Cacophonous Rosemount

As the oppressive noise level generated by motor traffic in Aberdeen increases in direct correspondence with the oil price, trying to undertake psychogeographical studies of the town and its socio-geographical relationships becomes more and more frustrating and our field reports run the risk of becoming increasingly one-dimensional. More than once, these pages have featured our bitter complaints about the growing cacophonous overburden of discordance on our town's streets and the impact of this noisy intrusion upon our quality of life. And when we visit an area of study, by chance dérive or purposeful expedition, it takes an engaged effort of the will to try to screen out the harsh racket which destroys the unity of the urban experience - that which our psychogeography seeks.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, we walked up and down Rosemount Place - host to a subsidiary commercial district of Aberdeen, about a kilometre from the town centre, and so fitting nicely the the multi-node-model of urbanisation. The Rosemount area is full of artefacts and arrangements of great psychogeographical interest. From ancient boundary stones to boutique cheese-vendors; from mid-century Viennese-style art deco apartment blocks to Georgian manor houses hidden behind Victorian tenements, accessible up long dark pends; from independent cosmopolitan cafés to cipher-embazoned granite pediments and gables - Rosemount is fascinating. Tree-lined avenues and traditional green-lane rights-of-way criss-cross the area. Rosemount would be a nice place to linger, to dawdle, to stroll and maybe even do some grocery shopping; to stop in a cafe and read a newspaper, to live life at a human scale and pace. But unfortunately, through-traffic roars up and down Rosemount Place, rat-running at maximum possible speed between the northwest of the town and the central business district. The noise generated by the continual high-speed flow of traffic makes Rosemount Place an unpleasant and oppressive zone. Not at all a nice place to linger.

We had intended to stay, to look at stuff, to think and reflect, to discuss what we were experiencing. But it was impossible. We couldn't dally, because we had to shout to each other in order to be heard. It just was not possible to stand on the pavement or stroll and maintain a conversation. Once again we were subjected to that most British of outcomes - the confusion that exists between streets and roads. In pre-mid 20th century urbanism, roads connected locations and streets connected people. A road's main function was transportation, while streets enabled public interaction. Today, in Aberdeen, even the streets are roads, and public interaction is marginalised in favour of noisy high-speed motor-traffic 'flow'.

According to the World Health Organisation document "Burden of disease from environmental noise" (pdf):

The health impacts of environmental noise are a growing concern. At least one million healthy life years are lost every year from traffic-related noise in the western part of Europe.

[...]

Traffic noise alone is harming the health of almost every third person in the WHO European Region. One in five Europeans is regularly exposed to sound levels at night that could significantly damage health.

[...]

Excessive noise seriously harms human health and interferes with people’s daily activities at school, at work, at home and during leisure time. It can disturb sleep, cause cardiovascular and psychophysiological effects, reduce performance and provoke annoyance responses and changes in social behaviour.

So, what is to be done? We're pleased to note that the Scottish Government is obliged by European Union legislation to address environmental noise via Noise Action Plans covering Noise Management Areas (pdf). Unfortunately, we're less pleased to note that local greenwash boilerplate issuing quango NESTRANS (North East Scotland Transport) is the local body responsible for dealing with transport noise in Aberdeen.

The NESTRANS "Health and Transport Action Plan" (HTAP) document is difficult to find, particularly as NESTRANS appear not to have updated the document index on their website since 2008, but a bit of knowledge of how to conduct advanced Google searches delivers up the goods.

• Google-generated HTML version here.
• MS Word .doc format download here.

It's disappointing to note that the "Noise Control" section of the report is practically identical to that published in the NESTRANS HTAP last year, the only change in the form of words being those necessary to report that no action has yet been taken, not even to identify problem areas. We'll save them the time and effort: the whole of Aberdeen is now a problem area for traffic noise.

• Google viewer version of 2010 HTAP here.

It was a fairly pleasant surprise to see that our local advertising free-sheet "The Aberdeen Citizen" (BEST free newspaper in Scotland) covered this story with a front-page splash last week: "EU COULD TELL ABERDEEN TO CUT DOWN THE NOISE" - they thundered. We were delighted. But then we read the article. The reporter who wrote it asked a local haulage magnate to comment. The transport tycoon in question responded by calling for road resurfacing:

"Drive past noise varies on the road surface ... it can be loud and intimidating. The only way to lower that is to improve the road surface."

(Our emphasis)

The reporter also sought a quote from a NESTRANS spokeswoman who said:

"As technological advances reduce noise levels from vehicles, it is possible that improvements will occur anyway."

Astonishing. This spokeswoman believes that "technological advances" will come to the rescue; presumably those advances being in the form of electric or hydrogen-powered vehicles which will emit negligible engine-noise. But, engine noise is already only detectable in today's motor cars at speeds lower than 20mph. Above that speed, it is the rolling tyre rumble and aerodynamic effects which produce the noise which so blights our urban environment and is of such great concern to the World Health Organisation. So the NESTRANS spokeswoman is happy to tell us that she is just crossing her fingers and hoping that the problem will go away, and the haulage magnate wants road surface 'improvements'. Neither of these quoted sources countenance measures (such as modal-shift away from use of private motor vehicles towards sustainable, active and/or public transport modes) which could reduce traffic volumes or speeds. They have not considered this obvious, low-cost and minimum intervention solution, because so entrenched has their motor-centric world-view become that they cannot see the bleedingly obvious fact that motor-traffic is the source of motor-traffic noise. To paraphrase the splendid "At War With The Motorist" blog:

The cause of traffic noise is traffic. Too much of if, driving too fast. We like to pretend that it’s bad engineering, because we can always fix engineering by replacing it with some different engineering. And we like to pretend that it’s not the volume and speed of traffic and the behaviour of drivers, because acknowledging this would mean giving up hope that one day the traffic noise will magically be solved. But that’s the way it is: too many cars, driven too fast.

Up the Stairs to an Understanding of Topography #03

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As we walk the concrete, adamant and flagstone pavements of our town, from time to time our feet stray with purpose onto grass and topsoil desire lines - on the beaten track unrecognised by those who have placed the paving, mis-planned our best route from place to place. And just as often, our feet find us climbing or descending the many staircases of the public townscape. When gradients become too steep for comfortable or safe walking and the ground beneath our feet breaks up into the discontinuities of riser and tread, those stringer-held steps can help us to a topographical understanding of the urban space and the underlying human and natural geography. An understanding of human interventions in the landscape - building up artificial features; bridges and causeways, embankments and revetments to span hollows and valleys, to terrace inclines or consolidate banks and tame hills. And we can reach an understanding of those banks, inclines, hollows, valleys and hills themselves - the treads and risers whisper to us a story of the three; no-four (not forgetting time, not forgetting heritage) dimensional shape of our urban environment.

And so a mental acquisition is gained and augmented by the agency of our calves and thighs and their unconscious unblended apprehension of scarp and glen: the sixth psychogeographical sense is fed by unconscious muscle memory and conscious eye.

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Throughout Kincorth, a network of paths and stairways leads through that southern-steep-sloped suburb (or "garden estate" as we are invited now to know it) to the craggy tops of Kincorth Hill - still sometimes know as  'e Grupms. Put a small hot tattie in you mouth and pronounce: The Gramps. Write it out longhand and untruncated and you'll appreciate that this prominence just south of the Dee is the last eastermost finger of The Grampian Mountains, triangling down the whole length of Deeside to a last low summit before finally giving out and giving way to the sea. Known once as Stoneyhill, the area towards the summit is now a nature reserve and is dotted with quarry workings and spoil tips dating from the 18th to the late 20th centuries.

Kincorth has or rather had in the past, a formidable reputation for gang violence, no-go areas and turf wars. But that's all histobunk now. On its traffic-free paths and stairs today, rather than loitering razor-gang hoolies lurking to tax or chib you, much more likely are you to see young mums chatting, the ill-considered parking of their progeny prams the only thing to impede your progress. Or you'll see sullen trendy teens in their jeggings and beehives, sumfily tutting and texting away their duty to walk the family shihtzu, collecting its tiny shits in a little orange plastic bag. But then, from time to time, you might be able to detect an inkling, an afterimage, of this place's formidable past as you note the swallow-tattooed neck of the painfully thin shortarsed shuffling alcoholic old man. His brilliantined attempt to DA his nicotine yellow grey hair betrays the fact that he's not nearly as old as he looks; his face is a contour map of a confrontational past in a lawless frontier. Twitching and grunting, grumbling to himself only, he re-lives past controversies - glories and humiliations -  as he stands smoking outside The Abbot - the area's only pub, near the top of the hill. The pub is named for the Abbot of Arbroath, the medieval religious warlord who held sway over the farms and peasants, crofts and serfs of this area during the days of real strongmen.

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If you stand at one end of Ashvale Place or the other, the 'vale' topography is evident. Presumably ash trees once grew in this valley. But what is not perhaps so clear is the fact that the valley's actually a good deal deeper and steeper than Ashvale Place makes it appear, for the road crosses the valley obliquely. The Holburn (or Ferryhill Burn) runs beneath Ashvale Place - at the far west end of the street it runs on the north, but by the east end of the street it runs on the south. A little exploration can show you the true shape of the valley - steep sides can be made out behind the townhouses on the south side of Union Grove, and likewise, the steep valley is evident in the retaining walls and steep drying greens which run behind the messy incoherent collection of buildings and carparks surrounding the Ashvale Chip Shop on the north side of Great Western Road, visible from Cuparstone Court. At the far west end of Ashvale Place, recent (well, within the last 15 years) redevelopment of industrial land has opened a new access for pedestrians up the south west slope of the valley from Ashvale Place to Claremont St. This is of great benefit to the residents of Pitmuxton, allowing greater permeability along the most direct pedestrian desire line between Pitmuxton and the town centre. Ashvale Place is characterised by robust unfussy Victorian tenements, which the recent long economic boom seems to have treated well. All units seem to be recently rennovated and in pretty good shape - singles and first timers occupy these well-enough-mannered apartments very close to the entertainment and employment zones of the town centre. People of my old-dad's generation knew a different Ashvale Place in the middle 20th century when the street was a slum; then known locally as "Ash-bucket Alley".

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As we walk the urban environment, it is sometimes hard to appreciate just how great were the interventions made by previous generations; it can be difficult to understand just how transformative they were. Most Aberdonians know that Union Street is a viaduct which crosses the valley of the Denburn. But, of course, it's not the only one; Rosemount Viaduct is a similarly impressive structure, if not more so, for it's spectacular curving grace between Schoolhill at its south-eastern end and Leadside Road at the north-west flattened the hills and smoothed access to the fertile slopes of Rosemount beyond while spanning the Denburn twice. Bypassing the filthy muddy sharny slums of Gilcomston and on proud granite arch the Rosemount Viaduct bore the new Victorians high above the old slums below; behind cast-iron parapet, so they could look down on those left behind in Upper Denburn and Jacks Brae in total safety - a different world. The photo shows a latter-day stairway which links a snicket from Upper Denburn to Rosemound Viaduct. On the opposite side, the street called Gilcomston Park, being vehicular, sort of ski-jumps its carrageway from ground level up to the level of the viaduct. 

Viaducts like these exist all over Europe in formerly hilly town centres with which the Victorians had their vainglorious way. Notably Edinburgh has its many viaducts and bridges with vaulted caverns below, and those vaults are put to work as entertainment venues, pop-up pubs, knocking shops, ghost-tour backdrops, etc.  Similarly, London's Oxford street is, in part, raised above the former natural topography. In parts, entire pre-Victorian streetscapes are preserved below vaults, notably the Georgian shopping street which has been preserved almost in its entirety below the Selfridges department store. We understand that this living psychogeographical fossil (for what else can we call it?) has been from time to time used as a film-set. Back home, we have heard claims of secret access, of strange artifacts and of old cottages and the like existing below the vaulted stonework of Aberdeen's viaducts, but we treat these claims with skepticism. We know that, notwithstanding the odd restaurant and nightclub, the vaults of Aberdeen are most commonly used as underground carparks, and commercial storage. However, we would love to learn of more exotic uses, of secrets forgotten, of stories waiting to be told. We would so love be proven wrong.

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Unknown Stones - Rosemount.

The city, having evolved to its current state over many centuries, contains many signs and signifiers, artifacts and arrangements which encode the events of the urban story and which can be understood by anyone who possesses the key to the code. Sometimes the key is apparent, often it is not. A good example of this type of artifact is Aberdeen's system of boundary stones - the March Stones - which we've been exploring over the weeks and months.

All of the March Stones are in plain view, but sometimes they are difficult to see. That's partially because our modern perception is simply not focussed upon estate boundaries; we've no need to know of rights of way along free byways and waterways or any other feudal concerns. During the psychogeographical process of exploring these boundary markers we had to learn where and how to look, where to direct our cognition so that we could locate the artifacts.

So, once we had those eyes switched on (as it were) - once we'd directed our consciousness towards ancient boundaries, where they might be and how they might be marked - we coincidentally found other stone marks and markers, signifiers of past property or infrastructure and not registered on the council's reference pages.

Back in November, we documented some of these 'Unknown Stones' which we'd seen around Ferryhill.

We've been wandering the Green Lanes of Rosemount this week, and we saw these:

Groove-marked stone - Watson Lane

Groove-marked stone - Watson Lane

M&C marked stone - Loanhead Walk Lane

These stones (and many others) appear on the first large scale OS map of Aberdeen, which was drawn in 1869.