Transcript
London — the greatest city the world has ever known. A great metropolis and a great port, a centre of learning, law and trade, and a meeting place of a Commonwealth of Nations.
Pre-war London: a city of eight and a half million citizens, where they lived and worked and played. Then war — total war — came to London. As they set about the job of clearing up the wreckage, the people of London began to see their city with new eyes, and they began asking themselves questions.
Was the old London all that it should have been? Must we always have slums, and an East End and a West End? Three people killed in the streets every day. Parks and gardens in some parts, but only the streets for us kids to play in. Perhaps we've taken it all for granted too long — and here is our chance to do something about it.
And we at the London County Council — like you — saw beyond all the suffering and destruction a great opportunity to build a new London: a better, finer, more spacious city than the old. It is our job to carry out the wishes of London's people, and so in 1941 we asked our architects to prepare a plan that would bring a new order and dignity to the whole of the County of London.
But first of all we had to find out everything about this great city we were planning to rebuild — everything about its history and its geography, its people and the way they lived. We had to find out how much of it had been totally destroyed, and how much was in such a bad state that it would have to be rebuilt anyway — and that didn't just mean the bombed buildings, but all those condemned and obsolete houses that we had begun to get rid of in the years before the war.
Then we had to learn what the people were thinking — what they felt should be done, and what they wanted. We had to know what sort of homes they lived in, and how and where they spent their leisure hours. And then we had to find out all about London's traffic: how many trams, motorcars, lorries and buses passed through the streets, at what times, and how long it took people to get to and from their work every day, and where they worked, and under what conditions.
We had to know all about the state of the people's health — what the mortality rate was, and how many new Londoners were being born in the County year by year. In fact, everything that affected the lives of Londoners past, present and future had to be taken into consideration in our plans.
We'd like Londoners to see more of the river than they do at present — it's nearly all shut in by commerce and industry. No doubt sometime that could be done, and more access given to the riverfront, but in the view of the Port of London Authority, trade considerations must come first.
It wasn't until all this information had been collected, tabulated and put on record that we could begin to see the broad outlines of the task before us, and our architects could get to work on their first designs for the New London.
Thousands of maps were made, hundreds of charts drawn, discarded, revised and done again, until at last we were ready with a complete plan to put before the government and the people of London.
This work was under the direction of Mr J. H. Forshaw, Architect to the London County Council, and Sir Patrick Abercrombie of University College — the world-famous British authority on town planning — as planning adviser.
Here in this book is a plan for the County of London. It isn't a hard and fast blueprint — our plan is an idea, a plan for something that is living, something that is growing. It's rather like the way you plan a garden: you've got to give the plants air and sunshine, and also shelter from wet and cold, and they've got to have room to grow. And there mustn't be any overcrowding. There must be change — always change — as one season or one generation follows another.
The city exists because men have realised that by living together they can enjoy many advantages, and it was this idea — the idea of people living in communities — that has formed the basis of our plans. London, of course, used to be a collection of scattered village communities. Only 200 years ago the central core was quite small. Round it were the villages, each living its own community life and each surrounded by open country. But as London grew, the villages grew also, and spread closer and closer together until they joined up in one huge and untidy sprawl — which is London as we know it today.
You see, the trouble is that London grew up without any plan or order. That is why we have all those bad and ugly things that we hope to do away with, if this plan of ours is carried out. When you come to look at London it's an amazing mixture of good and bad, beautiful and ugly. Mile upon mile without an open space — houses and factories, pubs, schools and churches all jumbled up together in hopeless confusion — and then in other parts fine spacious parks and public gardens.
London has many fine and noble buildings — buildings of which any city might well be proud. Here are some of the finest works of the great Christopher Wren: the magnificent Naval College at Greenwich and the equally dignified Pensioners' Hospital at Chelsea, as well as St Paul's Cathedral and the host of smaller churches and houses.
But look again and you will see misery — slums which any city ought to be ashamed of. Row upon row of dirty, dismal houses that should have been pulled down long ago. Homes without any proper sanitation, where every drop of water has to be carried down the stairs in buckets and the only place for the cooking stove is on the stairway landing. Homes where whole families live, eat and sleep together in one room, and the children have nowhere but the back alleys to play in.
But we mustn't forget that there has been some good planning in the past. You can see that in London's many beautiful squares and elegant terraces — not only the grand ones laid out by John Nash, but also those handsome, grassy streets built about the beginning of the last century, which are found in districts like Clerkenwell and parts of Islington. These good things we must do our best to keep.
But what about all those homes in the shadow of railway viaducts, where the people can't rest or sleep for the smoke and the din? And those blocks of offices and flats built right alongside factories, without air, sunlight or room? All these bad things must go, and the sooner the better.
Then there's the problem of London's streets. London has busy shopping centres, great markets and a theatreland which attracts visitors from all over the country — but to serve these it has an out-of-date street system quite unable to cope with 20th-century traffic. There are endless queues and many valuable hours wasted every day in trying to get from one part of the city to another.
London has a great asset in the Thames — a noble river, bordered in some places by fine embankments which open up wide vistas for the enjoyment of the people. But for most of its length it is shut off behind tall warehouses, factories and wharves. If these were to be regrouped and arranged more compactly, whole new stretches of the riverfront could be opened to the public.
Lastly, let us look at London's outskirts — that ragged boundary where Greater London merges into the open country. It is true that we have tried to preserve the amenities of the countryside through the open spaces of the Green Belt, and that is a step in the right direction. But at the same time we have allowed uncontrolled ribbon development: housing estates and factories have sprung up all along the main roads and railways leading outwards from the city, reaching far into what should have remained open fields and woodlands.
But in spite of all the muddle and confusion, the lack of order or design, one very important thing we discovered when we made our survey: the spirit of the old village communities has somehow survived. The old local loyalties are still there — that neighbourliness which holds a group of people together because they have the same interests and share their troubles and their joys. Yes, the spirit of the communities is still there. The trouble is their boundaries have got blurred and lost in London's untidy sprawl.
It seemed to us that a solution to the problem lay in the replenishment of these communities — keeping what was good and replacing what was bad. It is a pretty gigantic scheme, affecting the future of the whole of London. But big problems call for big solutions.
There are parts of London where rebuilding can start right away, as soon as labour and materials are available. We must be ready to make a start. The broad plan is complete, but it mustn't just stay in a book — it must be translated into action, and that is what our architects are working on now.
Well, let us deal with the worst places first. Some of the areas in most urgent need of attention are the industrial boroughs in the east and south of London — places like Bermondsey, Southwark and Lambeth on the south bank, and Poplar and Stepney on the north. Even before the Blitz, reconstruction here was long overdue.
Here is a photograph of Stepney, and it tells the usual story. There is an almost complete lack of open space. Houses are out of date and jammed in between railways and roads. Schools have hardly any playgrounds and are much too near factories and industry, and there are tenements built right alongside wharves and warehouses. It is a typical picture of muddle and overcrowding which clearly calls for drastic reconstruction.
First, let us look at the roads as they are now — narrow and winding. Then let us see where commerce and industry are — scattered all over the place. What we propose is one or two wider, straight principal streets, with smaller local service roads. For commerce and industry, our idea is to draw the scattered factories into groups near the main roads.
The remaining space would be divided into three social units. Each of these neighbourhoods would have a population of six to ten thousand people — the right number of children for a junior school. So the schools become, in effect, the centres around which the neighbourhood units are built up.
Here near the centre is the junior school. The people would live in streets or squares of terraced houses, each with its own private garden, or in blocks of flats standing in their own grounds. There would be local shopping centres to serve the housewife's day-to-day needs, and open spaces where the children can play. And finally, down near the boundary, would be a trading estate where many of the people living in the district would work.
Each neighbourhood must link up with all the others in the same community. Here are wide, tree-lined roads leading inwards to the centre, and here are the public buildings: the Civic Centre, a library, the health clinic, a concert hall, the fire station, a cinema, a central shopping area for the largest stores, a main hospital with its medical school. So the whole community is contained within natural boundaries — the main roads, the river, the docks, the canal and the industries.
The result of all this would be all the essentials for living, playing and working under decent conditions near at home, with plenty of light, air and space for everyone. So it is not an inhuman plan at all, but one designed to make life better and pleasanter for all of us.
Just as the neighbourhoods must link up into one community, so all the communities must link up with the others all over London. The City of London in the centre and Greater London outside don't come within our County of London plan, but their plans and ours must be made to fit. And that brings us to another aspect of London — London the machine, a vast machine whose arteries are the lines of communication.
With regard to roads, our chief aim must be to separate fast, long-distance traffic from local traffic. The idea is to have nine arterial roads for fast traffic leading into London. These would join a main ring road which would keep through traffic out of the central area. There would also be two main roads across the centre of the city. All the main arterial roads should have at least six traffic lanes and, wherever possible, they should be planted with wide grass borders and avenues of trees. Full use would be made of bridges, flyovers and tunnels, so as to have as few crossings and side entrances as possible.
When we came to examine the railways, we found the position complicated by the fact that they had been developed by ten or more competing companies, all trying to reach the centre quickly. Most of the main stations are out of date and some are very badly placed, and the miles of viaducts occupy many acres of valuable ground, as well as having a most depressing effect on the streets around them. If all the trains coming into London were electrified and taken underground as they approached the central area, land would be freed for other uses, and a great deal of noise and smoke would disappear — and so would some of the unsightly bridges which at present mar the river scene. In fact, it is pretty clear that a general tidying up of the present rail system is needed.
All this is part of London the machine. But there is another and important aspect of London's life — London the metropolis, the capital city. Most of you will know that part of the river which stretches between Westminster and the City. On the north bank there are government buildings, large office blocks and a fine embankment with trees and gardens. But on the south bank there is a confusion of warehouses, slums and derelict streets, and the mess is even worse since the Blitz. Here is a splendid opportunity to improve London by creating a new riverfront worthy of its position in the heart of the capital.
But we mustn't forget that this plan is at present only something on paper. Will London be recreated on modern lines worthy of her long history?
Here is Lord Latham, leader of the London County Council:
Well, that is the plan the architects have drawn up for the London of the future — your London. This is perhaps the greatest challenge to the pride, courage and vitality that London has ever had. And what we want to know now is: what do you, the people who love London, think about it?
Will this mean that some of us have got to move?
Yes, I am afraid some of you will have to move. We must reduce the number of people and industries in the congested areas if everyone is to be decently housed with plenty of open space for rest and play.
Just think of having proper playing fields for the kids — it seems like a dream to me.
That is why we want you to think about this plan — to talk it over among yourselves, and then to let us have your ideas about it.
It sounds fine, but who is going to pay for it all? It would cost millions and millions.
Yes, it will certainly cost a great deal of money — but not more than unplanned building, and a lot less than war. In a way, this is London's war against decay, dirt and inefficiency, and in the long run a plan such as this is the cheapest way to fight those enemies.
What a grand opportunity this is. If we miss this chance to rebuild London, we shall have missed one of the great moments of history — and we shall have shown ourselves unworthy of victory. So let us start now. A greater London, where everyone can live a full, happy and healthy life — a London whose citizens can be proud.