It's called encroachment. Encroachee? Fitzrovia. It's a central London neighborhood that Jane Jacobs would find much like Greenwich Village: (a) short blocks, (b) aged buildings, (c) mixed primary uses, and (d) high population densities. Anathema to her: single-purpose high-rises with all other uses zoned out. [2011]
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I have know London in 1967, 68, 69 and 70. Its centuries old skyline was yet intact and on par with Paris'; it was a city with a charm all of its own.
ReplyDeleteIn 1969 the first high rises were sprouting. Unbridled real estate speculation then run amok and savaged central London; it is now an unrecognizable monstrous hybrid of the ancient and the international skyscraper style of concrete, glass and metal boxes.
It is no longer London and will never be New York.
What the stalinist builders did to the East european and Russian cities, the capitalist ones have done to London: mutilation and uglification on a grand mad scale.
London traded her soul for the profiteering of a few; for generations to come she will bear the scars of greed and complete absence of esthetics.
Vaison