Oct 28, 2011

A Halloween scenario


It’s weird. It’s even kind of a scary picture. Like a corner in a Halloween Haunted House; the dramaturgy this time of the year couldn’t be more perfect. I’m just waiting for some terrifying monster to pop up in the middle of that concrete mess. Or, even worse: at places, Seattle and Umeå look like a war zone right now. Leaving me with a strange and awkward feeling of something that is basically unknown to me.

The southern mile of The Alaskan Way Viaduct is a smashed down grey dusty confusion of concrete, arne ring iron, bizarrely bent steel and creaking cracks. In Umeå, The Thornberg Building (Thornbergska huset) is cut in two parts wide away from each other. Excavator buckets are working their way through the collapsing floors, windows gaping black and empty, balconies gone and the yellowish façade ripped in pieces.

It looks like Beirut. And the wet weather in both cities makes the famous Lutzen fog come to mind, stresses the unreal settings, making them come across as really creepy. The scenes make me uncomfortable, although I know there is nothing dangerous going on here. Its just old times going, future coming. But those transitions can be very emotional and sometimes cause war-like states where they are happening.

The Thornberg Building is/was a four-story building right in the city center of Umeå. Typical in the sense of small stores located on the ground floor, offices and apartments at the upper floors, balconies facing the Rådhus (City Hall) Esplanade, one of the wide French-inspired streets built after the great city fire in 1888. Uncharacteristic though, as it was one of the very few buildings left from the era of Functionalism in Umeå. And this is what caused the conflict between preservers and developers in the city. Just as the Viaduct in Seattle is loved by some, others feel that it has to make room for something new.

So what about the 90 000 vehicles lost without the Viaduct right now, what about the Viadoom that was expected in Seattle? Well, it looks like the first part of the week went pretty smoothly considering the circumstances; people finding their ways around it, while actual gridlock and congestions arrived in full force Thursday. And then there is a Seahawks football game Sunday afternoon… But, the demolition has been going so well, the Viaduct will probably reopen Saturday midday already, two days ahead of schedule! That’s a win for Seattle right there!

Oct 21, 2011

The challenge


And naturally, in both my cities we are Occupying Wall Street! My son is chatting with Seattle activists who are taking turns live streaming from the various locations in Seattle, wanting to know what’s happening over here. Yes, of course it’s happening!

Although, today the big news in Seattle is the closing of the Highway 99 Alaskan Way Viaduct, this 1950s landmark for modern mankind encaged in their transportable tin can-home on wheels. Yes, while the eastern part of Strandgatan in Umeå is about to open, Seattle is facing a day dreaded for years. The Viaduct is eventually going to be replaced with a deep bore tunnel, and this 9-day close down now is the first step for an historic change. The southern mile is going to be demolished, and about 90 000 vehicles a day will have to make other choices to make their way through the city. Even on a normal day Seattle traffic is so tight one single incident can cause heavy build-ups in every direction. So, close to a hundred thousand vehicles suddenly all lost and out of their normal pattern… what’s to expect? Nobody really knows, a challenge certainly though, which for sure will keep the local TV stations overly excited and busy in their covering for a while!

Seattleits are advised to drive other routes, park and ride, take the water taxi, ride the bike or hop on the bus. The Metro bus system is bringing in an extra 30 buses to provide an alternative to the car. And, Seattle, here is a tip from the very north of Europe to make the buses more attractive: As the first city in Sweden Umeå is providing free WiFi on the local metro buses. And we would love copycats! I bet Seattle buses would be jam-packed all day long, noses deep down in Blackberries and I pads, connected shoulder to shoulder as well as by radio waves. So come on Seattle, high tech capital and home of Microsoft, a small city close to Lappland is challenging you on this!

Oct 15, 2011

A pricey word

The waterfront. Just taste it. If we were to grade the value of words within any city anywhere, I bet the word waterfront would score really high and taste better than most others. Of course there is words like park, city library, a good school system, marina, university, healthy tap water, concert hall, public transportations, shopping, prominent hospital, safety and landmark building, but waterfront… there is nothing like the waterfront.

In Umeå the waterfront is facing the fast streaming Umeå River traveling to the Bothnian Bay. In Seattle the waterfront overlooks Elliot Bay, the city-close part of Puget Sound connected to the dramatic Pacific Ocean. Watching the world map it’s obvious only a few places are lucky holding this high scored word in its dictionary. This remarkably valuable asset within its city boundaries.  Both Umeå and Seattle do. Yet it seems like the waterfronts have come to be more of a pricy problem than a priceless resource. We have seen decades of discussing, debating and reconsidering over this in both cities. Why? Well, I guess priceless has a price to it.

The Seattle waterfront is covering 26 blocks, the one in Umeå is about a 8-block stretch. Due to the redesign of the area, Strandgatan, the main street that cuts off the city center from the river in Umeå, is closed and will be until 2014. Final decisions about design and function of Strandgatan in the future are yet to come. In Seattle a busy and loud two level highway on tall concrete legs, The Alaskan Way Viaduct, is radically dividing downtown from the bay. Here though, the decisions are made. Finally I should say. The Viaduct is going to come down and a tunnel will replace it. Sounds like the only right thing to do? Well, it took a public vote only this August and the voices are still at a high pitch and probably will be for a very long time. Seattle is, in that sense, is a loud place. So is Umeå. Which makes me feel equally at home and comfortable in both places.

Oct 8, 2011

Sitting in the non-flow

Of course birches smell! It’s just that I can’t really recognize it’s characteristics, I am too close and it is too familiar to me. Arriving in Umeå now I am surprised though to find how the birches are not bare yet, the town is all yellow! Fall in Seattle and fall in Umeå are surprisingly matching at this moment, although the colors are different.

My oldest son, now a young man, is picking me up at the airport. When he and his brother were young and we arrived in northern Sweden after spending time in the moist city of Seattle, they were running around the front yard, happy calves in their first spring meadow, hopping, singing “it’s so fresh and crisp here!” And I think that’s the scent of Umeå. Birches in the dry coolness of this not-that-far-from-the-polar-circle place.

Driving through Umeå now, I find myself as annoyed as sitting in afternoon traffic in Seattle. It didn’t use to be like this! It wasn’t that you had to plan ahead your routes through the town not to get all worked up, back at the house starving and just half of the errands done. So what’s happening? Well, there are more cars for sure, and just like Seattle Umeå is redesigning infrastructure. Right now there is pretty much nowhere you can escape the roadwork and the build-ups in rush hour. Can 115 000 people really make a rush hour? Yep. Unfortunately. And pollution too, pretty bad actually. So although Seattle is a big city and Umeå a small, the feeling sitting there is the same. Locked up in the grid. Again, it’s only the scales that are different.

In both cities though, we are heading for something better they say, the redesigning has a purpose of course and we are better off staying cool and patient waiting for the reward in a few years. Going with the flow. Or sitting in the non-flow… and maybe ride the bike tomorrow instead, smelling the birches and the cedar. Bicycles… well, there is another interesting subject…

Oct 5, 2011

We take our time

So what’s the scent of Umeå? Do birches smell? If they do, that would be the scent of Umeå, cause Umeå and birches are so closely linked they are inseparable.

Umeå is located on the Umeå River; 15 minutes from where it reaches the Bothnian Bay, bringing huge amounts of that cold water from the vast mountains in Lappland and our westerns neighbor Norway. It used to be that the Port of Umeå was actually in the city, making the river waterfront a hectic loud place for business and travel. Not any more though. The port is now on the Bay, and for as long as most of us can remember the river waterfront in the city has been an embarrassing parking lot waiting for a better life. Oh how it has been waiting! Cause there must be a better life!

Summer 2010 the Seattle Met magazine was listing 100 reasons to love Seattle. # 63 was “We take our time”, saying “The big problem with Seattle politics, the mover-and-shaker types will tell you, it is ALL PROCESS AND ALL TO RARELY PRODUCT: nothing gets ever decided; it’s forever discussed, debated, reopened, reconsidered and finally talked to death. But that’s also the best thing about Seattle politics.” Meaning that the city is avoiding a lot of mistakes that way.

Well, you know, that quote could as easily have been clipped out of something written in Umeå, although the movers-and-shakers of my Swedish home town might not agree on that last sentence. At least not right now. Cause there was this thing about the front porch. In Seattle. And in Umeå. And the one in Umeå  just got stalled again.

Oct 3, 2011

Unknown spot

Watching Seattle Symphony’s brand new director, the 37-year-old French Ludovic Morlot conducting his current instrument, I feel right at home. In Umeå we are very familiar with this generation’s conductors who grew up on a mix of rock and classical music. Morlot’s upcoming concert with Beethoven’s Eroica and Zappa could as well been performed by the NorrlandsOperan Symphony Orchestra.

I was born in the Umeå region on the 63th latitude and have been there most of my life, growing up at the coast of the Bothnian Bay. We call it “the sea”, but well, it isn’t that salty, this water that makes our eastern neighbor Finland feel foreign to us. Always when arriving in Seattle I take a deep breath filling my lungs with the moist scent of water and red cedar, the characteristics of this area.

It was 1993 when I first came here. A young family with two little boys suddenly dropped down on a completely unknown spot at the far end of a different continent. Our big and close knitted community in Umeå felt unreachable pre-email and 9 hours before us. Oh how lonely it was and oh how it was raining that first long spring of mine in the Pacific Northwest, it rained like in The Killing! I honestly didn’t think I would ever come back. But, there was this day in mid June, the sun and Mount Rainier was out and we had done the bay cruise and were walking the waterfront and I was thinking; this might be a nice place after all!

Oct 1, 2011

Front porch

Amazing it is. How two cities, different in size and far away from each other are going through such similar processes to develop and prosper. Desiring modernity, sustainability and fame. And a new welcoming front porch.

And amazing it is, that those two cities both are home to me. Umeå, way up northeast in Sweden, and Seattle way up northwest in the US. Besides the location in their countries, the two places share being the center point in a region where water, lumber and mining through the history have been the natural resources. The universities and the cultural arts attract and provide intellectuals you wouldn’t expect in remote places. The popular music scene exports worldwide from both cities and the war between cars and bikes is a no fun situation in daily life. Seattle is flying airplanes all over the map and Umeå is driving Volvo trucks cabs the same route. The Seattle area inhabits about 3,5 million people, Umeå only 115 000. Yes, the scales sure are different. But I hope that you will find it interesting to find out the odds and ends within those.

And what about the front porch?