What the Dotonbori Canal should look like by 2015The City of Osaka
Remember the plan to turn the Regent's Canal into a swimming
route for commuters? That was the runner-up in a
competition to find a new green space in London to compete with
New York's High Line park, so it isn't actually going to be built.
If you want to see a canal conversion in real life, best head to
Japan.
The city of Osaka actually wants to turn a canal in the middle
of its tourist district into a huge public swimming area. It's not
going to be as ambitious as the 13.8km
LidoLine (which would have connected Little Venice in the west
to the Limehouse Basin in the east), but the Dotonbori Canal
swimming area's 800m would, The Japan Times
reports, be the largest public outdoor swimming in the
world.
Right now, the Dotonbori Canal has a boardwalk running alongside
it that was installed recently as part of a "cleaning up" of the
area to turn the rundown former theatre district into something
more family-friendly. Taichi Sakaiya, an
author and economist, is behind the idea -- a man ominously known
as "the Godfather of Osaka" for his influence on local politics. A
private company has been formed to fund the conversion of the canal
by 2015.
The canal itself -- 12m wide -- won't just be fenced off
halfheartedly at either end, it will actually be completely
converted into a pool. Concrete walls will separate it from the
waters in the rest of the canal at either end, with pumps
circulating the clean, chlorinated water.
Apparently, fans of local baseball team the Hanshin
Tigers like to jump into the canal when celebrating victory, but
when the pool comes in they'll have to start paying for that
privilege -- ¥1,000 (£6.41) for the first hour, then an extra ¥500
(£3.20) for each hour after that. The total cost of converting the
canal into a swimming pool is estimated to run to ¥3bn
(£19.2m).
However, the idea isn't exactly being welcomed by Osaka
residents, as the Dotonbori Canal has something of a reputation for
pollution and grime. The Japan Times quotes local
residents who are sceptical that the authorities will be able to
keep drunken patrons leaving nearby bars from pissing into the
canal as they tend to do at the moment.