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FEW parts of London can be more hateful than Canary Wharf. You've heard of the Stepford wife; this is a Stepford wharf, where nothing has been allowed to develop organically, where every restaurant and bar is a marketing person's concept outlet and where the sanitised streets are patrolled by private security men, scolding you for locking your bike to a lamp-post.
In a desperate, and from the outset futile, effort to out-wharf the Wharf, the City has gone the same way, spending the past decade and a half tearing up its historic buildings and streetscape for ever-larger "floorplates" and show-off towers.
What redeems both places is the bustle of people, for 60 hours of the week at least. But as Brian Sullivan, chief executive of the financial headhunter CTPartners, predicts a "seismic shift in the population of banking ... the financial equivalent of World War II", with 350,000 finance jobs lost worldwide in the next six months alone, it is time to think about what happens when that bustle slows or stops.
Conservationists like John Betjeman, the poet, were mocked as naive when they attacked the destruction of London's historic heart by the financial services industry. Finance gave us 20 good years but poetry lasts longer than money for a reason. We can now see that it was the apostles of steel-and-glass grandiosity who were the naive ones, with their simple faith in the eternal growth of the dividend and their reckless acquiescence in putting so many of London's eggs in one basket.
Talk of the "desertification" of the City and Canary Wharf, with their streets like scenes from the new BBC drama Survivors, is overdone. The majority of City workers will (we hope) keep their jobs, and finance will remain an important part of our economy. But the banking crisis renders economically urgent what was already humanly necessary: to diversify these one-industry company towns, and give them a more mixed, economically sustainable life.
In this, unlike in finance, the City could score against the Wharf. Its heritage and human qualities have not yet been totally destroyed. What we know from Britain's urban regeneration successes and failures is that demolition, as in the 1960s, does not work. From City of Culture Glasgow to the Albert Dock in Liverpool, from revived Manchester to our own Tate Modern, success requires the careful rejuvenation of the old alongside a judicious amount of the new. In places like Dalston and Docklands, "regeneration" has become a dirty word because it has forgotten this.
The old City had people living in it. It did not empty out at night, or at the weekends. That is what we need. Let us convert some of the increasing number of vacant office buildings into socially-mixed housing. Let us open clubs and restaurants to stimulate nightlife. Let us cherish the heritage features which attract creative industries and tourists.
There is already one part of the City which meets most of these criteria: Smithfield, whose vibrancy does not depend on bankers' expenses. With typical stupidity, the City Corporation approved a monstrous plan to demolish part of Smithfield Market for yet another dinosaur corporate megablock. Luckily, the scheme was vetoed by the Government. And last week, it was formally scrapped by the developer. There are now signs of a new approach, with talk of preservation rather than destruction.
London's true wealth, its greatest asset in a shaky world, rests not in the flashy temples of bombed-out bankers but in its matchlessly rich culture and urban fabric. What happens to Smithfield will be an important test of whether our rulers understand this.
Paddick's naked ambition
DOWN on I'm a Celebrity, Brian Paddick is clearly keen to avoid the fate which overtook him in the mayoral election — being, ahem, squeezed between more charismatic and popular candidates. But even baring his bottom for the viewers couldn't prevent the jungle capers losing out in the ratings to the Antiques Roadshow. Older than Esther Rantzen, more heavily-varnished than Robert Kilroy-Silk, more wooden even than Mr Paddick: no wonder the antiques have the edge.
Greenwich is not a done deal
THE sole tactic of those wishing to keep the Olympic equestrianism in Greenwich Park owes much to that of a five-year-old child: sticking their fingers in their ears and announcing ever more frequently, even as opposition swells, that the park is a “done deal”. They were at it again last week: a pronouncement by a group of Olympic bureaucrats that the park had been “confirmed” was presented, for about the fifth time, as a considered verdict, when we in fact know that none of the salient issues about costs and environmental damage have been adequately considered at all. It's not a “done deal”, it's a “Dome deal”, another Greenwich-related embarrassment just waiting to come up and clout us.
Reader views (9)
Huw assumes that socially mixed housing will lead to more crime- given the amount of the public's money lost in the city and the amount of profiteering by the overpaid financiers it is the less wealthy who may have to watch their belongings...
- Simon, Hackney London, 26/11/2008 16:28
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I don't think the City needs any more bars for people to drink themselves until they vomit in the street. Keep the character and keep a balance of offices, bars etc. I am bored with loud music and unpleasant people thronging the streets. This is going back to the days when people did live in the City. They moved out as had more wealth. I like the nfact that the City is quiet at certain times. Noise pollution is overlooked.
- Mary, Hornchurch, Essex, 26/11/2008 12:47
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I agree with much of what Andrew Gilligan says. The bit about "socially mixed housing" is very mistaken though - time and again it has been shown that people don't want to live in a socially mixed place in the long run, they want to live among others like them. Socially mixed housing in the City? Great, so now we have to watch our belongings there as well as in the rest of London! No thank you...
- Huw Morgan, London, UK, 25/11/2008 18:09
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The Medieval City of London griffin heads were bought by the owners of a country mansion in Northumberland from an architectural salvage yard.
- Lucia, greenwich, 25/11/2008 15:11
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We should try to bring the ancient heads of griffins which were removed from the City gates back to London.They are in the grounds of some grand house in the countryside. "Nobody wanted them and we have modern replacements" was the answer I got from the City of London relevant offices.
Ask the "Bargain Hunt" producers where these ancient griffin heads are. They know it. Bring them back, they are ours. You can't "replace" history. The "Old City Spaces" will welcome them back.
I have had enough of so much metal, glass and plastic everywhere!
- Lucia, greenwich, 25/11/2008 14:54
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Gilligan exhibits that peculiar English aversion to new buildings and skyscrapers that i've never fully understood since moving here. There's really nothing wrong with Canary Wharf except that it got too successful during the boom and getting in and out on the Jubilee line is vile and overcrowded. It's a place to work, dude! Do you even go up those office towers and understand the awe of the vistas? The shopping malls underneath are also a great way to get a lot of personal errands done. I would prefer working there to my depressing, badly retailed slice of the City were it not for the commute being easier here. Vast swathes of London remain medieval or 19th century on a human scale- does it make sense to try to recreate an ersatz version of that kind of thing in new areas? Smithfield is a neat building and Charterhouse Square is kind of cool but spare me the crowds of young bridge and tunnel clubbers who hit that strip of bars on the north side. I lived in a temporary flat on Smithfield when I moved here and it sucked - between the noise of the clubbers, there was also the 5am influx of the working meat market people and their trucks and forklifts. It's hardly Marylebone or Borough Market or one of the other great places to live in the core.
- Keith C, london, uk, 25/11/2008 11:58
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Greenwich Park, as Dickens put it, is one of the lungs of London. The idea of it being kidnapped by blindfolded Olympic foot soldiers, snatched like a park from a baby, in other words, or several hundred babies, is quelled only by the thought we have such a campaigning journalist as Andrew Gilligan in our 'hood sharing the local consternation. Will we ever wake up as a people except in our bank statements?
- Badenoch, SE3, 24/11/2008 20:57
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Err Andrew, I agree with you about the big floor-plate ground scrapers, however, every single tower planned in the city currently has significant public space enhancements. In fact many of them have totally permeable ground floors with trees and art, whilst others will even include free public sky gardens. The Broadgate tower has just this past week opened a huge new public thoroughfare over the tracks of Liverpool Street station.
Shouldn't you be supporting these?
- Liam Houghton, Westminster, London, 24/11/2008 17:28
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The Greenwich Park "deal" is surrounded by a bubble of PR and a shroud of secrecy - either because LOGOC and the ODA still don't know what they are doing yet or their plans are more horrific and disruptive than we may suppose.
- S. Mcneil, Greenwich, London, 24/11/2008 16:57
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