Fishing around in the recent history of clerkmanifesto I came upon my recent series where I was making the case that any city was improved by replacing its roads with canals. In my mini doctoral thesis I set the bar at a level I thought was pretty high for myself: I explored already lovely cities like Paris, Nice, Rome, and Kyoto, and coldly tested them. Were they actually better with canals?
They were.
But briefly looking them over I wondered if there wasn't more to explore in my thesis. Yes, an already beautiful city can be made even more beautiful if we get rid of cars and even roads, but what about an ugly city?
I live in Saint Minneapolis. I like it very much here. There are many lovely places here, and I have even documented some of them in this very space. The urbanist channels I follow regularly extoll Saint Minneapolis and their points are excellent. Saint Minneapolis is constantly regarded as one of the best biking cities in the country. And I'm sure it is. There is a good case to be made that it is one of the best urban areas in our entire country!
That said, and with all due city loyalty, I have to admit:
Saint Minneapolis is a pile of hot garbage.
Relative to the rest of the country it may be better hot garbage. Though that's pretty sad. Relative to a nice European city it is just simple hot garbage. And relative to a reasonably unfettered "Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" imagination of hope and light, it is a shining beacon of cruelty and injustice.
But I am not here to get into all that.
I just thought: There are some really ugly wide streets all over my city. Could they be improved by canals?
And then I went to steal pictures from Streetview of nearby areas that I regularly visit and am familiar with and know to be pretty ugly. But opening up Streetview, it was worse than I thought! I have dealt with up to five lanes of brutal traffic running through all the commercial areas I enjoy for so long that I think I have learned to partly tune them out. I know that Snelling Ave. and Lake St. are miserable roads hostile to aesthetics and human experience, but I am pretty good at looking the other way. That's where the coffee shops are. That's a place to walk to. That's where I live. So I learn to tune it out more that I would imagine.
What I'm saying is: these Streetview images were shockingly ugly. The small line of nice shops, or the useful trees, or the library building, were like ten percent of the scene. The roads, parking lots, and cars took up like half of any image. Did I think simply putting in a canal here could improve this mess?
Well, my plan was to try.
So I got rid of cars, and parking lots, and put in a canal. And...
Ah civilization. It really is that simple.
My point is made again.
No comments:
Post a Comment
If you were wondering, yes, you should comment. Not only does it remind me that I must write in intelligible English because someone is actually reading what I write, but it is also a pleasure for me since I am interested in anything you have to say.
I respond to pretty much every comment. It's like a free personalized blog post!
One last detail: If you are commenting on a post more than two weeks old I have to go in and approve it. It's sort of a spam protection device. Also, rarely, a comment will go to spam on its own. Give either of those a day or two and your comment will show up on the blog.