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July 11, 2007
Lessons from the Liffey
"riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."
So begins Joyce's Finnegans Wake, which ends several hundred pages later with the fragmentary start of the sentence, " A way a lone a last a loved a long the"
The Liffey, the river around which Joyce built one of the most complex and fascinating novels in English, becomes a metaphor for the history of Ireland, life, death, love and eternity. The Liffey was also an organizing tool for Bloom's day (and for Stephen Dedauls's meanderings) in Ulysses and was a touchstone for Joyce as far back as Chamber Music and Dubliners.
I mention it here because I've been doing a lot of traveling recently, and I keep running into cities built around rivers: cities that in all particulars are different, except that they're built around rivers. And I think Joyce is onto something bigger than an organizing mechanism to drive character and plot development. In every case, in every city I've been seeing an interesting pattern: you can tell a lot about a city, a culture and a people by how they interact with their primary waterways.
Let me give you a few examples. Then, if you're still with me, I'll tell you why I think this is so very important. (You can't have your pudding if you won't eat your dinner.)
Let's begin with a great urban waterway: London's Thames. What makes it great?
In my view, there are a number of key factors:
--it's integrated into the transportation infrastructure as an asset, and not just for moving barges;
--it's treated as a natural asset;
--the real estate around it is valuable--and valued.
Integrated transportation: Want to get from downtown to Canary Wharf (a key London financial center)? You can take a very slow cab. You can take the subway. Or, you can take a Thames Clipper. The cab costs a fortune, the subway's cheap but often crowded and warm, but the clipper is fast, fairly cheap and offers lovely views of London along the way. And that last point is key, because part of what allows the Thames Clippers to survive is that the following conditions prevail.
Natural Asset: The Thames is clean. Now, while you might personally not care to dip a cup in and drink the water, marine life flourishes and the river doesn't stink. (If you're wondering, the chocolate-brown color comes from a high level of natural sediment.) While you might be inclined to take away from this a message of environmental stewardship--and that's fine--my point is a larger one. That the river isn't toxic and doesn't stink is a reflection of the fact that the city has made the necessary infrastructure commitments to properly treat sewage and regulate industrial use of water (heavy industry are typically located on major waterways because of the volume they require) which in turn has a significant quality of life impact.
Real Estate Value: London's one of the most costly cities in the world and the area around the Thames is some of London's more valuable real estate. Where the river is treated as an important natural asset, the areas around river tend to be quite nice. People like to gather there. And the laws of scarcity and price dictate that the costs therefore rise.
I could add a number of other factors beyond these, but the larger point is that they're all interdependent reflections of a livable environment--and that has really, really important opportunities to yield with respect to work and working.
But for the moment, hold that thought and let's look at the livability impact on the surrounding urban communities of two rivers that don't meet these criteria: the Moskva River at Moscow and the Yangtze river at Shanghai. As you'll notice, each of these rivers is significant--that is, you've certainly heard of them, though you might not know that they run through these particular cities. And each of these cities are significant. Moscow and London are capital cities and, though Shanghai is not a political capital, one could argue that it's China's most important economic capital.
The Moskva River at Moscow is a fairly clean river as urban rivers go. I wouldn't want to drink the water, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that there are fish in it. However, while you can take river tours and while there are ample landing places, the river doesn't function as part of a transportation system--and this is really, really surprising, given how congested the rail system is.
More importantly, particularly when compared with the Thames, the river seems, well, neglected as a public asset. Yes, you can take a nice walk around the Kremlin, but despite the Kremlin's impressive grandeur, there's no comparison to walking past London's Parliament Building. The Moskva's embankment is a bit scruffy and shabby throughout the city center, and even at Gorky Park, which should be a major center of intersection between land and water, the steps leading down to the water feel almost like an afterthought. As a result, the only notable views from the river are of Christ the Saviour Church, the Kremlin, and a large statue of Peter the Great. (You'll need to scroll down the page for a photo if you follow this link.) So, in brief, with two important potential drivers of urban waterway improvement--transport and unique cultural assets--largely absent, not only does the Moskva fail to meet it's potential, but I doubt it soon will.
The Yangtze at Shanghai suffers from the opposite problems. While the Bund offers a wonderful potential river showcase, one that both the new World Financial Center and the gracefully-aging Oriental Pearl Tower building seek to exploit, the river's pollution not only threatens public health, but seriously undermines this magnificent waterway's potential as a center of cultural life.
Now, I could go on and on--from the Saigon river in Ho Chi Minh City to the Ob in Novosibirsk--but it would be a variation on these few simple themes you've already gathered around the interconnected effect of downtown waterways and city life. Let's just skip the tedium (send me a reply requesting more and I'll happily oblige) and get to the point, which is what this tells us about candidate life, and why it matters. See my next posting for tasty pudding on candidate life and lifestyle brands.
Posted by davidkippen at July 11, 2007 09:50 PM