Cambodia Walkman Continued
The Walkman saga continues… but first an update on the down-home ferry. It”s no longer operating from the southern location at the foot of Street 144. There are now two regular sized ferry boats operating from the foot of Street 106. The service, as a result, is more frequent but there is no longer an pption of boating across after about 8.30PM.
Quite a while ago I caught a fragment of an obscure movie. I have no idea what its name is – which nonetheless, evidently, made a lasting impression. It was about a young fellow who spent his whole life confined to one block in New York City. I didn?t see the part which explained his aberrant behavior, but it clearly must have been a traumatic early life experience.
The fascinating part is how he could manage to provide for his needs in such a confined space. New York, of course, is very dense. One long block, sometimes more than 200 meters, can have hundreds of stores fronting on it and thousands of people living in its apartment houses. Still he probably had to ask favors of friends for those things which he couldn?t access on his own. I”m just guessing; as I said, I only saw a little part of it and it could have been decades ago.
Little did I know when I was watching that movie way back then that I would someday be able to relate it to my own life. In my case, my block is how far I”m comfortable walking. Of course, I can leave whenever I want and use wheels whenever it suits me, but still, I do feel somewhat constrained. When people tell me about an attraction over by the lake, I say, gee, that”s really far, I don”t get around those parts very often. Martini”s? Once every couple of
years.
Regardless, I really don”t feel like I”m missing very much. For me the beauty of living in Phnom Penh is that I actually can take care of almost all of my needs by walking. There are far more bars within an easy walk than I could ever get around to frequenting. Restaurants, markets, bus stations, just about everything I need is at shoe leather distance.
In contrast, I couldn”t possibly do the same in Portland, Oregon my home base in the states – even if public transportation were added to hoofing it. There I feel positively deprived without my own wheels. Though the city has about the same population as Phnom Penh and it”s compact by American standards it covers a far larger area. There are many places there that I have occasion to go which would require hours and hours of walking. Though it has an excellent transit system for its size, I”d often be left with
nothing after midnight or have one hour waits in the evening before
midnight.
There are trips I can make in a car in Portland in less than 10 minutes, which would require more than an hour on public transportation, especially when the trip involves waiting for two buses. In contrast, most of my walks here are less than a mile, or 1.6 k”, which takes less than 20 minutes. It”s almost good that there”s no public transit here, otherwise I might get lazy and use
it, though still, never for short distances.
As well, it”s equally good that I don”t get along with motorbikes, at least as far as my pedestrian mania goes. It”s a push-pull situation. I?m pulled to the activity by the pure enjoyment of it; pushed by the lack of a viable or palatable alternative.
You get to see so much more at a walking pace, and that”s true even at my torrid speed. Occasionally I find myself walking with others and have to go to great lengths to slow myself down. While pleasure may be part of it, I also generally have business to take care of and it does take longer. There”s also the idea that walking fast is more like exercise. In addition, on a hot day I move quickly to finish up, while at night, as the theory goes, you really
don”t want to dawdle lest you become an easy target.
Which brings up another problem with sidewalk inaccessibility. Rather than vary my route everyday to see and witness more of the city”s variety, I trod the same paths every time based on the comfort and safety involved. Norodom is always preferred for obvious reasons though parallel streets are much more interesting. As a result, store owners miss out on window “shopping, since it”s often so hard to get near the “windows”. Sometimes business owners will park their giant SUVs right in front of their
display cases, literally placing obstacles in shoppers” paths.
In my recent article on the asphalt sea in front of Wat Ounalon on Sisowath I mentioned how people are often turned back by the difficulty of crossing it. In response two readers commented that they simply cross to the other side. In fact, I do that myself, but that”s exactly my point. Once you cross over to the park side, you”ve lost contact with the business side and they miss out because you no longer come in proximity to their offerings. Purchases you
might make spontaneously as you walk by no longer happen. When you
cross back over, it?s because you have a specific destination in mind, the businesses in between have potentially lost out.
For instance, I was walking on the park side of Sisowath one night when I did one of my loud, “No, I don”t want a moto”, routines and a friend sitting in the Riverside Bar heard me and called me over. Had I not been my noisy and slightly deranged self, he wouldn”t have known I was around. In contrast, If I had seen him as I was walking by on the sidewalk in front of the bar, I definitely would have stopped.
Awhile back the city started forcing businesses on Sisowath to leave room for walkers. The owner of the Riverside, who was active in an association of foreign owned businesses, was vocal and vociferous about filling up his sidewalk with tables. Part of his argument was that people like sitting outdoors, especially when they come from cold countries, and that it would seriously hurt his business.
In fact, I totally agree about sitting outside, I almost always prefer it. But it isn”t that simple. First, of course, as in my own example, he may be losing business by making discouraging people from walking on his sidewalk.
Secondly, as you may remember from my last article, the governor of Phnom Penh announced recently that all the city”s sidewalks were going to be narrowed to accommodate more vehicles. That block is a case in which that very thing was done. That is clear because the sidewalks on both the south and north of that block are much wider. The point being that the sidewalks belong to the people. If business or property owners get to use them at all, it?s strictly at the forbearance of the government. If the city so desired, the sidewalks could be eliminated entirely. The fact that their usurpation for private purposes is common practice only speaks to the inability of the government to properly regulate its environment.
Finally, serious injury or death may result from people wealking on the street. Drunken ne”er-do-wells sometimes drive very fast on that stretch and have killed people in the past. Does the owner of the Riverside really want to be personally responsible in that event? He”s got very large tables and chairs out front. Couldn”t he accommodate pedestrians while maintaining the same level of business by simply putting smaller furniture out there? Crazy as I am, I sometimes, accidentally on purpose, jostle people sitting in his chairs as I walk by the very narrow space he has left for pedestrians.
The only mitigating factor is that blocking sidewalks is common practice. It isn”t fair to place the onus for injury on an individual shop owner if everybody is doing it. That”s true even if an individual encumbered sidewalk is the cause of a specific injury. One can also understand resisting since no attempt has been made to stop the parking of cars on the sidewalk. However, ultimately, leaders have much greater responsibility than followers. The leader who fights against the safety of others, to increase his own profit,
will pay cosmically.
There is one time when the sidewalks are largely unencumbered. Late at night most are clear. In the wee hours, traffic is light. It”s quiet and peaceful. It”s cool and comfortable. There is an ethereal quality to being out when almost everybody else is sleeping. I like being part of the night and sharing the streets with the few night owls that are out and about, and there always are some.
As someone who”s been immersed in urban planning and design for a lifetime I see lots around Phnom Penh that pains me, and changes that have ominous portents. At the same time, the city remains, in terms of ambiance, culture, design, architecture, setting, the best place for me to be. Mostly it has the potential to be an exemplar of livability. It will take some time, in a worst case scenario, for the city fathers to destroy it. Meanwhile it”s there to enjoy… in spite of not being able to walk on the sidewalks.
Words by Stan Kahn
Pictures by Steve Goodman