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| Cataract Gorge, Launceston (Tasmania) - its beautiful free swimming pools were established in 1937 in line with a desire to improve the health of the working class. Not sure if Launceston is a member of the Swimmable Cities Alliance, but it certainly should be. The generosity of spirit that created places such as this has been missing from public spaces for a while. Lovely to see it making a comeback |
© Photo | Michael Shen | under CC BY -NC -ND
I came across the Swimmable Cities Alliance while looking at ways in which cities could keep cool during those heat waves and this one brings together several modern strands – the desire for good health, social connection and equality, connection with nature and protection of the environment.
Long before the formal Right to Swim movement gained momentum, Denmark had already laid much of the groundwork through decades of water quality restoration and civic access policies. Denmark’s broader cultural ethos—rooted in the Nordic “freedom to roam” tradition—also shaped early thinking around swimming as a public right. After Copenhagen Harbour Baths opened in 2002, the city’s success inspired other European cities to rethink their own polluted rivers and harbours.
Oslo, Paris and Rotterdam were the next to take the plunge. In 2015 Oslo opened its Sørenga Sea Bath, with its floating saunas, diving towers and promenades. It also comes complete with lifeguards, showers and sun decks. All facilities are public and completely free. They are part of a huge six mile long Fjord City harbour redevelopment, with residential buildings and harbour ferries, to be completed in the 2030s.
The Seine in Paris was opened to the public in 2023, exactly 100 years after swimming was banned because the river was too polluted. In 2015, the Greater Paris Sanitation Authority improved its sewerage system and the ways in which it dealt with stormwater run -off and waste water discharge. At €1.4 billion this did not come cheap, but gave the citizens of Paris a new opportunity for outdoor recreation and was finished just in time to host the opening ceremony at the 2024 Summer Olympics.
It was on the eve of this occasion that the International Swimmable Cities Alliance was born, its motto being: “We champion the Right to Swim and Nature Rights. Let’s make positive waves of change.” Today the platform has over 80 cities in 30 countries championing the Right to Swim.
In Rotterdam public swimming began in May 2024 with designated zones and floating platforms. It was the place where Swimmable Cities announced its formal charter as delegates from 200 organisations took to the water on World Bathing Day on June 22nd, 2024. [You can sign up on their website which also advises cities on how to make theirs a swimmable city]. Rotterdam already had a floating restaurant, a floating office and floating tiny homes, but Rijnhaven isn’t done yet. Work is ongoing on a 6.5 ha water park with floating shops, apartments, office buildings and a luxury hotel which are expected to be finished by 2028.
New York also trialled its +POOL on the East River last summer and Berlin hopes to open parts of the Spree to public bathing by 2026. If you'd like to see what some of these places look like, there's a lovely collection here. Not all of these facilities are new. Zürich (and Berne and Geneva) for example, have long had an outdoor bathing tradition as have the Scandinavians. Zurich's more than 40 bathing spots with their bars and saunas, also function as social hubs. Italy too, has a number of heritage 'lidos' as they are called there, but these aren't conveniently listed as some other sites are.
The open -air seabaths at Matosinhos in Portugal, were originally built in 1966 but have recently undergone a facelift (2019 -2021). They are regarded as a National Monument because of their unique organic architecture which follows the shape of the rocks and the Atlantic Ocean. Carpa Olivera at Mazatlán in Mexico, which dates from 1915 also reopened in 2015, so everyone seems to getting into the swim.
I don’t know if Bondi - one of Sydney's main beaches, is part of the Swimmable Cities movement, but with no less than 35 sea pools it ought to be, especially as its newly refurbished Icebergs Pool is celebrating 90 years of operation. Cape Town is another contender with 19 such pools of its own, though I did wonder why someone would want to build a pool beside a beach.
I suppose in the case of say, Sydney, you would have all the benefits of seawater, without the risks. You wouldn’t have to worry about sharks, undertows, the current or rogue waves washing you out to sea. They’d also be easier to monitor and filter, and if you were diving, you would be less likely to give yourself a concussion as you might leaping off random rocks, not knowing what’s underneath. Supervision would also be somewhat easier, as would keeping track of how many laps you’ve swum.
Indeed, many countries once had a tradition of public bathing if not necessarily on their beaches or in their rivers, but as a legacy of the benevolent social reforms of the late C19th and early C20th when public health movements began to flourish along with the demand for clean air, green spaces and universal suffrage. The importance of pools to Australia particularly, is reflected in the fact that many rural communities chose to commemorate their fallen soldiers with a swimming pool in their honour, rather than statues and monuments.
Given that many places in Australia are landlocked and far from water courses, the question is rather -why were these idealistic visions allowed to fade away? It's pure conjecture on my part, but I suspect that one reason was that after World War I, most people in Western countries had bathrooms and running water at home, unlike in the C19th, when only the wealthy had that privilege.
Another might be that from about the 1960s onward private cars became more affordable which meant being able to travel further from home - to unspoiled beaches and lakes, rather than crowded and most likely more polluted facilities at home. Urban rivers and inner city beaches such as St.Kilda in Melbourne, were certainly unattractive as this article shows. There were other reasons why many American pools closed, but we'll come to that shortly when we talk about the right to swim. Hint: It wasn't because everyone got private swimming pools.
Finally, the economic rationalism of the 1970s - 1990s did not help. Places such as Melbourne's dilapidated seabaths were demolished and privatisation spelled doom for many other public facilities which were seen as a drain on resources rather than as a public benefit. I have little in the way of evidence for these arguments, other than a few studies which show that as economic conditions worsened, attendance and subscriptions at paying facilities fell, with the impact falling mainly on low income earners. Yes, pools are expensive to maintain -be they in harbours, rivers or free standing - even rivers with no amenities need water testing and the like, but they will be of growing importance for their social, health and environmental benefits as the world continues to warm.
The Right To Swim
These days we take the right to swim for granted, but it wasn’t always so. Historically, pools and beaches were segregated—by race, gender, and class. The Conversation eloquently describes how African Americans were excluded from amusement parks and pools in the USA, with some pools choosing to close in the 1960s and 70s, rather than being forced to integrate. Officially, this was in the interests of public safety -there had been scuffles, riots and hostile encounters, yet these were largely cover for white supremacist attitudes which saw black people as diseased or sexually threatening.
Australia was not immune to such thinking. Indigenous people were often barred from public pools (and clubs and pubs) until the 1960s when students from Sydney University helped to break those barriers down.
For women to gain the right to swim involved neither violence nor bloodshed, but was nevertheless a long and arduous struggle. The Ladies’ pool at Bondi is a legacy of the time when women were first allowed into the water, albeit separately and most likely fully clothed. Though swimming had become popular for men by the 1830s, it was deemed thoroughly unseemly for women. Men swam naked.
In Victorian England and by extension Australia and other colonies, even piano legs were covered at the request of Queen Victoria (1838 – 1901) lest the sight of them should excite men’s passions, so for women to show a leg or any other part of their body was deemed morally reprehensible as well. If they were permitted near the water, as they sometimes were later in the century, they were obliged to swim in their clothes, even shoes. Since their garments were long, heavy and multilayered with petticoats, bustles and corsets, this was practically impossible and in many cases forbidden by law as well as custom.
The Quiet Revolution
Towards the middle of the C19th. This began to change. Doctors and social reformers, pointed out how unhealthy women’s attire was. American gynaecologist Alice Bunker Stockham railed against corsetry, warning that it could cause uterine prolapse and damage internal organs. Educator, publisher and advocate for women’s education Catharine Beecher promoted daily physical education for women through her newsletters and lectures.
In 1851, American abolitionist and Temperance campaigner, Elizabeth Smith Miller began wearing “Rational Dress“ – a combo of loose "Turkish" trousers gathered at the ankle and topped with a short skirt or dress, which she had seen in Europe, and the idea was popularised by Amelia Bloomer publisher of the first women’s newspaper in the USA and advocate of women’s rights. Although largely ridiculed by society, it did allow women considerably more freedom of movement. By the end of the century, however, swimming was still taboo.
Enter the "Australian Mermaid"
It took an Aussie to break the mould in 1905. Annette Kellerman -later known as “The Australian Mermaid” had been encouraged to swim to overcome weakness and deformity in her legs which had been caused by rickets. By the time she was 16, she was able to earn her living by performing as a mermaid in the Aquarium in Melbourne and at several other venues, as well as beginning to win races. To improve her chances, she had adapted a men’s one – piece costume and worn leggings underneath, but allowing her thighs to be seen had outraged the good citizens of Boston and led to her arrest for indecent exposure. Fortunately, she won her court case and changed women’s swimwear and their right to swim forever.
A strong advocate for health, exercise and a vegetarian diet, she was subsequently wooed by Hollywood and with her natural corsetless curves and her zest for life, was presented as the ideal model for women to aspire to. Having been inducted into Florida's Swimming Hall of Fame, she is probably better known in the USA than in Australia, but you can see more of her story here
Swimming as a Political Activity
As Erin Heaveny writes in Swimming World, this fed into the broader stream of women’s rights with women ‘s swimming becoming an Olympic sport in 1912, although American women were not allowed to participate until 1920. In 1914 English Suffragettes took to the water in one -piece swimsuits – still banned at the time, to demand the right to vote. In the USA they formed themselves into swimming leagues. As the Tribune wrote:
“These actions were part of a trend of advocating for voting rights through physical feats. Women rode horseback and raced cars to promote suffrage, and even climbed mountains – see the story of Annie Smith Peck for example, who aroused similar outrage for daring to wear pants while climbing mountains and who left behind a “Votes for Women” banner on top of a mountain in Peru.
Variations on a Theme
The Right to Swim has other permutations too. There are several groups dedicated to Wild Swimming, Outdoor Swimming and Wild Wimmin’s Swimming for example. I love that several cities in Australia have begun to list their free Wild Waterholes. France also has a number of wild swimming places, though they aren't so easy to find.
The UK’s Outdoor Swimming Society with its 200K members and 25 international affiliates, has been very active in having wild swimming places designated by local authorities. Their website offers excellent advice on how to make this happen, but also warns of the pitfalls of doing so. In April 2024, it staged a mass trespass to swim in a dam in order to reclaim the watery commons. This does have its antecedents. It was in this very place - Kinder Scout, in the Peak District, that a mass trespass by ramblers took place in 1932 and ultimately led to the Right to Roam in the UK.
[It’s worth backtracking a little here. Until the Enclosures whereby rural communal lands in Britain (1845) were progressively privatised, cities remained fairly small and people still had access to the countryside for foraging and recreation. Afterwards, people were driven into the grimy cities and factories, and towns grew larger and larger, removing most people from contact with nature. The original mass trespass at Kinder Scout by 400 working class men, was to reclaim some of the right of working people to access the countryside].
Yes, good old Microsoft Copilot has been helping me out again. Google's new automatic link/search feature has too. Although it has alerted me to some more recent information, it is also a bit confusing. When I link to Berlin for example, it usually links to an article about that city related to the subject I'm writing about. I assume my readers know where it is and do not need a link which tells them so. I also expect that you know where the Atlantic is. Feel free to look it up if you don't. I have therefore deleted a lot of these as in my view the whole thing gets too busy if I leave them all in.
I will be away next week, so not sure if I'll get any work done - be surprised. I will be.
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