plant a forest of 53,000 trees in memory of Hrant Dink. The organization seems to like undertaking symbolic actions, but I would never have expected something like this.

Hrant Dink was a brave and principled man. He was killed by people who hated him for what he was and what he said. His death was a loss to the Armenian community in Istanbul and around the world. Perhaps this tragedy will serve as a catalyst for change in Turkey. Over one hundred thousand people marched in his funeral procession in Istanbul, many of them carrying signs saying, “We are all Hrant.”

All the Armenians I know are talking about how to pay tribute to Hrant. A group of donors called Jeff Masarjian at ATP last week and suggested that we plant a memorial forest of 53,000 trees–1,000 trees for each of Hrant’s fifty-three years. Because that’s what we do–plant trees in Armenia–we thought this was something we could offer in Hrant Dink’s memory. I am hoping that you will join us in creating this living tribute to a courageous and exemplary man.

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It seems that all three capitals of the South Caucasus Republics are facing a crisis in terms of traffic congestion and pollution. The Instiute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR), for example, published an article on traffic jams in Baku and how the Azerbaijani Government is seeking to address the problem.

In March 2006, the president ordered the government to start a big building project aimed at unblocking the roads, removing traffic jams and creating a modern transport infrastructure.

According to the presidential plan, a new highway will be built between the airport and central Baku and there will be nine bridges, 13 underpasses and dozens of car parks. The cost of the whole project is 300 millions mantas (more than 263 million euro). At the moment, the government is using only its own money, but it may seek to attract foreign capital for the project as well.

Under plan, the Baku municipal authorities and the transport ministry must also implement a scheme to develop Baku’s transport network up until 2030.

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