what can we do to stop this?
- From: john.jsm@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:20:20 -0700 (PDT)
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23544589-details/Our+city+doesn%27t+need+this+nightmare+on+Doon+Street/article.do
The government decision to permit a 43-storey block of luxury flats to
rise behind the National Theatre is near unbelievable.
It is as if the Olympics virus has seized ministers with a frenzy, to
turn London into another Shanghai.
The tower, just short of 500 feet and located in Doon Street, will be
by far the most prominent building in the capital. It will be taller
even than the neighbouring London Eye, dominating the view east from
Waterloo Bridge, from the St James's Park lake and Horse Guards, even
from inside the courtyard of Somerset House. It is truly a
monstrosity.
The tower carries no national significance to justify such prominence.
It is not a city gate, a cathedral or town hall. It does not form some
dignified civic space. It does not even pretend to answer any need for
"social housing".
London is to be punched in the face for yet another speculative block
of luxury flats.
Despite horrified protests from English Heritage and her own planning
inspector, the Secretary of State, Hazel Blears, has lacked the guts
to stop it. I wonder if she - let alone London - has even seen a mock-
up of the building in situ.
More extraordinary is that the new Mayor, Boris Johnson, decided on a
technicality not to reverse a decision approving the tower taken by
his predecessor, Ken Livingstone. It was his first test as an emphatic
city executive and he has failed it.
The structure was one of Livingstone's so-called string of pearls,
intended to turn the Thames corridor into a canyon of slabs and
towers.
Londoners are already in for a shock when an early manifestation of
this policy, two residential blocks of similar height to the Doon
Street tower, rise upriver at Vauxhall, courtesy of a decision by
Blears' predecessor, John Prescott, and another at Chelsea.
None of these buildings meets any policy, whether from the Mayor's
office or the Government. There is no plan for the clustering of
towers and nowhere, apparently, that those in authority consider them
inappropriate.
They are being mooted for Victoria, Euston and Waterloo, largely
because that is where developers have sites vacant.
In no other world city is there no policy for high buildings, no
zoning, no plot ratio and no shred of aesthetic sensitivity over the
siting of towers. As for the architectural profession in this matter,
it is self-interest personified.
The South Bank tower appears to have passed muster because it is being
promoted by a community-based group, given the land by the old GLC for
"jobs and social housing".
That requirement has gone by the board. The only social element of the
project is a swimming pool, as if that required 43 stories of luxury
flats to make it pay.
In a farcical attempt to justify the outrage, a spokesman for the
developers said the tower would help combat "obesity, gang culture and
unemployment". How 329 luxury flats combat any of these ills is a
mystery.
This sort of Blairite language has lost all contact with reality.
Blears's claim that the tower would "benefit the local community" is
equally baffling. This is a key city centre site which already has 200
three-storey lowrent properties, a massive putative subsidy to the
lucky residents.
These houses were built at such low densities because that was "what
local people wanted". Do they now want luxury flats? The city must
take priority over a single block of residents in a matter of this
importance.
It is anyway quite wrong to use profittransfer as a tool to break any
planning rule. Would Blears let the Duke of Westminster build luxury
flats in Belgrave Square if he promises to put a playschool in the
basement? On the basis of her decision, he would be well advised to
try. This is not planning but little short of corruption.
The credit crunch appears to have brought some relief to the visual
chaos that Livingstone wanted to visit on London, the "age of shapes"
associated with the architectural peers, Lord Foster and Lord Rogers.
The Cheesegrater in Leadenhall Street and the Glass Shard in
Bermondsey appear to have fallen to commercial recession. We may yet
be spared other such gimmicks, including towers shaped like mobile
phones, toast racks and book ends.
They have fallen not just to the economic cycle but to the congestion
of urban transport and the preference of high-value financial services
for the more discreet frontages of Westminster.
Speculators consider luxury flats a more robust market. As so often in
London's history, it is the Labour Party that is proving their
greatest ally.
The argument over skyscrapers has nothing to do with land-use planning
or "building high to save the green belt".
London, not to mention the rest of the South-East, still has thousands
of acres of unused, or under-used, land that can be devoted to high-
density, lowerrise development.
What is the point of the Olympics if not to direct building eastwards?
As for skyscrapers, those who crave them can always go to their London
homebase of Croydon.
Skyscrapers are civic aesthetics in contest with private bombast. As
offices they have proved hard to let, even in boom times. Early ones,
such as Centre Point and the Euston Tower, remained empty or were
bailed out by government tenancies.
Even such icons as Canary Wharf and the Gherkin struggled for years to
find occupants. There is no "need" for these structures, which require
more costly servicing than lower-rise blocks. Even the Empire State
Building in New York is now a warren of low-rent tenants.
These structures are like yachts and racehorses, follies to capitalist
ostentation. The difference is that they are the ultimate "in your
face" gesture. They are utterly public, unavoidable, uncompromising.
Those who want them get them, while those who do not get them too.
Civilised European cities, such as Paris, Rome, Amsterdam and
Barcelona, have been confident enough not to clutter their historic
centres with visual discord. Towers are evocative of a banana
republic, desperate to boast its virility. London has no need to do
that.
High buildings are not part of the visual language of London. Its
character, now to be celebrated in the spotlight of the Olympics, has
always been a blend of stateliness and intimacy.
These qualities have no need of a thumping great peg, banged down
where the City and West End flow into each other round a bend in the
Thames.
The Shell Centre in the 1960s blighted this crucial spot. Now we are
going to repeat the mistake.
.
- Prev by Date: Re: FAO Friar Tuck
- Next by Date: FAO Friar Tuck II
- Previous by thread: Re: FAO Friar Tuck
- Next by thread: FAO Friar Tuck II
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
