Commerce, climate and environment combine to determine the best places to live. Planners may help, but people are not stupid.
In Canberra, the early settlers knew Burley Griffin had made a visionary mistake. His plan put all of the monumental and institutional buildings on the south side of the lake. They were elevated and looked north into the sun. The people, under his plan, were put on the north side looking to the monumental buildings that were lit up by the splendid sun.
Thus, under Griffin’s plan the people were to live with the cold southerly orientation. Moreover, on the eastern Ainslie side north of the lake, the slope of the hill gave them a westerly aspect, facing the worst of the weather, the hot afternoon sun and in the shadow of Mount Ainslie in the morning … the time when the sun is most welcome in both summer and winter.
The rich were not going to have a bar of this. They were attracted to Red Hill with the northerly aspect which gets the best of the low elevation winter sun. This is why Red Hill houses the merchants and the rulers. This is why Ainslie houses the low-income people, the peasantry and the workers. Commerce, too, has its effect. The commerce of Canberra is Parliament. The rich live close to it.
Kingston foreshore will take off. It faces the sunny north. Braddon is for the rich, but not to live in. It is for the rich to make money out of by housing the poor in as many little boxes per hectare as they can get away with. That is unless someone does something about it.
London is another example. For a long time the slums have been in the east, downstream of the city. Once again, driven by the environment and commerce.
Very early on there was an advantage being on the east, reasonably close to the sea. Royalty started the Tower of London early this millennium well downstream close to the coast. As the population of London rose, however, so did the stench. Sewage poured into the Thames so Royalty moved upstream to Westminster and later further upstream to Windsor. The tower was left for prisoners and beheadings.
Initially, commerce dictated that dutiable goods had to be brought close to the city where they could be watched and assessed. Later, commerce dictated that because of the over-crowding of boats and consequent pilfering during unloading delays, secure docks should be built further east and downstream.
Four nearly two centuries from the early 18th century, docks were built to give safe landing for the ships of commerce. They required many labourers. So the east end became the slums existing in the heavy downstream pollution, while the rich and mighty lived upstream.
The Monopoly board reflects it. Mayfair is furthest west and as you move east (back around the board) the properties decrease in value until you hit Whitechapel.
Things are changing, though, driven by environment and commerce. From 1960 containerisation threw thousands of Eastender dock workers out of work. In 13 years to 1981, more than 70 per cent of the jobs went … from 100,000 to just 27,000. The docks became a wasteland.
Meanwhile, environmental demands meant governments had to make the Thames a cleaner river. Suddenly, the Eastend had potential. Know wot I mean?
The docks which had been carved into the banks of the Thames and fitted with locks, provided still water not subjected to tidal disturbance. Empty warehouses nearby were ripe for urban renewal. Large companies had their eyes on the potential to create floorspace not imaginable in the city. Newspaper barons, especially Rupert Murdoch, saw the value in getting out of crowded Fleet Street. Now virtually all London papers are printed there and the editorial and advertising staff of most have moved there … to Wapping, the Isle of Dogs, and Canary Wharf (which now has the highest building in London at 50 stories).
The city airport was nearby, the Chunnel entrance was nearer, the underground railway is under construction.
The London Docklands Development Corporation was set up and the place began transformation. I suspect that just as the best part of London moved westward in the past, over the next century or so it will move eastwards … environment and commerce dictate it, though people who worked in the centre scoffed at the idea.
In London’s case, the renewal has been accelerated with some fairly bullish planning arrangements, with the corporation over-riding locally elected bodies, but being subject to a national statute. It has had the advantage of some of the Better Cities projects in some of the older industrial parts of Australian cities in that they are starting with a ghastly wasteland where change can only bring improvement.
The political accusations, however, have been diametrically different. In Britain, the Conservative politicians responsible for the Docklands development have been accused of attempting to convert good Labour boroughs and electorates into Conservative ones with the influx of financial yuppies. In fact that has not happened to any significant degree.
In Australia, the Labor politicians responsible for the Better Cities program have been accused of dishing out money to Labor areas. The retort has been that any urban renewal program will inevitably centre on Labor-held old industrial areas. (We will leave aside for now the bizarrely inappropriate renewal of fairly new non-industrial areas in Canberra that did not need renewing.)
Of course, the projects in the Docklands over a decade and a half have ranged from the idealistic to the crass and the inspirational to the dull, but many have been very successful, both financially and for creating better living. Since 1981, the mix of investment has been $3.4 million public to $12.2 billion private; about 1500 business have been created or relocated to the Docklands; 150,000 trees planted; 18,000 homes completed and 8000 homes refurbished; employment up from 27,000 to 66,000 and various infrastructure proposals completed.
The contrast with the traditional Monopoly-board London is astounding. Red buses, black cabs, congestion, people, movement, old, very high density, expensive living on one hand. New, open, spacious, modern, on the other.
None of it could have happened without the environmental clean-up. None of could have happened without the economic changes: containerisation, the demand for open space close to London by finance houses city, and integration with Europe. Indeed, the economic glitch in the late 1980s shows that, because the docklands struggled then.
Planning, and perhaps of equal importance good architecture and landscape architecture, helped make the changes result in better living conditions, but alone would have done little.