Pictures from my trip to Armenia

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Pictures from my trip to Armenia

Anyway, I remember one of my relatives from Armenia coming over to Montreal and saying how their city looked so much better than ours... She insulted many of our buildings, which is downright stupid.

Well, Montreal, although OK in parts, would never win any beauty contest for cities! And the old town is a hodge-podge of buildings, each one with its own style of design and damn-all concern for neighbouring structures. And of course massive and insensitive demolitions in the 70s and 80s. And soulless suburbs of appartment blocks and industrial estates.

In the 1990s Yerevan had the unique chance to become what few other capitals are and which all would like to be: a compact, modern, European city, with an atmosphere and physical appearance unique to itself, a pleasant place to live and work in, full of green parks, with inexpensive low-rise houses right in the very city center. But the current rulers, helped along by get-rich-quick-at-any-price diaspora scum like "Crusader", have destroyed for ever any chance of that happening.

[jgk3]

Re: Pictures from my trip to Armenia

Oh, interesting... This was during the reconstruction phase after the earthquake of 88 I presume?

[crusader1492]

Re: Pictures from my trip to Armenia

If bell-the-cat is against it, it must be good for Armenia.

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Pictures from my trip to Armenia

Oh, interesting... This was during the reconstruction phase after the earthquake of 88 I presume?

???
I think you have misread my post. 1st paragraph is about Montreal, 2nd is about Yerevan (or was there an eathquake in Montreal that nobody knows about )

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Pictures from my trip to Armenia

If bell-the-cat is against it, it must be good for Armenia.

Crusader takes the "if it is good for the oligarchy then it must be good for Armenia" approach. Co-incidentally (of course ) that will also be the most financially lucrative approach for him personally.

[ace]

Re: Pictures from my trip to Armenia

I dont consider the landmarks that have been destroyed "historical landmarks" - because they have a history no older then 50-70 years at most...those are not our historical landmarks, we have churches and buildings that date back 1000 years ago. THOSE, must be preserved.

The important issue here is that the buildings they are knocking down, are pretty xxxxty, true, and their not very safe, true, but they are also the only buildings the POOR in Armenia can afford (which I'm sad to say is the overwhelming majority). So their knocking down apartment buildings that so many people need - sending families deeper into poverty, thus, xxxxing the economy even more.

The only "good" that comes out of this is the few construction workers that get jobs.

[ace]

Re: Pictures from my trip to Armenia

And dont argue against me on this issue.

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Pictures from my trip to Armenia

I dont consider the landmarks that have been destroyed "historical landmarks" - because they have a history no older then 50-70 years at most...those are not our historical landmarks.

That is not correct. The majority of buildings that have been demolished were constructed during the Czarist-period.
It is short-sighted to say that buildings that are not old are not, or do not have the potentual to be, important historical landmarks. For example, although dating only from the 1970s the "Palace of Youth" was a landmark structure, and an irreplacable building for the architectural history of Yerevan. In any other country it would have been protected against demolition.

[TomServo]

Re: Pictures from my trip to Armenia

Perhaps Bell's next account will be of the cultural destruction going on not in Nakhichevan, but in Yerevan.

[jgk3]

Re: Pictures from my trip to Armenia

???
I think you have misread my post. 1st paragraph is about Montreal, 2nd is about Yerevan (or was there an eathquake in Montreal that nobody knows about )

no, I read it fine... I'm talking about the earthquake in Armenia. I was unaware that they were building up Yerevan to look like a modern compact European city.