Adhamiyah District Welcomes New Market Shops
There are a number of new industry and shops that are opening across Iraqi, and this is especially true in the Adhamiyah District.
New shops and stores are opening in the same areas that featured some of the worse fighting in the months right after the summer of 2007.
In the earliest months of the surge, the fighting in Adhamiyah was very fierce.
Now, in the same area that battle raged on fiercely the shops and stores are opening more and more each day, in the exact same areas where people fought and were killed.
The irony is not lost on the local citizens, but most of the success is from the fact that the Coalition and the Iraqi Security Forces have been able to learn to trust each other.
Members of the citizen groups in Adhamiyah are proud of their village as they have experienced a great deal of healing. The revitalization of the major street in Adhamiyah is a sign of growing security and better times.
Walking in the village has been in the past unsafe, but now it is similar to walking in a large mall, except for the fact it is outside.
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The security has been kept secure by the Iraqi Security Forces, and the success has been also due to the ready available power, water and other necessary supplies.
I think some of these discussions about the enmnorivental impact of different types of shopping somewhat miss the point. The cultural uniqueness of villages, towns, cities and regions are also a very important part of the environment. I would cite a very visionary big-picture planner named Kwaak Young-Hoon, from Seoul, Korea, who spent a few years at the Harvard Divinity School. He came up with a concept called the world cities network . (yes, Acton’s not a city, but the concept still applies) It’s too long a story to go into here, but his big concern is to maintain the uniqueness that is, in his view (and mine) crucial to maintaining the liveability and humanity of different places.As most locations (including Acton) get more and more built up, there is a big temptation to have more of the sameness which eliminate what makes each place individual. Big box stores, McDonalds and so forth are a very big part of that, as are very standardized designs of everything. In his case, he put his money where his mouth was, designing whole cities and areas, which would reserve space and zoning for traditional elements that keep each place unique.We need to work very hard to figure out how to maintain the uniqueness of Acton. This has to do with some careful consideration in this 2020 planning process of what parts of the planning and zoning of the villages and the strips (great road) are and are NOT working. I am not an incentivization expert, but there must be a better approach than the current approach, where we basically approve anything anyone wants to do (I have NOT see anything that anyone wanted to do in town ultimately be turned down). The 2020 process should take the time to develop a proactive plan.Thanks