Having chalked up a visit to another a 50s New Town (this time, Sussex's Crawley), some t'internet trawling led to the Borough Council's plans to rework the main shopping area. Whilst most towns and cities in the UK have evolved over hundreds, or even thousands, of years, in these unusual situations, the architects of these towns got the opportunity to deliver a whole town (or at least the plan for one) in one fell swoop. But, to quote surely the worst advertising tagline of all time, Change Happenz. (Italics and bold. A vile typographical war crime).
Crawley's large-scale redevelopment plan includes reworking the set-piece Boulevard, a road which was intended in the original 1950s masterplan to be 'enlivened with floodlighting and illuminations in colour' (presumably making it something like Welwyn Garden City's superb Parkway). In the event, Crawley's Boulevard has become a busy orbital road forcibly demarking the northmost end of the shopping precinct, making a trip across to the brutally dull 1960s Civic Hall a life-threatening funrun.
Crawley's large-scale redevelopment plan includes reworking the set-piece Boulevard, a road which was intended in the original 1950s masterplan to be 'enlivened with floodlighting and illuminations in colour' (presumably making it something like Welwyn Garden City's superb Parkway). In the event, Crawley's Boulevard has become a busy orbital road forcibly demarking the northmost end of the shopping precinct, making a trip across to the brutally dull 1960s Civic Hall a life-threatening funrun.
Civic pride fail
(spelt FA'L).
The old masterplan document (written about the same time as Orwell's 1984...) advocates a benign Corporation which should oversee the whole design of the town to ensure consistency and yet 'prevent the monotony of design and layout which are so often found where no aesthetic control has applied'. Variety good and continuity good. The document continues:
It is a defect of the modern town that the design of street furnishings is so rarely considered in relation to the street itself and to the buildings along it. Lamp standards of poor design, for instance, are frequently selected from manufacturers catalogues and used without discrimination. Footways are often obstructed by lamp standards, beacons, traffic signals, signposts, pillar boxes, fire alarms and other furniture, the design of which has obviously not been subject to any over-riding control or co-ordination.
These wise words have of course been ignored over the years. The town centre is now blessed with a selection of PoMo streetlights and signage. And - sigh - a transplanted Victorian bandstand that intentionally clutters up the central space, Queens Square.
Incongruous bandstand, superfluous steps and
tubular metal handrails all help cure the Scary Open Space.
The old High Street gets some strange silver-gothic
Millennial street furniture and, um, perhaps some gallows.
Crawley's current redevelopment plan is not the first attempt to bolster the array of shops and address the contemporary shoppers' desires. As is apparently obligatory with such New Towns, the 50s precinct was joined later by a full-enclosed shopping complex, centring on a large department store. Crawley's Debenhams is housed the multilevel 1990 PoMo of County Mall.
A shuddering orgasm for escalator-fanciers.
Harlow's Harvey Centre (1979) holds a glamorous and brown BHS. The whole of Bracknell appears to surround the large Bentalls, to the point that the store can be approached from all sorts of confusing aspects, including from the wilting Princess Square of 1984. Basildon's 1985 Eastgate once held a Savacentre and Allders - now an Asda and another Debenhams. Hemel Hempstead's 1990 Marlowes lacks such a punter-magnet and is therefore largely dying (and apparently modelled on a massive white trench).
Happy. Space.
But how many shopping centres can a modestly-sized town support? Crawley's new plan includes 100 new shops (anchored by a John Lewis). Hemel's new complex, Riverside, has already been built, again housing a large department store (Debenhams, naturally).
These redevelopments inevitably draw businesses (and shoppers) away from the original 50s parade and into the new, shiny, weather-proof complexes. The 'regeneration' of the town centre so often leads to the stagnation and abandonment of the original precincts. Much of the 50s shopping stock in Bracknell in particular is in a parlous state (despite a fucking deluge of fucking hanging baskets of fucking flowers).
Wild. West.
(ie Bracknell)
Great. Unwashed.
Fuck's. Sake.
Again, Hemel's Riverside has helped to knacker the Marlowes, which had in turned helped to knacker the set-piece 50s high street, which is now relegated to local supermarkets (in the former Sainsbury's), and chain pubs like Wetherspoons (which occupies the town's old theatre, and is done up inside like an industrial Nando's).
The stains of the Sainsbury's signage
peak out from the right.
Improbably groovy pub.
Completely unsympathetic on the inside.
So, what should be done with these old parts of New Towns? Bracknell's approach appears to be much like Thamesmead's - daub some render, splash around some blue paint, and pretend that the old buildings are new.
Happy now?
(fucking baskets of fucking flowers).
This approach, performed in a staggeringly inept way in Bracknell, rather underlines that there is nothing wrong with the old buildings [I am aware of writing 'underlines', but then using italics. For some reasons, 'this rather italicises' does quite convey what I meant]. Whilst 50s buildings are too new to be much admired (culturally, we've got as far as Victorian Gothic, and the occasional bit of Deco in the background of Poirot), simply sticking up wodges of new shopping next to them is not a way to ensure that a town continues to thrive (cf Bracknell).
Unless, perhaps, there is a deliberate masterplan being enacted. Perhaps the idea is to create a huge museum of consumerism, consisting of shopping precincts throughout the decades, thoughtfully arranged around clusters of increasingly-tall multi-storey car parks...
And, on that, I shall start thinking about scooting to the UK's newest shopping centre, the Olympic Stratford Westfield.
