An illustrated guide to Britain's controversial landscape

blitzandblight.com is a growing resource of information, images and references, about aspects of Britain’s public realm that have caused contention within national or local politics, the media or public debate.

The project specifically deals with places where decisions have been made, or a campaign has been led, for features of them to be either removed or somehow changed. These can be from the built environment or the countryside, and could include townscape, architecture, infrastructure, wasteland, transport, public art, street furniture, graffiti or litter.

The places covered by this website are not likely to be found in very many guidebooks but many of them are valued by a local community who are unhappy about their alteration. At the same time, the project deals with parts of Britain’s landscape that are commonly disliked and that people wish weren’t there; these arguably reveal as much about the British as the landmarks they will proudly show off to tourists.

But places can be, and often are, appreciated by some though derided by others. A building may, for example, be listed or awarded the Stirling prize and yet be hated by those who live nearby; or its popularity may be dismissed by developers who want to build something else in its place.

Unlike the many books, websites, television programmes and ironic prizes that mock or criticise places, this project does not offer opinions but refers to sources such as these — along with newspaper articles, campaign publicity, planning applications, design reports and so on — and examines how controversy has come about.

The website deals with England, Scotland and Wales and, so far, covers their capitals London, Edinburgh and Cardiff, as well as south-western Scotland, the north-west and south-east of England. Entries will gradually be added for each region of the country (using the boundaries defined by the European commission) and the project will continue to develop with additional writing and photography.

To help make updates, relevant information, corrections and suggestions from visitors are very welcome.

Blitz and blight

The Town and Country Planning Act 1944, also known as the “blitz and blight act”,1  was passed to assist local authorities in replanning and rebuilding Britain’s bomb sites and slums, after the second world war; the act allowed councils to make compulsory purchases of privately owned land that had been “blitzed” by war damage or “blighted” by bad layout or “obsolescence”.2  These new powers were incorporated into the Town and Country Planning Act 1947,3  which, alongside the New Towns Act 1946,4  was the foundation of modern planning in Britain and led to an era of extensive demolition, redevelopment and modernisation of the country’s towns and cities.

As a result, in the 30 or so years after the war, such run-down city centres as Birmingham’s were redesigned around an indoor shopping precinct or, as Gateshead’s, a multi-storey car park. Functional modern buildings replaced sooty Victorian stations at Birmingham New Street and London Euston. Squalid housing areas (London’s Elephant and Castle, Newcastle’s Byker, Sheffield’s Park Hill, Glasgow’s Gorbals) were remodelled into high-density estates of well-intentioned council flats. And the spread of suburbia was curbed by the nationwide introduction of green belts and the creation of 28 new towns including Basildon, Cwmbran, Milton Keynes and Cumbernauld.

With its reinforced concrete and modernist design, the postwar architecture was, however, unloved by many and soon gained a reputation for being of poor quality. Its image was perhaps damaged most, in the eyes of the British public, by the collapse in 1968 of Ronan Point — a typical prefabricated tower block in east London — killing four of its residents and exposing the on-the-cheap building methods and materials used in its construction.

Many of the ambitious social-housing projects and town-centre developments of the 1950s and 60s have long since become unpopular and are often charged with causing the same problems they were meant to solve. Their bad design is widely blamed for ghettoisation and the high crime levels of sink estates in Manchester’s Hulme, Glasgow’s Sighthill or north Peckham in London.

Although Ronan Point was rebuilt, it was eventually demolished in the late 1980s, since when many of Britain’s postwar schemes have been redeveloped. Blocks of flats from the Elephant and Castle to the Gorbals, for which we once had such high hopes, are now being ripped down and replaced. In the last few years, many of Britain’s most famous 20th-century buildings have disappeared; the 1960s Bull Ring in Birmingham has recently been razed, as has Owen Luder’s once-celebrated Tricorn Centre in Portsmouth and his Get Carter car park in Gateshead, the Trinity Centre, now faces the same prospect.

Considered out of date, these neglected structures are being edited out of the cityscape, much as their blighted predecessors had once been. But as we now regret the demolition of so much of our heritage during the postwar era, we may well also come to regret destroying that period’s architectural replacements.

Certainly, we have already learned to love a number of postwar buildings, some of which have been refashioned or reused. In London, the Brunswick Centre in Bloomsbury has been successfully resuscitated and sold-off council flats fetch increasingly high prices in Trellick Tower in Notting Hill and the Barbican Centre in the City. All of these “icons” have been listed, as has Sheffield’s notorious Park Hill estate, which is soon to be transformed into trendy apartments. Yet, the endurance of these structures may owe as much to their upmarket or central location as to a better design than those that have elsewhere been got rid of.

There will, inevitably, always be disagreement about how much of our recent heritage is worth keeping and what we should do away with. Opposition is, nonetheless, greatest when older buildings are threatened, such as Brighton’s Grade I-listed West Pier — whose burnt hulk is quickly disappearing into the Channel — or the rows of back-to-back terraces in the north of England, which are due to be demolished as part of the government’s housing market renewal initiative.

But while such buildings are being swept away, a new generation of gleaming edifices is being swiftly erected in their place. The introduction of the National Lottery by the Major government in the 1990s brought more money for “regeneration” and city centres such as Manchester’s and Birmingham’s and the watersides of Bristol, Cardiff and Salford have seen the effect of substantial public investment. This has attracted more developers and encouraged further spending from the private sector.

Money has not, however, reached everywhere and certain cities have declined further. For instance, plans to regenerate Blackpool, by turning it into Las Vegas-on-Sea, were halted by the city losing its bid for the nation’s first super-casino: an idea that has since been scrapped anyway by Gordon Brown.

The government and local authorities are frequently accused of improving certain areas to the detriment of others and concentrating investment in too few places. The London Olympic games will leave a “legacy” of new homes, parklands and sports facilities in the Lower Lea Valley but the advantages of these may not, as the organisers claim, stretch across the whole of the United Kingdom. Critics particularly question how far-reaching the games’ financial rewards will be, and whether £9.3bn is in fact being wasted.

In Scotland, the same questions will surely be asked more and more, over the millions about to be spent in Glasgow on the 2014 Commonwealth games. There is, moreover, little consensus about how lasting the benefits of these events will be or, indeed, to what extent this model of regeneration will actually be beneficial.

In spite of increased public spending, much of Britain’s transformation is being shaped, not by government-funded grands projets, but by the ambitions of private developers spurred on by the recent gung-ho spirit of the City of London, and the — pre-credit crunch — New Labour economy. The private sector has been paying for a flurry of “iconic” tall buildings that are significantly changing the skylines of Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow and London.

When heritage lobbies have objected or councils have refused permission, many of these developments have got the go-ahead, thanks in no small part to the former Deputy Prime Minister and the previous mayor of London. The long-term effects of their penchant for skyscrapers will become gradually clearer over the next five to 10 years.

That is not to say that resistance to change cannot be so strong that sometimes initiatives, that look likely to have a positive effects, have to be shelved — leaving their supporters complaining of nimbyism and a missed opportunity. Part of Ken Livingstone’s 100 Public Spaces programme, the planned new layout for Sloane Square met such a well-supported campaign against it that Kensington and Chelsea council had to concede defeat and abandon the scheme.

Perhaps most controversial of all are the changes happening to Britain’s rural scenery and natural environment. Vast new housing estates are planned across former industrial sites, such as the Thames Gateway, but these may have to encroach on the green belt, if Brown is to meet his pledge to build three million new homes by 2020.5

Although it is broadly accepted that there is a need for more affordable housing, the government’s ideas about where to put it have met considerable criticism, not least their insistence on building on flood plains regardless of the changing climate. Yet no less criticised are their decisions to let nature take its course, particularly choosing not to continue spending money defending the coast — and people’s homes — from the inevitable rise in sea levels.

Climate change has put the environment high on the political agenda, but there is much debate over what (and what not) to construct to deal with it. In face of an increasing population, the impact and relative benefits of needed new infrastructure on the landscape are contentious issues, whether growing energy requirements are met by fossil fuels, nuclear or greener means.

The countryside may soon look very different, if European targets are met for providing 20% of energy from renewable sources6  and even environmental groups disagree on how far they are willing to see the countryside altered. Greenpeace and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, for example, have very different attitudes to on-shore wind farms.

Upgrading Britain’s strained transport network could also dramatically impact the environment and plans to do so have caused protests, most visibly at Heathrow. The proposed expansion of the country’s busiest airport may make it a more bearable place to travel through but would also seem to undermine BAA’s promise to reduce carbon emissions.

The idea, and indeed cost, of changing the British public realm are rarely without their detractors. And where change is not happening, there are always people who are asking why not. But despite the lessons learned from the failures and successes of the postwar rebuilding, there is simply no way of telling how much of our blight we will regret destroying and how much of our regeneration will be the blight of tomorrow.

Disclaimer:
The information contained in this website is for general information purposes only. The information is provided by Stephan Takkides and whilst I endeavour to keep the information up-to-date and correct, I make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.

In no event will I be liable for any loss or damage including without limitation, indirect or consequential loss or damage, or any loss or damage whatsoever arising from loss of data or profits arising out of, or in connection with, the use of this website. Please contact me if you find any material on the site which is inaccurate or misleading. I am not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
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