About 2 years ago Da Nang thought it would be a good idea to overhaul 4 streets near the beach and turn them into "walking streets." This entailed ripping up all the already perfectly fine tarmac, putting in cobblestones, eliminating the sidewalks, and then attempting to tell drivers of vehicles that they cannot use these streets during certain hours of the day. Because people live on these streets, there are dozens of hotels and condos, there are businesses that need deliveries via truck etc, this ban on traffic lasted about 3 days before it was shut down. They did still try to prevent as many people as possible from driving on these roads but the idea that this was going to turn into some sort of massive market, kind of like what they expect to see in Thailand, just never happened.
For one thing, if all of a sudden foodstuffs were going to be available on the street how is that fair to the people that have gone through the great expense of establishing a restaurant in a building that pays rent? It isn't fair and after one week of the food stalls the restaurants complained enough that all of the food stalls were moved to another area entirely. An area that wasn't beautified and didn't have a street at all... it was just a field that would turn into a mud pit after just a little bit of rain.
There are some remnants of this very poor idea though, and they were the decorative bicycles that served as a barricade of sorts for any would be motorist coming down the street. Once the city completely gave up on attempting to dictate traffic, these bikes were simply discarded on the side of the road and that is where they remain to this day.
here you can see two of them right next to the recycling bins that the city installed that were also completely ignored by the municipality. I think it is incredibly ironic that a city would pretend to be interested in saving the environment while at the same time discarding their own garbage just "wherever."
YOu can see how long these have been here because the vines are now growing through the "tires" and I pushed and pulled on it to find that it is firmly held in place by these very tough and natural plants. The people who occasionally come by to trim the grass or slaughter all the flowers because they don't know the difference between the two, just skip this part of it because: Reasons.
I find it absolutely pathetic that this city pretends to give a damn about the environment and will also admit that I get a bit of joy out of any time that any government thinks that they are going to be some sort of grand savior or activities and community revitalization and fails miserably at doing so. Just a month or so ago there was a promotional event set up by Tiger Beer on the beach and it was wildly successful and they cleaned up everything after the fact. Why? Because it is a private company and they have much higher standards than the government does. If they were to leave a mess behind after the fact the news would be all over them. The beach area where they had their event was CLEANER than when they got there after they left. The government can't do that. It seems like anything they try to get involved with they somehow make it worse and it doesn't really seem to matter how much money they throw at it either.
I've gotten so used to these decorative metal bicycles being where they are on the side of the road that I will admit I am going to be a bit disappointed if and when they are removed. I doubt they will be though, because that would require some level of effort on the part of the government.