An Open Goal, An Uncontested Scrum

If you're familiar with local planning issues in Aberdeen, skim this first couple of paragraphs. If you're not, then you might be surprised to learn that in Aberdeen we have a sunken town-centre park called Union Terrace Gardens (very much like a pocket-sized version of Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens) which is under threat of redevelopment for the sake of business profits. The vision of one man (oil tycoon Sir Ian Wood), this proposed redevelopment has been branded as the "City Gardens Project" and is being 'driven' forward by local business development quango ACSEF (Aberdeen City and Shire Economic Future) along with some other local tycoons. Visit the website if you want.

Other than a scrubby swatch in the centre of a large roundabout on the Inner City Ring-Road, Union Terrace Gardens is the only open green space in the centre of our town. We've covered some aspects of this proposed redevelopment before, and we've even proposed our alternative 'vision' for what could be done to improve and safeguard (rather than destroy or jeopardise) this open green space in the town centre. Against stiff opposition, the business-orientated boosters of this commercial annexation of public space have pushed forward, ever onward - and last week opened an exhibition of the competing submissions to the international design competition which they had taken it upon themselves to organise with public funds. Members of the public are invited to view the proposals for the destruction of the gardens and are asked to vote for which of the six on offer they prefer. No minimum intervention option to restore the park to its originally-intended amenity is offered. Radical change is presented as a fait accompli.

Concept #1.

For visual interest, we've sprinkled this post with images from the submissions to the design competition, which we got from STV local. You can download big PDFs of the full submissions and read all the usual starchitect boilerplate for yourself from design competition gatekeeper Malcolm Reading Consultants' website here.

Interviewed on local TV channel STV, ACSEF-styled "heritage expert" Malcolm Reading himself, interviewed at the VIP-only opening of the exhibition which showcases the six competing designs, said:

>>transcript
It's a testament to Aberdeen haha really, in a sense of er it is a world city and these are world class design teams who're interested in building in this city. I, eh I think its a - its a - really it is, it is, a testament to an interest in design quality about what cities are going to be like in the twenty-first century [sic]

Concept #2

OK. Notwithstanding what's written specifically below, we're not going to examine the various proposals. To do so would be redundant, for friend of OtherAberdeen Fraser Denholm has already examined the six proposals and has written a blistering critique in his trademark style, which we endorse. Go and read it here.

Right, did you read it? Good. So we continue...


1. STARCHITECTS & THE BILBAO EFFECT

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starchitect

With urban generation from the turn of the twentieth century picking up, economists forecast that globalization and the powers of multi-national corporations would shift the balance of power away from nation states towards individual cities, which would then compete with neighbouring cities and cities elsewhere for the most lucrative modern industries, and which increasingly in major Western Europe and US cities did not include manufacturing. Thus cities set about 'reinventing themselves', giving precedence to the value given by culture. Municipalities and non-profit organizations hope the use of a Starchitect will drive traffic and tourist income to their new facilities. With the popular and critical success of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, by Frank Gehry, in which a rundown area of a city in economic decline brought in huge financial growth and prestige, the media started to talk about the so-called "Bilbao factor"; a star architect designing a blue-chip, prestige building was thought to make all the difference in producing a landmark for the city.

Concept #3

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/06/11/starchitecture-a-modest-proposal.html
NEWSWEEK

The trend [named] “the Bilbao Effect” after the huge success of Frank Gehry’s 1997 Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain—is just about over. 

The phenomenon of using iconic architecture to promote a city, an institution, or a real-estate development was a product of the economic boom that began in the late 1990s and ended with the recession in 2008. As Western economies begin to recover, extravagant, eye-popping architecture is giving way to a subtler new aesthetic. In the U.S. and Europe, architectural values are shifting from can-you-top-this designs toward more efficient, functional building. Innovation and experimentation are increasingly directed at sustainability and new technology. For a younger generation of architects in particular, “the spectacle building is kind of a dinosaur,” says Rosalie Genevro, director of the Architectural League in New York.

Two years ago, the Boston Globe article 'Marking the End of the Bilbao Decade' said: "…times dictate a shift away from vanity projects" and asked: "have we reached the climax and termination of a whole era in architecture?…" And now, Maria Misra writing in last month's Prospect magazine says: "We can expect the monstrous regiment of 'starchitects' who have strewn crass monuments to their [and their clients'] own narcissism across our cities to embrace a more sober, elegant and functional style…"

Concept #4

Alas, here in Aberdeen we must suffer the detritus left after the retreat of the waves at the high-water mark. In our tycoons we have a reservoir of not only the single minded monomania but also the narcissism necessary to power the last of the starchitects forward on one final vanity project, one last triumph of the will. And just as fast-fashion garments are remaindered unsold stepwise through the logistical chain all the way north through the towns and cities of the UK until at last they wash up last-gasp last-chance-to-sell in the shops of Aberdeen (next stop Africa!), so we see the last gasp of this will to "wow factor architecture" expire in our town centre.


2. THE OPEN GOAL

Whatever your feelings about the quality (or otherwise) of the conceptual proposals for the destruction of Union Terrace Gardens, it's important to realise that it's the choice of site that's the problem. We must be careful not to confuse context with content. Imagine, for instance, that these proposals instead were for a building/gardens project to be sited at:

• Mounthooly Roundabout / West Nth st. (Brownfield/transport land-use at present) 
• Timmer Market/Hannover St car park (Brownfield/transport)
• Denburn Health Ctr (Brownfield)
• Holburn Valley North Slope at Justice Mill Lane (Recently redeveloped brownfield - now commercial)
• Site of Union Square (Recently redeveloped brownfield - now retail)

We imagine that, on any of these other sites, the starchitect proposals would have been "grasped with open arms" [sic, per ACSEF] by the people of Aberdeen.

Concept #5

But, of course, the great big open goal which the tycoons and their bagmen have missed is the site of the now empty and soon to be derelict St Nicholas House, former headquarters building of Aberdeen City Council. Leaving our own feelings aside, the building is (rightly or wrongly) generally regarded as a much-loathed buck-tooth turned rotten, an eyesore in the heart of our town. Were the tycoons to have proposed a city garden or civic square on that site, they would have been pushing at an open door and been assured of the wholehearted support of the vast majority of Aberdonians. They would have reaped the benefit of citizens' goodwill for years to come (along with all the consent thereby manufactured for their atmosphere-jeopardising hydrocarbon production activities - but that's another story). How could they miss so obvious a wide open goal? What's wrong with them? We thought they were supposed to be clever.


3. AN ILL-DEFINED CONTEXT LEADS TO A FALSE PREMISE

As mentioned, this project is being forced onward by local enterprise quango ACSEF (Aberdeen City and Shire Economic Future) on behalf of the oil-tycoons for who's interests they provide the necessary administrative fig leaves. But the name ACSEF itself points to the problem these people have in defining the necessary content for our local community and wider society as they and we collectively face an uncertain future, for they have a demonstrable problem in defining the context in which they work. The name ACSEF - Aberdeen City and Shire Economic Future - is a misnomer, for these people concentrate their efforts on maximising benefits for local business (which is the concern of discrete private individuals, and is limited in its time horizon by reporting seasons and tax-return basis periods) rather than the local economy. The local economy, which is by definition the entirety of the local area, its land, its people, its society, its natural and human resources, its knowledge, its potential and its limitations - in addition to its businesses - is not delimited by time horizons either in the past or the future, and is much larger in scope than can be encompassed by mere business concerns. Thus, by viewing everything through the myopic lens of business, ACSEF blithely have alienated significant sectors of local discourse, which they simply cannot see.

So, having established that, we examine sceptically ACSEF's assertions that this redevelopment project is a "fundamental plank" necessary for "businesses and investment to secure jobs for our children and grand-children" and is required to "transform the economy". All this, somehow, from a small city centre park. It's clear that the problems facing the economy are several orders of magnitude more grave than any which might be solved by a real estate deal involving a town centre park. Again, from Prospect Magazine, from back in 2008 - close to the start of the current economic difficulties:

Gelrald Holtham writes:

The freeing of capital movements in the 1980s combined with the collapse of communism, releasing billions of new workers into the world economy, has recreated a global reserve army of labour. That in turn has contributed to a rise in the share of world GDP accounted for by profits and an accompanying decline in the share accounted for by wages. Such a development easily leads either to over-investment by businesses or a shortfall of aggregate demand. When wages lag, spending can keep up with output only by an expansion of consumer debt.
[...]
Since Keynes was unfashionable and Marx unmentionable, no-one asked what this would mean for the level and pattern of demand.
[...]
Yet here was the central problem with the globalised system. If profits and output rise persistently faster than wages, who will buy the output? A lack of effective demand, in Keynesian terms is averted for a time [by the expansion credit], but ultimately shows up in a problem of "the realisation of capital". 

So we in the developed world find ourselves here: globally defective demand caused by an imbalance between wage and profit rates, made worse by a collapse in the availability of the very consumer credit which had masked the problem for a decade or more, and severely aggravated by the necessity to pay down that debt at both national and personal levels.

But here, in our small corner, those who have taken it upon themselves to secure an 'economic future' for Aberdeen believe (or, rather, would try to have us believe) that a real-estate deal involving a small public park and benefitting a handful of local construction companies and property developers will fix it. It will not, of course. The imbalance between wages and profit took decades to reach this crisis point and so it will take comprehensive attitudinal shifts in society; a change in the local, national and international conversation, and a widespread paradigm shift to remedy this imbalance. It's tasteless in the extreme that a local business development quango should use the global crisis as a smokescreen for what is, in fact, a project to privatise - for the benefit of a tiny handful of already-affluent local business-people - a relatively small (but high-value) patch of what has been community-owned land since the middle-ages.

Concept #6

4. THE STING, AN UNCONTESTED SCRUM. "CHOICE ARCHITECTURE"

Above, when we pointed out the 'open goal' we mocked the boosters of the City Gardens Project for their choice of site. But maybe, just maybe they are cleverer than we give them credit for. We are particularly worried about the Concept #6 proposal, with it's bizarre monolith. Go and look at it again (pdf). Maybe we're just paranoid, but we worry nonetheless. Throughout this entire controversial debacle, we've had the feeling that we're being scammed in some way - and not the obvious one - that this whole thing is some sort of shell game. Large real estate deals have always and everywhere been characterised by the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't misdirection of bad-things-made-to-look-good and good-things-made-to-look-bad conjuring. Our concern is that this Concept #6 has been chosen for us, pre-selected. On internet chat forums, blogs and social networking sites, we're all too busy having a damned good laugh at its egregious MONOLITH to notice that this is, indeed, the only proposal which 1. nearly fits the tycoon Sir Ian Woods' parameters and 2. is said to have a 'feasible payback strategy'. We're all too busy being misdirected by the big flashing red herring MONOLITH to notice the 13000 sq metre three-storey public car-park which sits beneath the MONOLITH, and the unspecified area of private car-park which occupies the airspace above the Denburn Road dual carriageway to service the parking needs of the workers in the the 7000 sq metre commercial offices which straddle the valley and 'add to the urban grain' along the eastern slope of the Denburn valley.

For this design, rather than take the approach of all the other designs which are, in fact singular, genuinely monolithic buildings filling the valley. Concept #6 is actually modular, consisting of several discrete buildings which can be pick-mixed to suit. And, indeed (MONOLITH aside) to the vast majority of the public, proposal #6 looks OK. The gardens -particularly the natural [sic] amphitheatre - are shown to be left more-or-less untouched. With a push and a rush, we might envisage this proposal being adopted as Aberdeen City Council favourite, with the proviso that the horrid monolith part is left out (thus making it 'even' cheaper). Of course, the ever-promised arts centre was intended for location in the monolith - but you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs! So, in the end what we get is Concept #6 sans monolith (sans arts centre) but including its large development of commercial offices straddling the Denburn at Union Bridge and several new blocks of offices along the eastern slope of the Denburn valley. These commercial developments along with the large new carparks occupying the current 'dark' area of the gardens and over the Denburn Road dual carriageway. These commercial enterprises, carparks and offices, forming the 'payback strategy'. Brilliant!

We have heard members of the public mentioning that the #6 concept has nice things included in it - for instance the extension of the gardens to encompass the William Wallace statue and the inclusion of a spur which appears to extend greenery a hundred metres north as far as Woolmanhill. It has also been pointed out that the Concept #6 plans include the re-greening of Golden Square. But the 'nice' things about this proposal are merely the (very cheap) quid pro quo for developing the currently green backlands of Belmont St for commercial offices and turning fully one third of Union Terrace Gardens into a multi-story carpark.

Surely we need hardly point out that the extension of the park to Woolmanhill and Wallace, and the greening of Golden Square do not require the polity of Aberdeen to give consent to a real estate deal which will see the rest of the Denburn Valley at Union Terrace and Belmont Street fall prey to overdevelopment. Yet, having been presented with a fait accompli, we fear that people will feel compelled to choose the 'least worst' option. The 'least worst' option - we have heard and read a number of our townsfolk opine - is option #6.

And so the moneyed interests which would benefit from this privatisation of common land are offered an uncontested scrum. Amazing. We have heard a great deal from the promoters of this project about "World Class Architects". We have no particular comment on their competence as architects in the usual sense of building design. But we must offer our complements on the developers' heresthetical skills in the design of the "Choice Architecture" which is being presented to the people of our town. World Class.

Submission #6 - Multi-storey carpark on common ground

Submission #6 - Overdevelopment of Belmont backlands

Submission #6 - Overdevelopment of Belmont backlands

Greenwash, offset, culling and cars.

Granite City Forest Project
New planting at Inverdee.

Aberdeen-based readers will no doubt be aware of the controversy surrounding the planned cull of roe deer on Tullos Hill. This cull is necessitated, so its proponents insist, by the Granite City Forest Project, which had aimed to plant a "Tree for Every Citizen" by 2011.

There's an excellent article in the current Aberdeen Voice citizen journalism online news and information source - which we recommend, along with their ongoing coverage of this issue.

According to the council web-page, the trees of the "Tree for Every Citizen" project are intended to 'reduce' [sic] CO2 emissions, by offsetting 15,000 tonnes of the greenhouse gas over the next 50 years. That's 300 tonnes / year.

We just consulted the Other Aberdeen Abacus...

A mid-range Ford Focus (the most average of cars) emits 150 g/km CO2. And the planned Aberdeen Bypass AWPR (pdf) route is 46km total one way.

When you crunch it all together and cancel zeros and everything, the Granite City Forest will offset only sixty (60) average-car return journeys using the AWPR per day. That represents only 3 cars on the road at any one time (approx).

So, we can see that the 'tree for every citizen project' is meaningless greenwash which is being executed - including the deer cull - rather than make the politically much more difficult effort to encourage just sixty people to change their commuting arrangements. Indeed, it is clear that the forthcoming Aberdeen Bypass AWPR will much more likely induce additional people to commute to Aberdeen from distance using cars.

Yay for Aberdeen Cars!

Woonerf for the Denburn Valley Development.

Word comes from the European Commission that, for the sake of the future, for the sake of sustainability and for the sake of liveability, it is their aspiration that petrol and diesel vehicles be banned from urban centres by 2050.

As radical pedestrians and utility cyclists, naturally, this is exactly the sort of thing we want to hear. This weekend, the taste of exhaust pollution in the centre of Aberdeen was quite disgusting, the noise-stress was unbearable and the vast majority of people (pedestrians) were, as usual, crammed into their tiny pavement allocation by the car drivers who use the space allocated to them on our town centre's roads to the exclusion of all other potential utility that might be gained from that precious urban space.

Future carpark.

In the light of this new anti-motor transport policy development in Europe, it seems all the more perverse that Aberdeen's political and business interests are intent on pushing ahead with urban dual carriageway projects which will deliver large numbers of high-speed drivers into the town centre at a higher rate than ever before. This, of course, will necessitate the creation of more car parking space, which will in turn induce more journeys by car into the city centre. It's like the 1960's version of urban planning. Quite embarrassing, really. One of the places earmarked for a big new car park (sometimes euphamistically termed or "traffic hub") appears to be the city's historic Union Terrace Gardens. This is deplorable.

A radical daydream creeps into our consciousness, a vision of a pleasant city centre which is proud to display both its heritage and its faith in the future. One of the major arguments put forward by those who want to redevelop Union Terrace Gardens is the fact that they are 'poorly utilised'. Well, we're not sure that a city park loses utility when unoccupied by people - it continues to provide ecological services; oxygen generation, urban wildlife habitat, sound baffling and the like - but, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and it has been pointed out elsewhere that the Denburn urban dual carriageway is, likewise, 'poorly utilised'.

A woefully underused urban asset.
No pavements. WTF?

Another argument for decking over the Denburn valley is to conceal the unsightly urban motorway. But, wait a minute - why conceal something which is barely used? Why not just do away with it? Keeping such a big road seems a bit, em, short sighted when private petrol vehicles are to be banned from town centres in less than 40 years time. We say dig it up and lay turf. We say plough it up and plant trees. A small service road on the woonerf model could be retained for emergency vehicles and utility services, but, most of the time it would be used by pedestrians for pleasant sunlit walks in the serene and valley. Maybe the Denburn itself could run in the open once more.

Aberdeen Woonerf!

A "woonerf" is a shared space urban landscape - it's a policy pioneered in the Netherlands in the 1970's. "Woonerf" is a term increasingly used in the English-speaking world to mean an area where motorists have priority equal to or lesser than other road-users, thus increasing the livability of the city at the human scale, even as residential density increases. Based upon principals of filtered permeability and shared space for transport corridors and thoroughfares these woonerf areas were pioneered in Groningen and other towns in the Netherlands, Flanders and Germany to encourage walking and cycling by giving them a more attractive environment free from traffic and a time and convenience advantage over car driving. Why can't we have that?

A further argument put forward for decking over the Denburn valley is that the current gardens are often shaded - and this is true in the evenings. With our new plan to turn the existing dual carrageway into a new contemporary garden, the Denburn Valley Gardens (if you will) would encompass both east and west slopes of the valley, so some part of the gardens would always be in direct sunlight. The existing Victorian gardens would be fully retained at practically no cost, and when the sunlight moves off them, garden users can cross over to new, modern gardens on the east bank, terracing down from Belmont Street, accessed by footbridges over the railway line which itself would be retained lending scenographic drama to our showpiece city centre and displaying the latest tilting train TGV technology.

One of the intentions of the European Commission's policy is to move half of journeys under 200 miles onto rail. Retaining sight of the railway (and, perhaps, new platforms for passenger embarkation) would display the fact that rail travel is at the heart of our city's vision of the future - not the dead-end car-dependent motorcentric vision which today predominates to the detriment of our environment.

And so our radical daydream turns into achievable vision. We're not joking. This is now our stated vision for Union Terrace Gardens and the Denburn Valley, including Upper Denburn (you'll be hearing a lot more about Upper Denburn over the next few years - you heard it here first!).

It would look a little bit like this original human-scale vision for the valley, with greensward and gardens on both sides, a tiny Denburn Road woonerf full of dawdling pedestrians and the latest high-tech railway on display:

We'll be examining this radical new proposal in a bit more detail over the coming weeks with site-visits and the like. We'll do this in comparison with similar projects which have been delivered elsewhere, such as Cheonggyecheon Park in Seoul:

This is more-or-less exactly what we have in mind.

 The "High Line" in Manhattan:

The "High Line" regenerated a disused railway viaduct.
At Denburn, we will turn a disused dual carriageway into a park.

We will also look at our new woonerf proposal in the context of the City Gardens Project "Turning Vision Into Reality" presentation material (particularly that provided by Charles Landry), which we believe supports our vision for high-liveability, human scale, mixed use, walkable places of refuge and tranquility, where creativity can flourish.

Here are some of Charles Landry's slides, as presented to ACSEF and as available to download from the City Gardens Project website:

High-liveability - Mixed use - Places of refuge

Human scale - Walkability

Comforting to read this.

Twenty-eight Percent.

Last night, we were along to Peacock Visual Arts to attend the premier screening of Fraser Denholm's timely and apposite documentary film: "Run Down Aberdeen."
(Own-trumpet-blowing warning: Other Aberdeen's Alan was one of Fraser's interviewees in the doc.)

The film was followed by an open-floor and panel discussion, with the film-maker Fraser flanked by local politicos Deputy City Council Leader Cllr Kevin Stewart, Cllr Martin Greig and Lewis Macdonald MSP.

Here's the film to watch online - pass it on:


Run Down Aberdeen from Fraser Denholm on Vimeo.

We'll write a bit more about the film and the issues it covers later today, but for now we want to explore one particular statistic - mentioned in just one sentence during the floor discussion - from our Deputy Council Leader, Cllr Kevin Stewart.

A question from the floor relating to Aberdeen's role in the Oil and Gas industry was being handled by the panel. Labour and SNP agreed wholeheartedly that Aberdeen was an "economic powerhouse". And that's not just for the North East, but for the whole of Scotland and the UK, according to Lewis Macdonald MSP. Deputy Council Leader, Cllr Kevin Stewart, said that Aberdeen contributed 28% of UK tax revenues to the UK Exchequer.

This is not true. And the fact that both Stewart and Lewis believe that it is tells us more about these politicians than they mean it to. Just have a think about it... that statement suggests that of all the revenue collected by the UK government, more than a quarter comes from the economic activity of less than half-a-percent of the population. What an assertion to make! Really, if this were the case the whole world would beating a path to our small corner to learn the secrets of our special sauce.

But we've seen this error trotted out before by local press and local business-sector bloggers. (We trust that it is a genuine misunderstanding - and not a willfully disingenuous manipulation - politicians wouldn't do that, would they?) So, let's see where the source of the error comes from:

Firstly, like all misunderstandings of this type, it contains a kernel of truth. The 28% figure is within this document (big PDF) from special-interest business lobby group Oil & Gas UK.
[Edit: The figure has actually been revised recently, and now stands at 30% - even more than Cllr Stewart asserts!]

But, that 28% figure relates to Corporation Tax revenue - not all revenue, and it relates to the entirety of the oil and gas sector, not just the 'upstream' (finding and getting) activity which dominates business in Aberdeen.

So, for the avoidance of doubt, Oil & Gas UK rightly assert that the oil and gas industry generated 28% of UK corporation tax receipts during the tax year 2008/09.  But ask yourself: "What else happened during that period?" It's then quite easy to see why the oil and gas industry banked more than the "Square Mile in London" (as has been said elsewhere) at that time: As the oil-price spiked to that $147/barrel record, the energy companies enjoyed windfall taxable profits against the dark background of the financial sector falling into more-or-less ubiquitous loss. It is also relevant to point out that many UK Oil & Gas sector companies operate in a variety of overseas locations, but are stock exchange listed in the UK.

It is also telling that our local representatives to attempt to attribute the entirety of that oil and gas activity exclusively to this town. This is risible. Upstream (finding and getting) oil and gas is a cost centre for the energy companies. Profits are generated in transport, refining, trading, electricity generation & transmission and value-added retail. None of which impinge much on this region. We are exasperated that this boosterism based upon fallacy continues to characterise the discourse in this town and is continually repeated by our local press and politicians. We find it a bit nauseating.

Our local politicians appear to have fallen into the trap of believing Aberdeen's hubristic self-styling as Oil Energy Capital of Europe. It is not. London, Rotterdam, Paris and Moscow vie for that title. No-one outside Aberdeen who works in this huge industry which spans many regions and activities calls Aberdeen "Energy Capital of Europe". When these people in the industry outside Aberdeen hear the term they snigger, as a rule. In the words of novelist Cristopher Brookmyre:

"Europe's Oil Capital. Honestly. The first time he heard the expression, he'd assumed it was a bit of self deprecatory humour. That was before he learned that there was no such thing as self-deprecatory humour in Aberdeen, particularly when it came to the town's utterly unfounded conceit of itself."

Now, please don't misinterpret what we're saying. There's definitely much to be proud of in the business world in Aberdeen "City and Shire" (ugh). But there's no need to "enhance" these good things with disingenuous or demonstrably false hubristic misrepresentations which make us look vaingloriously stupid. To do so devalues that which is genuinely good and praiseworthy about our town. To do so undermines our standing amongst our competitor regions. And to do so undermines calls for greater support from central government and other non-governmental actors - help which Fraser Denholm's pertinent and well-timed new documentary aptly demonstrates that we need.

The future will contain many challenges. We need to face them with open eyes and realism. As we've said before, oil and gas reserves are finite. The day will come when we will all dearly wish that we had started down the difficult road of re-balancing our energy supply earlier than we have. In Aberdeen we will, additionally, wish that we had started down the road of re-balancing our local economy a little earlier too.



At Other Aberdeen we greatly fear that the currently high oil prices, the hubris they inspire and the offensive (and, as we have seen, ill-founded) triumphalism they provoke militates against the redirection of capital towards the development of a sustainable economy in Aberdeen, be that in the shape of the switch to renewable energy technology, the burgeoning development of the Scottish life sciences sector or other more traditional business sectors. We, unsurprisingly, would be happiest to see the creative and arts sector help lead in the regeneration of Aberdeen's built townscape and business landscape through grassroots bottom-up inclusive creative initiatives. We were gratified to hear during the panel discussion that Lewis Macdonald MSP supports this hope.

But then, there we were, at Cineclub hosted by Peacock Visual Arts. Should we have been surprised to see a politician (who is seeking re-election) wearing his metaphorical "I support the Arts" badge? Not for the first time this week, we realise that to ask the question is to answer it.

Solidarity With Egypt is Restorative Therapy for Aberdeen.

As Aberdeen today (well, Saturday actually) stands in solidarity with the people of Egypt in their quest for self determination we are proud that our town can play host to this demonstration.



We are proud, as this represents a restorative and healing recompense for a wrong done to Egypt and Egyptians by Aberdonians during the heyday of the British Empire. Once, long ago, the militant imperialist armed wing of the people of Aberdeen (in the form of The Gordon Highlanders) was by force of arms instrumental in denying that same Egyptian people any hope of self determination or freedom.

Devils in Skirts

There's a memorial in the Duthie Park which glorifies the three dead Gordon Highlanders, casualties of the campaign to suppress an Egyptian "revolt" in 1882. (NB, this memorial is to the very few local dead on 'our' side only - there's no mention of the Egyptian dead, of whom there were thousands.)

Inscription reads:
Erected by the Officers, NC Officers and Men of the 1st Battalion Gordon Highlanders
to the memory of their comrades who were killed in action or who died of wounds or of disease
contracted during the Egyptian Campaign 1882.
Captain D.L. Baynes
Leut A. C. Pirie
Leut H. C. Brooks

We find it astonishing that this memorial remains in place to this day without a corresponding acknowledgement of the dead on the 'enemy' side. All were victims of war. Victims we realise all the more when we learn that the campaign was principally conducted at the behest of the Suez Canal Co. in support of their commercial monopoly.

We are pleased that this shameful historical stain on our civic character is now fading. By Aberdeen's hosting of and Aberdonians' participation in the pro-democracy demo in solidarity with the Egyptian people on Saturday let's hope we can, in some small way, begin to apologise and make amends for our brutal and uncivilised behaviour during Britain's imperial era.


Edit -

Further interesting aspects of this episode and memorial come to mind...

• Not long having completed the process of smashing the clan system, deforesting the highlands and cleansing it of it's indiginous people in favour of a class of aristocratic land monopolosts, the British state - in the form of this memorial (amongst many other things) - sought to co-opt Celtic culture (as well as manpower) in the service of its imperial adventurism.
• Armed, as they were, by Prussia's favourite heavy arms manufacturer Kanone König (Canon King) Alfred Krupp of Essen, the Egyptian 'rebels' were merely proxy pawns in the great game of European power plays which culminated in the mass slaughter of the  Great War.

Shock Traffic News

Despite our promise not to read local newspaper The Press and Journal (as it often winds us up a bit too much) our attention has been drawn to this encouraging report:

Traffic on Major City Routes at Lowest Level.

Quite quiet on the A956 Inner City Ring-Road.
If this ringroad is so quiet, why do they think they need another one?

Apparently, motor traffic on some of the town's strategic road network has fallen to levels not seen since the early 1990's. We're delighted by this, and not entirely surprised. We have mentioned in the past how Aberdeen is a surprisingly good place to cycle, and every day we seem to see more and more cyclists on the town's roads, an impression confirmed by official figures.

Maybe we'll start an "Aberdeen Cycle Chic" blog.
Like Copenhagen Cycle Chic.

We were also unsurprised to see that some of the commenters who have posted their thoughts at the bottom of the report's web page are in denial about these figures (they are suffering from the paradox of rising expectations). They believe that buses cause congestion, and call for the abolition of bus lanes. Gave us a good laugh, that did. 

The P&J's report is correct to mention the growth in cycling and train use as being instrumental in the drop in traffic levels from their previously problematical and harmful levels (although they are, of course, still far to high). But they have failed to notice that many people actually use walking as a great, low cost, low carbon, healthy way of getting around. We've seen them, the flâneurs, appropriately and stylishly dressed, their boots were made for walking - and for cutting a dash around town. They walk the city in order to experience it. We are these people, we can all be these people.
Join us.

"Undertaking a key role in understanding, participating in
and portraying the city."

International Standard Cycle Infrastructure.

We were delighted when the creators of Copenhagen Cycle Chic gave us a mention on their "Copenhagenize" blog, which agitates for the building of better bicycle cultures internationally. Hey, Aberdeen cycling's now on the map!

Hardcore fixie!

We love Copenhagen Cycle Chic, and hope one day to institute Aberdeen Cycle Chic.

Another Twenty-Seventh City

With Aberdeen City Council taking the steps necessary to establish a special delivery vehicle (wassat?) to manage and develop publicly-owned assets in Aberdeen worth hundreds of millions of pounds, it is unsurprising that the town's thriving ecosystem of independent journalists, bloggers and activists are restive.

Earlier in the month, Aberdeen City Council published this report (PDF) which you might want to read. Though it's pretty tough going, full of pencilneck lingo bingo type rubbish like this:

Within this backdrop, the City Development Company would seek to remediate pockets of ‘market failure’ within the City region, and to not only contribute to the sustainable ‘macro’ economic future of the area, but to facilitate with partners the capturing of value for targeted beneficiaries within a charitable / regeneration role.

Articles and opinion expressing reservations about and opposition to the setting up of what will be Scotland's first city development company have been published in citizen journalist organ "Aberdeen Voice" and political blog Lenathehyena.Facebook groups such as Friends of Union Terrace Gardens and ACSEF Must Go are, as ever, alive with dissent. Opposition politicians murmur their dark misgivings into the twittersphere. Not wanting to be left out, we thought that Other Aberdeen had better chip in. So here goes...

This new development company (to be called "One Aberdeen") is to be a public-private partnership, with the aims of attracting investment, increasing the value of taxpayer-owned land and creating jobs.

Right. Firstly, the whole philosophy of transferring real-estate assets out of council control raises existential questions about the legal entity status of this development company. We are told that the organisation is to be a not-for-profit charitable foundation. We are nonplussed by this - we would have thought that the sole justification for transferring assets out of council control would have been to set loose the unfettered zeal of the entrepreneurial profit-motive. Thus freed from the dead hand of the state local authority, liberated capital in the hands of unrestrained capitalists is operated in an uninhibited fashion to generate profit for the capitalist and in the process provide value for the consumer. So, if all profits are to remain within the development company for re-investment, where is the incentive for the capitalist to operate the assets to the peak of their potential? How will the capitalist add to his capital under this charitable arrangement?

The "One Aberdeen" charitable trust will be set up as a holding company for a "Property Company" which will be its wholly owned subsidiary. A majority (3 from 5) of the members of the Property Company's executive board will be drawn from the private sector, and it would be reasonable to assume that these individuals will be professionals from within the real-estate sector in the local area - anyone else would not be competent to hold the post from lack of contextual experience and expertise.

Since time immemorial, real estate deals have been characterised by now-you-see-it-now-you-don't misdirection and sleight of hand. Bad things are made to look good and good things are made to look bad. We at Other Aberdeen pretend to no expertise in these matters, but in order for capitalists to become interested in operating within the One Aberdeen framework, one can be sure that there will be arrangements which we cannot at first see which will enable the capitalist to add to his capital or add to the value of his capital. For instance, one way to increase the sale price of an item is to reduce the supply of that item which is available to reach the market. In the context of publicly-owned real estate operated by a board member with links to a private-sector real-estate company (which operates its own private land-bank) it would be in the interest of that private-sector company to frustrate any attempts to bring the publicly-owned land to market. As it is likely that those drawn from the private sector to operate the "Property Company" subsidiary of One Aberdeen will be professionals who currently operate within the private real estate sector in the area, it is, therefore, easy to see how conflicts of interest will arise. Should those board members not be drawn from the private real estate sector in the area, then they will be incompetent holders of their posts. This is, of course, Catch 22. If board members are competent, then they will be subject to conflict of interest. If they are not subject to conflict of interest, then they are incompetent.

Perhaps this move to shuffle non-performing assets off to another body is simply an admission of inefficiency and incompetence on behalf of our council's current Enterprise Planning and Infrastructure (EP&I) committee; they are unable to generate value from certain assets, so they're just letting someone else have a go. Fair enough, perhaps we should admire the straightforward self-critical candour implicit in the creation of One Aberdeen as an executive replacement for the major part of the business of the EP&I committee. If we look at the move from this angle, it is merely a management change, and one which will change not much. If the council are guilty of anything, they are guilty of management by vogue. A fairly outmoded vogue at that; by their own admission, this move has been under consideration by the EP&I committee for at least a decade, and this type of public private partnership has been attempted before elsewhere, with varying results. For instance: the private-sector's attempted putsch on the civic sphere in Leeds failed spectacularly in 2009; Wolverhampton Development Company was culled in the summer; Hull's development company, Hull Forward, failed at the end of September; and Plymouth City Development Company closed its doors at round about the same time.

Others have rightly drawn a portentous comparison between John Aberdein's splendid satire on civic Aberdeen "Strip the Willow" in which private enterprise has its rapacious untrammeled way with an initially supine yet increasingly insurgent polity and populace in Aberdeen. The novel seems astonishingly prescient and is a damn fine read, so we recommend it. Along similar lines, though less obviously satirical is Jonathen Franzen's "The Twenty-Seventh City" which is set in St Louis, Missouri during a period of economic decline in the mid 1980's. The novel is a fictionalised account of a real-estate speculation led attempt to revitalise the city.

St Louis had, at one time, been the fourth-largest and richest city in the USA. Highly wealthy, it sat in the centre of the continent at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers at a strategic location linking north with south and east with west. Transportation hub and engineering powerhouse, a centre of both high technology and buchaneering risk-taking capitalism, St Louis hosted the 1904 Olympic Games and World's Fair. However, the Atlanticism of the second half of the 20th Century (along with other social and economic factors) didn't serve St Louis well, and by the 1980's, the city had declined from its eminent position to being only the "Twenty-Seventh" city of the title of Franzen's novel.

As the novel unfolds, we learn that the private-sector real-estate speculation-led attempt to revitalise the city is a great success. Through their own city development company - "Municipal Growth", business owners, land-bankers and construction industry interests gain political influence which allows them to sucessfully lobby for (among other measures) the relaxation of zoning (planning) constraints, the abolition of rent controls and the transfer of civic land-banks to private control. All of which has the desired effect: the inner city is gentrified, property values and rent receipts rise, inward investment increases, urban renewal. All spruced up and tickety-boo! Fantastic! Just like that.

However - and this is what should concern us in Aberdeen - this real-estate led renewal threw the baby out with the bathwater. Something had been lost, the ineffable St Louis-ness of St Louis was gone. The marginal, the marginalised the already disenfrancised had no place in the re-developed St Louis. The element of the city which lent the city it's color and vibrance, the creative, bohemian jazzy edgy of musicians and artists, poets and writers are squeezed out of the edges which they had occupied in the city before the arrival of "Municipal Growth". While the city is now sanitised for white-collar white-people to admire each other's choice of consumer goods, this is against a sterile background lacking in cultural context - it is a rat-race money-go-round only. Without meaning, without direction and without hope.

We should worry that here in Aberdeen, the proposed supremacy of private sector real estate interests will create a city suitable only for self-similar white-collar people - a homogenising swarm of cookie-cutter cubicle clones, an army of pre-indebted consumer/producer drones. So we must make sure to work to keep these private sector interests honest, we must be sure to scrutinise what they do and how they do it. There are plenty handbooks out there.

Like the fictional ones above and this real-life one below:

Leeds Plan B

Reflections on a Turf War

A poem by Steve Webb from the point of view of his 'Auld Jock MacKeachran' character about unpopular developments in Aberdeen and Shire.

Eence, oor prood forefaithers
Raised their kilts on the battle field
Defendin’ oor land fae thievin’ hands
Wi’ a big sword an’ a shield
A tradition upheld yet tae this day
In the Shire and Aiberdeen
Yet the Cooncil’s swapped the Claymore
For a tub o’ Vaseline.

Eence bocht and sold for English gold
Now any coin will do
To grease the wheels and seal the deals
O’ democracy done tae you
Trumpton gets his playpen
Woody gets his square
Stewartie Milne’s wee boxes
Spring up here an there

And on the ancestral turf o wir fitba team
While they’re rippin’ the hairt fae the toon
Wi’ the P&J pavin’ the way
Whistlin’ the Chamber’s tune.
Ah’m nae jist a nimby naysayer
Ah’m a forward thinkin’ chap
Noo ‘progressive’ is cool
Ah’m nae an auld fool
Hingin’ on tae Auld Lang Syne’s crap

We’ve 6,000 folk on a hoosin’ list
An a tycoon wi’ money tae spare
A wee local loon in shire and toon
Chucking hooses up iv’rywhere
Noo, foo’s this for a wee proposal?
The Sir Ian Wood Cooncil Estate
The main road, Stewartie Milne Drive
A statue o’ each on the entrance gate.
We could big it oot by Bieldside!
Aye right! Tack it on tae Brig o Don
Hameless folk get a hoosie
An’ the noteables’ names live on.

An’ Ah had a wee vision o’ Trumpton, an aa
It was misty kine, vague and grey
Jist the same to be seen
On the warld’s T.V. screen
On Trumpton Tournament day
Wis that hazy blur on the telly
Tiger Woods gaan twa under par?
That soond? A corbie cawwin?
Or locals gaan “Haar! Haar! Haar!”?

Formartine’s rollin’ sandy dunes
Eence a wild and soothin’ sight
Noo a potty putter’s private park
Next tae land filled wi’ oily shite
Ah love to roam auld Sco tia
Sae it irks, ye unner stan’?
Tae hear the Yankee dollar bark
“You! Get off my land.”

Money disna spik, it swears
It’s getting mair an mair obscene
Through a voice in the North it craws daily
“Sod Democracy Aberdeenshire!”
“Bugger you, folk of Aberdeen!”

Ah see yet anither vision,
Reflectin in shiny sheen
Standin on the fine clipped girse
O’ a funcy puttin’ green
It’s nae poppin’ corks or cigar smoke
Or splittin’ grins that catch ma een
But summin’ gaan on ablow the turf
Summons me tae be seen…

Aneth undignified local worthies
Bendin’ ower backwards to kiss Trump’s arse
Those ancient braves dirl in their graves
At this done deal democracy farce.

… Jock MacKeachran, 6th June 2010


Via Aberdeen Voice

Reflections on a Turf War

ACSEF Clypes to Labour Party Bosses - UPDATED

I really, really, don't want to turn this blog into a campaign vehicle, but the pychogeographical comedy content of ACSEF's actions are well worth following. Their fancy dress surreal buffoonery is one of the things which makes Aberdeen a great place to stay! Never a dull moment!

It seems that, unhappy with the opposition to the City Square Gardens Project expressed by the likes of Labour Party members Anne Begg MP and Cllr Scott Cassie, ACSEF's board petulantly decided to write to their bosses clype...

Press and Journal

Plea to Mandelson over city gardens
ACSEF ASKED LABOUR LEADERS TO INTERVENE
BY CALUM ROSS

Published: 08/07/2010

LORD Mandelson and other senior Labour Party figures were asked to intervene in the row over plans to transform the centre of Aberdeen, it has emerged.

Aberdeen City and Shire Economic Future (Acsef) wrote to key Labour members “expressing concern” at the party’s local opposition to a proposed development at Union Terrace Gardens.

Labour councillors in the city were left “stunned” last night after details of the letter emerged in a minute of an Acsef board meeting on April 20.

As ACSEF continue to gather power to themselves, as their abitrary use of public funds to gain political influence continues unchecked and as our elected representatives continue to express surprise that this is how ACSEF behave, we can sit back and watch the comedy unfold.

2+2=5

The board’s chairman, Tom Smith, said: “Acsef is a public-private-sector partnership that is wholly non-political.

“Our sole remit is to help drive the economic development of our region.

“We wrote to members of the government in power at that time to make a strong case about the benefits of the city gardens project and the consequences to our local economy if this investment was lost.

“We will continue to approach any public-sector organisation including governments, local authorities and enterprise organisations that can assist us to deliver our vision for the north-east and to help ensure that Aberdeen city and shire remain a priority for investment.”

The minute of the meeting shows the letters were agreed by the private-sector representatives of the board.

They just can't see something if it doesn't make money, can they? They have mistaken money for value and they have confused affluence with wealth. The two things are quite different. It's amazing (disingenuous?) that Tom Smith asserts that his actions are not political.

In Paul Theroux's psychogeographical oddessy The Kingdom by the Sea, he describes the typical Aberdonian as the type of "person who would gladly pick a penny out of a dunghill with his teeth".

We owe ACSEF a debt of thanks for helping to confirm this long standing and stereotypical view of us!





EDIT - UPDATE

Other Aberdeen has obtained the text of the letter in question...




c/o Nessco Group Holdings Ltd
Nessco House
Discovery Drive
Arnhall Business Park
Westhill
Aberdeenshire
AB32 6FG

Tel: 01224 252000
Fax: 01224 213417
e-mail: acsef@scotent.co.uk

Mr Jim Murphy, MP
Secretary of State for Scotland
Scotland Office 
Dover House
Whitehall 
London
SW1A 2AU

14 April 2010

Dear Mr Murphy,

I am contacting you as chairman of ACSEF (Aberdeen City and Shire Economic Future) to express our concern over Labour’s approach to a major investment opportunity for the region.

ACSEF is a public private sector partnership which drives economic development in the region by bringing all the key players together to have a cohesive, consistent strategy to growing the economy and enhancing quality of life.

Towards the end of 2008, Sir Ian Wood announced his intention to pledge £50 million of his private fortune into a radical transformation of a strategic central location in Aberdeen city.

ACSEF took the lead in what has now become a £140 million investment project to make our city centre more attractive, greener, better connected and safer, stimulating the regeneration of Union Street and the surrounding areas which have suffered as a result of under-investment.

The City Square Project aims to create a new five acre civic space and gardens at street-level in the heart of our city with a further two acre all-weather concourse underneath by raising the under-used Union Terrace Gardens and covering over the unsightly Denburn dual carriageway and adjacent railway line.

To secure our economic future, safe-guard and create jobs for future generations, we must see a radical transformation of this region’s city centre.

This opportunity to significantly improve our city centre is a fundamental plank of what we need to deliver if we are to succeed in transforming our economy over the next five to ten years.

Over the past 35 years, we have built a very successful economy, with low unemployment, and a large portion of the jobs being skilled, with high average earnings. We have one of the best workforces in the whole of Europe in terms of skills, capabilities, and attitude. The major changes that have taken place to a great extent have been driven by North Sea oil. In the coming years, this will start to change drastically.

Right now we have a window of opportunity and if we let it close on us, we risk a downward spiral that will see a serious decline in our economy, the gradual loss of businesses and consequently jobs and quality of life.

In the next few years, companies who are serving UK and international markets will be asking themselves where they need to be located in order to best serve their markets in the future.





With many regions in the UK and Europe aggressively vying to attract inward investment, we can only compete if we have a city with a centre that serves our community well and can play a major part in helping us build a profile as being one of the top European Cities.

Despite the economic success of the region and its significant contribution to both the Scottish and UK economies there has been a lack of investment in the city centre and surrounding infrastructure by successive governments which has led to its deterioration.

Over 1,500 businesses, who helped shape ACSEF’s manifesto, cited the paucity of our city centre as a major barrier to attracting investment and people. Re-development and regeneration of the city centre is now one of our key priorities.

Recent research revealed that Aberdeen’s city centre was a “strategic weakness” in the city region’s competitiveness.

We have been surprised and concerned that the approach taken by our local Labour politicians particularly at MSP and MP level has been very unsupportive. It would appear that they have mis-judged the importance of the scheme to the long-term sustainability of the region and chosen to support what is perceived as being the more popular option.

We are now in serious danger of losing this £140 million investment. The damage that this could do to our reputation nationally and internationally and the potential negative impact on other investment opportunities in the region could be significant.

For various reasons, which we would be happy to outline to you, the City Square project has divided the public who have participated in a recent public consultation.

There is over-whelming support from the business community and its representative bodies (Chamber of Commerce, FSB, IoD and CBI) for this project and we would have expected a more measured and supportive approach from our Labour politicians, rather than what appears to be purely electioneering.

While public opinion has been divided over this project, the business community believes that we cannot be denied this significant opportunity because the real issues have been clouded by mis-information, some of which has been promoted by Labour, or influenced by vociferous opposition groups.

It is highly unlikely that we will ever again be in a position to secure £70 million of private sector investment for a civic project. We must be under no illusion that this money is available for other projects or piece-meal developments. Sir Ian Wood’s donation is the catalyst for a further £20 million of private sector investment which makes the possibility of £70 million of public sector funding much more realistic.

The region’s business community would like your assurance that the Labour Government is and would continue to be, if re-elected, supportive of jobs and prosperity and committed to investment in ensuring Scotland’s third city, which contributes significantly to the Scottish and UK economies, becomes a world energy city.

Yours sincerely




Tom Smith
Chairman

c.c. Lord Mandelson
c.c. Iain Gray, MSP

Oh dear. My amusement has turned to embarrassment.

Mortal Terror on the National Cycle Network

To celebrate 15 years of the National Cycle Network, Sustrans have launched a video competition "What does the National Cycle Network mean to you?"

Here is my entry:

The Panopticon Singularity

A little while ago, when working on a private art project, I was taking photos of St Nicholas Church, Schoolhill and Upperkirkgate from the top deck of the St. Nicholas Centre. Nothing wrong with that, you might reasonably think. Think again. Having been observed (tracked by CCTV) "acting suspicious" I was intercepted by a burly security guard, who brusquely insisted that I stop, and demanded to inspect the photos I'd taken. I was accused of 'sousveillance' (ie surveilling the St Nic Ctr's surveillance system), the insulting implication being that I was planning 'something'.

I assured the increasingly antsy arms-crossed guard that I was planning nothing that would bother him or his bosses, but refused to show him my photos or tell him exactly why I was taking them. It was none of his or his employer's business - it was a private matter. I was escorted off of the deck and told not to return with my camera. You see, despite appearances, the top deck of the St Nicholas Centre is not a public space, it is owned by Land Securities plc and British Land plc operating as the "Scottish Retail Property Limited Partnership" and we go there at their sufferance only, and are therefore subject to their arbitrary 'rules'.

Who knew? I would, of course, been at complete liberty to take my photos on a street; which is a public right of way where I have inalienable rights of access, association, action etc. But these rights do not exist in/on top of a privately owned building. The same restrictions to our usual public liberty will apply in under and on ACSEF's City Square Garden. And so, finally and inevitably, we will be surveilled everywhere we go in the city centre.

But don't worry! If you've done nothing wrong, you've nothing to be worried about, have you? Have you? Embra-based speculative novelist Charlie Stross calls this version of the future way we live today 'the Panopticon Singularity'.

And I'm reminded of the words of Bryan Finoki from his 'Field Guide to Military Urbanism' blog. The blog mostly refers to urban situations in war zones, siege areas, divided communities and the like - but these words are pertinent to us, now, here:

[The] contemporary city is defined by a kind of de facto psychopathology that is embodied in the very spaces and architectural rationales that order urbanization today, from gated communities to urban surveillance landscapes, to the last dying refuges of public space that have been [will be?] overwhelmed by privatization and a complete hyper securitization of the built environment at all scales.

One might ask... what is the current diagnosis and mental health state of western democracy? Or, how can the city be viewed as an architectural weapon to enforce behavior, to mandate neo-liberalism in a way, to turn a population into an obedient supporter of rampant commerce? What are the inherent narratives of power that run through spatial constructs like maximum-security prisons, shopping malls, refugee camps, suburban sprawl, and the hardened borderzones between nation-states? Is there a psychopathological connection between them? Is there a new urban archetype here to be deconstructed?

Aberdonians should consider this question carefully; for in the answer we will find the mind of our newly enthroned plutocratic city fathers and the elected members who are their trustys.

Gardens Cash "Must Come From Business"

The machinations of ACSEF and ACC on the City Square Gardens Project grind on. Councillors begin to feel a sense of doubt and shame.


Today's Peenj



But those who bemoan the loss of the Brisac Gonzales Contemporary Arts Centre for Peacock Visual Arts for the site of the now proposed Sir Ian Wood Square have clearly missed the 'big picture'.

Here, now, towards the end of the age of hydrocarbon-propelled personal transport, we see our city abandon the sustainable Crossrail suburban rail transport plan in favour of a ring-road motorway (AWPR) and extension of urban dual-carraigeway schemes (Berryden, Kittybrewster); we have a celebrated celebrity international figure-of-fun loudmouth vulgarian making grandiloquent claims for a new golf-course and condominium scheme for the super-rich to the north of the city and the madcap imposition of the out-of-scale 'City Square' vanity project which wantonly destroys that which is actually quite good within the city centre; Mounthooly Roundabout is re-designated as part of the city's protected 'Urban Green Space Network' (no, really); then, just as the motor industry worldwide is re-tooling for battery-power electric vehicles, ACSEF (Aberdeen City And Shire Economic Future) intend turning the road to Peterhead into the 'Hydrogen Highway' of the future.

And then, out of the blue we have a truly amazing, stunning, visionary plan for huge tunnels and underground transport interchanges and escalators. Yes indeed, what the arts community needs to understand is that ACSEF are, in fact, an overground underground (like the anarchist Wombles) seditionist avante-guard group of very very serious contemporary artists and subversive revolutionary situationists intent on turning Aberdeen itself into the largest and most spectacular neo-conceptual art installation ever conceived in the world. Massurrealism meets fantasticism meets apres-post-modern-futurism meets impossibilism. We are their brushes, the City and Shire is their canvas. And they call their manifesto ENERGETICA. It's thrilling.