An urban sprawl we can all do without
Online
Surely, whichever sage coined the old Irish blessing, “May the road rise up to meet you,” did not foresee the cursed way those words would apply today in Beijing, where not so much the roads, but the sidewalks alongside them, are conducting an uprising.
The capital city’s woefully deteriorating walkways are prone to buckling, cracking and crumbling, putting countless pedestrians in danger of tripping and, in the worst-case scenario, doing a face-plant on the pavement.
I discovered this hazard firsthand recently during a night run through my neighborhood. Nighttime, after all, is safer for jogging than daytime, right? Most of the reckless drivers, scooter pilots and bat-out-of-hell couriers have retired to their homes by then.
On this night, however, the errant sidewalks, abetted by the city’s paucity of streetlights, conspired against me. It took just one of these miscreant bricks, jutting skyward but hidden in shadow, to catch the toe of my running shoe as I quickly passed over it.
In a split second I was airborne, though my childhood judo training saved me as I instinctively executed a breakfall, my arms sacrificing themselves so I could quite literally save face. The unexpected sprawl left huge scrapes, now scars, on both elbows.
Granted, I’m no construction expert. But when I was a child, my siblings and I assisted dad in setting the forms for, mixing, pouring and leveling enough concrete for a patio of around 90 square meters, as well as a lengthy sidewalk leading to it. Four decades later, it’s still intact.
The same cannot be said for Beijing’s unsafe sidewalks, which, rather than being constructed of concrete, are pieced together brick by brick, like a massive jigsaw puzzle. The bricks are then “secured” by a dirt mixture that’s filled in around them to supposedly hold them in place. But in many cases, the filler has been washed away by rain or eroded by strong winds. The bricks are subsequently broken, kicked loose or removed, or they simply stand perilously on end.
To make things worse, huge stretches of sidewalk that have been replaced recently, using the same method, seem particularly prone to quick deterioration, giving way like so many loose teeth. Alarmingly, even the yellow stone guideways, embedded in the sidewalks for cane-using blind or eyesight-impaired pedestrians, are in some places broken, heaving or twisted.
How many stubbed toes, twisted ankles or broken wrists — and let’s face it, falls are particularly dangerous for the elderly or infirm — are needed before the city wakes up to this danger underfoot?
Maybe the producers of these tricky bricks are making a mint, but as the city continues to grow and becomes ever more modern, this outdated mode of construction increasingly looks like a temporary fix.
The trouble is, this stopgap measure leaves step gaps, which, even in broad daylight, lie in wait for hapless passers-by.