Complex city: London's changing character

209 Pages·2020·347.401 MB·English

by  Manning, Jane

COMPLEXCITY
LON DON ’ S CHANG ING CHAR ACTER
JANE MANNING, ANTONY RIFKIN, DANIEL ELSEA, LIONEL EID AND GEORGE GAROFALAKIS
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements iv
About the authors v
Foreword vi
Introduction x
PART 1: LAYERS OF LONDON 1
1 What is character and why is it important? 2
2 Natural landscapes 10
3 The Square Mile 20
4 Ancient routes 42
5 Georgian planning 56
6 Victorian enterprise 72
7 20th century modernity 92
8 London’s centres 120
9 Artifcial landscapes 138
PART 2: A WAY OF SEEING 151
10 Looking to London’s future 152
11 From the generic city to the complex city 172
Endnotes 180
Index 185
Supporting partner 188
Image credits 189
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors wish to thank the Allies and Morrison Partnership for the generous time made available
to undertake the research for this book which is the result of a wide collaborative efort across
the practice.
In addition to the authors of this book, many members of the practice have, past and present,
contributed to the making of the book and to the thinking that underlies it, including: Alfredo
Caraballo, Alice Strang, Alistair Macdonald, Anthony Benson, Artur Carulla, Bob Allies, Elizabeth
Lancaster, Eric Hallquist, Geof Noble, Graham Morrison, Hara Anastasiou, Holly Conway, Indu
Ramaswamy, Jack Cox, Joanna Bacon, Laura Dodds-Hebron, Louise Mansfeld, Mark Leitner-Murphy,
Nne Owuasu, Paul Eaton, Romy Berlin and Steve Walker.
Romy Berlin has been central to the process of developing and designing the book and without her it
could not have been realised. A big thank you also to Imogen Blaikie whose photos of London help to
illustrate the variety of London’s layers.
We are extremely grateful to Professor Andrew Saint who read and commented on the manuscript at
an early stage.
We are also grateful to several individuals from beyond the practice who ofered valuable insights
including: Anna Gibb, Peter Bishop, Alan Leibowitz, Richard Brown, Eleanor Fawcett, Dave Hooley,
David English, Richard Parish, Tom Whittington, Oliver Russell, Rebecca Knight and Stephen Benson.
The authors would like to thank our publishers, Richard Blackburn, Alex White and Clare Holloway at
RIBA Publishing, for their fantastic support and for commissioning this project.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
The authors work together at Allies and Morrison. Jane Manning has led masterplans across many of
London’s opportunity areas, drawing on her background in environmental planning and urban design.
A town planner and urban designer, who has published a wide range of research for Historic England,
Antony Rifkin co-founded Urban Practitioners which merged with Allies and Morrison in 2011. The
practice’s head of communications, Daniel Elsea is a multi-disciplinary urbanist who has published
widely on architecture, global cities and visual culture. Trained as an architect, Lionel Eid has taught at
the Academy of Art in San Francisco and the Architectural Association in London where his research
focused on the history of urban development. George Garofolakis is a planner and urban designer
with a particular specialism in the analysis and visualisation of spatial data.
AbOuT THE AuTHORS v
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Emily Gee FOREWORD
London Planning Director
Historic England
There is a wide and wonderful range of publications on our capital city’s history but, you may ask, why
has London’s extraordinary character not yet been fully assessed? Many London boroughs have done
characterisation assessments to inform their planning work, but the coverage is incomplete and sufers
from the use of diferent methodologies, efectively preventing its use at a pan-London strategic level
to inform consistent policymaking. Given the pressures for growth that London is facing, with tens of
thousands of new homes required each year, London needs efective policies underpinned by robust
evidence – including a thorough understanding of character – to meet its citizens’ needs.
This book has grown out of an important part of the work Historic England have been doing in London
in recent years, supporting the Greater London Authority (GLA) in reviewing and updating the London
Plan to ensure that London’s growth sustains and enhances its historic environment.
Historic England is the public body that helps people care for, enjoy and celebrate England’s spectacular
historic environment. We protect, champion and save places that defne who we are. Working with
communities and specialists we share our passion, knowledge and skills to inspire interest, care and
conservation, so everyone can keep enjoying and looking after the history that surrounds us all. In
addition to providing planning advice to local authorities on development proposals and advising the
government on which buildings and sites should be protected, we carry out a broad range of activities
to support a wider understanding of our heritage.
Helping people to analyse, articulate and value the character of the places that matter to them is an
important part of our work. We have, over many years, supported the characterisation of England’s
historic landscape, creating detailed data sets to provide context for conservation decisions, while
recognising that change needs to happen to maintain locally distinctive and thriving places. However,
and perhaps surprisingly, one part of the country where this work remains incomplete is London.
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Planning for growth at a London-wide level is a broad-brush activity, based around major infrastructure
opportunities, large-scale regeneration opportunities and Public Transport Accessibility Levels. These
criteria alone are insufcient to ensure that other issues covered by national planning policy, such
as the historic environment, are adequately considered. Therefore, Historic England devised the
Character and Density project to review London’s diferent character types, and to provide evidence
about how growth in London can best be delivered to protect and enhance local character.
In late 2015, Historic England commissioned Allies and Morrison to review how London’s diverse
character areas could best respond to the high demands for growth in the city. Of particular concern
to us was the capacity of London’s more sensitive historic areas to accommodate substantial amounts
of new housing without harming their unique character.
The project required Allies and Morrison to develop an overview of London’s character types, at a
level that could inform strategic discussion; looking at overarching similarities between places that will
allow the complexity and specifcity of local character to be considered by local authorities. These
character types needed to encompass historic town centres, modern suburbs, existing and former
industrial areas, Green Belt areas and their settlements, as well as the ancient City of London and 20th
century Heathrow.
In undertaking this work, Allies and Morrison richly illustrated their fndings, making complex
arguments easily legible and helping to increase our understanding of London at a strategic level. The
graphics and maps, including the compelling London-wide map of the character areas, busted myths
and gave a much clearer idea of the complex tapestry of places in London. Key fndings included that
some of the most historic areas are those with the highest densities, that London’s character is far
greener than international comparators, and that all character types are capable of densifcation,
provided it is done sensitively.
With these fndings in mind, in late 2016, Historic England released a series of recommendations for
the new London Plan entitled Keep it London, including the need for the Plan to celebrate London’s
diverse character. In our view, the new London Plan needed to encourage future planning and design to
be more inspired by an understanding of the historic character of those places for which development
was proposed.
We were delighted when the GLA decided to put the understanding of character at the heart of their
new design policies and included in those the overarching character map. The character-led approach
to identifying the areas and the scale appropriate for growth in the new London Plan represents a
big step forward in ensuring that local identities are strengthened rather than eroded by ‘anywhere’
architecture and planning. The use of the character map from Character and Density in the Plan
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is itself a positive step towards developing the information required by planners, architects and
developers to help them make more informed decisions. It provides a strategic vision that now needs
to be translated at a local level and in richer detail by the London boroughs as they develop their
evidence bases to inform their approach to delivering growth locally.
We hope that this book is a huge success; raising the understanding and profle of local character
and making it accessible to a new audience. We hope that readers will see the benefts of taking
a character-led approach to planning for future growth, in terms of what it can ofer for both
placemaking and architectural design. Development which goes with the grain of places, while not
necessarily reproducing traditional designs, is likely to garner support from existing communities and
enable more homes to be built, without harming distinctive local character or other heritage. For
Historic England, this book represents an important step forward in articulating the important role of
historic local character to planning in London, which will need refning in the years to come as we seek
to sustain and build places for future generations to cherish.
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London Bridge during the 19th century, © Historic England Archive
FOREwORD ix
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