IMPROVING LONDON ?
By JULIAN HUXLEY
NE 9f The Spectator's editorial notes last week expressed warm
general approval of the Royal Academy Committee's plans for the reconstruction of London, as a generous scheme resting on conceptions that are simple and necessary, and also great. Second thoughts, perhaps, modify such first impressions. We can pay a genuine tribute to the scheme: it is on the grand scale, it represents is great deal of sincere thought, it is often extremely ingenious, and it is focussing and bringing to a head the public interest in the future of their city. But we may still ask whether the scheme really satisfies the underlying conceptions? And whether these concep- tions are really so necessary?
The plan, based as it is on the Bressey-Lutyens report of 1937, has two distinct components—a Bressey component and a Lutyens component. The Bressey component is the skeleton of the whole. It is essentially a plan for securing better communications for central London, based on the " backbone " of a circular ring-road, on which all the main-line termini are to abut. The Lutyens com- . ponent is essentially architectural. It seeks to embellish the facades of the streets, the piazzas and roundabout at their intersections. It also seeks to create " vistas " (the Committee's own term) and pro- cessional ways, and to give special dignity to a few selected sites, such as St. Paul's and the Tower. The result, it must be confessed, is a central London out of Baron Haussmann by New Delhi.
If today we were starting to plan a city from scratch, we should .assuredly not think primarily in nineteenth-century terms, of blocks of buildings intersected everywhere by streets for vehicles, so that the claims of quick traffic are confused with those of residence, shopping or industry ; but of a division of functions, in which the truly arterial traffic-ways are not permitted to have buildings along their frontages, and the residential areas are saddled with the mini- mum of traffic and the maximum of safe free space to, be enjoyed. Gallant attempts to realise this have been made here and there in the Royal Academy plan—by elevated traffic arteries without house frontages, by the blocking of certain streets to traffic and their setting aside for shopping or recreation, and so on. And this is probably as far as one can go at the moment in the replanning of the skeleton of an existing metropolis ; fir the most part one must be 'content with Haussmannism.
But even if one accepts these limitations, the Bressey scheme invites certain criticisms. Is it, for instance, the right policy to restrict the main line railway termini to the ring-road, in some cases moving them outwards? Would it not be better, if expense really is no object, to adopt the New York system of insisting that all trains within the central area shall switch over to electric locomotives and go underground, and then go one better than New York by having a single central interchange and through station. This last might be restricted to a certain proportion of passenger trains only, the existing stations on the ring handling the rest ; but even so in the long run it would surely pay in convenience and speedy flow of traffic.
There remains the Lutyens component. Though this bulks larger in the public mind because it appeals directly to the visual imagina- tion, it is in reality much weaker as the basis for a long-term plan. it is weaker because it springs from a conception which is largely out of date and because it doesn't seem to have even considered the possibilities inherent in modem construction, modern research and modern planning conceptions. The drawings could just as well be dated 1912 as 1942, and the general background is that of the pre- industrial baroque, with its emphasis on the symmetrical façade, the formal piazza, the vista, the processional way. The scale is that of the baroque town with its horsedrawn traffic, not of the modem metropolis attuned to the speed of the motor-car and the aeroplane. There is no suggestion that our building regulations should be amended to allow the height which modem steel-frame construction both permits and to a certain extent demands, nor any inkling of the new release of ground-space that this would allow. The amderlying aim seems to be an imperial but static splendour, focussed ton social elements such as the court (the processional way from Victoria to Buckingham Palace), the institutional Church (the St. Paul's area), the historic symbol (Tower Hill), and the traditional wealth (the City companies). The effect is tight, monumental and heavy, not soaring or spacious. Imprisoned in its formal sym- metries, the scheme never escapes into the free planning. and the spontaneity of forms realised in the past in such towns as Bath or in the present by designs like those of Le Corbusier for Algiers.
Though the Committee expressly state that they have not con- cerned themselves with the design of buildings, yet in all the drawings there is assumed a type of building design, with massive facades round internal light-wells, which is rapidly becoming out of date. Modern research on lighting and ventilation problems (in a few cases already embodied in practice, as in Rockefeller Centre in New York) is indicating a quite different type of construction as best adapted to the needs of the modem city—the up-ended tower rising from a comparatively low stepped base and becoming in- creasingly slab-like with increasing total bulk. If this type of con- struction were to be adopted, it would of itself dictate a different type of small-scale planning.
By way of example, let us look at a couple of the details. At Hyde Park Corner the open space is much enlarged to form a symmetrical piazza, and the Park Lane traffic is led in just to the east of Apsley House. The resultant asymmetry appears to have released an aesthetic conditional reflex. To the east of this, not only is a replica of Apsley House inserted, but beyond this a replica of the existing ordered screen which leads into Hyde Park ; and the replicated screen has no function except that of symmetry—it leads nowhere.
St. Paul's is to be surrounded with a formal piazza. A symmetrical approach is to be substituted for Ludgate Hill, though the tower of St. Martin's is to be retained, apparently in the interior of a block of offices ; this processional symmetry is justification for Wren's own views as expressed to Defoe. Another processional approach leads to the river, and is to be flanked alternatively by State barge-houses or by new abodes for the City Companies. The scheme is very clever in utilising the open spaces produced by bombing ; but a salient point is that it proposes to rebuild most of the devastated areas north and east of the Cathedral. The question will arise in many minds as to whether it would not be preferable to utilise this gift of Goering's to a much fuller extent, even if it does mean an asymmetrical space. After all, most cathedral closes derive charm from their extent and their irregularity.
Nearly eighteen months ago I was so amused by an utterance of Timothy Shy on planning that I cut it out. Reference to it today Shows that it was prophetic: "London in 1951, a chap in close touch assures us, will be a Caesar's Dream. Marvels being planned by the Reith Rovers include (i) a marble-paved triple triumphal way, sweeping arrow-straight from Belisha Square down Gollancz. Avenue to the Houses of Parliament and lined with soo chryselephantine statues, fifty times life-size, of leading political and booksy idols of the populace . . ."
It is all very well to be critical, but what alternatives are there? We can probably all agree that some traffic skeleton is essential and that one based upon the Bressey ring-road scheme is desirable. These concrete suggestions for the replanning of areas like St. Paul's, where focal importance is combined with widespread bombing damage, or like the south bank of the river, where everyone knows that something is long overdue, are important as visual symbols of what the people of London have the right to -txpect and as catalysts for popular enthusiasm. Personally, I would add, as further whet- stone of expectation, concrete suggestions for the rebuilding of at least two badly-bombed East End housing areas, one to be based on the planned arrangement of individual dwellings, the other on the most modern possibilities of sky-scraper flats, freely disposed in ample open space. I would also have liked to see suggestions for the location and design of civic centres, with numerous alternative treatments, throughout the suburbs—where, after all, the majority of Londoners live. Walthamstow, already before the war, had made a bold and imaginative contribution to this problem ; today we could afford to be even bolder.
But, beyond this, is it possible or desirable to go at present? Granted a general will to plan and an aroused popular imagination that.will insist on planning, the next steps needed will be in other
fields. First and foremost, we need the creation of a Central Planning Authority with really adequate compulsory powers ; secondly, large- scale and continuous research, under the Planning Authority as well as elsewhere, on the human needs to be satisfied and the technical and architectural means of satisfying them ; thirdly, the prohibition of further extension of the built-up area of Greater London ; fourthly, a proper zoning scheme ; fifthly, a complete overhaul of the building regulations as regards constructional methods, height of buildings, the location of pipes, &c. ; sixthly, arrangements for simultaneous termination of leases within considerable areas, thus making possible the planned rebuilding of the areas as wholes. To these I would add the willingness to make radical experiments in the re-design of single areas as they fall due for rebuilding, rather than a patching-up policy spread thin over all areas. Planning can then become evolutionary instead of static, and many apparently in- superable difficulties will be solved ambulando.
Previous page
