The decline of Dockland
Alastair Best
Dockland is one of those intractable parts of London—like Piccadilly Circus—which seems impervious to planning. The latest, and by far the most ambitious strategy for pumping new life into this sprawling area— eight and a half times the size of the City of London—has just been unveiled. To work, the plan needs a lot of cash, and the full-hearted consent of a lot of people. The sum required is about £2,000 million spread over fifteen years or more; and the heads which need to be banged together are those of the Government, the GLC and the five boroughs who have a toehold in the Docklands Development Area: Tower Hamlets and Newham on the north bank, and Southwark, Lewisham and Greenwich on the south. Above all, the highly sceptical local communities must approve. They have already rejected a 1968 scheme devised by Tower Hamlets and the GLC, and resisted five options placed before them by the DoE and their consultants, Travers Morgan and Partners. So the new plan, itself the result of much laborious consultation, will now be exposed to their full view for three months. All the apparatus of participation is being brought into play: questionnaires, special issues of a dockland newspaper, mobile exhibitions and public meetings. At the end of that time, the first stages of the strategy should begin to creak into gear.
Docklands today is certainly not a pretty or a healthy sight. The green Michelin guide to London—which classifies places rather like restaurants—awards 'Les Docks' no stars. One can see why. The area displays all the symptoms of decline to be found in the decrepit industrial towns of the Midlands and the North. During World War Two it was the most heavily bombed civilian target. Since then, its population has drained away as part of the GLC's policy to relocate Londoners in new or expanding towns in the Midlands or East Anglia. The arrival of containerisation was a further blow. It left the full, nineteenth century panoply of wharves, warehouses and shipyards high and dry, as the Port of London Authority edged downstream to Tilbury. The closure of the St Katharine and Surrey Docks in 1968, and the impending closure later this year of most of the West India and Milwall Docks on the Isle of Dogs, has deprived the area of most of its trade and related industries. Only a few indomitable independent operators are left, like Fred Olsen Lines, who run winter cruises to the Canaries from a glittering terminal on Milwall Docks. But theirs is one of the few jewels in a seedy environment of shuttered warehouses, ghostly streets and forbiddingly high brick walls. Wherever one goes in Dockland the picture is much the same. Large, stagnant sites waiting for something to happen; and tiny pockets of poor quality housing, in which a small, ageing, but fiercely independent population of 55,000 or so makes a last stand as the rates go up and the quality of life goes visibly down. Between 1966 and 1971, for example, the population of the whole of the Borough of Tower Hamlets fell by 18 per cent, from 202,000 to 165,000 and yet—such is the council's inability to provide housing on a rapidly diminishing rateable value—there were still 7,000 families on the housing waiting list.
But the decline of Docklands is not only measured by the lack of jobs and the numbers of families in bed and breakfast accommodation; it is also reflected in the abysmally inadequate roads and public transport system, and by the almost complete lack of public open space. The Docklands Team recognises these deficiencies and expresses them in pungent terms in its report. It plans to double the present population of 55,000 by the end of the century, to build 23,000 new homes and add to the 17,000 that will remain. It plans street markets in pedestrianised precincts and local shopping centres concentrating hard on convenience goods. The paltry 90 acres of existing open space will be increased by 360 acres (excluding allotments) to bring it in line with the present standard of four acres to every thousand people. On conservation, the plan promises to 'protect wherever possible the 102 listed buildings in the area, and its attitude to all forms of design is refreshingly undogmatic—not to say realistic: nobody will be compelled to comply with some vapid central 'theme'. The key to the revival of Docklands is improved transport and increased jobs. The plan's transport programme (costed at £467 million) cannot be accused of timidity. It lists three priorities: first, a five year plan to improve bus and rail services and the roads to go with them; next, reinstatement of freight rail lines to serve an expand ing industry; the widening, or relief of the hard-pressed A13 between Canning Town and Limehouse; and the making of the River Line (not a play by Charles Morgan, but a new tube running through the heart of Dockland between an extended Fleet Line and the GLC's waterside city of Thamesmead). And finally, third, a road tunnel between Beckton and Thamesmead to link the North Circular with the A2; an extension of the East London Line to north and south, and the electrification of the North Woolwich Line. A fourth possibility is a relief route between Greenwich and Southwark, slicing across the big bend of the Isle of Dogs and easing the pressure on Tower Bridge.
Turning to employment prospects, the plan forecasts that some 76,000 mainly industrial jobs will be needed by the 1980s. There will be three special industrial zones —on the Greenwich peninsula, in the Poplar/Silvertown area and at East Beckton—covering 620 acres. The plan is to encourage existing firms to stay or redevelop, and tempt new firms in to ensure between 24,000 and 31,000 new industrial jobs. All this will cost money. Between now and the 1990s the Docklands Team calculates that the plan will require some £1,143 million of public investment and £600 million private investment, together with the £300 million already earmarked for an international trade mart about six times the size of Covent Garden Market, at the Surrey Docks. Is investment on such a scale either possible or advisable? The Docklands Team think so. But they admit that, for the plan to work, GLC spending will have to be heavily biased in favour of Docklands for the next fifteen years at least. And they also recognise that even if the GLC and the five boroughs can be persuaded to pull together, it still remains to convince the Government to take Docklands seriously. For the Government to dole out the same grants and incentives that it gives to the impoverished develoPment areas in the north would mean a major reversal of policy. Over the last twenty years firms have been encouraged to leave the over crowded and over-endowed South-East and set up with government aid in Merseyside, Scotland and the NorthEast. To attempt to claw them back again would entail a major reversal of policy. It is just another of Docklands' misfortunes that it happens to be a pocket of misery amid an area of relative affluence. Beyond all these doubts about whether or not the plan can be put into practice, lies another: the chronic British reluctance to take their cities seriously. It is a peculiar irony that having pioneered the act of planning we should be so timid and ineffectual about putting it into practice. It has taken us nearly a hundred years to 'resolve' (in other words agree to ignore) the ten and a half acres around Piccadilly Circus. How long will it take to sort out eight and a half square miles between The Tower and Beckton ?
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