A rather gloomy and rainy day, but not too wet to prevent me from taking a long urban hike of about thirty kilometers that would give me a good idea of the layout and neighbourhoods of greater Reykjavik. My starting point was the Höfðy, the old house where Ronald Reagan and Mikhael Gorbochev held their famous summit meeting in 1986. I first went northeast from the center to Sundahöfn Harbour. One end of the harbour has some huge cruise ships; the other is container port, looking very modern, but quiet these days. I then turned south through the Laugardalur, a large park containing various urban amusements, including a zoo and one of the most popular geothermal pools. South of this, I walked through a housing project. It has the unmistakable stamp of planned social housing, but it is well-maintained and clean, if a little dull. At any rate, it has a good enough mix of buildings, easy access to regular urban neighbourhoods, and no hint of social degradation. Further south is the Kringlan shopping mall, a transplant from the universal indoor shopping mall catalogue that exhibits no noticeable Icelandic feature. Passing an inlet of the sea and a creek bed, I left the City of Reykjavik and entered Kópavogur. With 30,000 people, this is Iceland’s second largest “city”. It rejoices in the country’s tallest “skyscraper”, a glass office tower of twenty stories. But most of Kópavogur is pleasant residential streets with neat, not particularly fancy houses. There a small strip malls and standard suburban things. I’ve seen no sign of the global chains like Macdonald’s, Burger King, or Kentucky Fried Chicken*, and suburban restaurants (often Thai food or Ice Cream parlours) are usually incorporated into a larger building rather than isolated in their own parking lots. There is, however, a constant presence of Domino’s Pizza — but the pizza served little resembles the cardboard stuff that chain is famous for. The pizza is adjusted to Icelandic taste, with ingredients that would baffle a North American.
I continued through to Hafnafjörður, which is actually older than Reykjavik, and preserves some handsome 19th century houses. Hilly, and tightly concentrated in a fine natural harbour that has been used since the Middle Ages, it would probably be my choice if I had to live in the Reykjavik metro region. A half-hour bus ride would get me to the 101’s bookstores and night clubs, and I would find the tree-filled streets and well-crafted old houses more to my taste. It is, however, hemmed in by lava beds, and it is these, south of Hafnafjörður, that I reached the dark secret: Klukkuvellir, a suburban development so soul-less and depressing that it could have been built by French nouvelle vague film-makers of the 1960s as a set for a dystopian science fiction film. This thing was started only seven years ago and appears still under construction. Sterile apartment blocks and houses are plunked geometrically on a flat field of black lava. Lawns are grafted onto this lifeless soil, and don’t look like they will take. The older patches are yellow and dying. All the structures are white, clean-looking, and well-enough constructed, but they have a soul-crushing blandness and sameness. Though supposedly inhabited, I could see nobody in the winding streets except a couple of bored-looking kids. While covers a huge area, I did not see a single store of any kind, and absolutely nothing to do other than cower in your home. The inhabitants clearly have to drive to nearest shopping unless they wish to take a very long walk carrying parcels. I had no idea that anyone was still making stuff like this. Only a robot or the subject of a pre-frontal lobotomy could live there. Hasn’t anybody in Iceland heard of Jane Jacobs?
The layout of these towns forced me to return almost exactly by the same route, so I couldn´t really add to the experience beyond this point.
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*I subsequently found three KFC’s in Reykjavik
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