To Fix London House Prices, We Should Learn From The 1930s

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by muppet

Okay, bingo we appear to be making progress.

What makes this one look like it's sourced from North America:




And this one doesn't?:

Is this a serious question? You don't see the difference? Are you aware that this is an urbanist forum where 99% of people will be able to correctly identify which of those is closer to the NA urban vernacular? It's fairly obvious. Your aesthetic sense appears to be as remedial as your understanding of common NA urban typologies. But then again, you also said you liked that London tulip building, so I guess that should have been a clue.

In the first image, do you see those clusters of towers, all sharing a similar design language, creating a couple of miniature "city within a city" skylines? We've already established that that is a quintessentially NA vernacular. One that is found in many of these types of developments.

The second image reminds me more of European commie blocks than anything in NA. Actually, it really doesn't look like much at all, not distinctive enough to register as anything or anywhere in particular. They're just some random buildings that probably don't even exist. These images aren't helping your case at all.

[badrunner]

Also, you might have missed it, but the lying muppet has now acknowledged that he has lied and misrepresented my position, without offering any correction or apology. It is duly noted.

[nito]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Is this a serious question? You don't see the difference? Are you aware that this is an urbanist forum where 99% of people will be able to correctly identify which of those is closer to the NA urban vernacular? It's fairly obvious. Your aesthetic sense appears to be as remedial as your understanding of common NA urban typologies. But then again, you also said you liked that London tulip building, so I guess that should have been a clue.

In the first image, do you see those clusters of towers, all sharing a similar design language, creating a couple of miniature "city within a city" skylines? We've already established that that is a quintessentially NA vernacular. One that is found in many of these types of developments.

It might be easier for everyone if you laid out exactly what the similarities are.

[edale]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Also, you might have missed it, but the lying muppet has now acknowledged that he has lied and misrepresented my position, without offering any correction or apology. It is duly noted.

No one cares.

[badrunner]

The lying muppet cares a great deal

[muppet]

Wow, just wow.

Originally Posted by badrunner

.

In the first image, do you see those clusters of towers, all sharing a similar design language, creating a couple of miniature "city within a city" skylines? We've already established that that is a quintessentially NA vernacular. One that is found in many of these types of developments.

Anyhoo, so could you provide some North American examples of this city-within-a-city you're talking about. Is it because they are close together? Are you talking about the ones with the green roofs?

[Fresh]

Originally Posted by muppet

Wow, just wow.



Anyhoo, so could you provide some North American examples of this city-within-a-city you're talking about. Is it because they are close together? Are you talking about the ones with the green roofs?

something like this?

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6386...7i13312!8i6656

[muppet]

^Thank you Fresh, what's the date for that development?

badrunner can you confirm that's an example?

And can we get some criteria going?

[muppet]

The Wembley district actually looks like this if you're interested:

Originally Posted by muppet

Well tbf, Wembley is not the most salubrious area but the developments have their moments, although not exactly prize-winning. It's hit n miss, depending on the age -there are generally two waves
of development interrupted by the hiatus of the '08 crash.

Bear in mind the original plans with the worst identikit buildings (2006):


https://wallpapercave.com


got added to by the 2014 plan:





Detailing's much better on the newer stuff, yet still austere


https://www.buildington.co.uk/images...5.68771100.jpg









[/IMG]
www.homeviews.com





2006 buildings - a bit loud/ dated (due to the '08 crash some of these went on hold for nearly a decade, but a good mix of development and community in the end)




https://www.youneedtovisit.co.uk/wp-...2-1024x768.jpg



www.realm-village-outlets.co.uk


Ugly AF shopping centre, but at least it's popular



www.quintainliving.com


The local community centre/ civic hall/ library:



www.hopkins.co.uk


Approaches to the stadium are lined with displays and food vans


https://wembleypark.com/




...versus 2015, more reserved, yet more expense paid to it



www.homeviews.com



www.constructionmanagermagazine.com, https://galostar.co.uk



https://static.gridarchitects.co.uk/...two-thirds.jpg, www.walkermodular.com


www.theconstructionindex.co.uk

It's even got a boxpark now (designer shipping container stores, start ups and food).


https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restau...n_England.html


The district is only halfway completed, there's another whole area on the other side of the stadium that's lying fallow and industrial.

[nito]

If badrunner’s point is of cities within cities from an urban perspective, then I don’t think that is a North American event. In the context of London, large scale developments such as Wembley probably have more in common from the pedestrian-focused post-war projects. The Barbican and other London estates emerged from the rubble of Blitz destroyed neighbourhoods and the demolition of buildings thought unsuitable for the era, but they applied new thinking such as segregation of pedestrian and vehicle traffic and of course tower blocks. Countless similar projects emerged across the city, e.g. Thamesmead, and many have or are in the process of being redeveloped.

The Barbican

Source: Joas Souza Photographer - https://www.joasphotographer.com/arc...otos-of-london

Thamesmead

Source: Proctor & Matthews Architects - https://www.proctorandmatthews.com/n...project-leader

[muppet]

If you go back, postwar Euston's another example





Pimlico's Churchill Gardens - a 32 block development drawn up as part of the Abercrombie Plan for London
-the taller buidings are from 1946 and now protected, the lower ones in the decades after.





And even further back, the pre-war midrise tenement block districts from the 30s such as Edgeware Rd or St John's Wood, all mixed with business and retail and postwar (albeit, although pedestrian-priority they never separated vehicles from people)





SJW is a strange series of millionaire's housing estates

[muppet]

Features of the 1943 Abercrombie Plan


http://historyofpublicspace.uk, https://municipaldreams.files.wordpress.com



London Wall development built over rail lines


https://granger.com



Today -updated




The former New Scotland Yard building (once a 60s glass slab) has been redeveloped in a similar postwar style to its predecessor, and the former district plan for Victoria




London Wall has been almost entirely replaced -like most development from that era torn down when highrises fell out of favour. 400 tower blocks were felled by the Millennium alone.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by muppet

London Wall has been almost entirely replaced -like most development from that era torn down when highrises fell out of favour. 400 tower blocks were felled by the Millennium alone.

It just seems so wasteful to tear down a high-rise to replace it with another high-rise (and an unfortunate architectural loss in many cases, like Robin Hood Gardens). Or were there structural deficiencies or maintenance issues with some of them that necessitated them being pulled down?

Here the approach with our post-war tower blocks has been to add infill development to their plazas, green spaces, parking lots, or other wasted space around them. Eg. stuff like this:


https://urbantoronto.ca/news/2017/11...isville-avenue


https://urbantoronto.ca/news/2020/11...-fairview-mall

[muppet]

I like that idea, the tower blocks were torn down for a variety of reasons -the look was unpopular and they degraded fast (concrete vs British weather), and the social problems resulting from islanding communities into working class ghettoes. Many of the estates were replaced by lowrise density in the late 90s-00s -the tower in the park idea afforded a generous supply of land, enough to even increase the population despite taking down the highrises.


The ones that have survived are pretty much taken over by the middle classes now -and a rash of recladding. The Grenfell Tower is a classic case- an impoverished development where some flats were going for half a million, where the artifice of 'improvement' literally killed off the community. The developers like to advertise the fact the former residents were paid off multiple times what they originally bought their properties with, but forget to mention that despite that prices are so ridiculous they likely had to move out of the city.

As for the office towers many got a new layout a reclad and new glass, and some are unrecognisable. The building with the green roof next to it below is one of them:



The London Stock Exchange was notoriously ugly (literally shit brown concrete that started out white), that was redone in the mid noughties. They're talking about another reclad now
because the green glass is so dated:




Many just went the way of the wrecking ball -this trio for example - I really liked the one on the right. The one in the centre was replaced with a 990ft tower, on the left a 738 footer,
the one on right will be a supertall. Of course the only way to build in the financial district is on postwar buildings.

[biguc]

Originally Posted by muppet

http://historyofpublicspace.uk, https://municipaldreams.files.wordpress.com



London Wall development built over rail lines


https://granger.com

This reminds me of Breitscheidplatz, the centre of West Berlin and the British Sector.

Before:

wikimedia

After:

Alamy


There are British fingerprints all over this area--it's quite different from modern redevelopments in the American and French sectors, never mind the Soviet. And it's different from what you'd find in a West German city.

There's definitely a well-established London-way of building highrises.

If I could try to guess at what bladerunner was seeing wrong/American with the new developments, it's that there's a stadium and the whole development is surrounded by low-rise, lower density development. In that aspect, it does look American in a way that the Parisian development--fit seamlessly into a mid-rise cityscape--doesn't.

This reminds me, there's another thread on here comparing a freeway-side, arena district to La Ramblas. Barcelona had better watch out before every American city has a pedestrian avenue carved through a medieval city centre; their city will look like a knockoff.

[Crawford]

I'm highly skeptical that the Kudamm-area architectural form is the way that it is because the Brits were nominally in charge for a few years.

The British essentially left in 1954, before the Kudamm became the Kudamm. And British and French administration of West Germany was largely a ceremonial role, kind of a light Western propaganda in order to differentiate the U.S. hegemony from the Soviets.

My dad is old enough to barely remember the French administration of his Mosel-area village, and it was very light-touch, just an administrative layer within an American occupation.

[biguc]

We've generally been talking about the plan of these places, more than the architecture. My point, accordingly, isn't about the architecture as much as the planning of Bretischeidplatz and the am Zoo area. (Kudamm is Kudamm, as it was before the war. )

Anyway, planning to rebuild the city started as soon as the war ended. And restarted when the city got divided.

Here's a timeline from the Berlin planning department showing when Berlin adopted the plan that applied to Breitscheidplatz.

https://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin....wicklung.shtml

More from the planning department concerning the reconstruction itself, which began in the '40s.

https://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin....gsentwicklung/

Here's a comically dated look at rebuilding (actually in English), published in 1959, that claims that the Brietscheidplatz plan was established by then, that Berlin's senate didn't pass a general planning law until 1956, and that reconstruction was already underway.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40102263?seq=1


I'd be highly skeptical that an occupier doing heavy reconstruction for a decade wouldn't leave a long shadow. The place looks and feels British. It's in a place that was occupied by the British at the time when its plan was developed and reconstruction started. It feels comfortably Occamy to say that there's a British influence on the place. You can believe what you want.

[nito]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

It just seems so wasteful to tear down a high-rise to replace it with another high-rise (and an unfortunate architectural loss in many cases, like Robin Hood Gardens). Or were there structural deficiencies or maintenance issues with some of them that necessitated them being pulled down?

They were not great buildings and proved to be insufficient for the needs of subsequent eras, e.g., low ceiling heights in offices, not energy efficient, etc... The residential estates also consolidated and compounded various social and economic problems, which is why there has been limited resistance for them being redeveloped. Not all has been swept away, some have secured listed (protect) status and others undergone refurbishment.

[Miu]

I don't associate this type of urban development with North America at all. If anything, these recent London developments look and feel quite northern European, and to the extent similar projects exist in North American cities, they strike me as quite European-inspired.

[10023]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

It just seems so wasteful to tear down a high-rise to replace it with another high-rise (and an unfortunate architectural loss in many cases, like Robin Hood Gardens). Or were there structural deficiencies or maintenance issues with some of them that necessitated them being pulled down?

Here the approach with our post-war tower blocks has been to add infill development to their plazas, green spaces, parking lots, or other wasted space around them. Eg. stuff like this:


https://urbantoronto.ca/news/2017/11...isville-avenue


https://urbantoronto.ca/news/2020/11...-fairview-mall

Most of these 1950s-70s era buildings are irredeemable. The ceilings are low, the layouts aren’t what people want, the buildings lack resident amenities, and construction quality isn’t great. One just needs to recognise them as the mistakes they always were and start over.