Up the Stairs to an Understanding of Topography #01

Desire lines diverge

As we walk the concrete, adamant and flagstone pavements of Aberdeen, 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, we find our feet climbing or descending the many staircases of the public townscape. When gradients become too steep for feet to comfortably and safely walk an incline and the ground beneath them breaks up into the discontinuities of riser and tread, those stringer-held steps can help us to a topographical understanding of Aberdeen. 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 and unblended apprehension of scarp and glen: the sixth psychogeographical sense is fed by unconscious muscle memory and conscious eye.

Up from Virginia Street to Castle Terrace, up Castle Hill. These steps, according to Aberdeen Civic Society's Alex Mitchell, may well correspond to the former Hangman's Brae, where a house was allocated to the town executioner.

Up from Ruthrie Terrace to Ruthrieston Road, vaulting over the Old Deeside Line disused railway (now re-used as Sustrans National Cycle Network route 195). Up from the broad flat valley of the Ruthrieston Burn (its flood-plain occupied by Asda, carparks, playing fields and a trunk road today). Ruthrieston Road connects the Foords o' Dee (fording the river-shallows where newly feudal modern medieval Ruadri extorted his licensed tax and gained his power) with the south-western marches (ancient borderlands) of Aberdeen along Countesswells Road. But who was the countess?

Devanha Lane climbs step-terraced between unremarkable modern tenements on the après post-industrial sites where brewery and foundry and cattle-exporting/royalty-importing railway terminus once helped built Ferryhill's wealth.

All the way up to splendid Devanha House on the summit of Ferryhill itself from the once tidal mudflat - long-since railway re-claimed - land at the southern end of South College Street, the ancient right-of way connects the southern turnpike road and Wellington Bridge to the heart of Ferryhill.






We've identified about 36 sites like these around town, we'll document them bit by bit over the coming weeks. Nominations are welcome.

Desire Lines: Incipient, Thriving, Extant, Extinguished

Desire line - Spa St. into the Denburn Valley

 According to Paul McFedries' delightful Wordspy website, a "desire line" is:

An informal path that pedestrians prefer to take to get from one location to another rather than using a sidewalk or other official route.

[Edit - also check out McFedries' definitions for "green skeleton" and "meanderthal". Brilliant - just our kind of stuff.]

McFedries goes on...

Desire lines (or natural desire lines, as they're also called) are those well-worn ribbons of dirt that you see cutting across a patch of grass, often with nearby sidewalks — particularly those that offer a less direct route — ignored. In winter, desire lines appear spontaneously as tramped down paths in the snow. I love that these paths are never perfectly straight. Instead, like a river, they meander this way and that, as if to prove that desire itself isn't linear and (literally, in this case) straightforward.

Desire to cut a corner at School Road.

Splendid! We remember watching an Open University architecture module transmission many, many years ago. The design and construction of a university campus extension was being examined as a case study. The architects/planners decided that the best policy for pedestrian circulation infrastructure was, for the first few terms of the campus' operation, not to provide paved pathways at all. Rather, they waited several months to see where footfalls eroded natural desire lines, and only then - once natural patterns of pedestrian circulation had been established - were those desire-line delineated paths paved with slabs or asphalt or whathaveyou.

King Street

Thistle Court

Thistle Court

Desire Arch!
Great Southern Road

Desire Stairs!
Cornhill Road

Unfortunately, today, in our urban landscape, the desire lines of pedestrians are frequently subsumed, usurped, supplanted and extinguished by the tarmac-expressed desire lines of motorists. So travelers on foot are herded and corralled, folded and forced - contra to their natural desire lines - into patterns of movement which planners have forced upon the townscape to unquestioningly serve the doubtful exigencies of motor transport over the convenient, sustainable and pleasant experience of walking.

Know your place!

We are thwarted and frustrated by barriers placed across our routes 'for our own safety'. And yes, it's true that motor transport presents a grave danger to pedestrians. But is that the pedestrian's fault? Must we pay the punishment price of curtailed movement because of the inattentiveness and lack of empathy of the motorists who are infantilised by the infrastructure and street furniture which is provided for their convenience (dressed up as our safety) only? Is it not the proliferation of that very 'safety' infrastructure, signage and barriers which further infantilises the motorists, absolves them of responsibility for their own actions? The pedestrian "just came out of nowhere", and so the victim is blamed. The more the pedestrian is corralled behind barriers and directed exclusively to designated light-controlled crossings, the less the motorist considers the needs of the pedestrian - if the pedestrian's place is safe behind the barrier, the motorists need not concern themselves with those on foot at all. As long as they are behind the barrier, the pedestrian does not threaten the motorist's no-claims bonus.

Gray St. No direct route for those on foot.

Woolmanhill. Know your place.

Crown Terrace steps.
You may not continue your journey.

One might be tempted to think that today's urban planners don't want us to walk at all. When pedestrians are catered for it seems like an inconvenient afterthought - second best after the 'needs' of the all-important motorists are dealt with first. Tutting, shaking his head and raising his eyebrows, the planner puts in barriers to protect the motorist from having to think about unpredictable pedestrians.

John Street.

College St/Guild St/Bridge St.
Not even a light-controlled crossing
for pedestrians!

Broomhill Road. No way through for you!

Indeed some recent road projects have been forced through our town centre with no provision for pedestrians whatsoever. We find this bizarre.

No provision for pedestrians whatsoever.