恐怖主義危及歐洲城市的漫步傳統(tǒng)

Barriers are going up around Europe. Hours after a terrorist in a van mowed down pedestrians on Barcelona’s Las Ramblas last week, Madrid installed massive plant-pots at Puerta del Sol in the Spanish capital. Entrances to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, leading to Milan’s cathedral, are blocked by ugly new jerseys, as Italians call them — the modular concrete lane separators first used in the US state.

各種隔離屏障正在歐洲各地涌現(xiàn)。最近，一名恐怖分子駕駛貨車在巴塞羅那的蘭布拉大道(Las Ramblas)沖撞行人，數(shù)小時后，馬德里方面在西班牙首都的太陽門廣場擺上了巨型花盆。通向米蘭大教堂的埃馬努埃萊二世回廊的入口被丑陋的“新澤西”(new jerseys)堵住——意大利人之所以這樣稱呼它們，是因為美國新澤西州最先使用這種模塊化的混凝土車道隔離墩。

Nice, victim of the worst vehicle attack to date, has only recently unveiled a white truck-resistant pillar-and-cable fence, cordoning off the Promenade des Anglais, where 86 people died on Bastille Day last year. London, hit by two attacks this year, has reinforced pedestrian walkways on bridges with concrete blocks.

曾發(fā)生過迄今最為嚴重的汽車恐怖襲擊事件的尼斯，只是在最近才設(shè)置了一道防止卡車沖撞的白色柱狀護欄，將“英國人散步大道”(Promenade des Anglais)隔離開——去年的法國國慶日，86人在此遇難。今年已經(jīng)遭受兩起恐怖襲擊的英國，用水泥墩加強了對橋梁上的人行道的保護。

To the acute pain of further loss of innocent lives — tourists, shoppers, revellers — add the sinister, hard-to-define threat to something quintessentially European: the paseo, the passeggiata, the promenade.

對歐洲典型特征——散步、漫步者和濱海步行大道——的難以界定的險惡威脅，加深了無辜生命(游客、購物者和歡慶人群)隕落帶來的刺痛。

“Walkability” has become a central tenet of urban planning. One study suggests that people living in walkable places engage in 100 minutes more physical activity a week than those who don’t. “Walking meetings”, as favoured by the late Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, are now modish ways to stimulate creativity in Silicon Valley and beyond.

“可步行性”已經(jīng)成為城市規(guī)劃的中心原則。一項研究表明，居住在適于步行的地方的人每周從事體育活動的時間比不住在此類地方的人多100分鐘。馬克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)和已故的史蒂夫•喬布斯(Steve Jobs)都推崇的“走動式會議”(walking meetings)，如今已成為硅谷等地激發(fā)創(chuàng)造力的時髦方式。

But we Europeans do not need to be told by professors and entrepreneurs that walking is good for us. We have been strolling sociably towards greater wellbeing for centuries.

但我們歐洲人不需要教授和企業(yè)家告訴我們步行的好處。幾個世紀以來，我們一直在從容不迫地走向福祉程度更高的社會。

Arriving in Barcelona in 1826, the American naval officer Alexander Slidell Mackenzie took rooms overlooking “the Rambla”. The street, built over an old riverbed and at that time only recently urbanised, was “constantly frequented by every variety of people, and in the afternoon was thronged to overflowing”, he wrote in his travelogue A Year in Spain. Well-dressed men and women mingled with peasants, artisans, French officers and their girlfriends, students, curates and monks.

1826年抵達巴塞羅那的美國海軍軍官亞歷山大•斯萊德爾•麥肯齊(Alexander Slidell Mackenzie)入住了可以俯瞰“蘭布拉大道”的房間。他在游記《在西班牙的一年》(A Year in Spain)中寫道，建于一段古河床之上且當時才剛剛完成城市化的這條大街，“總是有形形色色的人光顧，下午經(jīng)常擠得水泄不通”。穿著考究的男女混跡在包括農(nóng)夫、藝術(shù)家、法國官員及女伴、學(xué)生、牧師以及僧侶的人群中。

It goes without saying that the threat of imminent attack puts this tradition of ambulatory, open-air cosmopolitanism in jeopardy.

不用說，隨時可能遭受襲擊的威脅，讓這種適于步行的戶外世界主義傳統(tǒng)陷入危險之中。

The essence of the stroll — which, in Paris, gave birth to the ideal of the flâneur, the leisurely observer of city life — is that it should be relaxed. When I lived in Milan, which is certainly not Italy’s most laid back city, a passeggiata in one’s Sunday best, past the Galleria and the Duomo, was a weekly restatement of one’s part in civilised society. The menace of terrorism will have already persuaded some nervous boulevardiers to divert to less populous places, take the car, or cower on the sofa at home. For those who do venture out, having to keep an eye out for murderers in vans wrecks the whole idea of a civilised city walk as an exercise in stress-free people watching.

漫步的本質(zhì)在于它應(yīng)該是讓人放松的——在巴黎，散步催生了漫步者的理想，即作城市生活悠閑的觀察者。住在米蘭的時候——米蘭當然不是意大利最慵懶的城市——我發(fā)現(xiàn)，穿上自己最好的衣服，漫步穿過埃馬努埃萊二世回廊和米蘭大教堂是人們在文明社會中每周的必修課。恐怖主義的威脅已經(jīng)讓一些惶恐的巴黎林蔭大道咖啡店的主顧轉(zhuǎn)向人不那么多的地方、駕車或者窩在家里的沙發(fā)上。對那些敢于冒險外出的人來說，他們不得不時刻注意貨車里是否藏有恐怖分子，使得人們在文明城市漫步時無法再毫無壓力地觀察人群。

It doesn’t do to romanticise the notion too much. These days, Las Ramblas is as much an overcrowded tourist attraction as a civic amenity. It has “evolved from being the favourite street of Barcelonans to a street many avoid”, Eduard Cabré, an urban planning consultant, told website Citylab shortly after the attacks.

過于浪漫化這種觀點沒有用。昔日供人休閑漫步的蘭布拉大道，如今已變成一個人滿為患的旅游景點。城市規(guī)劃咨詢顧問愛德華•卡布雷(Eduard Cabré)在恐襲發(fā)生后不久對Citylab網(wǎng)站表示，它已經(jīng)“從巴塞羅那人鐘愛的大街變成了許多人避之不及的大街”。

And of course, local authorities need to protect citizens from likely threats. Hence the new bollards on many of our boulevards.

當然，當?shù)卣枰Ｗo公民免遭意外威脅的傷害。因此，我們許多步行街道出現(xiàn)了新的路樁。

At the same time, though, “we really don’t want to abolish pedestrians or we will end up with ghost cities”, as Marialena Nikolopoulou of Kent School of Architecture told me. She and others have tested clever alternatives to fortifying public spaces, such as using mirrors or floor markings to make pedestrians act playfully, so that suspicious behaviour stands out.

然而，與此同時，正如肯特建筑學(xué)院(Kent School of Architecture)的Marialena Nikolopoulou對我所言：“我們真的不想讓行人消失，那樣我們的城市最終將變?yōu)楣沓恰?rdquo;她和其他人測試了加固公共場所的更聰穎的替代方案，比如使用鏡子或者地面記號來讓步行者表現(xiàn)地更加歡愉，這樣可疑行為就會引起注意。

It is worth a try, if only to safeguard the public demonstration of civic sociability and friendly exchange so admired by generations of visitors.

這值得嘗試，但愿它能夠捍衛(wèi)這種被一代又一代的游客傾慕不已的公民社交和友好交流的公共形式。

“Who can say enough in praise of the paseo?” Mackenzie wrote in the 1820s. “It furnishes an amusement at once delightful and innocent, and from which not even the poorest are excluded, a school where the public manners are softened and refined by social intercourse and mutual observation; where families meet families, and friends meet friends, as upon a neutral ground.”

麥肯齊在19世紀20年代寫道：“誰能窮盡對漫步的贊美?它可以立刻帶來一種宜人而單純的愉悅，甚至最窮的人也不會被排除在外，它是一個被社交和互相觀察軟化和洗煉的公共禮儀學(xué)校;它是一個家人和朋友見面的場所，有如一塊中立之地。”

It is a measure of how hard terrorists have hit Europe that we now have to armour that innocent, neutral ground like a potential battlefield.

我們現(xiàn)在不得不將這一無辜中立之地武裝得像潛在的戰(zhàn)場一樣，從中可以看出恐怖分子對歐洲的沖擊有多大。