A Brief Comparison/ Initial Impressions – Kuwait City vs. Main Beach, Queensland, Australia...

The short, roughly 20 second, video above was taken last week in Main Beach in Queensland, Australia. It shows the surprisingly varied pot-pourri of residential buildings in the area, where single storey houses are crouching next to a scattering of twenty storey towers (that all have been named according to various holiday resorts around the world – Miami Tower, the Maldives, etc.), all which, in turn, seem to be squeezed inland by the adjacent beach-side sand swells – a situation not that dissimilar from Kuwait. However, when studied at a more detailed level, the streetscape in Main Beach does contain a number of advantages to comparable areas in Kuwait, as here each street is flanked by a roughly 1 meter wide, clean and uncluttered, footpath, which runs along a single, non-protruding, row of parked cars. Each high-rise has its own, usually underground, car park and it's quite clear that in Main Beach the pedestrian (bicyclist, skateboarder, jogger, etc.) is the protagonist of the ambulatory realm. This point is further emphasized by the fact that the closest more substantial vehicular thruway is a significant distance away from the beach, resulting in the perceptually enhanced condition where one can actually hear, smell and feel the neighbouring sea from even a decent stretch away from its crashing waves...

View over Main Beach, Queensland...

If there were any 'issues' with Main Beach it would be its somewhat, almost bucolic, air of blandness that seems to permeate its streets, particularly now during the off-season (it's still Spring in Australia). There really isn't that much to do, see or notice whilst walking around – it's a rather sterile ambiance which is partly amplified by the more recently completed residential towers, which clearly haven't, as of yet, comfortably 'rooted' themselves into the local vernacular, where their abutting trunks sit somewhat awkwardly next to some of the older, mostly one and two floor, residences. It's going to be interesting to see how this juxtaposition of scales and densities will play out over the coming decades...

A not too generous, but sufficient, footpath accompanies most residential streets...

Regardless of its arguable shortcomings Main Beach is still on a urban planning level a number of steps ahead of where most of Kuwait currently stands. With a bit more forethought and planning, however, there is no reason for why parts of this city couldn't achieve something comparable to this popular beach resort by the Gold Coast of Australia...

There is a clear juxtaposition between the older low-rise and the more recent high-rises residential projects in Main Beach...

Pedestrians are prioritized in Main Beach...

The Main Beach beach...