Does this mean that pedestrians were previously encouraged to cross when vehicles could drive into them?
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Yes. So many cars trying to turn into the crosswalk as soon as their light turned green, not bothering to notice there were pedestrians there too.
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Sounds like a good, honest living to me!
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Bender sees this as a mirror to our own past: My impression is that in Europe, we used to have this connection 1000 years, 2000 years ago, with the feelings and understanding of what’s going with the river similar to those of the Nez Perce
I’m sorry, but that’s ahistorical BS. A thousand years ago (well 1200 years), Charlemagne attempted to build the Fossa Carolina to link the Rhine/Main system to the Danube system and enable direct trade between the North Sea and the Black Sea. Two thousand years ago, the Romans diverted entire rivers into aqueducts, moats and sewers.
The article makes a good and very important point, and one that I have thought about a lot as well, but it’s not helped by this sort of pseudo-spiritual noble savage adjacent environment myth.
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Didn’t Kerouac kill Kerouac? You know, by drinking himself to death? 
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The view from just inside the city limits of Addis Ababa:
The area in the center, past the high-rise buildings, lies just beyond the city limits
On the one hand it’s not my country, nor my business how they do urban renewal here. On the other hand, it is undeniable that large swathes of the city (just not in the city center*) looked just like the area in the middle of the previous photo, & that many small, working farms & the families thereon were displaced to make room for the construction. One eventual effect was that the regional state surrounding Addis Ababa created a special zone around the city (effectively, a donut-shaped county) to manage the growth around the city, but even there I’ve seen new hi-rise developments (“real estates”).
The middle of the city is being rebuilt, as well. The Piassa neighborhood (built during the Italian occupation, hence the name) has been at least halfway replaced (some of the businesses - cafés, jewelers - remain, but moved into the new buildings).
With that said, here’s the modern cityscape in Addis:
*(ETA) it’s hard to say what constitutes the “city center.” There are neighborhoods in the middle of town named Arat (4) Kilo & Sidist (6) Kilo, but no one is sure 4 or 6 kilometers from what/where.
(Another edit to clarify which photo)
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Looks nice, have fun!
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angry, grungy guitars… 
where am I going, where am I from, waiting for a train that will… never come…
Oh, no, wait. Never mind there it is! Hooray for the subway! So dependable!
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