The lovely David Thame of EG called me to pick my brains about his upcoming feature for the magazine on the prospects for London regeneration schemes. In a (somewhat breathless) list he was seeking intelligence on Elephant and Castle, the East End (Stratford, Bromley by Bow, Royal Docks) and Battersea Power Station ("just because something is up for sale", he asked, "does that mean there will be activity?") with Nine Elms generally. Oh, and for good measure, Earls Court, Wembley, the Greenwich Peninsula, Canning Town, Lewisham Gateway and Brent Cross/Cricklewood.
Whew! I said. Calm down dear, for goodness sake, you'll have a hernia!
But he was seeking some proper thoughts on which of these could be serious prospects for progress in 2012, and which might end up moving a little slower, so of course I tried to be helpful. But you won't be surprised to learn my prognosis was a little bleak.
Whew! I said. Calm down dear, for goodness sake, you'll have a hernia!
But he was seeking some proper thoughts on which of these could be serious prospects for progress in 2012, and which might end up moving a little slower, so of course I tried to be helpful. But you won't be surprised to learn my prognosis was a little bleak.
There isn't much good news around on any of the above (with the
exception of Stratford, of course. And, as I said to David, after £9bn
public investment, it would be a bit worrying if we hadn't got good news
there. And even then, it's far too early to gauge whether it will
yield a decent rate of return).
But I got to thinking: in this brave new world of localism, what would propel some schemes or inhibit others?
One thing is for sure: we can't go on as we were.
And another thing that's for sure (so that's two things for sure then): there ain't going to be any government money sloshing around for big London schemes. The serious question here is, is that such a bad thing? Regular visitors to this blog will know that I firmly suspect that, over the past decade at least, government money and/or top-down initiatives have had the effect of bending other (public and private) resources and staff time in what were, as it turned out, unproductive ways; where locally generated ideas, left to themselves, might - and I use the word advisedly - have used resources more effectively.
It is always easy to be wise after the event but, frankly, a lot of "regeneration" has been built around wishful thinking. You've only got to look at the Thames Gateway. The late great John Sienkiewicz's original concept of a limited set of critical actions (sic) around a set of his beloved "zones of change" became translated into a bloated delivery plan machinery of UDCs and URCs that (rather expensively) lost the plot. No wonder Peter Bill once famously (and brilliantly) described the Gateway as "sclerotic".
And the collusion in hubris continues. We don't seem to be able to wean ourselves off the pavlovian response to government initiatives. The best examples of this in recent times are, of course, the Enterprise Zones and the RGF, where the medium has - more than ever before - become the message. And where results will just never begin to reflect expectations or the public resources (not just the government grant but all the local staff resources) devoted to them. As one of my "elders" puts it so eloquently "I don't begrudge job creation schemes, particularly among the (so-called) regeneration professions, but the emperor should put some clothes on before sniggering at the fashion sense of previous eras".
Not many reasons to be cheerful on stalled large-scale London schemes, in my view (as I told our cub reporter there) but, I would guess, what little activity there is will be real, at least.
But I got to thinking: in this brave new world of localism, what would propel some schemes or inhibit others?
One thing is for sure: we can't go on as we were.
And another thing that's for sure (so that's two things for sure then): there ain't going to be any government money sloshing around for big London schemes. The serious question here is, is that such a bad thing? Regular visitors to this blog will know that I firmly suspect that, over the past decade at least, government money and/or top-down initiatives have had the effect of bending other (public and private) resources and staff time in what were, as it turned out, unproductive ways; where locally generated ideas, left to themselves, might - and I use the word advisedly - have used resources more effectively.
It is always easy to be wise after the event but, frankly, a lot of "regeneration" has been built around wishful thinking. You've only got to look at the Thames Gateway. The late great John Sienkiewicz's original concept of a limited set of critical actions (sic) around a set of his beloved "zones of change" became translated into a bloated delivery plan machinery of UDCs and URCs that (rather expensively) lost the plot. No wonder Peter Bill once famously (and brilliantly) described the Gateway as "sclerotic".
And the collusion in hubris continues. We don't seem to be able to wean ourselves off the pavlovian response to government initiatives. The best examples of this in recent times are, of course, the Enterprise Zones and the RGF, where the medium has - more than ever before - become the message. And where results will just never begin to reflect expectations or the public resources (not just the government grant but all the local staff resources) devoted to them. As one of my "elders" puts it so eloquently "I don't begrudge job creation schemes, particularly among the (so-called) regeneration professions, but the emperor should put some clothes on before sniggering at the fashion sense of previous eras".
Not many reasons to be cheerful on stalled large-scale London schemes, in my view (as I told our cub reporter there) but, I would guess, what little activity there is will be real, at least.
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