Dirty pavements and disease

Roads, footpaths and sidewalks in our towns and cities are dirty. They are surfaces where dropped food is irretrievable, where grit is picked up on shoes to be tramped indoors, where take-away wrappings blow, and where oily cars leak and spitters spit and canines shit. And because dirtiness is associated with disease the pavement, rightly or wrongly, often takes the blame for spreading infection.

Roads and footways were even dirtier before they were paved. In wet weather pedestrians used to slog their way through mud, and when it was fine carts and carriages threw up clouds of dust and pulverised horse manure.

So it is no wonder that the great British social and public health reformer of the 19th century, Sir Edwin Chadwick, was an admirer of asphalt. In his 1871 article ‘On the sanitary advantages of smooth and impermeable street surfaces’ he wrote how the new ‘asphalte’ roads in the City of London powerfully affected the cleanly habits and health of people and especially of children because they were always playing in the street. He remarked that, compared to macadam pavement, which was made from packed stones, asphalt was quiet, dried quickly, eliminated mud and dust and could be hosed clean.

Since that time hosing down seems to have become an imperative whenever ‘dirty’ pavements have been implicated in the spread of disease, especially during epidemics. Even when the actual mode of transmission of a disease is reasonably well understood, health authorities have made a show of decontaminating the streets.

This happened in 1900 when Sydney experienced a terrifying outbreak of bubonic plague mainly centred around areas close to the docks. Rats were considered to be the carriers of the contagion and householders were instructed to kill rats and prevent them from coming into their houses. They were also ordered to clean and disinfect their properties, so large amounts of rubbish were cleared out and piled in the streets ready to be carted away. The city pavements were part of this vast cleansing operation and crowds gathered to watch the streets being washed using fire hoses.

Another measure to disinfect the pavement was described poetically in a Daily Telegraph article of the time:

“Some men were put on during Thursday night to whitewash part of the streets within the quarantine boundaries. They made the footpaths like a succession of long white sheets.”

Street disinfection continues to be used as a public health measure during epidemics. In 2019 a new and fatal coronavirus disease began to spread around the world. It came to be called COVID-19.  There was (and still is) no cure but it was fairly quickly established that the virus was transmitted through the air by droplets sprayed out when  an infected person sneezed, coughed, or talked, and that it could also be picked up from high-touch surfaces like doorknobs and handrails where it lingered. 

Nevertheless, just as in the past, the pavement was also implicated as a factor in its spread. By 2020 news services were publishing photos from many countries showing trucks or workers in protective clothing hosing down streets and plazas, or spraying them with disinfectants such as bleach. Scientists from other countries, commenting on this phenomenon, concluded that these measures were almost certainly ineffective and may even be harmful to people and the environment.

It would seem that these street cleansing activities were as much about authorities being seen to do something as they were about actually stopping the spread of COVID-19. Some commentators even added that in many countries people like to see large-scale public action by the government and that, since it had been carried out in previous emergencies, this sort of action may be embedded in a country’s culture and tradition. At such times the pavement is co-opted into a show of government effectiveness and dependability.

References

Chadwick, E. (1871) On the sanitary advantages of smooth and impermeable street surfaces. Journal of the Society of Arts, 19, pp. 789-792.

Prevention of Plague: Instructions to Householders, issued by the Department of Public Health, Sydney, 1 March 1900.

Bubonic plague. Fighting the Disease. The Quarantine Area Enlarged. Clarence and Richmond Examiner. Grafton NSW, 27 March 1900, p.8 (quotes the Daily Telegraph).

Bricknell, L. & Trott, D. (2020) Sanitising the city: does spraying the streets work against coronavirus? The Conversation, 5 May 2020.

Bhat,  S. A et al. (2021) Environmental and health impacts of spraying COVID-19 disinfectants with associated challenges. Environmental Science and Pollution Research International, 29, 85648-85657.

Chung, E. (2020) Is spraying disinfectant in public spaces a good way to fight COVID-19? CBC News, 18 April 2020.

Images

1. Street flushing machine on Meagher Street Chippendale, 1928. (City of Sydney Archives)

2. Children playing on Bankside in London, 1893. (Paul Martin photographer. Daily Mail Online, 17 May 2019)

3. Crowds gather to watch the streets being washed using fire hoses in the docks area of Sydney, 1900. On one corner a barrel of whitewash can be seen.

4.  In Napoleon Street, rubbish has been cleared from properties and piled on the roadway ready to be carted away. The footpaths have been whitewashed. (This and previous image are from a series of albums in the State Library of NSW containing ‘Views taken during cleansing operations, quarantine area, Sydney, 1900, under the supervision of Mr. George McCredie, F.I.A., NSW’)

5. A worker spraying the street with disinfectant in Moscow, 2020. (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters, published in Chung 2020)

6. Municipal tankers spray disinfectant as a precaution against the coronavirus in Moscow, 2020. (Andrei Nikerichev/Moscow News Agency via Associated Press, published in Chung 2020)

Asphalt rules

Man in the moon, Broadway Shopping Centre car park (Sydney), April 2015 (photo: meganix)

Man in the moon, Broadway Shopping Centre car park (Sydney), April 2015 (photo: meganix)

Today is the anniversary of the launch of this blog. It was on 3 May 2009 that I wrote the first post and welcomed readers to Pavement Graffiti, “where asphalt rules and grey is good. The focus is on roadways and footpaths, and ‘graffiti’ means anything written, drawn, scrawled or stencilled on them”.

Centennial Park labyrinth (Sydney), November 2014 (photo: meganix)

Centennial Park labyrinth (Sydney), November 2014 (photo: meganix)

Back then I had embarked on a PhD at Macquarie University, also titled Pavement Graffiti. Six years on, the PhD has been achieved, there is a gallery of images on-line at Pavement Appreciation and a Facebook page of the same name, academic articles have been published, magazine articles too. From time to time journalists stumble upon the blog and ask my opinion about graffiti, Eternity or, as happened this week, walkable cities. The blog does not have a huge following but I am grateful to those who have given long-standing support or have simply shown a fleeting interest.

'Happy BDay Lolz Grace', Watsons Bay (Sydney), December 2014 (photo: meganix)

‘Happy BDay Lolz Grace’, Watsons Bay (Sydney), December 2014 (photo: meganix)

My interests have broadened to encompass a concern for the disappearance of strange spaces, areas of decay, and layered sites under the pressure of urban renewal (or urban homogenization). I am now an Adjunct Fellow of the Urban Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney.

'Go vegan', Queen Victoria Building (Sydney), October 2014 (photo: meganix)

‘Go vegan’, Queen Victoria Building (Sydney), October 2014 (photo: meganix)

But I still retain my fascination for the pavement and am currently waiting to hear if my article on ‘Imagining the pavement: a search through everyday texts for the symbolism of an everyday artefact’ has been accepted for publication. Watch this space.

'I love same sex love', Sydney Park, St Peters, February 2015 (photo: meganix)

‘I love same sex love’, Sydney Park, St Peters, February 2015 (photo: meganix)

And do, please, continue to enjoy the literary adventure of reading the street beneath your feet.

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Tributes outside site of Martin Place siege (Sydney), December 2014 (photo: meganix)

 

Roadworks retrospective

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Pothole marked for repair, Newtown, 2008. Photo by meganix.

 

Comedian Dave O’Neil has been to see the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition, From the sidewalk to the catwalk, at the National Gallery of Victoria. He liked it because he’s into seeing what one person can achieve in a lifetime. But as Dave says in his newspaper column:

“It’s kind of sad that it’s mostly famous people who get exhibitions and accolades.

“Gautier rightfully gets his time in the sun, but what about other people who have contributed to society in some of the less glamorous fields? Wouldn’t you love to see an exhibition tracking the life of a road worker?

“Someone who goes around fixing potholes and other structural problems in the roads.

“Imagine the before and after shots of carefully repaired roads, a map pinpointing all the achievements and major works over the years.

“I can see a Next Wave Festival highlight already. I’m putting in for funding as soon as I finish writing this column.”

Yes please, Dave.

Glebe (Sydney), 2004. Photo by meganix.

Glebe (Sydney), 2004. Photo by meganix.

Dave O’Neil, ‘Man about town: celebrities are not the only ones who deserve an exhibition about their life’, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 February 2015, The Shortlist, p.2.

 

Black Santa

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Black Santa was an Erskineville man, Syd ‘Doc’ Cunningham, who used to distribute presents to rural children every Christmas. Syd would sit outside the Woolworths supermarket in King Street, Newtown, collecting money and toys throughout the year. Around Christmastime he would give a Christmas card to people who dropped money in his bucket.

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After Syd died in 1999 a bronze plaque was installed at the spot where he used to set up his folding table. On it was a depiction in relief of his plastic bucket.

Syd (Doc) Cunningham plaque, King Street, Newtown (Sydney), 1999.

Syd (Doc) Cunningham plaque, King Street, Newtown (Sydney), 1999.

In 2000 the footpath was repaved, with synthetic bluestone pavers replacing the asphalt.

King Street repaving, 2000.

King Street repaving, 2000.

Before the works commenced the plaque was removed. But in the place where it had been glued to the footpath, somebody wrote an impromptu memorial to Black Santa in red chalk.

'The Black Santa Claus' hand-drawn plaque, 2000.

‘The Black Santa Claus’ hand-drawn plaque, 2000.

After the repaving was finished, the original plaque was reinstalled, and it’s still there today. The supermarket itself has changed hands a few times. Currently it’s an IGA. And Syd’s plaque has become the focal point for beggars who keep his memory alive by collecting for themselves.

Syd Cunningham plaque, long since reinstalled, 2008.

Syd Cunningham plaque, long since reinstalled, 2008.

Funny thing though. Just a few days ago, someone wrote a post about the plaque on the Republic of Newtown Facebook page, adding, ‘ Sadly, the plaque was removed when the footpath was resurfaced’. Somehow this person had failed to notice that the plaque was put back fourteen years ago. That Facebook page got many comments and even though several noted that the plaque was still there, quite a few comments demanded that the plaque be replaced. Sentimental indignation prompted by misinformation. It happens.

 

The plaque in the same spot, next to the IGA supermarket, December 2014.

The plaque in the same place, next to the IGA supermarket, December 2014. All photos of this spot in King Street are from the Pavement Graffiti archives by meganix.

 

The demon blacktop

Paint splash, Botany Road, Redfern, 2013. Photo by meganix.

Paint splash, Botany Road, Redfern, 2013. Photo by meganix.

Glossy black dance floor or ashen skin or something else entirely? The asphalt pavement stirs the poetic imagination of some writers but the hard truth spoils the romance of the blacktop.

It was Vladimir Nabokov who wrote , ‘Voraciously we consumed those long highways, in rapt silence we glided over their glossy black dance floors’. Australian author Jessica Anderson says of one of her characters, ‘… in her visual memory of Sydney as a city predominantly blue and green and terra-cotta, there had been an element missing. And here it was, this ashen skin covering not only the road, but the footpaths as well’.

Unfortunately that dark covering is making Sydney hotter because it absorbs heat and radiates it back out. Sustainability campaigner Michael Mobbs has the figures to show that suburbs with black roads and few trees suffer badly during heatwaves. It’s called the urban heat island effect, and to counter it the City of Sydney is conducting trials in Chippendale using lighter-coloured surfaces on some roadways. The pale pavement is open grade asphalt filled with concrete slurry.

Pale pavement, Chippendale, 2014. Image from City of Sydney website.

Pale pavement, Chippendale, 2014. Image from City of Sydney website.

Mobbs has been monitoring the trial. He says it reduces the temperatures by two to four degrees on a hot day, and predicts that during heatwaves there may be six to eight degrees difference. Death rates rise in cities during heatwaves, so that difference could save lives. Glary though.

Vladimir Nabokov. Lolita. 1955.

Jessica Anderson. The impersonators. 1980.

Asphalt and umbrellas

This week I have been thinking about the role the pavement can play in our thoughts and feelings about particular places and times in our lives. Long after the Hong Kong pro-democracy protest is over, and whatever the outcome, the gritty surface of the city’s public spaces will figure largely in the memories of the people who took part. The asphalt has been a major player in the drama of the so-called Umbrella Revolution.

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Slate.com

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NBC News

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The Telegraph (UK)

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The Telegraph (UK)

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The Telegraph (UK)

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Global Grind

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Protestors themselves remove slogans and graffiti from the street. Getty Images

 

 

 

Disintegration

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In an art gallery bookshop recently I came across a little book on a subject that interests me. It has taken me a long time to discover it, since it was first published in 1994. Wabi-sabi for artists, designers, poets and philosophers is by design philosopher, Leonard Koren.

It may have been Koren’s book that put the Japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi on Western curricula. These days most designers will have had some passing acquaintanceship with wabi sabi during their student years, although few have any real grasp of the concept. This is not surprising. Apparently author Marcel Theroux presented a program called ‘In Search of Wabi Sabi’ on BBC Four in 2006. In it he asked people on a Tokyo street to describe wabi sabi, but he was usually given a polite shrug and the explanation that wabi sabi is simply unexplainable. So, while I cannot possibly encapsulate Koren’s elegant little book in a blog post, I can give you an idea of some of the things he says about wabi sabi.

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Peripherally associated with Zen Buddhism, and based on the idea that truth comes from the observation of nature, wabi sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete; a beauty of things modest and humble; a beauty of things unconventional.

Wabi sabi is an aesthetic appreciation of the evanescence of life, and its images force us to contemplate our own mortality. They evoke an existential loneliness and tender sadness mingled with bittersweet comfort, since we know all existence shares the same fate.

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If things are described as having the quality of wabi sabi, it means that their appearance suggests natural processes. They are made of materials that are visibly vulnerable to the effects of weathering and human treatment, and they record these processes in a language of discolouration, rust, tarnish, stain, warping, shrinking, shrivelling and cracking. Their nicks, chips, bruises, scars, dents and peeling are testament to histories of use and abuse. Koren even says that “wabi-sabi comes in an infinite spectrum of grays”.

Now you can see why I might be interested in wabi sabi. Don’t these descriptions of the material qualities of wabi sabi fit so well the appearance of worn pavements! I am reminded of the chapter on ‘How to look at pavement’ in James Elkins’s book How to use your eyes. “Cracking, distortion, disintegration, ravelling, shoving, rutting – I love the terminology of distressed pavement,” says Elkins, “The utterly ordinary mangled surface of the road … is full of metaphors for human disaster”.

My interest in wabi sabi extends to the aesthetic appeal (or otherwise) of run-down parts of the city – old alleyways, derelict industrial sites, shabby shopping strips, crumbling houses. But I’ll save that discussion for another time.

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Elkins, James, How to use your eyes, New York, Routledge, 2009.

Green, Penelope, At home with Leonard Koren: an idiosyncratic designer, a serene new home, The New York Times, 22 September 2010.

Koren, Leonard, Wabi-sabi for artists, designers, poets & philosophers, Point Reynes, California, Imperfect Publishing, 2008.

Wabi-sabi, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi_sabi

Hard rock

Service lane off York Street, Sydney.

Service lane off York Street, Sydney.

The remnants of asphalt and concrete, and the old paving stones underneath, give this laneway in central Sydney a pleasingly shabby appearance. The stones are not cobblestones – as I have been known to mistakenly call them – but pitchers, and in this case pitchers of trachyte. A pitcher is a rectangular stone paving block about 22 cm wide, 30 cm long and 15 cm deep. Trachyte – like granite – is a hard, impervious, igneous (volcanic) rock.

I learnt this from a recently published book, Sydney’s hard rock story: the cultural heritage of trachyte. With its many beautiful illustrations, the book tells a fascinating story.

Quarried from Mount Gibraltar (the Gib) near Bowral in the NSW Southern Highlands, trachyte was first used in the 1880s for paving cubes and for kerb and gutter stones in Sydney, replacing the sandstone flagging that was too easily worn away by the city’s increasing traffic.

But when the durability and imposing appearance of the Bowral trachyte was recognised it was soon incorporated into the design of many grand buildings and monuments, complementing Sydney’s characteristic golden sandstone and investing the buildings with a sense of strength, solidity and permanence. A special feature of Sydney’s hard rock story is its trachyte walk through central Sydney, which takes the curious ambler past over 30 buildings in just a few city blocks.

In parts of Sydney, such as the service lane I photographed, trachyte paving can still be found. And despite the efforts of recent City Councils to remove it, much of the original, roughly-dressed trachyte kerbing and guttering remains as well.

You can find out more about this lovely book at the website, Sydney’s Hard Rock Story. Here are a couple of photographic excerpts:

Trachyte1

The Sydney City Council began to use trachyte for kerbs and gutters in the 1880s and the kerbs at the edges of York Street, the ‘frames’ of the drainage inlets and the stormwater lintels are all made of cut trachyte blocks. Similar kerbs, still displaying the textures made by the masons’ tools, can still be seen in almost all of Sydney’s streets.

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The former Bank of Australasia (now ‘Paspaley’), on the Martin Place and George Street corner. It was the American architect Edward Raht’s second Sydney building, designed in 1901. The entire building is faced in trachyte, with walls of rock-faced ashlar. The coat-of-arms and the sea-shell motif at the corner pediment represent some of the most detailed trachyte carving in Sydney. The building has two large basement levels which extend outwards for 5 metres beneath Martin Place.

 

Sydney’s hard rock story: the cultural heritage of trachyte, by Robert Irving, Ron Powell and Noel Irving, published by Heritage Publishing, Sydney and Leura, 2014.

Your typical pedestrian

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My WordPress avatar is a pedestrian traversing the asphalt. Despite a continuous battering by passing traffic, you can see that my pedestrian still has a burning heart, thanks to an implant by the 90s band Junglepunks.

Pedestrian and Junglepunks stencils, Broadway (Sydney), 1999

Pedestrian and Junglepunks, Broadway (Sydney), 1999

I have met many such pavement people since I began my graffiti project way back in 1999, but I seem to have only mentioned them once on this blog site. A desire to revisit them has been prompted by some of the photographs in a new little book by Phil Smith, Enchanted things, where he writes:

‘The pedestrian figures here were all intended by some designer as generic representations; yet to the glad eye they display their eccentricities, amputations, stretch marks, wrinkles, prostheses and rearrangements. They serves as memento mutabis (“remember you will change”), a reminder of your body as unfinished business, inscribed into its path and subject to all that passes along it, a history made on the hoof.’

In this photo-essay Phil, an ambulant academic at Plymouth University, UK, urges us to undertake an ‘experimental pilgrimage without destinations’ where disfigured pedestrian figures are just a small sample of the absurd, ironic and accidental artworks in the urban landscape that, if we take the trouble to notice them, will rearrange our attitude to the world.

My Sydney pavement pedestrians serve to confirm that walking in the builtscape is no simple matter.  They don’t need Phil to tell them they should LOOK, LOOK RIGHT, LOOK LEFT. But even if they have an opinion about what they see, they are made to shut up. It is sometimes permissible for them to manifest their gender or age status, but more often than not they are stripped to their naked genderlessness, a mere shadow of their supposed selves.

Although exposed to assault from all sides, they can hardly complain they weren’t warned. Even so, when cautioned to THINK BEFORE YOU CROSS and STEP SAFELY they generally decide to make a dash for it. Some do so with a defiant display of insouciance but others are so terrified by the traffic they jump right out of their shoes.

Pedestrian whose comments have been censored, Summer Hill, 2010

Pedestrian whose comments have been censored, Summer Hill, 2010

Wise walkers, Stanmore, 2000

Wise walkers, Stanmore, 2000

Unwise street crosser, Newtown, 1999

Unwise street crosser, Newtown, 1999

Left and right shoes left behind, Newtown, 2000

Left and right shoes left behind, Newtown, 2000

The more purposeful striders who stick to the footpath find they are obliged to share their way with cyclists and sometimes even elephants. Hidden trenches and falling manhole covers are additional hazards.

Casualties are high and many pavements are haunted by the remains of hapless pedestrians, last seen in healthy condition maybe twenty years ago, now reduced to making ghostly appearances from between the cracks in the asphalt.

Pathway parade, College and Liverpool Streets, Sydney, 2011

Pathway parade, College and Liverpool Streets, Sydney, 2011

 

Pedestrian in trench, Newtown, 1999

Pedestrian in trench, Newtown, 1999

Pedestrian under manhole cover, Chatswood, 2007

Pedestrian under manhole cover, Chatswood, 2007

Traces of a pedestrian, Berry, NSW, 2007

Traces of a pedestrian, Berry, NSW, 2007

 

Like my flat mates, I find it hard to keep up with Phil’s ambulant ruminations. Nevertheless, the next item on my reading list is another recent book by him, larger in size and no doubt equally challenging.  It’s called On walking … and stalking Sebald and its cover features an array of pedestrian figures. How could I resist?

 

Smith, Phil, 2014, Enchanted things: signposts to a new nomadism, Axminster: Triarchy Press.

Smith, Phil, 2014, On walking … and stalking Sebald: a guide to going beyond wandering around looking at stuff, Axminster: Triarchy Press.

Vale Jeffrey Smart 26 July 1921 – 20 June 2013

'Bus terminus', Jeffrey Smart, 1973

‘Bus terminus’, Jeffrey Smart, 1973

Traffic marks occur frequently in Jeffrey Smart’s precisionist pictures of the built landscape, their sharp outlines and piercing colours marshalling into order the compositions of tarmacs, car-parks and autobahns that he was driven to paint. In his work, wrote Mark Ledbury, we see a celebration of the road marking as a painterly object.

With his depictions of hard-edged and perfect  roads signs on even and unblemished asphalt, Smart drew our attention to a property of the pavement that we might overlook if we only concentrated on the flaws in its pocked, patched and scarred surface. For the fact is that, prosaically functional though the pavement may be, it is an edifice of monumental proportions, stretching horizontally further than the eye can see and intruding on our everyday lives in ways that we barely acknowledge.

In an interview with journalist Janet Hawley, Smart once said that he was happy if the public was stimulated by his work, ‘and if they see Jeffrey Smart paintings everywhere in the urban landscape, it means I’ve helped educate their eyes, so I’ve done them a favour’.

Thank you, Jeffrey Smart.

'The rainbow', Jeffrey Smart, 1965

‘The rainbow’, Jeffrey Smart, 1965

Ledbury, Mark. 2011. Mute eloquence: the art of Jeffrey Smart. Sydney University Museum News (25): 12-14.

Hawley, Janet. 1989. Jeffrey Smart made simple. The Sydney Morning Herald (Good Weekend), 13 May 1989, 14-20.

© Megan Hicks 2013

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