Originally published at: London was almost turned into an L.A.-style highway hell by 1960s urban planners | Boing Boing
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Everyone needs to read The Power Broker, about Robert Moses, to avoid such colossal mistakes in the future. Also we should not forget that that quite a bit of Jane Jacobs’ activism against highways included NIMBYism. Her books should also be compulsory reading for urban planners, but keep in mind that outside her books, she was often against increasing density and such.
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The delightful North and South Circulars as well as the Westway were the constructed parts of Ringways 1 and 2.
At the time they were proposed, the idea of Ringways made sense as an attempt to try and keep traffic out of London; it was only much later that it was realised new roads created their own new traffic.
Not that the UK completely escaped Los Angelesisation - the city plan for Milton Keynes with its grid of high-speed dual carriageways was strongly influenced by US road planning. Spookily, it really works in MK and it’s a shame the newer parts of the town haven’t extended the grid into the newer developments.
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Ever seen the plans Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, had for Paris?
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My fantasy “cold open” for a movie of JG Ballard’s Concrete Island is dashcam footage of leaving a car lot in the City and speeding out of London at ridiculous speed until crashing on the Westway and ending up in the island.
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Indeed! Le pruit igoe.
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Londoners don’t know what they are missing!
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Only NIMBYism in the broadest sense, and not in terms of how we currently define the term. When we talk about a NIMBY now we’re talking about a usually white owner of a single-family home who doesn’t want a multi-unit building (especially a rental one) in the neighbourhood under the assumption that it will bring in poor and/or BIPOC residents. They couch it in terms of “ruining the character of the neighbourhood” or (if they’re clever) “overwhelming local infrastructure and services”, but it’s more often about classist and racist anxiety over property values.
Jacobs, in contrast, had deeper reasons linked to time and place for having antipathy toward high-density development. An urban apartment tenant herself during her NYC years, she was wary of the mid-century trend in high-rise development (especially Corb-inspired public housing) that destroyed her famous “eyes on the street” and organic urban neighbourhood cohesiveness by eliminating the front stoop, the porch, and the street-level windows. She was critical of Levittown exurban single-family home developments (the ones Moses’ expressways were meant to serve) for the same reasons.
Corb, Robert Moses, and William J. Levitt are the unholy trinity of disastrous mid-century urbanism. It’s 2022 and we’re still dealing with the fallout of their visions.
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Say what you will about M25, it has inspired at least one good song:
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The Westway has more than a few.
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the beloved M25
Ummm…
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I have to admire the logic behind these kinds of things.
“We need to build this monstrous road system to handle the growth in travel.”
“But you’re going to have to demolish 300,000 homes!”
“Yes, and those people will be moved. And once we’ve moved them, they’ll want to travel to get to work, or to visit friends and family in their old area.”
It’s a magnificent combination of cunning and stupidity.
I’ve lived very near one of the proposed southern Ringway routes for three decades, and can tell you that the best travel improvements have been in public transport. Better buses for local journeys, better train services for commuting/longer journeys. These roads wouldn’t have had even half the same impact for most people because they’re not actually going where people go anyway…
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Or pick any song you like from Orbital, named after the M25 and going to look for raves!
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Think we can convince Ben Wheatley to just spend the rest of his life making films based on Ballard’s work? High Rise was great.
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The song was inspired by the frustrations of M25 and M4 motorway rush-hour traffic.
Fortunately, I don’t have to use the M4 very often, except for the occasional trip up to London. Although it runs just a couple of miles north of where I live in Chippenham, the A420 Bristol Road is less than a mile from me, and is a lot easier to use. The whole U.K. motorway system, however, is being fucked about with, by a Government idea of ‘Smart Motorways’, where the hard shoulder is being turned into another carriageway, with emergency refuges spaced along the main motorway. Nobody in the government’s highways department seems to be able to explain how a motorist is supposed to manage if their vehicle suddenly breaks down between refuge points, with no means of moving it, leaving them trapped and vulnerable to being hit by a 40-tonne truck that hasn’t seen them, because of poor weather or the driver watching Netflix on his phone…
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Oh man, that brings back memories. Perfect for driving at night.
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As I understand it, It’s Immaterial was a “one hit wonder”, if they released anything else I’ve no knowledge of it…
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