get out of town

I've become obsessed with overpasses. even as a kid the sight of the 'spaghetti' junction just east of glasgow filled me with awe and a subconcious respect for that level of engineering. I remember watching bladerunner and metropolis and wondering if places like that really would become reality. how wonderful they looked and how free we could be.

Designing a motorway to run through the centre of a city is, of course, crazy: people have to live there. a city is not somewhere you just travel to to work - cities are for people and not cars. last year we saw some soul destroying apartments which sat between overpasses and shook like new york apartments from those movies in the sixties and seventies.

Osaka, having been largely destroyed in the war, is now very rich in such fast and wide roads which means that people very often run second fiddle to cars. which is really sad. In 1970, as osaka was holding the world expo, glasgow was opening what would become the busiest motorway bridge in europe and a few hundred metres further on this would slice through charing cross and an area of architectural importance. at the same point it closely misses the mitchell library - the largest reference library in europe and a landmark within the city. to walk to the library you have to jostle with several busy junctions, the hum from the motorway channel below lingering in the air like a swarm of bees only broken by angry blasts on the horn.

while the peripherique and M25 are not ideal, they certainly seem to have more appeal than a road which cuts off communities. whilst glasgow enjoys a channel beneath, the urban scenery of osaka is that of flyovers and as futuristic looking and convenient as they might be, life often dies below them.

but whatchagonnado?

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