20 JULY 1944, Page 7

LONDON IN 1970

By HAMILTON KERR, M.P.

HE Town and Country Planning Bill recently came before the House of Commons for its Second Reading. The Bill and the White Paper outline the short and long term plansior uture development. These two documents propose the means or lying a new face to our country ; but they cannot decide the hysical aspect of our cities 3o years from now. That will depend pon our architects and town planners, and upon public taste.

And so it is pleasant, and perhaps profitable, to exercise one's magination by asking oneself what type of towns and cities we hould like to see as we travelled through this island, say in the 'ear 1970. Let me deal principally with London, and I will say 'hat I would do if I were an arbiter of taste, although I am more an aware that an aspiring Petronius has even fewer friends than Cromwell or Mussolini.

When Byron's Don Juan was attacked by footpads on Shooters ill, just as he saw London spread below him for the first time, must have seen much the same London as Talleyrand noted um his coach window as he came to take up his post of Ambassa- or after the Revolution of 1830. It was still the London of the ighteenth century and the Regency, a London of red brick and hite stucco, of a crowded and thriving business community urrounded by residential areas laid out in parks and squares and erraces, and spreading beyond these the traveller found the rustic elights of Highgate and Hampstead, Kensington and Kew. The odustrial Revolution had not yet concealed the face of London ith a mask of smoke, and had not yet launched a tidal wave of ean, dark and hateful buildings over the present east end to gulf the market garden villages of Essex. It was a London use physical lineaments still expressed its true soul, which was hing more than the character and genius of our people. It could boast the fabulous magnificence of Rome, nor tempt the eye th the ambitious architectural perspectives of Paris or St. Peters- g. It was homely and yet a capital city, it was ordered and yet regimented, and it brought the delights of the country, the ees, the grass, the water, into the everyday life of a great corn- unity. It is this essential genius of London which, I believe, e must preserve in the coming age, and, while giving it new out- rd forms, retain its main characteristics. So let us take a brief gage into the future.

Suppose that we are flying, from New York to London some day in May, in the year 197o. The indica:or light in the passenger cabin shows that the pilot is about to land at the great terminal airport of Staines. ' Flying at soo miles an hour, the journey from New York has taken us about six hours, and the air-conditioned pressure cabin has maintained the temperature of a May morning in the icy altitudes above 30,000 feet. During the voyage we have been served with a delicious hot lunch, and entertained with a cinema film dealing with a romance among the palms of Tahiti. We have rung up a friend who is travelling for a rest cure to New

York on the Queen Mary, and have been amazed to learn that, as we pass through the calm stratosphere, the liner has been struggling

against a 6o-mile per hour gale. Now, as we touch ground, we alight at one end of a three-mile runway, so designed that, should the engines of an air-liner cut out when taking off—the moment of supreme danger—it will still be able to land in safety.

Once past the customs at the airport, we enter a helicopter for our next destination—namely, the roof of Waterloo Station. During the flight of five or six minutes we take the opportunity of examining the suburbs below us. The new schemes have begun to abolish the old ribbon development, and removed in many areas the endless rows of semi-detached houses of varying architectural styles, some half-timbered, some of brick, some of khaki rough-cast, sprawling like a rash over the countryside. Instead, we see long arterial avenues lined with grass and trees, and behind these pleasant groups of brick houses, each with its own garden behind, but arranged in crescents, blocks, or squares, much as you would find in Bath or Bloomsbury, or a New England town. And everywhere you notice trees, for one of the most effective memorials of the second world war was the planting of a tree for every person killed.

As our helicopter approaches Waterloo, the winding path of the river through London at once catches the eye. Particularly fine is the south bank, where gardens and well-designed industrial buildings have long since replaced the hideous warehouses which disgraced a former day. (For surely the present Battersea Power Station proves that industrial building can achieve a striking beauty).

Safely landed on the roof of a newly sited Waterloo Station, we take a taxi for our hotel, and travel along the great ring road which connects all the main London stations. As suggested in the present Royal Academy plan, the road is sunk, with all crossings in the form of fly-overs, and our unobstructed passage allows us to travel at 4o miles per hour, so that we can reach any point in London in under a quarter of an hour. And at intervals along the grass banks of this sunk roadway flower all the shrubs of May, lilac, laburnum, may, as well as the pink chestnut.

Now I hope that our traveller on this spring day of May, two, will be particularly impressed by the excellent design of the buildings lining the ring road. In New York the architects have enjoyed the advantage of building on a foundation of hard rock, and aided by a brilliant atmosphere producing vivid lights and shadows they have been able to achieve an almost Gothic effect with buildings of enormous height. But in London, a foundation of clay coupled with L.C.C. bye-laws has restricted height, and the architects who have attempted functional architecture have, to my mind, produced an effect as dreary and soulless as numbers of market garden boxes piled one on top of the other. In spite of a few noteworthy excep- tions such as St. James's Underground Station, the general rule has been such buildings as the Dorchester and Grosvenor House, and in Leeds that much publicised block of workers' flats—the latter always personally reminds me of Van Gogh's " Rond des prisonniers." But for us in England, eschewing height, I believe that the principle of classic architecture emphasising the horizontal line offers the best solution. It provides us with the possibility of pediments, mouldings and porticoes, and the decorative use of sculpture, whether in groups or friezes. And when the architect uses materials such as Portland stone or good brick, maintains all that is best in our building tradition.

Now let us suppose that we have arrived at our hotel. Unpacking my luggage I discover, to my extreme annoyance, that I have left my evening tie in New York, and as it is just about 6 o'clock I must buy another before the shops close. The hotel porter tells me that the nearest and most convenient shop is in Piccadilly Circus, and there I repair at full speed. I approach the shopping centre by a covered passage, specially reserved for pedestrians, sloping down under the roadway, and find myself in a large and pleasant garden some twenty feet below street level. Above you can see buses and private cars travelling at considerable speed on the roundabout, but here among the grass and plane trees and tulip beds you find nurses sitting beside their perambulators, children driving hoops or watching the sparrows splashing on the fountain's edge, and people taking tea at an open-air cafe under a large red and white awning. Shoppers continually pass by with paper parcels from the shops which face this garden below street level, which forms a natural meeting place for the neighbourhood, unmolested by street traffic. Similar shopping centres arc to be found at many of the big road intersections.

We cannot finish our visit to London without a trip to St. Paul's. Already from half-way down Fleet Street we can see its dome rising above Ludgate Hill. And after we have climbed the dome, what a view greets the eye. From the south transept a broad avenue runs down to the river, for is it not right that the Thames, whose waters reflect so many of the famous buildings of England—Windsor Castle,. Hampton Court, Lambeth, the Houses of Parliament, the Tower, and Greenwich Hospital—should as well reflect the dome of the great metropolitan church. In the near foreground smoke rises from vessels loading and unloading in the Pool of London, whilst beyond the Isle of Dogs and the great bend in the river the cranes in the West and East India Docks, and the Albert Dock, fret the sky. But the north bank of the river has radically changed its appearance since the extensive damage to Poplar, Canning Town, Silvertown, and West Ham in the blitz of the second world war. The trees of squares, gardens and open spaces everywhere appear above the roof tops and add their amenities to those of Victoria Park and Hackney Marshes. And so ends my imaginary picture of London in 1970. I can, perhaps, see some of my readers raise their eyes from the script and sigh " How much will this all cost? " The Royal Academy Plan envisages all these improvements, but I have never seen an estimate of their cost in round figures. Doubtless the expenditure could be spread over a number of years. The schemes would certainly give employment to many thousands of men for a long period, whilst the Income which France gained from the tourist traffic before the war shows that amenities provide a permanent national asset. All I can say is, that the blitz has given us a second chance in our history to rebuild the capital of the British Empire in a manner worthy of its great traditions, and as a fitting memorial to that immortal moment when a few hundred Spitfires and the imperishable soul of a people stood between the world and enslavement.