Tag: City
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The Forced Disappearance of Street Vendors in Beirut
On a sunny November day last year, a street vendor ran panickily down Beirut’s Corniche, pushing his cart, laden with corn and cotton candy, and crying out in agony. He was being chased by three police officers, who eventually caught and cuffed him. A little more than a year earlier, in June of 2021, a… Read more
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Transport Towards a More Just Lebanon
“There are probably less taxi drivers on the streets, and if the ride fare further increases because of fuel price hikes, I will stop working because I won’t get customers anymore,” said Jamal, who drove a shared taxi car also known as “service,” part of a largely self-organized and unregulated system securing affordable transportation to… Read more
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Moving in Lebanon is a luxury, only public transport is the solution
On one of the walls in the Gemmayze neighborhood of Lebanon’s capital Beirut, “Retrieving Beirut” is written, and below it is a drawing of a taxi car. The writings on Beirut’s walls call attention to the indispensability of mobility, secured through the network of taxis and buses/vans, in “retrieving” the city back from the grips of an economic and political… Read more
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The Pull Out Of The Poverty Trap
One warm afternoon in the historic Chawkbazar neighborhood of old Dhaka in Bangladesh, Shawkat, a 55-years-old rickshaw driver, was resting on the side of a road after hours of pulling his rickshaw in the day’s insufferable heat. On the other side of the road, a ten-year-old girl was standing with a toddler in her arm,… Read more