Goodbye, killer views! (It will be safer now)

My personal soul memory is from a sunny September evening 2003 driving back from West Seattle - what did I do there? I can’t remember. 

I didn’t plan on taking the Alaskan Way Viaduct, I made a wrong turn and suddenly there I was. Driving north with the evening-glorious Downtown at my immediate right and the stunning view of Elliot Bay to the left as well as the sunset over at the Olympic Mountains far away west. I was high on the unexpected driving pole position experience!

After decades of debate and work in progress the two deck Highway 99 Viaduct closed late Friday night. It is so Seattle how the love-hated Viaduct was packed with cars and people dancing and celebrating the six story construction like it was New Years Eve or 4th of July! Oh how I miss that playfulness of my second home town!

The road up till this day has been nothing but playful though. One part of the debate has been how the Viaduct cuts the Waterfront from Downtown not only visually and practically but by the 24-7 roar of compact traffic generating 80 decibel alongside the Pike Place Market. The shady wasteland in-under the Viaduct has been home of the homeless and rats.

Another voice in the discussion was the 2001 earthquake which made the Viaduct crack and settle. By the way, that’s the only time my father questioned a Seattle trip of mine, just a week after the quake. Do you really have to go? I felt I did. And I couldn’t cancel my ticket. It all went well though. 

Since the 2001 quake, public agencies and citizens waded through eight years of process, an advisory ballot and $325 million in tax money to study and review as many as 75 variations before Governor Christine Gregoire chose a deep-bore tunnel in January 2009 as the biggest piece of a $3.3 billion viaduct replacement.

The tunnel-bore has of course not been a stroll in the park (a story by itself) and there’s never been a clear public consensus around which path was wisest — a tunnel, an elevated replacement, street-level highway, surface road plus transit, or retrofitting the old viaduct but earth quake-secured. That debate might echo long after the sound of the concrete decks demolition.

Which will happen in the next six months. Project demolition of the 66 year-old emblem of the age of happy motoring. The four-lane tunnel will open Monday February 4, and as many as 100 000 people are expected to return the weekend before for a celebration to say farewell to the viaduct and preview the tunnel!

Until then, good luck Seattle with the upcoming there weeks without a viaduct and no tunnel. In short, good luck with squeezing all the Highway 99 traffic into the already jam packed Interstate 5, for once I am not a bit envious!

Political conventions/frightening entertainment

Superb Swedish summer and American political conventions. A strange mix.

I have CNN on my TV menu, but very rarely watching. These last two weeks though have been an exception. All the time I haven’t been spending in the sun working on my tan, the TV has been on. Watching the morning after summery for breakfast, and from dinner to late bed following the live coverage from the Republican and Democratic convention. Wishing I would have been in the U.S. of course, but happy that the extra dollars for CNN every month, for once is paying off.

Actually, gorgeous summer weather and conventions is a normal, as the conventions happen when Seattle is at it’s best. 2012 I was spending my days on a balcony at lower Queen Anne with a killer view of downtown Seattle, Mount Rainier and Elliot Bay. What miss matches 2016 is the CNN frenzy mixed with the serenity of pine trees, spruce, birches and green fields as a back drop.

Now, one could see the conventions as great entertainment if it was a movie. Or, they would easily be imagined as one of the White House/Washington TV series. But they aren’t. They are real. They are reality, and the outcome of them don’t only affect the U.S., they affect the whole world. Sometimes, over here, we ask ourselves why the American election gets so much media attention, and why we seem so obsessed with it. And I would say the answer would be it really is great entertainment, but even more that it has such an impact on all of us.

If I was an American I would be a democrat. And 2016 I would be a Bernie Sanders supporter. But you don’t have to be either a regular democrat or a Bernie Scandinavian Socialist to be scared to death by Donald Trump.

The man who started out as a joke has become someone who no one is joking about anymore. The fact that he himself doesn’t seem to know when he is serious or joking makes it’s even harder to smile. Was asking Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s emails a joke or not? Is the threat to lock her up a joke? Will he punch “that little man so hard”? To mention a few of those things lining up, only during the convention.

I could make a never ending list of all the things which would be devastating not only to the U.S. but to the world and for generations ahead, if Donald Trump would get to be the next president of the United States. But in a contemporary context I find one particular issue very alarming.

Why is it that in 2016 there are countries which perceive themselves doing better on their own? Why is it that Boris Johnson had the majority of Great Britain vote for the isle kingdom to float by themselves outside the European Union? Why is it that Donald Trump is able to incite Americans shouting “America first!”

Is it that Great Britain has the history of colonial power? And that the U.S. (note, not only Trump) sees itself as the leader of the free world? A hubris of national self confidence? Making believe that they need no one else but themselves? Great Britain a  federation of islands. United States a continent. Well, no man is an island.

Brexit was a joke until it happened. No one thought it would. Not even the Britons  themselves. People voted Brexit just for fun. But it turned out votes are not a joke. Boris Johnson and his crew left the ship immediately, the fight had been the fun, the execution and the managing wasn’t their cup of tea. And now Britain is stalling the exit from the E.U.

A clown with a funny hair do had a good time and altered the politics and the market in Europe and thereby the world. Now there is another clown with a funny hair do having a good time, and the consequences of that are likely to be devastating. And I have a feeling the managing won’t be his cup of tea either. Or rather his six pack of bear.

I can’t vote, so I have to ask you, fellow Americans, to make this scenario not happen. First Ladies are the future. So, let’s vote for Hillary Clinton this time around. And make her pave the way for the next one 2020. The outstanding Michelle Obama for president.

The Nordmaling and Robertsfors of Seattle. And why.

When I first came to Seattle in 1993 I was struck by how the city was laid out between the waters of Elliot Bay to the west, Lake Washington to the east and around Lake Union in the middle of the city. The hills and the waters made it easy for the eye to navigate. Queen Anne Hill, Capitol Hill, First Hill, West Seattle over the bay. In the middle the dense Downtown as the obvious city center surrounded by neighborhoods were people lived their lives.

I was fascinated by the neighborhoods. Wallingford, Madrona, Madison, Central District, Ballard, Montlake, Queen Anne. I remember writing letters (!) home trying to explain how Seattle had a city center surrounded by small-towns like Nordmaling, Robertsfors, Vindeln and Vännäs, places of about 2-3000 inhabitants when I grew up in Västerbotten Region where Umeå is the main city. Places with local downtowns, schools, shops, most everything you needed. Built up by single homes, mostly.

In 1993 the Seattle population wasn’t far from 600 000, Greater Seattle about 2 million. In 2014 about 668 000 and Greater Seattle 3.6 million people. I’ve been thinking the fact the City of Seattle hardly been growing during these 20 years is because it’s squeezed in between the waters and have very little chance to expand. And the expansion that’s after all been happening is upwards with the Downtown condo rises. It’s not until this summer I have learned that I’ve partly been right in my guesses, and why.

The Seattle neighborhoods are protected single-family zones! I don’t know why I never even questioned the fact that the Nordmalings and Robertsfors of Seattle are only residential areas with quite streets and basket hoops in the back yards and alleys, although they are in the middle of the fastest growing major city in the U.S.! Maybe because Wallingford, Madrona and Ballard all have their souls, their communities, their self-evident space in the fabric that is Seattle. 

They say a city without building cranes is a city without a future. In that case both my cities sure have a future. For as long as I have known Seattle, building cranes have been a part of the skyline. That’s also true for Umeå now.

Due to my body restrictions I unfortunately haven’t been back in Seattle for three years. That stay was though, speaking in terms of getting out and about, my most difficult one. I stayed in lower Queen Anne in a penthouse with a killer view (google Seattle views and the first one you will find was mine!), but it became a tower from which I dreaded to climb down. Partly because of my back, but mainly because of the location. Well, the location on the map is great, close to Downtown, but to drive from there to Downtown or Capitol Hill through the Mercer (street) mess, was a nightmare of road work, traffic gridlock and construction sites. I feel claustrophobic even thinking about it.

Yet it seems like the three years after 2012 have totally crazed Seattle. Amazon is taking over the former wear house waste land (umebor, think Västerslätt) South Lake Union, made it it’s campus adding more than 15 000 workers to Seattle with capacity of 30 000 within e few years. Last time this kind of company development happened in the Seattle area was Microsoft in the nineties, although in Redmond east of Lake Washington. Now it’s happening right in the core of the tight Seattle city center with already packed freeways and over-crowded buses. As much as I miss Seattle and always long for the Emerald City, this picture makes the claustrophobia take a seat on my chest.

So, where will everyone live? Downtown condo high rises, yes. But, it might be that the Seattle neighborhoods will be changing. The single-family zoning may very well be in jeopardy. That’s in the Seattle Mayor Ed Murray’s panel on housing affordability, because here is another issue. As Seattle’s booming is going through the roof, who but the Amazons and the Microsofties will afford to live here? A lot of the new high-rises planned for Seattle aren’t condos but apartments (unthinkable in the nineties, only losers were renting), because people just can’t afford to buy on this market anymore!

Wallingford, Madrona and Ballard might look different in the future. In the recent draft  of the panel on housing affordability’s recommendations, the committee argued for converting Seattle’s single-family zones into “low-density residential zones” allowing more types of housing, such as “small-lot dwellings, cottages or courtyard housing, duplexes and triplexes.” 

I can see how this stirs up feelings all around Seattle. The neighborhoods are beautiful and generally safe. Privileged, if you so will, some very privileged. To buy a home in either of those neighborhoods is money. But maybe, if the development is restricted to mother-in-law backyard units and modest town houses, it won't be worse than tearing down a bungalow replacing it with an oversized McMansion blocking the view? And might it add something to diversity?

Now, is building cranes always a sign for a a better future? Well, that’s a different topic.

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.