Category: europe19

Keeping the family connection alive, I went with them into Switzerland where they share their time between Lausanne and their chalet at Commeire, a collection of small former farmhouses in the Alps near the Italian border. A heatwave had struck Europe with temperatures ramping up to the high thirties for the best part of a week. Everyone was wigging out and seemingly permanently on the verge of collapse. I could have been more sympathetic, I suppose but this fell like a normal Sydney summer to me…a bit uncomfortable but somehow familiar.

Obeying an internalised drive to Keep Doing Things despite the weather, on a recommendation visited an intriguing project in suburban Geneva. The Renaturation of the River Aire is a project which had an ecological ambition to remove a concrete drainage canal and restore the original river’s alignment. The winning competition entry instead kept much of the canal infrastructure as a park and immediately adjacent, through an ingenious arrangement of earthworks and grading, created an area which would continue to be shaped and eroded into a new watercourse. The park was extremely popular (at least until the heat ramped up) and in a remarkable coincidence it turned out that my cousin’s sister-in-law lived about 25m from the canal. I got an insider’s view of not only the way the project had changed the area (mostly positive with a few gripes about noise) but also more of the story about the political wrangling that drove it forward.. Despite its benefits for the environment it needed a bunch of manoeuvring to propel it through local and federal politics, questions about land ownership etc. Seems like these are universal problems.

Renaturation of the River Aire

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I won’t bore you with details of the study tour proper – it’s was a fairly esoteric undertaking. You’ll hear about it when I get home if it’s your bag. But I will bore you with a (hopefully) short rave about Utrecht. It’s the Netherland’s 4th largest city which means it’s tiny by Australian standards. There has been a gradual removal of the influence of cars from the city centre over the last few decades which means there’s a peaceful pleasantness to the place, with a constant buzzy undercurrent created by the student population. Streams of people on bikes pass through the main thoroughfare each day – nearly as many people on bikes as the number of vehicles on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. There’s the infrastructure to support all these bikes too with 25000 spaces available for parking around the main railway station

Cycling

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My base in London was Lewisham – as far as it is in London as the Sydney suburb is from the CBD and it and nearby Deptford were the ends of journeys into the centre. Once a distinct village in its own right Lewisham is now subsumed into greater London. It’s a gritty bustling suburb, which might have had a bit of a heyday in the 1960s but feels on the tipping point of a new era of renewal. Suttons Radio became a welcome local, just around the corner from the AirBNB where I was staying. It’s the kind of relaxed friendly place I like, complete with a scrabble set and weekly trivia pub quiz. If all of Lewisham redevelops like this it will be alright.

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