Apartheid, Aberdeen Style

Image: © Bill Harrison Taken: 20 Sep 2009

A long-standing transport problem in Aberdeen City is the crossing of the River Don -- there are just two public road bridges. However, some of the paper mills that once lined the Don has their own private crossings. Most of the mills are gone, but the bridges remain. The Don also represents a cultural divide: much of its southern bank is lined with working-class communities such as Woodside, Tillydrone and Seaton, whereas the northern bank is middle-class commuter-land. Here we see one upshot of this tension: bollards that sink into the road to allow certain vehicles to pass but not others: the powers-that-be have granted the middle-class residents of the north bank electronic passes to access a quick route to the city centre but working-class residents of Tillydrone who wish to head north are not so fortunate... It all brings to mind a famous dispute in the 1930s in Oxford: http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/4185278.50th_anniversary_of__snob_walls__demolition/

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