Quand le bâtiment va,... / Emerging from the crisis?...

Quand le bâtiment va, tout va, dit-on. Ici à Sofia, la crise a affecté gravement l'économie, mais l'impression visuelle est tout autre : partout, des immeubles sortent de terre, assez souvent sans les infrastructures publiques nécessaires. C'est d'ailleurs cela, le plus frappant : d'une part l'essor considérable de la construction de nouveaux bureaux, de nouveaux logements, certains luxueux, et d'autre part l'état d'abandon dans lequel se trouvent encore les routes, les égoûts, les terrains au statut incertain, plus de vingt ans après l'implosion de l'empire soviétique.

The saying has it that when the construction sector is doing all right, so is the economy. Here in Sofia, the world recession has taken a toll on the economy, and yet the visual impression one gets is quite different: all around, buildings are coming out of the ground, and most often they are not supported by the necessary public infrastructure. In fact, this is quite striking: on the one hand, the extraordinary expansion of available office space and housing -some at quite a level of luxury-, and on the other hand the state of disrepair in which you find roads, waste water management, and any plot of land whose status remains unclear, and all of this more than twenty years after the Soviet empire imploded.

Ceux qui construisent
pour ceux qui investissent

Those who build
for those who invest

                                                                                                              (photo : JJS, 20100303)