Studies in Urban Order: Urban horror

Showing posts with label Urban horror. Show all posts

Sunday, 5 June 2016

A good city has industry: email from Mark Brearley to a man called Vincent, on Twitter

P Wilkinson Containers / William Say & Co, Verney Road, Bermondsey. Producing metal and plastic containers in London since 1930. They are now threatened by Southwark Council and the GLA’s plans for big scale housing development in the area.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the road a residential tower is already rising, part of a development that makes no attempt to accommodate the again burgeoning industrial economy clustered around the Old Kent Road.

Hello Vincent.

Your Twitter comment about the Old Kent Road plans, to replace an extensive mixed economy with housing dominated development, have been pointed out to me. You wrote that people need homes not the industry that is there. You launched you views in the open, and so I have taken the liberty of widely sharing my observations in response.

I am upset by your comments and I do not understand the inference that this has to be an either / or choice. Why can’t we have both? London would be a sad place if it could no longer welcome a diverse economic and civic life. Surely we don’t want our city beyond the centre to become a vast housing estate, a steroided suburb, to be unable to house the full range of activity that its people make happen, to suffocate vitality. Yes, London needs much more housing, but it also must address a wider accommodation crisis. Glib assertions that swathes of commercial activity are not needed do not help.

My business, Kaymet, has been producing anodised aluminium trays and trolleys in the area since 1947. We are proud to be a growing company that exports to 30 countries, and to be one of the hundreds of thriving industrial businesses in the area. We do not want to be pushed aside, we have no interest in leaving our city.

I do not believe it is right, or necessary, to expel all those vehicle repair businesses, the rich diversity of builders merchants, courier facilities, hirers, storers, shippers, printers and caterers. In fact people do need the aluminium and plastic container makers, the shim producers, the metal polishers and finishers, the hydraulic equipment refurbishers, the waste handlers, the powder-coaters, art restorers and steel fabricators, the set and prop, festive decoration and ceremonial hat manufacturers, the stone carvers, terrazzo producers, bakers, potters, painters and sculptors, the leatherworkers, jewellers, garment and furniture producers, the operators of ice cream vans, and more. All this is there, around the Old Kent Road, productive, dynamic, providing thousands of jobs. All this is what you claim people do not need. You are wrong.

I am sure you would not be happy if, following a process that you had no opportunity to influence, without there having been any coherent public discussion, without any options having been made visible, plans were laid out for your nice bakery to be brushed aside, to be replaced by residential focused developments. You would not like it if a councillor talked casually of expropriation, and even those running other businesses not far away started applauding, saying that you are not needed. If people started to point out that perfectly good baked items can be produced in efficient factories elsewhere, outside London, and that small scale bakers' claims to be valid are as nothing compared to the need for housing, that you and your workers can all find jobs in offices or similar, you would not be pleased, you would perhaps feel insulted. Well, you should be able to understand why we are unhappy, and why your comment is so hurtful.

Please Vincent, think again, join us in shouting out that a good city has industry, as part of its rich mix. Help us to argue that we can shape the Old Kent Road area to embrace a fully diverse economy, that this can be compatible with large scale development of housing, that bold change could seize the widest range of opportunities, could be done nimbly, inventively, inclusively. We do not need to expel, to throw away what we have, that would be foolish.

Mark

Kaymet

Wednesday, 27 April 2016

It will be interesting to see what variant of steroided suburb Berkeley are cooking up. I’ll bet it makes no place for industry, nor for most of the rest of the vibrant (and fast growing) existing economic and civic life of Peckham.

Berkeley's proposals for the Old Kent Road area. The exhibitions took place on Wednesday 20 April from 2pm to 8pm at the Unwin and Friary Estate Tenants’ and Residents’ Hall, Frensham Street, Off Peckham Park Road SE15 and Thursday 21 April from 2pm to 8pm at the Links Community Centre, 353 Rotherhithe New Road, SE16 3HF.

Some words from Mark Brearley, owner of Kaymet (tray factory) and Professor of Spatial Planning and Urban Design at London Metropolitan University:

My business, and the neighbouring businesses, just meters away from Berkeley’s land, have not received emails nor leaflets, even though I get the impression that Southwark Council have shared contacts with Berkeley. I guess they don’t count the economy as community.

Regardless of what Berkeley are cooking up, their approach makes a mockery of the planning system, shows their contempt for it, their un-interest in democratic process and civil rights. They are openly sharing their ideas for a residential led development on protected industrial land, running way ahead of the local planning authority’s process to decide on what type of land-use / development scenario will be appropriate for the area in future. That process has so far not even managed to set out issues and options, nor to consult on and engage in a dialogue about them. There have been no opportunities to make comments nor lodge representations about possible changes to planning policy that are likely to have brutal consequences for businesses in the area. Yet we hear rumours that Berkeley want to put in a planning application before Christmas. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Meanwhile the local planning authority are conspicuously failing to embrace an understanding of the economic dynamic of their area. They seem to have no intention of meeting the requirement placed on them by government to ensure that the accommodation needs of the economy in their area are properly planned for. Development rights were expropriated by central government in 1947 (the same year my business started in this part of London) and then they were handed over to local authorities. Southwark Council seems to have forgotten that when expropriated assets were handed to them they came with a responsibility to manage them fairly and without prejudice, indeed that was the very reason why they were expropriated. Now they seem content to disregard the interests of business communities who have little voice and do not get to vote, who are taxed but not represented. The Council seem to think it's fine also to parade the possibility of property expropriation as a way to push through the suburb building plans that they clearly are already wedded to. Businesses have not been kept informed about the process that is ongoing, indeed most (such as mine) have so far received no communication on the matter. Yet the Council state that they will tell us all what their preferred option for the future of the Old Kent Road is in just a few days time! They too should be ashamed of themselves, and their friends in City Hall.

None of this is good.

I urge you all to speak up for a more diverse and accommodating Old Kent Road.

Mark

Kaymet

The Godiva chocolate factory, loading on the street alongside Simonis metro station, Koekelberg, in the city of miracle mix, Brussels.

Saturday, 19 December 2015

Terrifying loss of accommodation from industrial areas in London

[adapted from an email chain from Professor Mark Brearley]

There is now substantial loss of accommodation ongoing from industrial areas in London, due to the permitted development liberalisation. Industrial areas are not immune to this strip-out.

The below are excerpts from The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015:

B1 offices

Class O – offices to dwellinghouses
Permitted development
O. Development consisting of a change of use of a building and any land within its curtilage from a use falling within Class B1(a) (offices) of the Schedule to the Use Classes Order, to a use falling within Class C3 (dwellinghouses) of that Schedule.

B8 storage

Permitted development P. Development consisting of a change of use of a building and any land within its curtilage from a use falling within Class B8 (storage or distribution centre) of the Schedule to the Use Classes Order to a use falling within Class C3 (dwellinghouses) of that Schedule.

Most industrial buildings can be presented as B1(a) or B8 if an owner needs to (in order to, for example, get away with conversion to residential). I assume that very few industrial buildings in a city like London will have clear planning status, pinning them a particular one of those anyway-semi-meaningless B use classes. So it all blurs around, and the result is that most industrial accommodation, everywhere, is now triply at risk. At risk from Local Plans that fail to designate for policy protection, at risk from ad-hoc planning decisions that disregard policy, at risk from permitted development that goes around planning.

The image is of is an example, a building currently being converted to residential in one of the Old Kent Road industrial areas, I believe via permitted development. The same is happening in the nearby Parkhouse Street industrial area, against what even the gung-ho local planners would have allowed through planning application. The same is happening all over town, such as in the Lower Sydenham industrial area where a building, with a very unfortunate relationship to assorted fairly rough industrial uses such as a concrete batching plant, is turning residential.

Grim.

We are Londoners, we don’t want a suburbanised city.

Hackbridge industry is now nearly all evicted and the accommodation demolished. More housing estates coming soon. When Mark Brearley was at the GLA he tried valiantly to argue for a more subtle and mixed future, a more urban future, but to no avail... here's what's happening now:

Tuesday, 1 December 2015

Making in London: the Old Kent Road and Ice Cream, by Mark Brearley

On 1st August this year my colleague Mark Brearley went for a walk around the Old Kent Road with his daughter.

They spoke to Ossie the ice-cream guy in 8 Sandgate Street, the place they had looked at a few months earlier and considered buying as a new home for Kaymet (their tray factory), off the Old Kent Road. Ossie's family have 55 ice cream vans based in Bermondsey, Peckham (Mani’s by the car wash place http://www.manicaterers.co.uk) and Camberwell. On Sandgate Street he has raised the roof and fixed the building up well, with a high mezzanine and so on. He does vans for Glastonbury and other events, and liveried up ones for the London Eye and several such places. They have 30-something Kelly's of Cornwall branded vans - like a franchise. He said they need to be around there because most of their business is in Central London. He said the Southwark planners told him that the area would all become housing in future, and he worries that his and all the businesses will all be pushed out to Kent.

There are also lots of caterers / food preparers in the area of the Old Kent Road, which is currently being primed for 'regeneration', for example there is one behind the Kaymet factory, in the Glengall Business Centre (http://www.berkeleycatering.co.uk/index.php).

Here’s an extract from Mark's list of London manufacturers, covering the Old Kent Road, plus some:

Sadly the old Kaymet Sylvan Grove factory was demolished last week. To make way for, you guessed it, a block of flats!

Piece by piece our city sub-urbanises. We all need to shout out stop!

Thursday, 18 September 2014

Cycling in London

A few weeks ago a young man was cycling across London Bridge, in several busy lanes of traffic. He was turning right, so was riding in the far right lane. He clipped the central reservation, lost control of his bicycle, fell into the path of an oncoming car and died instantly. His name was Chris Tandy and he was only 28 years old.

Typical of most people who cycle in London, he was a young professional who lived in Hackney, he cycled regularly and had no doubt experienced lots of 'near-misses' before in his life as a cyclist. But I happen to know that he was a careful, risk-averse person who always wore a helmet, followed the rules of the road and was just very, very unlucky on this one occasion. But you only have to be very, very unlucky once and suddenly there's 200 people in your school chapel sobbing at the futility of your disappearance. And that's what happened to Chris.


Method of travel to work: bicycle. Red indicates greater density of respondents.	Source: http://datashine.org.uk

Every day I cycle to work along the Whitechapel Road and this week I have seen two cyclists almost get squashed by lorries. In both instances the HGVs couldn't see the cyclists as they pulled in, or turned left with scant warning. No-one was really in the wrong, and in both incidents nothing serious happened. But cyclists are totally vulnerable, we have nothing to protect us from a lorry wheel so the idea that we share space with huge, deadly vehicles with very poor visibility, especially at the low level a cyclist occupies, it completely ludicrous.

Most people are put off cycling in London because they are afraid of death or injury, or just find the whole experience deeply stressful. If it wasn't for the extreme convenience of cycling, those factors would put me off too. It doesn't have to be that way, some very simple design ideas and changes to interchanges would make all the difference. Different solutions would be appropriate indifferent circumstances, but the time has come to stop scapegoating cyclists.

For example, every morning I have to turn right at a huge junction. This involves me sitting in the centre of the junction, a vulnerable unprotected human being, while lorries and buses squeeze past on either side, then racing to turn right ahead of a stream of impatient traffic. A simple solution would be for bicycles to 'proceed with cauthion' and turn at major junctions while pedestrians are crossing. On the very odd occasion when a cyclist proceeded with insufficient caution and bumped into a pedestrian, the worst that would happen would be some injured pride, and perhaps a bruise or two. But death or life changing injuries would not be on the agenda.Similarly Chris Tandy should have been in a dedicated bike lane, separated physically from motorised vehicles. The pavement on London Bridge is very wide, there could easily be a bike lane there.

Bicycles need to be prioritised on London's roads, so we can move forward as a green, cycling city... the oil won't last forever, it's obvious that the car is unsustainable and we should be world-leading in finding better ways to move about in urban areas.

I am writing this blog entry because I am angry that a young man who I knew and liked has died for absolutely no reason, leaving behind a tragic scene of devastated friends, parents and fiancee. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but if we had decent cycling infrastructure in London, there wouldn't have been wrong time, because he wouldn't have been in the wrong place. Come on people, this needs to be fixed.

Link to the Evening Standard article [tip: don't read the comments]

A nice, thoughtful comment from <http://road.cc/content/news/126000-tributes-paid-cyclist-killed-london-bridge>

Not sure where he was. ES article says 'after getting off a train at London Bridge' which suggests he would have been heading North.
However, the photo on their story shows Police vehicles here (google street view link) which is the Southbound carriageway. http://goo.gl/933nJX
Regardless - no separate, safe, cycle facilities in either direction.
Parked cars allowed on southbound carraigeway outside rush hour so heading South you are often push near to central reservation by buses .
If he was heading north (but fell into southbound carriageway at that point) it would seem highly likely he was following cyclecraft, behaving like a car, and taking the lane in order to go straight ahead. Perhaps a fast close pass from behind by a vehicle pushing through angry at him being 'in the middle of the road' causing him to lose control? Suspect the car in question wouldn't even have stopped.
Again saw cars travelling at well in excess of 50mph on a 30mph residential street in South London today (speed sign stops reading at 45). It's a road that's meant to be a backstreet cycle route, part of LCN 25. Exactly what we're going to get as 'Quietways'

Wednesday, 10 April 2013

Plan Zheroes Stop Food Waste

http://www.communitymaps.org.uk/version6/includes/MiniSite.php?minisitename=Plan%20Zheroes%20Stop%20Food%20Waste&minisite_group=plan%20zheroes

Fascinating!

Saturday, 16 March 2013

Babies and the City

So, I have not blogged for nearly a year.

That's not what blogging is supposed to be about, it's meant to be regular. Sorry...

...but I have a good excuse.

I've been having a baby (my baby is called Tomas Clossick O'Sullivan and was born on 29th July 2012). Look at him. Isn't he lovely.

However, I am now returned to the serious matter of studying London (mornings only, the afternoons are taken up with smearing food about the place and banging objects into other objects). But before I start blogging about my research, I have some thoughts on London and babies. I have had an enjoyable maternity leave and it has been an eye-opener, showing me a whole underworld (or parallel world) of parents who occupy the same city as the rest of us, yet are excluded from much of what used to comprise 'adulthood'.

Babies are rarely seen in the cinema, in restaurants, galleries and so forth. This has become apparent as we have lugged our baby around to all of the above (he is a quiet little soul, and distinctly portable), and noted the lack of other parents and their children. At the same time, there is a vast array of parent and child specific social events (I speak from a very white, very middle-class vantage point here) - baby swimming, yoga, NCT friends' meetings in cafes or Pizza Express, where (mostly) women block the place up with multi-coloured baby gear and earnestly discuss the best weaning options. The nature of the parallel baby world is highly individualistic. One woman, one baby, go about their day together. Woman does the domestic work of baby-feeding, cleaning, cooking etc. and baby is entertained at some baby event or other. After a year or so of this toil, she gratefully staggers back to work to get some social contact and reestablish herself in the adult world.

The loss of extended family as people move away (particularly prevalent in London) means that (mostly) women are left entirely alone in this bizarre parallel world, and as a result they cling desperately together trying to find kindred spirits and another adult to communicate with who might have some modicum of interest in their offspring.

I am not remotely surprised that post-natal depression is so prevalent, as there is something deeply unsatisfying about a life in which the highlight of the day (indeed, the only event of the day) is a baby class where a group of maniacally grinning women sing mindless songs together while the babies look bemused, followed by a 'stay and play', where each mother-baby pair plays with colourful objects and the mothers try and sneak in a bit of adult chat in between.

For parents the psychological effect of this apartheid are immense. To move from one arena (the baby-free) to the other (baby-filled) is discombobulating and strange, it shakes the base of your self identity. Suddenly your social life with child-free friends is gone, because children cannot be taken out at night to pubs, restaurants etc. Because of a lack of exposure to children on a daily basis, the child-free are afraid of, or at best disinterested, in children. This separation of worlds is self-reinforcing (if you only associate the presence of children with noise and annoyance, rather than fun and interest, you will reject the idea that they might be included in the adult world).

Almost everything child-specific seems designed to prevent them from becoming quickly and easily socialised, which is odd, because presumably the ultimate goal of all children is to become a functioning adult. For example, a sizable majority of restaurants and cafes do not have high chairs (or just unwelcoming) so parents congregate in a few places which are accessible to pushchairs, which quickly become zoos of squealing and running while frazzled women try and drink coffee together. Instead of enjoying the business of sociable eating together with adult companions (as seen in Italy and other southern European places where parents are not pariahs), children are placated with colouring pencils and boxes of toys. What does that teach about the value and pleasure of sharing food?

So what sort of measures do I suggest could be taken to ameliorate this unpleasant situation?

One possible solution would be for people to work together with children in tow. For example, by forming housework and cooking co-operatives where baby-carers come together to achieve things (so, everyone gets together at one person's house and does the cleaning, while one or two people look after the kids). Similarly, the total exclusion of children from all working environments seems unnecessary. It wouldn't take massive imagination (with changes to break structures and working hours) to enable people to take their babies to work in a sling where possible (eg. working in a supermarket).

It is sad that such a blessing as having children is SUCH an imposition on ordinary adult life in our society, but it needn't be that way... we just need clever, creative solutions.

Thursday, 13 October 2011

What is 'Depth'?

The title of my thesis is one of many things about my work which I do not yet fully understand.

It is 'The Depth Structure of a London High Street: A Study in Urban Order'. On Tuesday I was required to give a four-minute presentation of my research project, and I realised that I have not yet defined the word 'depth', although I have a good sense of what it means, I need to be able to explain it and define it, so I am not sloppy in my writing and thinking. It is an essential term when one is trying to be an urbanist (Google definition of 'urbanist' is: An advocate of, or expert in city planning):

There are so many ways in which the definitions of 'depth' below are apt. They capture the essence of what depth means when used in reference to the city, but none of them refer to the city, or to any of the structures which comprise urbanity [‘the quality or state of being urban’, but where ‘urban’ is used as Lefevbre uses it in The Urban Revolution, ie. all of society is now urban, it all exists with reference to the city and city-based global economies, even if it does not actually exist within the spatial bounds of a particular city].

Dictionary.com defines depth like this:

noun

a dimension taken through an object or body of material,usually downward from an upper surface, horizontallyinward from an outer surface, or from top to bottom ofsomething regarded as one of several layers.

the quality of being deep; deepness.

complexity or obscurity, as of a subject: a question of great depth.

gravity; seriousness.

emotional profundity: the depth of someone's feelings.

intensity, as of silence, color, etc.

lowness of tonal pitch: the depth of a voice.

the amount of knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, insight, feeling, etc., present in a person's mind or evident either insome product of the mind, as a learned paper, argument,work of art, etc., or in the person's behavior.

a high degree of such knowledge, insight, etc.

10.

Often, depths. a deep part or place: from the depths of the ocean.

11.

an unfathomable space; abyss: the depth of time.

12.

Sometimes, depths. the farthest, innermost, or extremepart or state: the depth of space; the depths of the forest;the depths of despair.

13.

Usually, depths. a low intellectual or moral condition: Howcould he sink to such depths?

14.

the part of greatest intensity, as of night or winter.

15.

Sports . the strength of a team in terms of the number andquality of its substitute players: With no depth in the infield, an injury to any of the regulars would be costly.

At its simplest level (and by definition, depth has many levels), it is a dimension taken through a city or body of buildings, from one point to another either vertically or horizontally. This dimension is physical, a measurement of things which exist in the world and can be touched and seen. So, for example, the depth of the block adjacent to the high street is its dimension from front to back, and its layered composition, such as: shop front; rear of shop; yard; garden, kitchen, living room, front garden, street.

The dictionary definition of ‘depth’ includes references to seriousness; emotional profundity and intensity, (as of silence, colour, etc.): eg. the depth of someone’s feelings, and to the lowness of a voice. Thus, the word depth is a metaphor; it was born of a physical experience in the world (a dimension through space, an object or a body of objects). But it can also be used to represent ideas that also have this quality. So, the structures that comprise urbanity have a ‘depth’, which refers to their complexity and obscurity, their many layers and to their interconnectedness in all dimensions. These structures are manifold, just a few examples are: economy, society, legislation and government.

However, depth also refers to the unknown and the unknowable, usually as ‘depths’ eg. the depths of the ocean, or to an unfathomable space or abyss, eg. the depths of time. So, by definition, the depth structure of the city is, to some extent, always unknowable. It is impossible to fully know everything about the economy, society, legislation etc. in the medium of words, or in one human mind, or in a diagram or image or essay. This knowledge as a whole exists only in situ, ie. The depth structure of the city IS the city itself. So the praxis of the city, and an interpretation of this, is the way to access depth.

The depths are also the farthest, innermost or extreme part or state, eg. the depths of the forest; the depths of despair. Certainly not unheard of would be a phrase such as the depths of the slum, or the depths of the ghetto, usually referring to a tangle of city and people where undesirable and frightening things take place (which also picks up the definition of ‘depths’ as a low intellectual or moral condition). This relates back to the unknowable nature of depth, and the depths of the city would be a place where there are layers and layers of physical and non-physical structures all collide and mesh and mutually change and affect one another in a complicated multi-dimensional way.

Finally, depth also refers to the amount of knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, insight, feeling etc. present in a person’s mind or evident in some product of the mind, such as an essay or artwork, or the city itself, the product of collective minds. There is knowledge, insight and wisdom required to try and comprehend the depths of the city, and at the same time knowledge, wisdom and insight have created it, and continue to create it. It is also a jointly imagined reality that everyone who moves through it participates in – the complex social, economic, historical rules, values, and systems which do not have a physical shape are a product of the collective.