The sweet aroma of mutton smoke drifts through a maze of crumbling alleyways, a barbecue tang that for decades has lured meat-eaters from across Pakistan to the frontier city of Peshawar.

The ancient city, capital of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has retained its reputation for some of Pakistan’s tastiest cuisine despite bearing the brunt of the country’s bloody war with militancy.

University student Mohammad Fahad had long heard tales of Peshawar’s famed mutton.

“Earlier we heard of Peshawar being a dangerous place,” he told AFP — but security has improved in recent years, and he finally made the hours-long journey from the eastern city of Lahore to see if it could live up to the hype.

“We are here just to see what the secret to this barbecue is,” he says, excitedly awaiting his aromatic portion in Namak Mandi — “Salt Market” — located in the heart of Peshawar.

The hearty cuisine comes from generations-old recipes emanating from the nearby Pashtun tribal lands along the border with Afghanistan.

It is feted for its simplicity compared with the intricate curries and spicy dishes from Pakistan’s eastern plains and southern coast.

“Its popularity is owed to the fact that it is mainly meat-based and that always goes down well across the country,” says Pakistani cookbook author Sumayya Usmani.

The famed Nisar Charsi (hashish smoker) Tikka — named after its owner’s renowned habit — in Namak Mandi chalks up its decades of success to using very little in the way of spices.

For its barbecue offerings, tikkas — cuts of meat — are generously salted and sandwiched on skewers between cubes of fat for tenderness and taste, and slow-cooked over a wood fire.

Its other famed dish, karahi — or curry stew — is made with slices of mutton pan-cooked in heaped chunks of white fat carved from the sheep’s rump, along with sparing amounts of green chilli and tomatoes.

Both plates are served with stacks of oven-fresh naan and bowls of fresh yogurt.

“It is the best food in the entire world,” gushes co-owner Nasir Khan, adding that the restaurant sources some of the best meat in the country and serves customers from across Pakistan daily along with local regulars.

By Khan’s calculations, the restaurant goes through hundreds of kilograms of meat a day — or about two dozen sheep — with hundreds if not thousands served.

Hash and meat

The clientele at Nisar’s Charsi and other Salt Market eateries usually arrive in large groups, with experienced customers ordering food by the kilo and guiding cleaver-wielding butchers to their preferred cuts, which are then cooked immediately.

Peshawar’s improved security has given business a boost, Khan said.

“We had a lot of troubles and pains,” he admitted, remembering friends lost during the years of devastating bombings and suicide attacks.

But some customers said they had been loyal to Peshawar’s cuisine even during the bloodshed.

“I’ve been coming here for more than 20 years now,” said Hammad Ali, 35, who travelled to Peshawar with eight other colleagues from Pakistan’s capital Islamabad for a gluttonous lunch.

“This taste is unique, that’s why we have come all this way.”

Orders generally take close to an hour to prepare, with customers quaffing tea and occasionally smoking hash ahead of the meal.

“They smoke it openly here,” explained Nisar Charsi’s head chef Mukam Pathan. “When someone smokes one joint of hash, they eat around two kilos of meat.”

For those looking for a little less lamb, the city’s renowned chapli kebab offers an alternative.

The kebab is typically made of minced beef and a mix of spices kneaded into patties and deep fried on a simmering iron skillet.

Rokhan Ullah — owner of Tory Kebab House — said the dish is most popular on cold, winter days that see ravenous customers flocking to its four branches across the city, overwhelming staff and making orders hard to fill.

“They eat it with passion… because one enjoys hot food when the weather is cold,” explained Ullah, who plans to expand in major cities across Pakistan.

Customer Muhib Ullah has been eating kebabs three to four days a week for the last decade.

“This is the tastiest and most famous food in Peshawar,” he declared.

Hours-long meals

For regular barbecue eater Omar Aamir Aziz, it is not just the heaping portions of meat that attract foodies to Peshawari cuisine, but the culture that has built up around the meal.

Other cities in Pakistan and abroad have more in the way of entertainment and nightlife options.

But in deeply conservative Peshawar, eating out is the primary leisure activity.

Meals tend to last for hours after the meat has been consumed as conversation continues over steaming cups of green tea.

“That’s what we have and that’s our speciality,” says Aziz. “We’ve been doing this for two, three, four hundred years.”
…

Apple on Wednesday cut the revenue forecast for its latest quarter, citing fewer iPhone upgrades and weak sales in China, and its shares tumbled in after-hours trade. 

The company forecast $84 billion in revenue for its fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 29, which is below analysts’ estimate of $91.5 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Apple originally forecast revenue of between $89 billion and $93 billion. 

“While we anticipated some challenges in key emerging markets, we did not foresee the magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in greater China,” Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said in a letter to investors. “In fact, most of our revenue shortfall to our guidance, and over 100 percent of our year-over-year worldwide revenue decline, occurred in greater China across iPhone, Mac and iPad.”

Wednesday was the first time that Apple issued a warning on its revenue guidance ahead of releasing quarterly results since the iPhone was launched in 2007. 

Sharp drop

Apple shares, which had been halted ahead of the announcement, skidded 7.7 percent in after-hours trade, dragging the company’s market value below $700 billion. 

A slew of brokerages reduced their first-quarter production estimates for iPhones after several component makers in November forecast weaker-than-expected sales, leading some market watchers to call the peak for iPhones in several key markets. 

On Apple’s earnings call in November, Cook cited slowing growth in emerging markets such as Brazil, India and Russia for the lower-than-anticipated sales estimates for the company’s fiscal first quarter. But Cook specifically said he “would not put China in that category” of countries with troubled growth. 

That all came before the damage to the Chinese economy from trade tensions with the United States became clear. On Wednesday, China’s central bank magazine said the country’s economic growth could fall below 6.5 percent in the fourth quarter as companies face increased difficulties there. 

Apple has held firm on its premium pricing strategy in China despite the risk of a slower economy, a factor that has been exacerbated by the strong U.S. dollar. Apple tends to set its prices in U.S. dollars and charge a broadly equivalent amount in local currencies.  

“The question for investors will be the extent to which Apple’s aggressive pricing has exacerbated this situation and what this means for the company’s longer-term pricing power within its iPhone franchise,” James Cordwell, an analyst at Atlantic Equities, told Reuters. 
…

Few experiences capture old New Orleans and the Mississippi River quite like a paddlewheel riverboat coming around a muddy bend with its tooting whistle, towering smoke stacks and water-churning propeller. 

This month, a new riverboat is set to launch in this Louisiana port city. A plunge in tourism after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 forced the New Orleans Steamboat Co. to sell off one of its two boats, but the arrival of the City of New Orleans is a sign of the steadily rising tide of tourists each year to this Southern city of Mardi Gras fame. 

“People come from all over the world. It is astonishing. They really want to see the river,” said Adrienne Thomas, marketing director for the company, which also owns another riverboat, the Natchez. 

Once numerous

A century ago, countless paddlewheel riverboats plied the Mississippi and its tributaries. Today, New Orleans has two: the Natchez and the Creole Queen, which is operated by New Orleans Paddlewheels. 

Now the City of New Orleans is coming full circle, back to the state where it was built in 1991. For years it operated as a casino boat in Rock Island, Ill., until the mid-1990s. But after that state legalized onshore casinos, the boat became obsolete, said Matthew Dow, project manager heading the vessel’s renovation. The then-named Casino Rock Island sat unused for years until the New Orleans Steamboat Co. bought it in 2016. 

“We instantly fell in love with the boat,” Dow said. “We saw the potential in her and knew that we could do her justice and bring her back not only to her former glory but well beyond that.”  

Dow said the vessel already looked the part of a New Orleans riverboat, with its curved decks, plentiful windows, decorative fleurs de lis and giant paddlewheel.  

Initially, it was brought to a dry dock for hull repairs, then towed to New Orleans for a makeover. 

“We had to rip all of the walls out, all the ceilings, a lot of the insulation,” Dow said. “Basically, we had to strip this boat down to the superstructure, to bare bones, and everything had to go back new.” 

There were additions, too. A dumbwaiter was added to connect the galley to all three decks for food transport, along with passenger elevators and handicapped-accessible restrooms.

Dow says the company is aiming to have the boat ready for tours by Jan. 21, when the Natchez goes into its annual service and maintenance layup. After that, both boats will operate simultaneously. 

More spacious

The two riverboats look similar, both painted red and white with giant red paddlewheels and exterior deck space for close-up views by passengers of the giant propeller. But the new boat has more indoor space. 

The Natchez was built in the 1970s for sightseeing with a lot of open deck space, and its main deck is occupied mostly by the boat’s vintage 1925 steam engines, an attraction for passengers. The Natchez is one of only six commercially operated steamboats left in the U.S.  

The new boat is run with a modern diesel-electric system. It takes up less room, allowing for more indoor space for dinner seating, jazz brunches and special events. 

“Even though we don’t have the steam engines, we do have the working paddlewheel, and we want to show that off,” Dow said.  

As with the Natchez, cruises on the City of New Orleans will include narration about the city and shoreline sights such as the port, historic Jackson Square, the Chalmette Battlefield, which marks the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812, and the Chalmette National Cemetery. And there will be plenty of live music. 

Cyndi Gruenberg of Houston, Texas, rode the Natchez with her husband and two daughters recently and said they learned much about the city. 

“It was a great trip, a little bit of history along the river and just a fun ride,” said Gruenberg. “It’s pretty cool.” 

‘Back in every way’

Tourism officials say they don’t expect a shortage of passengers, as the number of visitors to New Orleans has surpassed pre-Katrina levels in recent years. 

Stephen Perry, head of New Orleans & Co., which promotes tourism, says the city is “back in every way” with increased hotel and restaurant bookings. Riding a paddlewheel is part of the New Orleans experience, he noted. 

“This is one of the most eclectic, authentic places left in America,” Perry said. “People don’t come here only for food and music. What they like is other experiences. 

“A paddlewheeler is just one of the great added attractions of imagining yourself in a time gone by.”
…

The roller-coaster ride on Wall Street resumed Wednesday, the first trading day of the new year, as stocks plunged early on, then slowly recovered and finished with a slight gain.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped as much as 398 points in the first few minutes of trading after more shaky economic news from China. But it gradually recouped those losses, and a small rally over the last 15 minutes of trading left major indexes a bit higher than where they started.

That kind of whiplash was typical during the last three months of 2018, and many strategists think it is likely to continue.

A Chinese government survey and one by a major business magazine showed manufacturing in China weakened in December as global and domestic demand cooled. That weighed on big exporters, with tech companies like Microsoft and industrials like Boeing taking sharp losses early on, only to bounce back.

Some of last year’s worst performers, including energy and internet companies, led the gains Wednesday.

After gliding gently higher for years, propelled by rising corporate profits and extremely low interest rates from the Federal Reserve, stocks have been heaving up and down in recent months as a host of fears weigh on investors, including threats to global economic growth.

Stocks are coming off their worst year in a decade, and many Americans could be in for a shock when they open their monthly and end-of-the-year 401(k) statements.

The benchmark S&P 500 fell 6 percent in 2018, its first substantial loss since 2008, and dropped 14 percent since late September. Many other stock indexes around the world fared even worse last year.

The U.S. economy has been expanding for almost a decade, and stocks have risen steadily over that time. From September through the end of December, however, investors became more and more worried that challenges such as U.S.-China trade tensions, rising interest rates and political uncertainty could slow the economy and company profits, and possibly tip the U.S. economy and the global one into a recession.

Many Wall Street banks are forecasting a year of modest gains for stocks. But most also say they expect these sharp reversals to continue as investors try to handicap so many unknowns.

Vinay Pande, head of trading strategies for UBS Global Wealth Management, said company earnings jumped in 2018 and are likely to keep improving.

The S&P 500 index finished with a gain of 3.18 points, or 0.1 percent, at 2,510.03, while the Dow rose 18.78 points, or 0.1 percent, to 23,346.24. The Nasdaq composite climbed 30.66 points, or 0.5 percent, to 6,665.94.

Most markets were closed Tuesday for New Year’s Day.

Oil prices

Prices on long-term government bonds rose, a sign investors were looking for safer options. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.65 percent from 2.69 percent.

After sharp losses at the start of trading, benchmark U.S. crude jumped 2.5 percent to $46.54 per barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price international oils, rose 2.1 percent to $54.91 per barrel in London. Those gains helped send energy stocks higher.

Oil prices have fallen about 40 percent since early October 2018 as investors reacted to the possibility of weaker demand for energy as economic growth slowed. That led to sharp drops in energy companies.

Julian Emanuel, chief equity and derivatives strategist for BTIG, said investors often start a new year by buying shares of the companies that did the worst the year before.

Meanwhile, health care companies, the best-performing part of the market in 2018, fell Wednesday as drugmakers and insurers lost ground.

In other trading:

• The dollar fell to 109.21 yen from 109.61 yen. The euro fell to $1.1344 from $1.1445. The British pound slid to $1.2609 from $1.2752.

• France’s CAC 40 fell 0.9 percent and the British FTSE 100 added 0.1 percent. Germany’s DAX rose 0.2 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng tumbled 2.8 percent and Seoul’s Kospi gave up 1.5 percent. Tokyo’s markets were closed.

• Wholesale gasoline rose 1.8 percent to $1.33 a gallon. Heating oil gained 1.3 percent to $1.70 a gallon. Natural gas rose 0.6 percent to $2.96 per 1,000 cubic feet.

• Gold rose 0.2 percent to $1,284.10 an ounce and silver added 0.7 percent to $15.65 an ounce. Copper fell 0.3 percent to $2.62 a pound.
  …

Rotting hides on the road are all that is left of three butchered cows.

Such carnage is common in Venezuela’s cattle country, where thieves, squatters and government policy threaten a vital food resource.

Venezuela’s severe economic crisis is felt keenly in cities — where food sources are limited — but it’s also cutting a swath through what should be the country’s food basket.

Seeing the hides on the road — the handiwork of cattle poachers — Jose Labrador stops his truck and explodes with rage.

“It’s as if they were telling us: ‘We are killing your cattle, so what?'” the 46-year old rancher says, fuming that complaining is useless — police and local authorities will do nothing.

Labrador and other farmers in the cattle-rearing region of San Silvestre, in the western state of Barinas, say they are in a state of siege — from squatters, gunmen and government price controls that make their farms unprofitable.

“I can’t sleep on the farm anymore because I’m scared,” said Jose Antonio Espinoza, owner of a 600-head herd in San Silvestre. “They have come around here and tied people up, and then stolen everything — chainsaws, water pumps, cattle.”

He said as many as 74 bulls have been stolen over the past year from his family farm.

Cowboys on horseback herd his traditional Venezuelan Brahman and Carora breeds, as well as buffalos, to and from their fertile grazing land.

But they are powerless when the rustlers strike.

The wheeling of vultures overhead is a warning that the poachers have struck once again. When they arrive, only bones and skin remain, the meat cut up and taken away to feed a hungry black market.

Farm Policy Failures

In a 2016 survey, three-quarters of Venezuelans reported they had lost weight since the economic crisis began, by an average of 19 pounds (8.5 kilos).

Chronic shortages of protein in the cities should provide an opportunity for the country’s farmers, but farms are producing less and less.

Meat produced in Venezuela now barely accounts for 40 percent of  domestic consumption, less than half the 97 percent of two decades ago, according to the National Federation of Cattle Ranchers.

Per capita meat consumption went from 20 kilos per year in 1999 to only seven kilos at present, the federation says. Even then, farmers can’t fulfill demand.

“We are going backwards… even though those of us who remain on the land work tooth and nail,” federation president Armando Chacin told AFP.

Chacin warned that government policies, far from easing the problem, have served only to strangle growth.

Venezuela, a country of more than 30 million people, raises less than 10 million head of cattle, the federation says; in 1999, when the population was 20 million, there were 14 million cattle.

Dwindling resources makes meat more expensive in the capital Caracas, 560 kilometers (350 miles) away, where it costs the equivalent of the minimum monthly wage to buy two kilos of meat.

Land Expropriations

Since the arrival in power in 1999 of Hugo Chavez, the socialist government has expropriated five million hectares (12.4 million acres) of agricultural land, the cattle ranchers federation says.

At the same time, high oil prices meant Venezuela imported more of its food, to the detriment of its own agriculture industry.

Now, Chavez’s hand-picked successor Nicolas Maduro sets prices for basic foodstuffs, often below production costs, leading many farmers to bankruptcy.

Price controls mean farmers get little for the meat they produce.

After years of fattening, a big animal brings in about $250.

But with Venezuela’s staggering inflation set to top one million percent this year — according to the International Monetary Fund — it barely covers the cost of a truck tire.

Land invasions are another problem. Emboldened by government policy, armed squatters invaded a large maize farm in San Silvestre and ransacked it in the space of three days.

“They robbed nine tractors and three harvesters, they destroyed the house. We got tired of complaining about it and neither the national guard nor the police intervened,” said Marisela Febres, the owner.

The incident happened in 2016, but she was never able to recover her land. Arguing that the land was idle, the state-run National Land Institute awarded the farm to the squatters earlier this year.

In border areas, farmers can be even more exposed, regularly becoming the target of extortion by armed groups, engaged in running contraband or drug trafficking.

Late last month, the government took over the running of a score of slaughterhouses. Officials accused their owners of speculation and promptly slashed prices by two-thirds.

There have also been cases of pro-Maduro state governors demanding that farmers sell part of their production, setting the prices themselves, to distribute to their supporters at low cost.

Making matters worse on a local level is that the poachers don’t discriminate.

The animals killed include breeding bulls and dairy cows alike, animals that remain productive for up to 12 years. One cow alone can produce 4,000 liters of milk a year.

Labrador says he was a recent victim.

“They killed a bull of mine with incredible genes, one that was going to be a very productive stud,” he said.

Farmers have difficulty buying seeds and fertilizers, even vaccines for livestock, he says.

“If there are no medicines for people, imagine what it is like for the animals.”
…

Laborers milled around an unfinished eight-story building in an expansive field in Konza dotted with zebra and antelope — the only visible sign of progress in a decade-old plan to make Kenya into Africa’s leading technology hub by 2030.

Grandiose plans, red tape and a lack of funding have left Konza Technopolis — the $14.5 billion new city to be built some 60 km (37 miles) southeast of Nairobi — way behind schedule on its goal of having 20,000 people on site by 2020.

“It has taken too long and I think people have moved on,” said tech entrepreneur Josiah Mugambi, founder of Alba.one, a Nairobi-based software company, who was initially excited by the government’s ambitious project.

Dubbed the Silicon Savannah, Konza aims to become a smart city — using tech to manage water and electricity efficiently and reduce commuting time — and a solution to the rapid, unplanned urbanization which has plagued existing cities.

About 40 percent of Africa’s 1 billion people live in towns and cities and the World Bank predicts the urban population will double over the next 25 years, adding pressure to already stretched infrastructure.

Konza’s dream is to become a top business process outsourcing hub by 2030, with on-site universities training locals to feed into a 200,000-strong tech-savvy workforce providing IT support and call center services remotely.

But the first building has yet to be completed on the 5,000-acre former cattle ranch, three years after breaking ground, and business has shifted its focus to other African countries, like Rwanda, with competing visions to become modern tech hubs.

“Nobody can wait that long for a city to be built. For a tech entrepreneur, they think about where their startup will be two to three years down the line,” said Mugambi.

Other smart cities planned across Africa include Nigeria’s Eko Atlantic City near Lagos that will house 250,000 people on land reclaimed from the sea, Ghana’s Hope City and an Ethiopian city styled as the real Wakanda after the film “Black Panther.”

Utopian

Bringing such utopian schemes to life is no easy task for African governments that are struggling to provide adequate roads, power, water and security to their existing cities.

“Upgrading infrastructure in places like Kibera (slum) in Nairobi to provide water and a better sewerage system is equally as important as building a new city such as Konza,” said Abdu Muwonge, a senior urban specialist with the World Bank in Kenya.

Some critics say Konza was ill-conceived from the start.

“The vision is wrong; the vision is too big,” said Aly-Khan Satchu, a Nairobi-based independent financial analyst.

“This is miles from anywhere. There are not leveraging the existing infrastructure … It is assuming that you can bring in academia, you can bring in venture capital, you can bring in corporates.”

The first serious hurdle arose in 2012 when the National Land Commission (NLC), which manages public land, introduced a cumbersome land acquisition procedure, said Bitange Ndemo, who led a team that conceived Konza Technopolis in 2008.

“The NLC was saying we should follow the processes of acquiring public land, which would take years to complete,” Ndemo, now an associate professor of business at the University of Nairobi, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The delays caused at least one deal with a German university to fall through, he said, as the process was much slower than the old one where investors signed deals directly with government ministries which took care of land leases.

To resolve this, the government transferred ownership of the site to the Konza Technopolis Development Authority (KoTDA), set up in 2012 to co-ordinate development of the new city, which now allocates land to investors on 50-year renewable leases.

Cold Feet

Financing has also proven a major issue.

In its strategic plan, the government promised to fund 10 percent of Konza, laying the infrastructure, while the private sector would come in with the rest of the money to build universities, offices, housing and hotels.

But the government was slow to contribute its share and has yet to pass a law to create KoTDA as a legal entity which would make it easier to sign contracts with external lenders, said Lawrence Esho, one of Konza’s project planners until 2013.

“They are way behind schedule partly because the government took time to give Konza money,” he said, adding that no money came in until 2013.

“This stopped any work from starting at the site and investors may have developed cold feet as they waited.”

KoTDA’s chief executive, John Tanui, said the government has committed to invest more than 80 billion shillings ($780 million).

“When I say committed does not mean we have absorbed. Our absorption is less than 10 percent of that figure,” he said, without elaborating.

The government has stepped up funding since 2017, said Abraham Odeng, deputy secretary at Kenya’s Information Communications and Technology ministry, without giving figures.

Odeng pointed to a 40 billion shilling contract signed in 2017 with an Italian firm to build roads, water and sewerage infrastructure by 2021, funded by the Italian government.

“That is a concessional loan, which is a long-term loan that the Kenyan government will pay,” he said.

Drop in the Ocean

But Kenya’s growing reliance on loans is causing jitters, with the International Monetary Fund warning of an increased risk of default.

The Washington-based lender forecast Kenya’s total public debt will reach 63 percent of economic output or GDP for 2018, up from 53 percent in 2016, citing the government’s public investment drive and revenue shortfalls.

The World Bank’s Muwonge said the issue is eliminating challenges for the private sector to do business.

“Getting Konza city off the ground will require that we pull in private capital with concessions for them to deliver certain kinds of infrastructure for which the government may not have resources,” he said.

Five local investors, including Nairobi-based software developer Craft Silicon and the state-run Kenya Electricity Transmission Company, are expected to build offices, residential buildings and hotels by 2020, KoTDA head Tanui said.

But critics say it is not enough.

“What (investors) have allocated so far is still a drop in the ocean,” said Ndemo, the former government technocrat.

And international interest is shifting elsewhere.

Rwanda — widely regarded as the least corrupt country in East Africa — launched its Kigali Innovation City in 2015, designed to host 50,000 people in universities and tech companies on a 70-hectare site outside the capital.

The $2 billion plan, due for completion by 2020, is seven times cheaper than Konza.

“All these other (cities) have better proximity, have better density and have better collaborative feedback loops,” said financial analyst Satchu. “We are now at a serious disadvantage vis-a-vis these other countries.”

($1 = 102.5000 Kenyan shillings)
…

Think of public spaces in big cities, and formal parks, bustling markets and grand squares come to mind.

Think again.

In the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, residents have redrawn the map and come up with innovative ways for locals to congregate in their ancient and fast-changing city.

A boxing ring was built on a bridge. Next to it — architects installed art to amuse commuters as they hurried over the river.

The grimy gaps between garages were turned into a ‘stadium’ where locals could face off over dominoes. Inside the disused garages, bakeries, barbers and beauty salons plied their trade.

It is not how most cities do public spaces, but Tbilisi — which stands at the crossroads of Europe and Asia — has a long history shaped by diverse masters, all of whom left their architectural imprint on the Caucasus.

As the city shakes off decades of Soviet rule and reinvents itself again, developers have bent once-tight planning rules and a building boom is underway — one that is changing the face of the city and jeopardizing the open areas where Georgians meet.

“Left behind … (in) the construction boom, public spaces are still important and constitute a resource, a big treasure to be preserved,” says Nano Zazanashvili, head of the urban policy and research division at Tbilsi’s Department of Urban Development, a city office. “The main challenge of the City Hall is to protect these areas.”

Boxing Bridge

The DKD bridge — which connects two Soviet-era residential districts — is a perfect example of how locals adapted centrally-imposed urban design to fit their own suburban needs.

Flat dwellers in this northeastern sprawl live in the sort of anonymous, concrete blocks typical of any Soviet city.

Beauty is not their selling point, so in the 1990s architects installed informal shops, a hotel and a boxing gym on the bridge, which connects two identikit micro-districts.

The bridge building was part of an outdoor exhibition created for the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial earlier this year.

The event – the first since Georgia regained independence in 1991 – brought together experts to study the city’s rapid transformation and to involve locals in the debate.

“It is the very beginning, not even a first step,” Tinatin Gurgenidze, co-founder of the Biennial, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “The local community needs to understand what is the necessity of working on these issues.”

Rich Mix

Downtown, the cityscape makes for an eclectic backdrop.

Deco mansions jostle with Soviet constructivism. Ancient sulphur baths and tiny churches squat at the feet of futuristic skyscrapers, while rickety wooden houses lean into the hills, their gaily painted balconies perched in thin air.

Much of this history is fading into oblivion, sagging walls propped up with outsize beams to stop whole ghost streets crashing to dust.

Other parts of town are bulldozed and built over.

The city center is a decade into a frenetic construction boom, but the drab Gldani suburb mostly cleaves to its 1970s integrity, an era when uniform blocks were built to accommodate workers relocated from older, central neighborhoods.

This dormitory suburb became the area of the city with the highest density of population – and as communism and central control began to crumble, residents stole the chance to tack on ad-hoc balconies, garages and makeshift gardens.

With Georgian independence came a headlong rush to architectural deregulation, free of any supervision or control, changing the look, feel and use of once sacred public spaces.

“People came up with their own solutions to the problems,” said Gurgenidze, who trained in Georgia as an architect. “The informal structures need to be taken into consideration when decision makers and architects plan the future of these areas.”

Informal and Changed

Take the garages — erected in front of flats to park cars in the 1990s, they were later transformed into basic fruit and vegetable shops, bakeries, barbers and beauty salons.

Rented for 40-100 lari ($15 to £38) a month, the self-declared shops generate extra income for the residents and many were legalized after the fact into formal commercial spaces.

Now they face a possible next life.

The mayor of Tbilisi, former soccer star Kakha Kaladze, this year launched an initiative with local backing to replace the ‘garages’ with playgrounds or gardens.

So far, the plan has had limited success.

But according to architect Nikoloz Lekveishvili, locals are regaining the tiny spaces in between to play dominoes, soak up the greenery and relax with neighbors.

“People see this public space as an opportunity,” he said.

Lali Pertenavi, an artist who grew up in Gldani, temporarily turned Block 76 — a local residential building — into an exhibition space in October as part of the biennial. Residents opened their homes to artists, who in turn transformed them into social spaces recalling the best of Soviet-era collectivism.

While a master plan for the whole city is under discussion at municipal level, public spaces for ordinary people are low in the pecking order of priorities.

“Public spaces and green areas are a hot topic in the local debate but people don’t have enough time to fight for it,” said Anano Tsintsabadze, a lawyer and activist managing the Initiative for a Pubic Space, an NGO that focuses on urban planning and supports residents fighting for public spaces.

In parts of the city, such as Saburtalo and Didi Digomi, the community is slowly mobilizing against the privatization of public spaces amid a drive to keep them free and accessible.

“The social tissue has grown more than the local government.

People know what happens in Europe and are asking for more organised, clean urban spaces,” said architect Nikoloz Lekveishvili, co-founder of Timm Architecture, an international network stretching from Milan to Moscow, Istanbul to Tbilisi.

($1 = 2.6550 laris)
…