May 8th, 2009
The streetscape of a moonscaped city
By Matthew Blackett // 8 Comments
Spacing publisher Matthew Blackett is travelling through Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Germany and will occasionally post his observations about all things urban landscape(ish).
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REYKJAVIK, ICELAND -- If you're familiar with my travel blog posts over the years here on Spacing Toronto, you'll known that I'm endlessly fascinated with streetscapes and the infrastructure that is used to make public spaces function. I often get odd looks from passersby (and my travel partners or hosts) as I take photos of garbage bins, bollards, and bike lanes, among other things.
This Scandinavian journey is providing me with a lot of material. My posts will attempt to give a brief profile of each city's street furniture and urban design elements and (potentially) provide a Toronto context or comparison.
From the pedestrian's perspective, Reykjavik's central core is infinitely walkable, though rather hilly. Sidewalks are either paved, cobbled, or laid with interlocked bricks and stones. Because of the density on neighbourhoods, buildings (both retail and housing) tend to bump up right against the sidewalks, creating a more narrow feeling in the pedestrian right-of-way than we're used to in Toronto. On the main shopping drag the sidewalks were wider than anywhere else in the city.
Throughout the central part of the city is a series of pedestrian wayfinding signs that are both low in height and distinctive from the local street signs. Though the signs don't provide distances (something I think is necessary for this type of signage), the type of destination is indicated with a symbol (historic area, historic building, museum).
At the base of the main shopping street is Reykjavik's Ingà³lf's Square. It's surrounded by shops, office buildings, and cafes (click on the image above to get a 360-degree view of the square). It's not particularly large, maybe 60 metres by 35 metres, but has a variety of functions. On one side are small food outlets: one is kind of like a convenience store, with water, snacks, and newspapers, while the other is more of a fast food take-out place with a few stools and benches (photos below). The square also has some nice inset benches, a small, sculpted water fountain behind the food outlets, and a geyser-like installation that is always pushing out steam.
The square's designers decided to embrace skateboarders rather than discourage them by installing a metal rail for tricks. The ramps into the square, obviously installed for accessibility, also double as skater infrastructure, and if you look at the above panorama, a ramp became a spot to learn how to rollerblade for a young girl. The ramps also allow Reykjavik's motorcycle enthusiasts to bring their beasts into the square (which seemed to be used as a meeting spot before heading out of town; you can see them in the panorama as well).
Though I was critical in my previous post about the minimal amount of cycling infrastructure, Reykjavik certainly has an attractive public realm. My first post noted the small doses of advertising infrastructure which seemed to be solely limited to street furniture items like public washrooms, bus shelters, and a handful of "info" pillars. Both the pillars and washrooms are a common style that I've seen in other cities in North America and northern Europe. Unlike Toronto's info pillars, which seem to minimize and hide the city map, Reykjavik provides a large map.
Poster kiosks did not appear too frequently in the downtown core of the city, but there were a few, though space was very limited. I particularly liked the example shown above for its lighting component.
Toronto has been at the forefront of battling smoking in public places like restaurants and bars, but the City's downfall has been the lack of planning on how to deal with all of the cigarette butts littering sidewalks and curbsides. There have been attempts to incorporate cigarette disposals into the garbage/recycling bins, but this functionality is often overlooked in favour of the bin's other purposes. In most cases, clubs and restaurants are left to deal with the mess. In Reykjavik, the city has provided public ashtrays that are either installed in the sidewalk or attached to the side of a building.
On-street recycling options seem to be something Toronto is a world leader at implementing. In most cities I have visited in North American and Europe, the option to separate your waste is not yours to make, and Reykjavik is not much different. Their garbage bins are modest in design and prominently display their city's crest. There were a few recycling bins, but nothing as convenient as we have it in Toronto.
Older cities like Reykjavik also seem to have a plethora of street covers for either hydro, sewers, or water mains. I was able to capture a handful of these beauties, but I suspect there were twice as many that I missed.
For more photos on Reykjavik's public spaces, check out the collection on Spacing's Flickr account.
photos by Matthew Blackett
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Beautiful photos and writing. Thank you!
Street signs were in English? (note third photo from top). Could you get around without having to speak Icelandic? I wonder if Iceland would have some kind of Bill-101 inspired legislation to preserve the purity of the Icelandic language, which apparently is little changed since Viking times.
Michael, I haven't been to Iceland, but visiting Scandinavia I've found exactly the opposite of the Bill 101 attitude. Everyone in the bigger cities can speak English and is happy to do so in dealing with any visitor. Using only the words for "hello" and "thanks" earned me a compliment on my Swedish (which I thought was bizarre, but the guy seemed sincere).
In riding a ferry between Sweden and Finland, the official safety announcements were trilingual (Swedish, Finnish, English), but casual announcements were English-only. It's simply the common denominator that works for the most people. I'm sure English is taught in schools (it would, after all, be essential for doing business across Europe), and there are plenty of English shows on television, which are subtitled rather than dubbed.
So at least in the Scandinavian countries I visited, concerns about cultural preservation haven't stopped them from being pragmatic on language usage.
I haven't been to Iceland, but I've been to the Faroe islands. Like Iceland, the Faroese language is close to old Norse. There were probably fewer English signs in Thorshavn, but English was spoken just about everywhere. In one way, English as a second language may save the old Norse of Faroese and Icelandic, because otherwise the more modern Scandinavian languages may take over. The Faroes are a Danish dependency, so the alternative to English would be Danish I suppose.
I had no problem as everyone spoke English and seemed to want speak it since any attempt I made to ask for food in Icelandic was met with English responses.
I've now been in denmark, Sweden and now Germany. Most everyone can speak English with the germans being the least good at it. I suspect that has something to do with them having 80 million people and another 20 million in Austria and Switzerland who speak it as well.
In fact, the Danes and swedes talk English to each other.
It was clear that in each country they are proud of their culture and heritage but have no problems with learning another language. And I have to say as a visitor I am very grateful of how easy it has been for me. I feel a tad guilty but it remves one of the greatest stresses of travelling.
Re: "Bill 101 Attitude" -- a few nuances.
I would say that for most people, Québec is actually very similar to European countries both in its attitude towards English and how well its population speaks it. City folks speak it more than country folk, for example. Of course, the exception is Montreal, which is truly one of the most bilingual (and indeed, trilingual) places on earth.
While hard-liners and newspapers on both linguistic sides love to create sensation, the day-to-day reality is quite different, with most québécois apologizing sheepishly for their poor English, even if they actually speak it fairly well. I have met a few anti-English people, but they are rare, and the attitude is the same as the Irish and Scots hating the English, Southerners hating the Yankees, or even around delightful Lake Atitlan in Guatemala the Tz'utujil-speaking people hating Cachikel-speaking people on the other side of the lake. Us-against-them, nothing more.
The concept of protecting a language is foreign to English-only speaking places, but in the 20 years that I have lived here, I have grown to respect many aspects of Bill 101, such as sending immigrants to French-speaking schools or language-of-work for large companies. The sign laws I find heavy-handed, but I actually like the effect, and I don't get excited about a few words in English here and there (see http://spacingmontreal.ca/2009/01/24/vieux-quebecs-ice-cross-comp/), nor the legislated lack of them since really, it's not so hard to figure out that that a place displaying bread and fancy pastries in the window isn't going to try to sell you a new car, even without your dictionary to help translate "pà ¢tisserie-boulangerie" 
Thanks for these posts, Matt! They're a great read, and the photos are fantastic. I was in Iceland a couple of months ago, and it's been fun to read your thoughts/adventures as you've travelled.
Thanks so much for these posts from Reykjavik Matt! I've always wondered what the City felt like...
Comment by Dylan P
May 8, 2009 | 1:11 pm