Ln• cHi iiL-Vsi.-. >•>'._.-.«•.•• • rnntnrwa 7 198 N AUTUM 4 °2 E U S °IS CONTENTS URBAN METROPOLIS 2000 John Cunningham M.P. answers back. London's landscape plan? DESIGN Goode nature in the city. den Ruyter and Hinse. QUARTERLY Barcelona, Hong Kong and Singapore Suburbanization answers back. was stick in people society wished to ignore, with URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY No. 24 SEPTEMBER 1987 only poverty in common. And history wonders why high-rises failed. separated by garages, is not the basis of any Why not renovate these tcwer blocks so that they village I know. The appearance of our villages become part private, part public, each contributing should matter more than whether private cars gain a to create a communality, reducing envy making patina of rust standing in the rain. inequalities? Why not government quotas so that private developers restore tcwer blocks selling 70% There should be no questions, and therefore no and returning 30% to locals on waiting lists? Indeed problems, regarding the land coming out of culti- one bright light in our erupting yuppie city is that vation before the end of this century. The redun- for the first time in years it is becoming profit- dant land gives us one last chance to recreate and able for developers to build apartments rather than restore a real rural environment and cover so much offices. As it becomes unfashionable for a yuppie past damage. There is no need for suburban hones to live at the end of a railway line, central London and tiresome pine plantations rather hefty, meaty could become reinhabited, a proper city centre full oak forests, deciduous autumns and revitalized of enough people to show signs of life after 6 pm. ecosystems. Who knows, by 2001 the borders of the One can only go on to hope that the process could city and countryside might become distinguishable spread; with the opening of Canary Wharf old 18th once again instead of our late 20th century blur. and 19th century townhouses, such as in Bloomsbury and St James, could be relieved of their type- Landscape architecture is not left untouched by this writers, the strip lighting removed and humans process. Its most obvious action in our cities must returned; exquisitely tasteful homes now being more be the garden festivals. Where do the festivals get valuable than offices and another defence against landscape architects and where, more importantly, rampant inner city suburbanism. What a dream. does it get our cities? Instead of an inheritance of splendid urban parks we have the expensive kitsch Planners have also been allowed to bring petit of a Hemel Hempstead back garden; great industry bourgeois lifestyles into our urban fabric. Who put into the creation of what the public accept and allowed them to say that cars should have a expect rather than something they can admire. And priority? People living in the suburbs who wish to the final result is more cosmetic green parkland commute? I am urban therefore I walk. I am urban settings for inner-city housing. Like an unwelcome therefore I take public transport. The Euston Road guest crashing a masked ball suburban housing underpass amongst others should be filled in, the estates get in where they should have been left out. Finchley Road narrowed detering the daily queues of one passenger cars, encouraging humans to mingle and Unfortunately for landscape architects the suburban therefore to live. Singapore has resolved this ethos of their profession is less their choice than problem. Each car entering the central area without that of their patrons. Surrounded by architectural 4 passengers must buy a pass and thus, in effect, is clients, landscape architects are repeatedly called fined. upon to plant in the most inappropriate of places. It is as if an entire profession (architecture) has Roads in London have always been of an adequate size intentionally misunderstood another (landscape for buses, deliveries and ambulances, only 6 lane architecture), the former pressing its claim to motorways could ever make than suitable for the superiority by asking only for latin plant names private car. To sacrifice London to the require- from the latter, and thus missing the point ments of the car is aesthetically and politically entirely. The awful result for our cities is a suburban, suggesting that all residents have a fabric unsuccessfully "softened", ie suburbanized, similar ability to own cars. I can think of only by injudicious planting, when a hard solution would one type of environment where car ownership must be have been far more suitable. It seems that land- the norm1 - the suburbs. In a real city it is only scape architects, left to design as they have been a minority who can afford to run, and increasingly, to park a car; it is the majority who must use public transport. For planners to respond to the car is to define our cities in physically and politically alien ideas. As such the M25 is a relief from the constant on- slaught. Taking traffic away frcm London the city centre is less frequently used as sane great motor- way interchange. But one fears the motorway will encourage other hideous results. Will it lead to greater pressure for arterial routes through London? Perhaps city motorways to link Victoria coach station to the new orbital road? If private cars were severely reduced public coaches could speed to the M25 junctions on nearly empty roads, slowing down occasionally for the odd bus to trained, could create far more urban, exciting overtake a motorcar for the disabled. surroundings then the usual row of evergreen shrubs and dying planes that they are habitually called The M25 also encourages the spread of that appalling upon to "design". developer's excuse for destruction, 'infill', that somehow it is perfectly acceptable to build an MFI Throughout these pages I am not advocating a return warehouse in half of a severed green field. Our to some unpleasant past nor a trite pastiche of maturing motorways of the sixties and the seventies English countryside that responds superficially to show their increasing integration into the land- its inhabitants. Keeping our cities urban and our scape. Severed areas, particularly on the contin- villages rural makes as much aesthetic as financial ent, are planted with forestry or are left, untouch- sense. Increasing public transport encourages ed by any human to nurture a small scale environ- higher employment and reduces pollution of our ment. Cheap furniture warehouses are not the only environment. Local shops would re-open in both our alternatives to left-over land. The urban, or cities and villages, also demanding more labour. rather the suburban, sprawl must not be encouraged. Urban and rural areas would become more localised, more communal with the added benefit of less crime. Rural areas have suffered suburbanization almost as Vandalism would be reduced with greater urban heavily as our cities. Who is not increasingly population densities leading to less unwatched disgusted by the spread of 'rural' style closes and streets, the community more ready to look after its the like at the edge of our once compact villages? own. It is all very well using real slate roofs and sash windows but to determine layout by vehicular access, A city untouched by alien ideas. Let us leave the to design houses suitable for cars is to destroy our suburbs to become retirement zones for those who rural fabric and merely fulfil suburban aspira- have opted out of real life, soft options for a tions. Convenient sight lines for cars, houses culture without a core. URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY No. 24 SEPTEMBER 1987 THE SUBURBANIZATION OF LONDON by John Welsh In my mind I know the city from the countryside, the suitable for a junction on the M25. The facade of village from the High Street, but something seems to Islington's Upper Street has been damaged to allow have gone wrong. My city should be busy with people for vehicular access while redundant land has become and dirty, innovative and sometimes sinful, my a suburban lawn. How dare such a grand building be village should be quiet and attractive, sitting on ignored until it becomes an under-used convention age old custom and foundations. Instead the reality centre, of which London has too many already, why is a blur. I drive out of a city where the concept not some great civic building such as a new museum? of strolling is barricaded behind gratings, passing Paris got the Musee d'Orsay and we got the tackiness imitations of inner-city Cotswold cottages and of 1980s tinseltown. finally hit something similar to countryside; tree- less, hedgeless and built-up. I am no longer sure It is easy to see scorn as Elitism, to see bad taste which is city or village. as a response to "the people's" wishes but a pro- fession is trained to lead. Architects, planners v 0) c -H Cn rt E •H o ,c o w •o c 05 o O My twentieth century city has become smothered by and landscape architects all seem to have fallen the symbols and ideas of an alien force. That of into a trap, responding to a suburban ideal when the suburbs. It seeks to rationalize and segregate, dealing with the city while forgetting exactly why to sterilize and make sensible all that is grand and and how it is we live there. glorious in our pompous cities. I am not seeking a Krieresque image of Italianate lifestyles but rather The city has always been the centre for innovation. attempting to reclaim London. To build pastiche, to build in quaint materials is not the action of a city architect.