Apparently this will all be changing soon. The National Housing Corporation, which owns quite a bit of downtown Arusha, has recently declared that they intend to demolish all their downtown properties and replace them with multi-story buildings.
I guess it's hard to stop progress. I was saddened to read that it sounds like in a few years the downtown Arusha area will be unrecognizable to me. I just hope they at least maintain many street blocks worth of shops and wide sidewalks with street parking where people can continue to go about their business....
On another note... See those thin poles on the top two floors that seem to be holding up the floor above it? You guessed it, those are tree branches that are used as a temporary support to hold up the floor above. The first time I ever saw that was on my first safari in Tanzania. And believe me, I am still impressed every time I've seen it since.
What's funny is that after returning from Tanzania I started seeing this kind of building technique all of a sudden all over the Los Angeles Area.
Construction like this has probably always been around but I just never noticed until having witnessed the Arusha stick construction technique. The buildings I saw here were being supported by a network of metal scaffolding, not tree branches. Same basic engineering principles, just using different materials.
Here we have a multi million dollar high rise condo complex going up in Century City, California, and you can see the same technique. See those steel beams at the top that look like pieces from a giant erector set? Those are holding up the top floor while it's being put in place.
Geoff
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