Business Communities
Can London become a sustainable community?
By Alan Moore
Apparently David Cameron sees Letchworth as a model community. And, our Prime Minister says he wants to apply the principles of garden cities throughout the UK. I was born in Letchworth in 1964 and my parents moved there from London in 1959/60 and still live there. There is no doubt that Letchworth was inspirational in its conception and design. Indeed Ebenezer Howard the Quaker who conceived of this sustainable community, green and greenbelted, economically vibrant and teetotal gave a significant gift of what a sustainable community might look like in 1903. Its impact upon the world was to inspire the garden suburbs of Hampstead and Brentham, Welwyn Garden City and garden village suburbia in New Jersey and elsewhere in the US. And yet is it not extraordinary that we still look to 1903 as our moment of inspiration.
Especially when Guardian journalist Peter Heatherington writes, Letchworth clearly offers a different challenge. While its residential properties, half of which are social housing and affordable homes often in the same street as more expensive houses, are physically in good shape, the town’s shopping centre and businesses have seen better days.
Today the town centre has been hollowed out.
This
happened years ago to begin with, the core of the town centre demolished to make way for the inevitable albeit small shopping mall, and today a monstrous Morrison’s supermarket sits whale like in the town centre sucking what little commercial air there is out of the small retailers – it’s
45 entrepreneurcountry
like a supermarket come DeathStar but on a smaller scale. If you look at the original design of the town centre you will see much of its charm and true character has been stripped from it. Only residual clues are left.
The indoor market that has existed since I was a boy is closing up as the rents have been pushed so high it is no longer commercially sustainable. We can now all go to Argos instead. David’s the Bookstore, also a stalwart of the town will eventually close, as the impact of the supermarket selling books, CD/s postcards etc has its inevitable impact. The Post Office, a beautiful and remarkable building has been shut down. There is NO post office in the town centre! Frankly I wonder what the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation has been doing? The large open space that sits just up the way from the Library had all its magnificent trees cut down and modernised several years ago. The Spirella building with the first ever sprung ballroom in the UK has been fully restored and renovated, so thumbs up for that. And the local museum is slated for closure. Two secondary schools have been shut down, The Norton School which my good friend’s father was a successful
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