Thursday, February 02, 2006

We're Movin' on Up, .... and Out





Beirut is alive. Traffic jams all over town. People buzzing at all times of day and night. The human activity is comparable to any major city in the world. Just don't look up. The life at street level never goes above it. It migrates North, South, East, and West; but never up.








A lot of office building around town, old and new, but not many offices. I did a consulting job for a food outlet in Downtown last year, and I naively searched for the business lunch crowd. Crowd! Ha! That was stupid of me. There were 1200 office workers in Solidere (outside of ESCWA). I'm not sure what the total built-up area of Solidere is, but it's safe to say that one office worker per 50, 60, 0r 100 square meters does not constitute a crowd. The scene is cloned in the other business districts around town: Ashrafieh, Hamra, etc...

But enough negativity already, at least we are living at Street Level now. It sure beats the time when Life in Beirut was below ground level.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That's exactly why glass buildings are multiplying. they don't want us to see that the offices are empty...