The King of Fashion and, just along the street, the King of Shoes, are no more. Casualties of the Heart of Doha project, these venerable emporia have gone the way of the dodo, in the path of the slum-hungry bulldozers. A shame, really. No doubt a shop or two will feature in the new Heart, but will they have doors to the street? Will they have brash, friendly names? And most of all, will they sell affordable things that normal people need to buy? Or will they be upmarket designer boutiques, vying in sycophantic competition for the favours of the spoilt? Sometimes I wish I didn't know the answers to my own questions.
I was shocked last month to see how much of old Doha had been demolished. Even my former residence in the old German Embassy compound has fallen to the ravages of developmentitis.
ReplyDeleteAnd I was ironically amused to note that Souq Waqif had been flattened to make way for, erm, Souq Waqif. Or is that SouqDisney[TM]?
Meanwhile, the B Ring Road between Crayzee Signals and Jaidah Flyover remains untouched and unimproved, despite a design having been finalised since 1998.
You're right about that stretch of B-Ring. It's a disaster in 'rush' hour. The new-old-Souq, as we call it is quite nice to take a visitor to for a meal, but it hardly passes muster as a souq any more. Someone should tell them that you can't build 'heritage'!
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