PD Smith

Soci­ol­o­gist William B Helm­re­ich knows New York City bet­ter than most peo­ple. He has walked almost every block in the city’s five bor­oughs. That’s 6,048 miles in the last four years. Or, mea­sured in shoe leather — that’s nine pairs of shoes. Helm­re­ich admits that “you have to be a lit­tle crazy to explore the city as I did”. But the result is a won­der­ful book, one that echoes with the voic­es of one of the great­est cities on the plan­et.

My review of The New York Nobody Knows is in Sat­ur­day’s Guardian. This is the first para­graph:

’ ”Walk­ing is the best way to explore and exploit the city”, writes Iain Sin­clair in Lights Out for the Ter­ri­to­ry. It’s a truth that was dis­cov­ered in 19th-cen­tu­ry Paris by the flâneur – that “botanist on asphalt”, to use Wal­ter Ben­jam­in’s mem­o­rable phrase – who turned the city’s boule­vards into draw­ing rooms in which to dis­sect the met­ro­pol­i­tan crowd. And now, from Tokyo to Lon­don, urbanophiles agree that it is through what Michel de Certeau beau­ti­ful­ly termed “the long poem of walk­ing” that you can tru­ly under­stand that most com­plex and beguil­ing fea­ture of mod­ern life: the city.’

Read the rest online here.

The Japan­ese edi­tion of City arrived in the post today and it looks great! It’s pub­lished by Kawade Shobo Shin­sha in Tokyo, one of my favourite cities, and is avail­able from Ama­zon Japan and all good book­stores. Enjoy!

Until last week, when­ev­er I thought about Copen­hagen — and I admit that was not often — three peo­ple came to mind: Niels Bohr, Jan Gehl, and Sarah Lund.

Bohr’s Insti­tute for The­o­ret­i­cal Physic­s was at the cut­ting edge of the­o­ret­i­cal physics in the ear­ly 1930s, and the set­ting for a mem­o­rable per­for­mance of Goethe’s Faust by the sci­en­tists (much more on this here). Jan Gehl is an influ­en­tial Dan­ish urban­ist and archi­tect who pio­neered pedes­tri­an­iza­tion in cities. In 1962, Copen­hagen became the first city to pedes­tri­an­ize a main thor­ough­fare. The two-kilo­me­ter-long Strøget is Europe’s longest pedes­tri­an street or, to be more accu­rate, col­lec­tion of streets. And, of course, as all fans of crime fic­tion know, Copen­hagen pro­vides the set­ting for Detec­tive Inspec­tor Sarah Lund’s inves­ti­ga­tions in the superb Dan­ish TV series For­bry­delsen (The Killing, 2007).

But now when I think of Copen­hagen anoth­er name springs to mind, and with it a unique build­ing.

Last week I spent a relax­ing cou­ple of days in Copen­hagen. It’s a beau­ti­ful city of red-tiled rooftops, bicy­cles, cob­bled streets full of peo­ple rather than choked with cars, and colour­ful hous­es reflect­ed in canals. Great street per­form­ers too, like these two demon­strat­ing an impres­sive bal­anc­ing trick.

It’s also a city that is clear­ly seri­ous about its envi­ron­men­tal responsibilities: for instance, the city recy­cles more of its waste than any oth­er Euro­pean cap­i­tal. But above all it’s a won­der­ful­ly friend­ly city.

The man who did most to shape the city you see today is King Chris­t­ian IV who was known as the “archi­tect king”. Dur­ing his six­ty-year reign (1588–1648) he for­ti­fied the city and reclaimed land from the sea. He also built the Rosen­borg Palace (1606), with its moat and ele­gant red-brick tow­ers. One of its more unusu­al fea­tures is the Mir­ror Cab­i­net, cre­at­ed for Fred­erik IV in about 1700, a small cham­ber with mir­rors on each wall and even on the floor, which appar­ent­ly the King used to peer up wom­en’s skirts.

Beau­ti­ful though the Rosen­borg Palace undoubt­ed­ly is, I was more impressed by anoth­er of Chris­t­ian IV’s build­ings. The RundetÃ¥rn, or Round Tow­er, ris­es above the pedes­tri­an zone, on Købmagergade. Mod­elled on Tycho Bra­he’s famous obser­va­to­ry called Stjerneborg (the cas­tle of the stars), the 42-metre-high Round Tow­er is Europe’s old­est func­tion­ing astro­nom­i­cal obser­va­to­ry. Built between 1637 and 1642, it was part of Chris­t­ian IV’s Trini­tatis Com­plex which com­bined a church, a schol­ar­ly library (hold­ing some 10,000 books) and an obser­va­to­ry into one enlight­ened archi­tec­tur­al struc­ture.

But what is tru­ly remark­able about this tow­er — and appar­ent­ly it is unique in Euro­pean archi­tec­ture — is the 209-metre spi­ral ramp that leads up to the view­ing plat­form at the top: a sin­u­ous path­way, paved with ochre-coloured bricks, wind­ing itself sev­en and a half times around the hol­low core of the tower. It’s an extra­or­di­nary struc­ture that feels almost nat­ur­al rather than man-made, as if it is a stone tree that has grown out of the heart of the city. As I walked up the spi­ral path, I was remind­ed of the fan­tas­ti­cal tow­ers of Dutch artist MC Esch­er or some­thing dreamed up by Borges.

It’s said that when Tsar Peter the Great of Rus­sia vis­it­ed the city in 1716 he rode up to the top on horse­back. And in 1902, a vis­it­ing Ger­man demon­strat­ed the pow­er of the lat­est Benz-Gagge­nau auto­mo­bile by dri­ving up the spi­ral ramp. (There’s an amaz­ing pho­to of this sur­re­al moment in tech­no­log­i­cal and archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ry here.) For­tu­nate­ly, Copen­hagen has sub­se­quent­ly decid­ed to keep cars in the city firm­ly under con­trol. There is lit­tle doubt that if, like me, you pre­fer to explore a city on foot or on bicy­cle then this is as close as it gets to urban heav­en. More peo­ple cycle to work in Copen­hagen than in the entire Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, as Taras Grescoe has point­ed out.

From the top of the Round Tow­er you can gaze out across the roof­s­cape of the medieval city cen­tre, with its wind­ing streets and half-tim­bered hous­es. In the dis­tance you can even see the 8‑k­ilo­me­tre-long Øresund Bridge that links Den­mark and Swe­den.

Copen­hagen is a mem­o­rable city, designed for peo­ple rather than cars, and one that oth­er cities have much to learn from. It’s a com­mu­ni­ty with a rich his­to­ry, not a col­lec­tion of dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed, Bal­lar­dian traf­fic islands, as so many cities have become. For vis­i­tors from Britain, it’s not a cheap city though — eat­ing out was cer­tain­ly more expen­sive than Berlin, for instance. But we found some great cafés and restau­rants. A cou­ple that spring to mind: a real­ly excel­lent fish restau­rant is the Fiske­bar, near the cen­tral sta­tion; and if you like Ital­ian food, La Roc­ca is the place for you. And of course, wher­ev­er you go the many pas­tries and dif­fer­ent types of bread are all deli­cious. I wish we had a Dan­ish Kon­di­tori near us…

So thank you — or “Tak” as they say there — Copen­hagen for mak­ing me feel wel­come (at the air­port the bor­der guard actu­al­ly said “wel­come to Den­mark!” when he hand­ed me my pass­port; I bet UK offi­cials don’t say that at Heathrow). And thank you Copen­hagen for intro­duc­ing me to the RundetÃ¥rn and to your archi­tect king, Chris­t­ian IV.

As ever, you can find more pic­tures of Copen­hagen on my Flickr page.

I first vis­it­ed Berlin in win­ter 1990, a year after the momen­tous events that led to the fall of the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic. I was study­ing Ger­man lit­er­a­ture at uni­ver­si­ty and Berlin was a city I had already explored through the pages of nov­els, such as Döblin’s won­der­ful Berlin Alexan­der­platz. When I was there the Wall was still stand­ing, although it was being steadi­ly erod­ed by sou­venir hunters armed with ham­mers and chis­els, each one eager to sal­vage a con­crete piece of Cold War his­to­ry. I remem­ber how deeply strange it felt, unre­al even, to walk beside what the GDR had termed an “Antifaschis­tis­ch­er Schutzwall” (anti-Fas­cist pro­tec­tive bar­ri­er), ven­tur­ing into areas where not long ago only armed bor­der guards were allowed to walk. More than a hun­dred peo­ple were killed try­ing to escape to the West from the east­ern sec­tor.

Build­ings near the east­ern side of the Wall looked as though they had been trapped in a time warp, their black­ened façades still pock-marked with bul­let holes and shrap­nel scars from the last war.

The sign at Check­point Char­lie looked like a prop from a Cold War movie. At any moment, I expect­ed to catch sight of Har­ry Palmer hur­ry­ing past to a ren­dezvous with a Sovi­et spy in some dark Berlin alley.

When I went back at the end of the 1990s, Berlin was being trans­formed. The city had become one giant build­ing site. Pots­damer Platz was a vast, mud­dy hole in the ground and cranes stalked the city’s sky­line. The stri­dent sounds of con­struc­tion — pile-dri­vers and pneu­mat­ic drills — were the birth cries of a new unit­ed Berlin.

Revis­it­ing the city today I’m struck by how dif­fer­ent it feels. The mud, bull­doz­ers and black­ened façades have large­ly gone. The city’s mon­u­ments, like the Bran­den­burg Gate, have now been cleaned and restored. Grime scrubbed away and scars healed. The once divid­ed city has been replaced by an appar­ent­ly unit­ed and con­fi­dent cap­i­tal. There are new glass and steel edi­fices on every street, it seems. As a result the city’s past is less visible. But it’s still there. And some­times all you have to do to find it, is to look down at your feet.

Stolper­steine — stum­bling stones — com­mem­o­rate the vic­tims of Nation­al Social­ism and are placed in the pave­ment out­side their for­mer homes. There are thou­sands of these Stolper­steine in Berlin’s streets. It’s a beau­ti­ful­ly sim­ple and res­o­nan­t idea, the brain­child of artist Gunter Dem­nig. These stum­bling stones make the past vivid­ly present: it’s there beneath your feet, wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered like the lay­ers of his­to­ry that lie just under the sur­face of any ancient city.

“Irgen­wann fällt jede Mauer” — even­tu­al­ly every wall falls. That was one of the slo­gans paint­ed onto the Berlin Wall. And, indeed, most of the Wall has now gone, ground up to make grav­el for the roads that now link East and West Berlin. A struc­ture that once divid­ed peo­ple final­ly helped to bring them back togeth­er again. In today’s some­what ster­ile Pots­damer Platz, a small piece of the Wall remains, its graf­fi­ti-scrawled sur­face now embell­ished with pieces of chew­ing gum. The struc­ture that once defined this city is now almost invis­i­ble, an absent pres­ence whose for­mer course is traced through the square by a line of unob­tru­sive cob­ble­stones. Once again, his­to­ry lies beneath your feet in this city.

 

Along­side the Riv­er Spree, a longer sec­tion of the Wall remains, turned into an impromp­tu can­vas for street artists and renamed the East Side Gallery. It includes this great piece by Thier­ry Noir who, togeth­er with Christophe Bouchet, was one of the first artists to paint the west­ern side of the Wall in 1984.

Sad­ly the future is uncer­tain for at least part of what is the longest remain­ing stretch of the Wall. The land beneath it is grow­ing more valu­able by the day and devel­op­ers are gath­er­ing for the kill. A new apart­ment block and a hotel are on the draw­ing board and once again the bull­doz­ers are on the move.

In the new Berlin there is undoubt­ed­ly much that is impres­sive, such as Nor­man Fos­ter’s recon­struc­tion of the Reich­stag. The view across the city from its dome is tru­ly mem­o­rable. It was cer­tain­ly worth get­ting up ear­ly on a bright Sun­day morn­ing to see it, before too many tour groups arrived. It’s a remark­able struc­ture. But in this city haunt­ed by its past, what par­tic­u­lar­ly struck me was the graf­fi­ti made in 1945 by Sovi­et sol­diers, who scratched their names on the para­pets of the roof as they looked out across the black­ened, bombed-out ruins of a once great city.

A city is a palimpsest. Each gen­er­a­tion writes their own urban sto­ry. But some traces of the past need to be retained as we hur­ry into the future.

Daniel Libe­skind’s Jew­ish Muse­um (2001) is anoth­er pow­er­ful piece of archi­tec­ture. Instead of the uplift­ing trans­paren­cy of Fos­ter’s dome, Libe­skind’s build­ing is full of unset­tling, dis­ori­en­tat­ing spaces, such as the Holo­caust Tow­er, where the dis­tant sounds of the city echo in the dark­ness.

The Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al, designed by Peter Eisen­man (2005), was cer­tain­ly pow­er­ful but I found it also strange­ly anony­mous. A grey, name­less necrop­o­lis at the heart of the liv­ing city. Com­ing across the Stolper­steine in Berlin’s cob­bled streets was for me a far more poignant reminder of the city’s — and Ger­many’s — dark past.

While I was in Berlin I saw an exhi­bi­tion at the Perg­a­mon Muse­um about one of the ear­li­est cities — “Uruk: 5000 Jahre Megac­i­ty”. If you’re vis­it­ing Berlin before it ends in Sep­tem­ber and you’re inter­est­ed in the his­to­ry of cities, this is a must-see. They have brought togeth­er an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly rich col­lec­tion of arte­facts illus­trat­ing the life and cul­ture of the world’s first urban civ­i­liza­tion.

Like Berlin, Uruk was also famous for its wall, some 9 km long and con­struct­ed using 306,000,000 bricks. For the Sume­ri­ans who found­ed Uruk more than five thou­sand years ago, Eden was not a gar­den but a city. In their leg­ends the first city was called Eridu and it was cre­at­ed by the god Mar­duk. He want­ed to give his peo­ple a place of shel­ter, a refuge to pro­tect them from a nat­ur­al world that can be harsh and unfor­giv­ing. The Sume­ri­ans did not long for some myth­ic rur­al idyll, an unob­tain­able Arca­dia. They believed the city was the place where all their dreams would be realised. And Uruk became one of the largest of their cities — although, with respect to the organ­is­ers of the exhi­bi­tion, not quite a “megac­i­ty”.

The exhi­bi­tion is superb though. This 4000-year-old clay plaque of a winged god­dess (pos­si­bly Ishtar) struck me as being espe­cial­ly beau­ti­ful.

Berlin has cer­tain­ly changed since I first vis­it­ed. That’s not sur­pris­ing. Change is an essen­tial part of urban life. Old struc­tures must make way for new ones. But there is a pow­er­ful con­ti­nu­ity, too, in cities. That con­ti­nu­ity has at its heart the human sto­ry of desires and dreams, a sto­ry that stretch­es back to Uruk and beyond. Amidst the glass and steel and opti­mism of today’s cities, we need reminders, like the Stolper­steine, of those human sto­ries.

After a few days in Berlin, I caught the ICE train down south to Munich, where I lived in the ear­ly 1990s. It’s a beau­ti­ful city, but of course very dif­fer­ent from Berlin, both then and now. Apart from the Dirndls and Leder­ho­sen, it’s always been a more afflu­ent and expen­sive city. For for­eign­ers like me, the dialect is also far more dif­fi­cult to under­stand. One of my first ports of call in Munich was the Oly­dorf, or the 1972 Olympic Vil­lage, where I used to live.

It’s been ren­o­vat­ed recent­ly which I hope means that today’s stu­dent occu­pants no longer have to put up with cock­roach­es in the apart­ments and pigeons occu­py­ing the bal­conies. (Even­tu­al­ly I became quite skilled at dis­patch­ing cock­roach­es with a rolled up copy of the Süd­deutsche Zeitung.) Some things do change — and for the bet­ter.

But I was relieved to see that oth­er things had­n’t changed. My favourite café-bar in Munich was Drug­store, oppo­site Wedekind­platz in Schwabing. It was found­ed in the swing­ing six­ties and is still going strong. It’s the friend­liest bar any­where. And they serve great food. What more can you ask for? Well, per­haps anoth­er beer…

In fact, in Munich many things were just as I remem­bered them. The Englis­ch­er Garten, which opened in 1791, is still one of the most beau­ti­ful urban parks I know.

The Vik­tu­alien­markt still offers a mouth-water­ing selec­tion of the most per­fect food on the plan­et.

And, of course, a Weizen remains the best beer on this world or any oth­er.

But some things have changed in Munich. The city is expand­ing, as is clear from the extend­ed U‑Bahn lines. The city’s art gal­leries have been attract­ing inter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors since 1830 when the Glyp­tothek opened. New gal­leries have opened since I was there, includ­ing the Pinakothek der Mod­erne and the beau­ti­ful­ly designed Muse­um Brand­horst. The Lenbach­haus, one of my favourite art gal­leries (I love its Blaue Reit­er col­lec­tion), has also been expand­ed and is now even bet­ter than before.

If you go to the Lenbachhaus, don’t miss Rudolf Schlichter’s bril­liant por­trait of Bertolt Brecht. Although in most peo­ple’s minds, Brecht is asso­ci­at­ed with Berlin — both before and after the war (he is buried in the Dorotheen Ceme­tery in what was East Berlin) — he was born and grew up in Augs­burg, not far from Munich. He also lived in Munich in the 1920s.

Walk­ing around Munich today and trav­el­ling on its excel­lent pub­lic trans­port sys­tem, I was pleased to see that the city that used to pride itself on being the “Welt­stadt mit Herz” — the world city with heart — is now far more diverse than it once was. The world has come to Munich. Despite its con­ser­vatism and love of tra­di­tion, Munich is now tru­ly a glob­al city.

It was great to revis­it Berlin and Munich. They are very dif­fer­ent cities. But both are dynam­ic, excit­ing places with long his­to­ries and promis­ing futures — cities where any­thing can hap­pen. A sign I saw in the won­der­ful Pren­zlauer Berg dis­trict of Berlin put it per­fect­ly: If you can dream it, you can do it.

And that’s true now in vibrant cities like Berlin or Munich, just as it once was in Uruk.

You can see all the pho­tos in this post, as well as more from Berlin and Munich, on my Flickr page in high­er qual­i­ty than my site allows (there’s a set for Berlin and Munich). I hope this post and the images encour­age you to vis­it some of the places for your­self.

If you do, here are a few rec­om­men­da­tions of cafés and restau­rants.

In Berlin: Restora­tion 1900, a great local bar-restau­rant in Pren­zlauer Berg. For a spe­cial occa­sion Alpen­stueck is worth trying. The Fri­day Turk­ish mar­ket off Kot­tbusser Strasse is amaz­ing. If you’re look­ing for fresh food, this is the place to go. Near here at Paul-Lincke-Ufer 42, Cau is a friend­ly bar with a won­der­ful­ly sun­ny ter­race beside the canal. If you’re in Mitte, Café Oliv is worth a vis­it.

In Munich: wie schon gesagt, Drugstore. One of my oth­er favourite bar-restau­rants is Atzinger near the uni­ver­si­ty — a relaxed place, that serves huge por­tions and great beer. If you’re around Frauen­hofer­strasse, Das Kranz is a great lit­tle restau­rant. For superb Viet­namese food look no fur­ther than Cyclo in There­sien­strasse. And for a deli­cious veg­e­tar­i­an menu, go to Prinz Myshkin not far from Marien­platz. If you like beer gar­dens, head for the Chi­ne­sis­ch­er Turm in the Englis­ch­er Garten. An amaz­ing set­ting to enjoy a beer. Viel Spass!

I spent yes­ter­day on a train (actu­al­ly, sev­er­al trains) lis­ten­ing for the first time to the audio­book of City. The nar­ra­tor is Steven Cross­ley and he reads it beau­ti­ful­ly. It’s a new expe­ri­ence for me, lis­ten­ing to some­one else read my words. I haven’t heard all of it yet — it’s more than thir­teen hours long! — but I cer­tain­ly enjoyed the expe­ri­ence. And I hope you will too. You can find it at Audi­ble in the UK or the US.

City is still pick­ing up reviews, most recent­ly in the Spring 2013 issue of Urban Design jour­nal, where it was described as “an excel­lent intro­duc­tion to the city, and should be on every stu­den­t’s read­ing list”.