Rootless

The construction of the cycle speed track over Battlefield continues (at snails pace it must be said).

The roots of the many trees felled to make this environmentally friendly (sic) race track have been piled up like corpses after a battle.

The hardcore has been laid, next comes the tarmac and then …?

… at a guess: Speed.

It will be interesting to see how well the construction of "havens" protects the very young and dogs from cyclists who already seem as though engaged in a pursuit contest.

Meanwhile, cycling is attracting criticism elsewhere (off site link). It's not all about gold medals by the sackful.

Pigeon free Milton Keynes

I visited Milton Keynes this year and saw the future. It reminded me of a saying of Kirkegaard's that thoughtful revolutionaries leave everything as it is but empty it of significance. It's not that Milton Keynes is dull; it insists upon it. Nowhere I have ever been lacks character. Everywhere has a 'character'; it's unavoidable. The character Milton Keynes has is similar to that of a modern bus shelter. There is not a lot more to it than what one can see at a glance and mostly it's the incidental and appliqué that stands out and provides further interest, if at all. In 'MK' its just there isn't any of the incidental. It isn't allowed. Sitting in one of the several restaurant chains that are only culinary delight of MK and watching the sun set I noticed something odd. There were no pigeons.

These thoughts come via an article from the BBC web site on post war planning in the UK, particularly the 'new towns' built to address the housing needs of a country that had seen no public investment in wartime and lost three quarters of a million homes to bombing.

"People actually didn't like their lives being reorganised in this way," says Hebbert. It was seen as paternalistic, "a top-down manoeuvring of people's lives which the free British citizen became increasingly unhappy with".

"You kind of go from visions of utopia to critiques of subtopia" adds Clapson, citing architecture critic Ian Nairn's term for unsightly, sprawling suburban development. – Tom Heyden

Today an ever expanding UK (particularly, southern England) population has created pressure to 're-evaluate' the new town concept. It reads as if some people, faced with a dilemma that cannot be squared (population expansion, limited land and intense opposition to building on green field) are trying to see the good side in a movement that succeeded in housing thousands of people but became rapidly synonymous with the breakdown of cohesion and compassion.

The article can be read here online.

Vote for Art

Another article that highlights the way art (and artists) are used to prop up a declining civic and commercial sector. Making this point today would seem now to be unnecessary in so many places, in the U.K. and abroad; old hat. So what?

You'd be surprised. When this city's revitalisation fantasies were fuelled by copious amounts of (borrowed) money in the years before 2008, mentioning the role of the arts in creating success for a depressed post-Industrial city centre fell on some very unhappy ears. I was myself slapped down in public by a highly paid well filled suit piloting a 'Shop til We Drop' strategy for this city for even mentioning it. Artist's he said with a wrinkled nose, were perverts. The big name stores would be lured into town and, given easy plastic credit then available no questions asked, so would the shoppers. High Street UK. Weirdo and pervert free.

It flopped.

What do we have now in my fair city? An ever increasing café society and more art galleries in abandoned commercial premises. Who would have predicted that?

Latest redundant English sea side town to see the art route to a future – any sort of future – is Folkstone, like fellow struggler, Margate and sharing many of the same problems. The London Observer's Tim Adams explains here. (Off site link.)

Summer's end?

Hopefully, not. I am posting a photographic gallery of a walk along familiar paths from my home to the shops on Shields Road that, like a cross section through a tree, is for me a record of time passing.

The first photograph is taken from roughly when I sat on a then yellow painted local authority owned and run bus the first time I laid my eyes on what I call Battlefield. I can remember the dismal grass and broom handle thick sapling trees, recently planted, and a certain forlorn look, as if no one gave this patch much of a chance. It did not seem to me to be a place at all and I doubted the trees would survive vandals as I had seen in another city further south. Wrong. They survived long enough to be cut down by a very different class of vandal. (See my previous post.)

Battlefield 09.08.14

But others are thriving and alongside the refurbished (and magnificent) East Coast Mainline Byker Bridge there is now a mature woodland. The forlorn has been transformed by nature's hand. It is no idyllic place; it challenges in some ways. But if one turns one's mind and looks at matters from another standpoint, survival, even compromise can be noble. I've lived to see it with my own eyes.

Residual

Enlightenment comes via piece of junk mail.

Very occasionally someone puts the Jesmond Residents Association (JRA) newsletter through my door. I'm technically not living in Jesmond, I think, and I'm no member of the JRA. But I am grateful to the Association for information that relates to the cycle highway being rapidly constructed across 'Battlefield' as quickly as the trees can be felled. Sustainable but not for amenity obviously.

"Last summer [2013] the City Council was awarded 5.7 m[illion GBP] by the Department of Transport (DfT) from the City Cycle Ambition Fund. …" (JRA newsletter Summer 2014. Additions in square brackets byBtB).

Whilst the newsletter doesn't mention 'Battlefield' – and who ever does? – it is obviously part of the same "strategic cycle route" planning discussed in the note.

Some might think it a fair exchange, trees for a safe cycle route. But there was such a route already. Making it so cyclists can be tempted to speed past pedestrians with no protection for either is seemingly inviting trouble. Maybe leaving things as they were would invite caution? It would certainly have saved a lot of trees.