SAVE THE CITY, DON’T JUST PAINT IT!!

Well… different opinions for the presentation in Famagusta Gate. Let’s try to summarize it in some points:

* The reason of the meeting was the presentation to the neighbors of Takt-el-Kale of the restoration of one part of the area, including Pendadaxtilou Street, Ermou Street, Ammochosto Street and Leoforos Athinas. The intervention is focuses on facades, pavements, and urban furniture.
* The objective is the rehabilitation of Takt-el-Kale area, in stages, that will involve in the future Agios Antonios and Agios Ioannis areas. This first intervention will be divided in three phases, beginning spring next year and for a period of more than one year.
* The presentation was carried on from Nicosia’s Mayor, Eleni Mavrou and the Architects Petropoulou and Papadopoulou. The audience, basically neighbors of Takt-el-Kale, were approximately around 100 people.

After the presentation of the project, it was the time for questions, and these are some of the conclusions:

+ Most of the interventions by the people began with a: “I would like to thank the Major for this project….” And continued with “… but the real problem is…”
+ The project offers a “face cleaning” of the area. The people spoke about their actual problems, which their project had almost nothing to do with.
+ The main problems are quite obvious: garbage, light, traffic, parking, clubs, noises, the mill, etc. None of these are solved in the project, not even mentioned.
+ Although the project can help the area, bigger efforts are needed for more obvious and urgent problems.

The last hour was a little bit of a mess; people trying to give their points and the Mayor trying to defend hers. In the end, the project presented wasn’t the main subject of discussion, and the people wanted to make the problems clear to the Mayor, so that the municipality can take serious actions to solve them. If this is done correctly, they said, then, in the future, projects like the one presented will be welcomed and applaud. The money should be spent somewhere else at the moment.
Our hope is that these meetings can help to the communication between the government and the inhabitants of the city. We don’t believe they are two different things, but two parts of a bigger one called Nicosia, and they have to walk together hand to hand.