Waterfront report

- I have a thing for ferries. 

Says Dr McDreamy to Meredith in Grey’s Anatomy when they first start dating. Well, I have a thing for ferries too. I loved the years when my friends Matt and Elizabeth lived over at Bainbridge Island and I had to be on the ferry most every day while staying with them. An who doesn’t have a thing for ferries? Certainly not the cameras spotting them in every movie or TV series taking place in Seattle, floating land marks.

We don’t have ferries in Umeå any more. There used to be, when I was a kid, ferries taking passengers between Umeå and Wasa in Finland. But the Umeå River isn’t deep enough for modern ferries, the bridges crossing the river too low, and the port moved out to the coast. And left the Umeå waterfront empty and abandoned. 

The Seattle waterfront is nothing but abandoned though, Elliot bay makes it very busy. But it isn’t friendly in a welcoming way. The Alaskan Viaduct Highway 99 and the parking underneath has been cutting it off from Downtown making it an emotional grey zone when it comes to places to visit. Well, that is all going to change now. Exactly like the waterfront in Umeå is changing.

My two cities share the same vision: to turn the cities’ face to the water. To reconnect the city to the water. To build a city front porch where people want to hang out feeling happy and safe.

Seattle has chosen landscape architect James Corner (maybe best known for the Highline in New York http://www.thehighline.org/james-corner-field-operations-and-diller-scofidio-renfro),  as the designer of the 26-block transformation which will take place the coming years up to 2020 http://waterfrontseattle.org. Umeå is ahead of Seattle, already finished Broparken, one of three parks in the 9-block area called The City Between the Bridges  http://www.umea.se/umeakommun/kommunochpolitik/planerochstyrdokument/utvecklingochplanering/stadsplaneringochbyggande/projekt/stadenmellanbroarna.4.5c07cebb11a983a683e8000779099.html, and the main attraction Väven http://kulturvaven.se,  the new building for cultural arts well on it’s way, changing the Umeå skyline in a big way.

Wednesday this week James Corner was in Seattle presenting his work, this far. And even though Greater Seattle inhabits 3,5 million people and Umeå 117 000, the intentions for the new front porches are very similar. Even though the Seattle waterfront is 26 blocks and the one in Umeå only 9, the visions are to transform them into a green and friendly space, attracting people to walk, bike, listen to concerts, play, eat, roller skate, parkouring (Umeå) swim (Seattle, there will be a big pool on a barge at the water in Elliot Bay) and just hang out with an ice cream people spotting.  

Seattleites are asked to dream big and to be involved in the design. The Parkour park and the skate park in Umeå happened in collaboration with skaters and the Umeå association for Parkour, UPKF http://www.stolterman.com/upkf_english_/start.html. Interactivity is the new black. Big changes usually causes big worries, so letting ordinary people into the process is not only strategically smart, it is also beneficial for the project.

The original idea was to open Väven, the building for cultural arts, at the inauguration of Umeå the European Capital of Culture 2014 some month ago. Well, the building is there, the spectacular glass exterior inspired by the graphic birch stem is up, but the interior is yet to be finished and the opening scheduled to November.

That’s a minor thing though compared to the stalled situation in Seattle. Bertha (yes, she has a name), the huge drill boring the tunnel through Seattle which will replace the Alaskan Viaduct 2016 making it possible to connect Downtown to the waterfront, is for some unknown reason stuck since weeks, even months back, making the time plan for the waterfront project uncertain.

I love the ideas for both my two waterfronts. I love that the city centers will expand all the way down to the water. I love the wood, different kinds of stone and grass, the materials chosen for feet and paws to walk on. I love the parks and the greenery, and the vision that the waterfronts will change to a social and vibrant welcoming spot all year round. I love how my cities want it’s citizens to be comfortable and thrive at the heart of the town, at the artery that Umeå River and Elliot Bay are.

I love the ferries. I have a thing for ferries. Me and Dr McDreamy. Those are not in the plan for Umeå though. For those I need Seattle.

Ship ahoy!

Oh how I loved being in Seattle during the Holiday Season! Just loved it!!

The Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Westlake Mall! The lit up Downtown, crazy with Christmas shoppers! The ferries filled with dressed up people going to Christmas parties! The neighborhoods competing about the most insane over-the-top light displays! But most of all I love the Christmas Ships!

For many years I made sure getting my dosage of Seattle Holidays. I packed my bags in December with an assignment of a story for Swedish National Radio or Television as an excuse and headed over for a week-ten days in a rainy city making the lights even more vibrant in the reflecting puddles.

I shot Seattle Men’s Chorus in Beneroya Hall and the Dreamliner Virtual Rollout, I reported about the different ingredients of the American Holidays and about The Washington Software Alliance. I told the story of the Cool House, the new city public library and I interviewed the author Russel Banks on a Seattle December visit. I also spent days sitting at the Blackbird Bakery on Bainbridge Island working on the texts for my photo show Away is Home, Home is Away. A couple of times the visit was postponed to right after Christmas, making me spend New Years in the Emerald City!

The Holiday memory I treasure the most though is the year we stayed in Seattle. Cause there can’t be any better place for a Holiday experience than Portage Bay overlooking the Montlake Cut!

Our place for the year was a small house that didn’t look like much from the outside, but was such a wonderful little home for my family. It was on Boyer Avenue about five blocks from University Bridge, and Portage Bay was the best entertainment all year round. I used to have my afternoon tea lying in my cushy cream colored love seat watching whatever was going on down on the bay through my big panorama window. I never got tired of that view! All those boats in different shapes and sizes! Trouble & Trouble and I had our different Argosy cruise ships favorites. Come to think of it, Trouble 2 and I actually agreed on the same preference.

This weekend is the opening for the Christmas Ships in Seattle. And I know exactly what Portage Bay looks like this evening! A parade of lit up, dressed up, spruced up boats glittering and glimmering in the dark night! And some of them have music, choirs singing on the black water!

Trouble 2 and I could sit for hours watching the floating lights waiting for our ship. Here it comes, there it is! Let’s just sit here forever and enjoy this! Oh how I miss that! And where did that little boy go?

Actually, he and Audrey are down in my kitchen making dinner for us. He is right here. In the woods at the end of the road. The opposite to Portage bay. No water for ships to sail on. I am doing what I can to lit up the dark though. Strings of lights in my maples guarding my gate. Light curtains from the roof of my front porch. Spotlights shooting up my dad’s ash tree down in the corner and the big pine next to the field.

There is one ship though! My grandfather’s old apple tree is lit up with spotlights and along the round wooden deck underneath sits a string of lights. Another string is attached to the rope tied around the stem at the crown of the tree and anchored in the ground some feet away in the lawn. That device actually looks like a backstay and in the summer I even connect a light piece of fabric to it, which makes you think of a sail.

It’s been snowing today. In the snow there is a lit up apple tree that in wintertime looks like a space ship. No, I don’t have any waters. And there are no ships sailing here. I might be able to arrange some singing though. On my space ship in the woods at the end of the road.