QUESTION TIME
uestiontime
Thismonth’s question:Isitpossibletoputthe‘village’ backintoLondon?
Last autumn’s London riots sent shockwaves through the country. They were a wake-up- call for the government, police and everyone involved in reducing anti-social behavior, including architects. In the wake of the riots PrimeMinister, David Cameron has been pushing his Big Society agenda and London Mayor Boris Johnson has talked at length about his desire to bring a sense of village life to the capital. The idea is to develop areas that promote a real sense of community, belonging and ownership. The 2012 Olympic
athletes village, that will be known as ‘East Village’ post-Games and will provide some 2,818 residential homes, has been shaped with such aspirations in mind. Sited in a deprived area of East London this development has wide, open social areas at the heart of each of its eleven plots, and is a far cry from the drab blocks of social housing of yesteryear. But, is it really
possible to bring a taste of village life to Londoners? If not possible, how could urban areas in the capital be improved and a sense of community encouraged?
Karl Renner PARTNER, CLARKE RENNERARCHITECTS
Though the London Underground map is a design classic, any bus traveller knows that it doesn’t accurately convey the real topography of the city.Widely separated places on the tubemap often turn out to be surprisingly close together and it’s already a truismthat London is indeed a collection of villages, eachwith its own centre and character, all jammed together.While some villages leak into one another, so you’re not quite surewhen one ends and the next begins, there are sometimes little pockets of housingwhich don’t seemto belong anywhere. But London’s populations are
somuchmore transient and multi-cultural than a ‘real’ village would be, and it’s difficult to build local loyalties. Boris is clearly promoting the
urban village as part of that slightly desperately-held governmental hope that buying into our locality willmake it somehowself-policing and prevent riots.While it’s the usual biggies of appropriate funding,worthwhile jobs and proper education that are the primary keys to social cohesion, there are useful things thatmight be implemented. Localmarkets and farmers’
produce stalls are nowfairlywell- established, though the prices are generally eye-watering. But Todmorden, in Yorkshire, has evolved a policy of growing vegetables in verges, graveyards and left-over spaces. This is rather cutely known as ‘Incredible-edible’ and people are encouraged to pick what veg they need as they pass the kale-patch. It’s easy to see how this couldwork in London,
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particularly if each locality had its own google-groupwebsite / noticeboardwhich could also be used as a pinboard for events, markets, goods exchange and crime-reporting. Perhaps the greatest social
upliftmight come fromdraconian litter-collection (as litter disheartens an area) and rigorous rubbish-recycling. It’s daft that councils all have different policies aboutwhat can and can’t be recycled, and these should be standardised forthwith. Then there should be properly-managed collection and a high degree of compost production for local use; and paper and cardboard should be transformed into home insulation. Housing, too, is paramount.
That favourite, ‘public participation’, rarely generates any original thinking, ‘triumphs’ seeming to centre around insisting on brickwork. But there are perhapsways of, say, getting people to help in the actual building or insulating of their own homes and earn ‘points’ for rental or purchase discount.Other policiesmight include blurring planning and tax regimes between housing, employment and retail in order to encourage inhabitants to work and sell fromhome, and to make it easier to convert empty shops into live/work units.
James Carr DESIGNPARTNER, BARTONWILLMORE
For developers, architects and planners the term‘village’ has long been used to drawon a feeling of a sense of place and belonging and associate itwith new development, but is it really possible to create a true village
that ismore than just a name in one of theworld’s greatest cities? The definition of a village is a
group of houseswith a church but without amarket.However, in Britainwe imbue this definition with amuch stronger emotional, and largely unwritten definition of what a village is. Formany it is often associatedwith being of a time; it has a history and a particular feeling long remembered. But it is also about streets onwhich one feels safe, where you knowand speak to your neighbours;where car drivers are friendly and courteous,where children can run and playwithout the risk of injury or abuse.Where all your grocery needs are provided for by small shopswith ever smiling owners. The villagemay have grown and shrunk over the years, but its history can be seen in the changingmaterials and
textures.And this it seems is wherewe allmightwant to live. In recent timesmanymarketing
hours, nevermind design hours, have been spent persuading people that they do or can live in such a place, be it Bloomsbury, Marylebone or Blackheath. These places are all very different spatially and yet they all aspire to that sense of belonging and identity. Is it possible therefore to drawoutwhat canmake these villages, true villages in every sense of the label? Three key themesmay go some
way tomaking the so-called London villages feel like the villages of old. JanGehl showed theway in a recent lecture at RIBA.He talked of current projects inAustralia,Mexico and USA where giving streets back to people hadmade significant and positive changes to theway they treated and came to own those streets, and ultimately how they
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