FROM THE SECOND DECADE
Extracts from our archives

2011

WALLS AND BILLBOARDS

Anoma Pieris wants those unsightly billboards that are jostling for space dismantled – and a return to Colombo’s tree lined streets

In the past few months, I’ve had the opportunity of travelling along byways and by-lanes in many parts of this land, along roads that many of us would never encounter in our furious rush to get to Yala, Nuwara Eliya, Trinco, Dambulla or whatever tourist destination we have in mind.

They are places that have become the backwaters to major highways since these routes were created for colonial trade and traffic.

I expected these places to be idyllic, the result of poorly kept roads and limited commerce. In fact, I was looking forward to slow bumpy journeys along these routes.

The topography of these roads was not unlike the one closer to home, which is carefully maintained (or not) by our neighbourhood to prevent traffic from tearing past our houses. These, I said to myself, are the villages that everyone talks about as being fundamental to our identity.

Poor, they certainly were…

We were unable to find a cool drink along the route from Colombo to Gampola, for example – unless we travelled north to the Kandy Road. But closer to major towns such as Wattala, Ja-Ela and Mabole, along the coastal road, or Kadawatha, Kegalle, Warakapola and Gampola in the interior, we encountered a condition that has spread like a virus throughout our landscape.

It is the phenomenon we call ‘conurbation.’

You will note that I haven’t mentioned the towns down south – because I couldn’t see the scenery. That was obstructed by hotel walls.

The term ‘conurbation’ describes a condition where a city spreads outward, blurring the boundaries between its urban centre and the suburbs so that it takes on the form of a ceaseless mass. This mass mercilessly eats up the countryside, chewing up – in the case of Sri Lanka – paddy lands and plantations.

Hillsides are carved up for use as landfill, leaving cruel cuts in the landscape; and sea sand is carried away from the river mouth, causing the sea to travel further inland. Environmental erosion is thus facilitated by human greed.

Instead of touring the scenic sites at the end of your journey, why not pause and explore these pathways to your destination?

You will see how paddy fields are being filled and replaced by middle-class housing enclaves, how canals and waterways are being turned into rubbish dumps, leaving rank pools of mosquito breeding water. You would not have to travel too far to witness these changes – just a few kilometres north of Kotte will do.

See how Kotte’s suburbs have raised high walls to the street so that the traveller is disoriented. How lands that should have been preserved for public parks and playgrounds have been carved up and sold.

We are allowing our cities to turn into middle-class slums.

Suburbanisation progressing in this manner might be interpreted as substandard urbanisation that is delivered by and to a population that does not understand what it means to be urban; and what it means to share public amenities and seize opportunities for public discourse.

So what shall we do about this?

The first question we need to ask ourselves is whether any of this bothers us – or are we happy living behind high walls and meeting our friends in hotels?

For example, when did you last walk down your lane to the shop at the other end? When did your child last play cricket on the street? How high is your boundary wall?

These questions are not merely rhetorical. If you cannot see the street, you will not allow your child to play in it. If you need to drive to get to the corner shop, you may as well drive to the supermarket.

But if it doesn’t bother you that you contribute personally to the growing hostility of our urban landscape, let me ask you how you imagine your city to be in the future. Do you see it as a sea of walls?

The walls that hide the scenery prevent us from noting their disappearance and we soon become convinced that high walls (rather than large gardens) are a sign of affluence. They clearly demonstrate the two-dimensional nature of our lives that are split between public and private.

But this language of walls is even more corrosive, as it has spawned another more frivolous version of itself – one that is able to perch at even the most precarious corners. Our main highways have become a wall of billboards!

I am reminded of the lines by Ogden Nash – “I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. In fact, unless the billboards fall, I’ll never see the tree at all,” which seems to put Sri Lanka’s current predicament in perspective.

Earlier this year, I shut my eyes all the way to Matara (thankfully, I wasn’t driving) so as to arrive in a decent frame of mind. I know this is the media age where our private fantasies are plastered on walls and cutouts of politicians compete with the Buddha statues on the highways.

So walls and billboards… these are the main characteristics of our cities.

And you in the private sector must share the blame for this phenomenon.

Cricketers and phone companies are the biggest culprits. While it is true that the former are the stars of this golden age and the mobile phone has transformed our lives, the billboards that surround us spell out the two dilemmas of our modernity: how to tread that difficult path to individualism while remaining connected to the pressures of an extended family life.

We want to remain connected even as we become mobile.

But the trees – those magnificent overlords of our daily grind that gasp for breath along our polluted highways or suffer an early death to make way for them – remain firmly rooted to place, geography and environment, carrying in them the histories of age-old religious traditions and conversions, food, timber, perfumes, herbal remedies, and abodes for deities and demons alike.

This article therefore, is for those of you who are shamelessly accommodating billboards on private properties for mercenary reasons – and for the businesses and municipal authorities that encourage it.

You who criticise the West so aggressively in the newspapers, why not hesitate at least this once before adopting a Western habit. Say ‘no’ to billboards.

The billboards are a cancer. They flaunt the wealth of the few in the faces of the many. Fortunately, the women are appropriately clad or else you can imagine the increase in traffic accidents. The images are so large you can count their teeth… These two-dimensional cardboard mortals occupy the ethereal realm reserved for the gods.

Occasionally, a billboard performs a pedagogical function – for example, I have seen advertisements against child soldiers in the north of the island. In the Panadura area, I spied a billboard enumerating the cost of a new road… down to the quantity of rubble and labour charges. And I was surprised to see a billboard that informed me of what our taxpayer money is doing for us here in Colombo.

I beg of you, champions of this our beautiful land, it is not enough to fight for and croon about its beauty – we must also be able to experience it. Because once we become desensitised to the subject matter on billboards and take them for granted as a ubiquitous presence, a different battle would be lost… it is one worth fighting for.

Tear down the billboards and break down the walls. Give us back a city of quiet repose with gentle tree lined streets and shaded pavements. Give us cities that are friendly to pedestrians, and respectful of our views of the fields and of the sky.

And if you cannot give this to us, my recommendation is as follows: erect billboards that show us what our streets looked like during an era when trees were precious, and request corporations and commercial establishments to plant and adopt streets according to that plan.

Imagine billboards with tree lined avenues lining the streets of Panchikawatte – wouldn’t that be inspirational!

Secondly, if billboards are essential – in some cases, they may convey some important truths – cut holes in them to reveal critical views.

Thirdly, rather than raising billboards above walls, line them along walls and pavements like they do at cricket matches so that pedestrians don’t have to strain to read them.

Finally, deploy billboards to skilfully conceal ugly buildings, although perhaps that is what we are already doing…