Taka nieduża zabawa, miałam troszkę ochotę porysować. Zatem Szanowni – przedstawiam nieco inną wersję ul. Zachodniej w mieście Łodzi. Inną niż ta obok, taką ze ścieżkami rowerowymi po obu stronach, z kilkoma więcej drzewami. Jakoś tak to normalniej i bardziej miejsko wygląda, mnie przypomina tor wyścigowy Formuły 1 w każdym razie.

Po lewej – wizualizacja ze strony Zarządu Inwestycji Miejskich, po prawej – rysunek odręczny na podstawie obrazka obok.

Every single day Polish newspapers inform about deadly casualties of traffic accidents. Today this was an 8-years old girl in Poznań who was crossing a street with her Mum through zebra crossing and on a green light. The other day this was an elderly lady who passed away after a truck hit her walking her daily path to a local market. She used pavement for this.  The driver was reversing his car and was sure he did this into a snowdrift. The penalties for such accidents are meagre, which does not help discourage lousy driving habits. Drivers tend to not respect speed limits; typical behaviour of drivers is to neglect signs. Part of the problem is bad law; the regulation which does not give priority to pedestrians while approaching the crossing. Another issue is traffic culture and general social disrespect for all modes of transportation but individual vehicles. The third piece which contributes to this puzzle belongs to Modernism heritage of poorly designed streets.

The efforts manifested in Le Corbusian’s call to kill the ‘street corridor’ which afterwards got translated into some of the postulates of the Athen’s Charter prove fruitful in many Polish cities. The urban streets hierarchy which follows Modernist principles does not invite social life. Instead, by their appearance and meaning, these streets encourage higher driving speeds. Adjusted to accommodate 90 km/h many of larger streets inform a potential driver that speeding up is welcome. Separated from streets, pedestrians paths often lead to nowhere and these related to streets lost their former meaning and importance. Cities became machines, where principles of traffic engineering rule. The hierarchy and subordination of streets to car traffic have acquired a strong position in the traffic laws and regulations. It still translates into the widths of streets and this way generates stronger traffic flows and, as an outcome, congestion. Whereas rights of way should remain larger to contain a variety of social activities and public transportation, continuously maintaining the large traffic lanes for private cars in cities should be eliminated and replaced by other traffic modes and space for other activities/vegetation. This statement has been repeated thousands of times, but this is still not enough.

There is more to placemaking than the actual making of places, understood as placing benches, adding flowers, changing pavements, and the like, and I am convinced people involved in these activities would share my views. Creating social situations, around which the real physical settings would be built in future, conveys a method to change reality. The strength of local communities gathered and unified around a place is in the position to provide brand new and often very creative proposals based on the in-depth observation of the real-life situations performed by many. Strength stemming also from the complex composition of a group of various and multiple profiles increases the potential for creativity. The daily usage of space yields numerous small-scale situations which call for better, more comfortable solutions. Not being afraid of people, collaborating with them, architects and urban designers may use this knowledge, answer these needs. Add a support to a bench here to help an elderly lady sit comfortably. Add a seat there, in the shadow so a group of teenagers could protect themselves from the summer heat. Use the breeze which cools the air and which nobody would expect in a place like that. Slowly develop solutions, starting with temporary prototypes. Often not even real just to understand each other and actual needs. Show local people they are respected and ask their opinion, your work may change real-life conditions of a few and of so many.

Great rulers of the past understood social needs, this is perhaps why they deserve to be called great now. Bacon explains that once, the famous pope Sixtus the Fifth, walking the paths of Rome from one church to another followed by groups of pilgrims, must have noticed the need to give the processions a proper scenery. With time these processions acquired physical form in one of the most recognisable layouts of streets forever. We may multiply such examples.

Contemporary society is different; we are no longer unified around one single vocation. Guessing what different people want would be a chore, much easier is just to ask or sometimes to show examples. Not only would we learn about the desired culture of usage of space, but also gain support for our further efforts. We just work in order to achieve these goals with the local community, not against them. Otherwise, given little means, urbanists are given in the contemporary world, with our role reduced to advisory only, we may just sit comfortably in our armchairs and complain that in the past, urbanism used to be great.

This is a little piece of a philosophy behind our recent involvement in the workshop our students held at the Institute of Architecture and Town Planning of Lodz University of Technology where I work. The workshop itself deserves a separate entry and it will get it very soon. Stay tuned!

Przez Kongres Ruchów Miejskich

This is a book on the impact of Jewish culture on the development of towns in central Poland. This is what should be stressed. I have got a little personal relation to it. I am very happy to introduce this book to the readers of my irregular blog. Actually, many of my friends and colleagues asked me where to buy it and how. So the main purpose of this entry is that I would like to explain here how to do this.

The book has been published by Wydawnictwo Politechniki Łódzkiej (Lodz Technical University Publishing House). If you do not speak Polish, instead of going through Polish pages it is much more rational to just write the retailer and order a book. You may also want to have my signature on it, please do not hesitate to ask for it. Just write an email to zamowienia@info.p.lodz.pl. It will be my huge pleasure to go to the library where publishing house is located and sign it for you.

I had a wonderful opportunity to promote the book not so long time ago in Lodz Centre of Dialogue of Marek Edelman. I am very grateful to the Directeur of the Centre Dr Joanna Podolska and her employees for both this opportunity and very warm welcome. This has been a great event and I was astonished how many people came and wanted to share their interests in Jewish culture and its impact on the urban fabric of Lodz and other towns in central Poland.

Here are some photos from this event:

photos by Dialogue Centre of Marek Edelman

Tomorrow there is the first day of Spring. Today we have got the international day of happiness.

Happy – Pharrell Williams – Happy (We Are Europe) by W24

We love the city we live in. It is truly great to walk streets one likes so much, to admire its city scapes, to talk to people, to enter a local shop and exchange a word with a shopkeeper. All these activities make life much more agreeable, however this may happen that my opinion are not as obvious as they may seam… I’ll tell you a little story.

It was a Sunday afternoon, with the rain drizzling and hardly anybody in the street. I took my dog to the neighbourhood park, which we like walking in very much, its temporary emptiness adding to its values. When walking rain nearly stopped, we made a full circle and started coming back, I decided to make some errands in the shop over the corner. Shopkeeper smiling as usual made me laugh on some small story, juicy pears in my bag weighted in a promising way. I had already seen smiles on faces of my daughters when I would make them this small Sunday afternoon pleasure…

And then it happened again. This is just incredible how people are frustrated nowadays. I have no idea what is behind but this happens more and more often that someone starts talking to you and reprimands you on something either inexistent or absolutely unimportant. This is as if they wanted to open a valve and let some tension out. Some seem to have everything and still the stress is so great that they cannot constrain themselves from saying some impolite words to a total stranger. The easiest to someone who seams defenceless: to a child, to a woman, etc.

As myself I just answer these criteria, this sort of situations happen to me quite often. Usually the attackers are older man, usually well upholstered , probably fathers of a family, with expensive clothes and car. As a slim woman, who moves around walking or biking, I do not have these outside attributes of power, and I seam an easy prey for such aggressive men.

It has just happened today that a guy like this reprimanded me that I left my dog in front of a shop for a minute when doing some errands. Masza the dog is a kind of wonderfully calm and nonaggressive creature which would not ever  harm a fly. She maybe looked sort of dangerous when younger but these impressions dissolved long time ago, and now with her nearly grey muzzle one must really try hard to see any danger in her. So a fatty “macho man” just reprimanded me that I should not leave my “dangerous” canine unattended like this, and walked to his newest Honda, blinking lights when he approached. And left, leaving me and my smiling dog behind. I do wish people like that to be less frustrated.

However this was not the only time when such strange situations happened to me, on another occasion a driver, also a sturdy one and good looking, tried to down me of my bike. Just stopped me on the red light, got me down of my vehicle and started dragging towards the pavement. He maintained that I had allegedly hit his car.. He calmed down after an intervention of few passer-byes who showed him that there is no the slightest trace of any hit on his car’s door. The only thing I could do was to cry out loud, which I obviously did screaming and trying to defend myself.

I just wonder what is wrong with these people. Why they cannot be just happy and smiling? Why actually they cannot just say nice things to others? What are the reasons for this overwhelming frustration? Is this a pace of life? Stress levels which are too huge and they cannot stand them?