How Far In You Get

The four bands

1. Ground with nobody to askNo gate, no hours, nobody whose day you interrupt by being there. The commonest kind of half public ground in this city and the kind visitors trust least, because nothing tells them it is allowed.
2. Ground that keeps hoursOpen, and open on somebody else's clock. The hours are the whole of the arrangement, and they are the thing most often out of date on the internet and correct on the gate.
3. Ground that opens if you askA name in a book, a telephone call the week before, a person who says yes. Asking is not a formality here: it is the entire difference between welcome and trespass.
4. Ground where the edge is all of itThe fence, the lane, the last public foot before the working part starts. Reading the edge as a refusal is a mistake; the edge is often the best seat in the place.

All eight, in order

1. Ground with nobody to askA Greenway Under a Viaduct | DoorstoneA strip of public paving that goes under something enormous, and is quieter for it. No gate, no hours, and almost nobody there at two in the afternoon.
2. Ground with nobody to askA Quadrangle You Can Walk Through | DoorstoneThe commonest piece of half public ground in this city, and the one visitors stand at the edge of and then go around.
3. Ground that keeps hoursA Cemetery That Locks at Dusk | DoorstoneThe only place in this book whose closing time is a condition rather than a number, which makes it the most misread gate in the city.
4. Ground that keeps hoursAn Arboretum That Opens at Eight | DoorstoneOpen every day, on somebody's clock, and the clock is the entire arrangement. Turn up ten minutes early and you are standing outside a locked gate with a very good view through it.
5. Ground that opens if you askA Reading Room That Wants Your Name | DoorstoneOpen to anybody, and open only after you have written your name in a book and put your bag in a locker. Two minutes of friction that keeps most people out of the best room in the city.
6. Ground that opens if you askA Rooftop You Have to Telephone For | DoorstoneNo hours, no gate, no sign. One telephone number and a person on the end of it who says yes on some days and no on others, for reasons that are entirely theirs.
7. Ground where the edge is all of itA Fairground Between Events | DoorstoneAn enormous piece of ground that is either wide open or entirely shut, with almost nothing in between, and the calendar is the only thing that decides which.
8. Ground where the edge is all of itA Working Farm You See From the Lane | DoorstoneA genuine working farm inside the county line, with a public lane down one flank and a gate that does not open for visitors. The lane is the whole offer, and it is a better one than it sounds.

Why four and not three

Because the third band, the ground that opens if you ask, is where most of the good afternoons in this city are, and a three band scheme collapses it into either open or shut.

A rooftop that a telephone call opens is not the same kind of place as a garden with a gate, and it is not the same kind of place as a farm that will never let you past the wire. Putting all three in one bucket labeled restricted is what makes a city look smaller than it is.

Why the rule and not a color

Each band carries a horizontal rule and the weight of that rule is the encoding: a hairline for ground with nobody to ask, a heavy bar for ground where the edge is all of it.

Weight rather than color, on purpose. A reader who cannot distinguish two colors loses nothing here, the pages print correctly in black and white, and the band is written out in words beside every rule anyway. Using this site says the same thing at more length.

What a piece contains

Four questions, asked of every one of the eight, in the same order:

1. Whose ground it is. Ownership, because it explains every other line.
2. How far in you get. The specific extent, and where it stops.
3. What it costs to be there. Usually nothing in money and something in conduct.
4. What going wrong looks like. The realistic failure, not the dramatic one.

Then the piece itself, then what is practically there: surface, water, shade, whether a pram manages it.