London Thinks Big

DoubleOphicleide32

Banned
Fucking good job none of you planner morons have been let loose on London, the place has been trashed enough as it is. I'd take it back to how it was in the early 1920s before the beginning of suburban ribbon development, WW2 destruction and the scourge of modernism (can the ASB please drown Richard Rogers in an unfortunate punting accident at university?), and LEAVE IT ALONE. It had already grown quite enough. This is a little island, we need our green belt, and as for going upwards, well, look what's happened. The heart and soul has been ripped out of the city. Flyovers, grade-separated cycleways, elevated monorails or light rail at rooftop heights, Corbusian urban ghettoes... they'd wreck the city even more comprehensively than it already has been!

The only schemes I've seen in this thread that are possessed of the slightest merit are the Westminster Imperial Halls, the Selfridges tower, and that neo-Baroque monster in Stepney. Maybe that Waterloo Crystal Curve thing purely on the basis that it doesn't look as bad as the mildewed squared-off elephant droppings that have despoiled the Lambeth riverside for the last 65 years or so. I still live in hope that the government will have the courage to piss off the Twentieth Century Society idiots and dynamite the Royal Festival Hall, National Theatre etc.
 

kernals12

Banned
DoubleOphicleide32 said:
Fucking good job none of you planner morons have been let loose on London, the place has been trashed enough as it is. I'd take it back to how it was in the early 1920s before the beginning of suburban ribbon development, WW2 destruction and the scourge of modernism (can the ASB please drown Richard Rogers in an unfortunate punting accident at university?), and LEAVE IT ALONE. It had already grown quite enough. This is a little island, we need our green belt, and as for going upwards, well, look what's happened. The heart and soul has been ripped out of the city. Flyovers, grade-separated cycleways, elevated monorails or light rail at rooftop heights, Corbusian urban ghettoes... they'd wreck the city even more comprehensively than it already has been!

The only schemes I've seen in this thread that are possessed of the slightest merit are the Westminster Imperial Halls, the Selfridges tower, and that neo-Baroque monster in Stepney. Maybe that Waterloo Crystal Curve thing purely on the basis that it doesn't look as bad as the mildewed squared-off elephant droppings that have despoiled the Lambeth riverside for the last 65 years or so. I still live in hope that the government will have the courage to piss off the Twentieth Century Society idiots and dynamite the Royal Festival Hall, National Theatre etc.
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1920s London was horrifically overcrowded and filled with cholera. I'd rather we not maintain that.
 

DoubleOphicleide32

Banned
Cholera was long gone by the 1920s. Overcrowding wasn't *nearly* the problem it is today. The city was in far better shape, the transport network was able to cope, and it hadn't been blighted with bad architecture.
 

kernals12

Banned
DoubleOphicleide32 said:
Cholera was long gone by the 1920s. Overcrowding wasn't *nearly* the problem it is today. The city was in far better shape, the transport network was able to cope, and it hadn't been blighted with bad architecture.
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Inner London had 4.9 million people as of the 1921 census, it's now 3.2 million. Islington went from 400,000 to 210,000. Southwark went from 556,000 to 288,000. 1920s London was still very much the London of Charles Dickens.

People then started moving out to more spacious accommodations.
 

DoubleOphicleide32

Banned
That's because a huge amount of inner London housing stock has been lost to office developments and second homes used two weeks a year. Official estimates of population are also off due to illegal immigration, subletting etc - Tower Hamlets is particularly infamous for it.
 

Pera

kernals12 said:
Which is why it's stupid to only consider transportation systems based on how much space they take up. Bicycles don't work for the elderly or the disabled, they don't work in the rain or cold, and they're dangerous.
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If you’re used to cycling you can keep it up a long time. My father and my parents in law still cycle at age 85. There are als tricycles and other cycles adapted for handicapped people. If you have a safe infrastructure, a lot can be done by bike.
 

phx1138

kernals12 said:
they don't work in the rain or cold, and they're dangerous.
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They work very nicely if you've got the nerve to use them. i've seen people here riding in the snow, never mind rain. (You couldn't get me to do it, mind,;) but some people will.)

And "dangerous"? I find cars more dangerous. I've damn near been run down by idiots as I crossed the street right in front of them, because they're too busy looking at the traffic & itching to turn a corner.:rolleyes::angry: And as a former cyclist, I've had drivers go out of their way to block my path.

Drivers treat anybody who isn't in a car with contempt. And that isn't limited to bicycles. It applies to motorcycles, too. Drivers treat them like targets.:eek::angry:
 

kernals12

Banned
phx1138 said:
They work very nicely if you've got the nerve to use them. i've seen people here riding in the snow, never mind rain. (You couldn't get me to do it, mind,;) but some people will.)

And "dangerous"? I find cars more dangerous. I've damn near been run down by idiots as I crossed the street right in front of them, because they're too busy looking at the traffic & itching to turn a corner.:rolleyes::angry: And as a former cyclist, I've had drivers go out of their way to block my path.

Drivers treat anybody who isn't in a car with contempt. And that isn't limited to bicycles. It applies to motorcycles, too. Drivers treat them like targets.:eek::angry:
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Have you ever fallen out of a car?
 

DoubleOphicleide32

Banned
Social mobility was a thing, we had grammar schools, anyone could get a world class education. Now the comprehensive system forces mediocrity on everyone unless you can afford to buy a decent education. I should know, I'm a product of the failure of modern state schooling.

Also, by WW1 London had effective water treatment, the Victorians did a huge amount of work on that and some of what they built is still in use today.
 

kernals12

Banned
phx1138 said:
They work very nicely if you've got the nerve to use them. i've seen people here riding in the snow, never mind rain. (You couldn't get me to do it, mind,;) but some people will.)

And "dangerous"? I find cars more dangerous. I've damn near been run down by idiots as I crossed the street right in front of them, because they're too busy looking at the traffic & itching to turn a corner.:rolleyes::angry: And as a former cyclist, I've had drivers go out of their way to block my path.

Drivers treat anybody who isn't in a car with contempt. And that isn't limited to bicycles. It applies to motorcycles, too. Drivers treat them like targets.:eek::angry:
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You see a lot fewer people cycling when it's raining or snowing. You also see people walking on highwires between skyscrapers, that doesn't make it a good transportation system.
 

teg

b0ned0me said:
So in other words you have no idea about what london is like at all. Or the huge numbers of people who currently either drive to a train station or walk past their car to a train station and the cram onto packed trains that cost them thousands of dollars a year in tickets. Solely because as expensive and miserable as their commute is, it’s currently cheaper and faster than sitting in nose-to-tail traffic for hours and then paying 50 bucks each day to park. Fix it so they can drive to work in half an hour and park easily and 90% of them will say fuck the train. Then add in all those people who commute on motorcycles or carpool, all those people who could have a car but currently don’t, and BAM your new roads are soon packed again.

Not sure of the relevance of the rest of Britain given that this thread is allegedly about London, but then maybe you should change the title to “What if a totalitarian dictatorship decides to raze totally raze london and rebuild it like Houston on acid” since that seems to be your solution to pretty much every problem.
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If you want an idea of what London would be like with some of these schemes in place, then just imagine Bristol but multipled several times. (Plus BCC is currently exploring how to build a light railway network right now.)
 

Carl Schwamberger

A Modest Proposal

Remove from London all persons with a felony conviction, a chronic drug addiction, inability to remain gainfully employed for the majority of the time. A point system awarding demerits for the above activity will lead to ten or fifteen percent of the population sent packing. Transported to Australia sounds good. That population reduction should solve a lot of the overcrowding problems. Demerit points for handwringing and calling this system inhumane.
 

ECavalier

teg said:
If you want an idea of what London would be like with some of these schemes in place, then just imagine Bristol but multipled several times. (Plus BCC is currently exploring how to build a light railway network right now.)
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Bristol is not a remotely fair comparison It’s road network is as badly conceived, underdeveloped and mismanaged as it’s public transport: it’s a problem with Bristol not the philosophy. As for the notion of light rail, they’ve spent my entire life ‘exploring’ how to build various different mass transit systems and the only one that ever moved past this was an unsurprisingly halfhearted attempt at cheapest least useful option.
 
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