Making Sense of the Mayoral Election

A very interesting start to the morning at Centre for London, with a breakfast debate on the London elections. Ben Page, Director of Ipsos-Mori presented recent polling data, while Steven Norris, Conservative Candidate for London Mayor in 2000 and 2004, and Tessa Jowell, Ken's campaign Chairman, commented on this and previous campaigns. Sonia Purnell, journalist and Boris biographer, gave some interesting insights into the blond haired frontrunner.

The event was off the record, so I'm limited in what I can say. There was an interesting discussion on what matters to London voters. One person summed up the contest as being between Marmite and Marshmallow. Ken is marmite - you either love him or you hate him - while Boris is marshmallow - you'd probably take one if offered one, but it's not something you long for.

Observer kudos to my former Prof

The Observer devotes almost a whole page to lauding the 25-year efforts of my former professor Michael Edwards and a group of local activists in ensuring a better vision for the King's Cross development.
"The main message is that the wisdom of citizens should routinely count for much more than it does in British planning, because it is always local people who understand the aspirations of their community and the way their particular public spaces work," the paper says.
"Regeneration appears to be about structures, high finance and profit but, of course, it only really works if local people and their homes aren't swept aside by the interests of capitalism."

New Midlands City

The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail both ran with stories that the government is plannning a new city in the Midlands, running alongside the "contraversial" HS2 line, and "concreting" over the British countryside (suggesting any such plans will run into serious opposition).

The plans, which appear to run contrary to the localism agenda, are supposed to be announced Tuesday and are being sold as an answer to the chronic housing shortage in the south-east.

But if the government is so pro planning-deregulation, why try to dictate where development should be? Why not enable development where people want it? Or within the framework of a spatial plan that uses an evidence-based approach to where development is needed (and resources can accomodate it)? The devil may be in the detail, but in the era of localism, the policy seems strangely top-down and I can't help thinking it's a poor substitute for a national spatial plan.

Tacheles

Berlin has been top of my places to visit for many years. Sadly, it looks like another remnant of the anarchastic, artistic post-wall Berlin may have been lost to developers before I get there. The Kunsthaus Tacheles is a former 1930s department store, taken over by artists after the wall came down to prevent its demolition. It's graffiti covered walls have long housed an art center, nightclub, and activist nexus, but the space looks set to be handed over to developers. The Observer says the area now has the highest rental costs of any Berlin district and the Tacheles is to be replaced by luxury appartments and offices - a BMW- Guggenheim project for an urban design showcase that got scared off by local opposition. It would be a shame if an attempt is not made to capture something of the spirit of Tacheles - although personally I regret not seeing the original.....

Birthday views

There's nothing like a birthday for giving yourself a treat. And so I did, at Vertigo 42, the former NatWest building, with fabulous views over London. At sunset. These pictures don't do it justice....

Crystal Palace

For most of my first year in London, I jogged through the grounds of Alexandra Palace in the north. But since I've been south London based, I haven't visited her sister park, Crystal Palace. Until now.

I braved a horrible, rainy day for a tour of the site where the glorious domed exhibition centre once stood to get a better idea of the Crystal Palace story. Originally created by Joseph Paxton to house the Exhibition of all Nations, staged in Hyde Park in 1851, the structure was later dismantled and moved to Penge. We've fallen out of love with the mega-event we invented, even if we are to stage the Olympics this year (grumblers are reminded that the reason we were initially happy to have won, was because we beat our great rival France, who really wanted it). But the magic of the world's first mega event lives on - and so it should. It spurred France and the U.S. into copycat shows that sparked the imagination, attracting millions. A curator of a Paris exhibition on Tarzan once told me he believed that the exoticism on show at the Chicago exhibition of 1893 inspired Edgar Rice Burroughs (imagine in a time before mass travel the wonderment of native Indians marching through town).

Six million visited the Great Exhibition, and public opinion clamoured - without success - for the palace to remain in Hyde park. It was rescued by six "gentlemen of means" who purchased the structure and moved it to Sydenham Hill. The structure was enlarged, with courts depicting different periods of architecture and hailing great works of art and manufacture. Magnificent fountains decorated the grounds, which also hosted firework displays, funfairs, motor racing (the first person to be killed by a car was in Crystal Palace) and other events.

But in 1936, the palace was destroyed in a fire. It was never rebuilt, partly because it was never profitable: construction costs far outweighing expectations (will we never learn?). The history, however, is kept alive in a charming and fascinating museum in the only surviving structure (besides the railway, the dilapidated and somehow sad terrace, and the sphinxes) from the time.