And they’re off. The great Borduriada 2009 is under way in at least two of Bucharest’s six sectors, with local mayors eager change the kerbstones on as many streets as possible, because, well, because it’s cheap and relatively easy.
To the casual observer (and there is no observer more casual than Bucharest Life), the urgent need to change the city’s kerbstones could be considered another simple case of Bucharest putting the cart before the horse. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all. Indeed, the fetish for changing kerbstones began some years ago, when former mayor Adrian Videanu decided to change the granite kerbstones of yore with cheap, nasty concrete ones.
Back then we were told much the same as today. Amongst other things Videanu memorably said that changing kerbstones, and lowering of them at street corners, was needed in order “to make the city more accessible for the disabled.”
A lovely sentiment. It’s just a shame Bucharest’s drivers don’t concur:
Get a wheelchair/pram/pushchair through there?
Like the benches and flower beds which sprang up after last year’s local elections, the Borduriada is a highly visible campaign that – even though many, many people see its pointlessness – does at least prove in unquestionable terms that the local authorities are doing something.
In truth, this is a wilful waste of time and money that could so better be spent elsewhere. Still there are streets in the capital that are unpaved. Still tens of thousands of people go without sewerage and running water. Changing kerbstones should be #156 on any list of priorities for the capital. It would be on ours.
But then perhaps we do not have the same priorities. We are foreigners after all. What do we know? But we would just make a suggestion: if you really do have to change the kerbstones, why not use the opportunity to bury the city’s power and communication cables? If the streets have to be dug up anyway, why not take the chance to place this unsightly mess out of sight once and for all?
Or would that require joined-up thinking?
