The draft City Plan 2040 is at its Examination in Public. The Corporation has abandoned plans to move Billingsgate and Smithfield fish and meat markets to Barking and to close them, with traders to be compensated and presumably freed to fend for themselves. Michael Cassidy, an ‘architect’ of today’s Square Mile and a founder of this Forum at an earlier turning point, has retired after 44 years as a leading City politician.
These and other signs tell us the City has embarked on a new era. The City Plan 2040 seeks to accommodate a changed post-Covid world, to make the Square Mile a ‘destination’ for visitors, and much more desirable for employees and therefore businesses.
Underneath the optimism lies a permafrost of existential concern and debate. Firstly in financial terms, the ability of the City’s principal public expression, the Stock Exchange, to compete effectively with global rivals. This is a problem for all stock markets when compared to Wall Street and its sustained bull market driven by tech and its dominance in the US economy. Perhaps a more protectionist US will prompt investors to revalue London’s and the European exchanges.
And secondly, expressed by what former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone rudely used to refer to as ‘the Heritage Taliban’, the fear that adding 1.2m sq m of office space in the next 16 years, the chief policy of the new City Plan, will damage the historic built environment. A debate expressed in the battle between Bevis Marks Synagogue and proposals for 1 Undershaft, and more general debate around new-build versus re-use. See the Examination in Public for how it plays out.
We had a similar debate in the mid 1980s, over a different set of threats, for similar reasons. It's always been like this, as Michael Cassidy would testify. Hard fought-over turf with blows exchanged between old and new in an undersized ring (with plenty of underused corners). The City remains an engine of growth, as the refashioning of Broadgate and the vertical thrust of the Cluster testify. The new plan seeks to re-import more desirable urbane qualities neglected in Big Bang’s dash to globalisation, and essential attractors in the unending war for talent. New schemes pay for that.
Recent criticism in the FT of proposals for Smithfield meat market, that the new Museum of London and whatever happens to the, er, rump of the market and its surrounds, will in some way be ‘sham urbanism’ are understandable. It is a shame the market is going (even 30 years after traders embarrassed the Corporation by packing not only meat but also their local ward).
Such criticism is however ‘nostalgie de la boue’ as the French put it. We are unlikely to persuade woolly mammoths to reinhabit northern England, no matter how much that might appeal to conservation, or indeed conservative, instincts. A ‘Saved’ Smithfield meat market would end up equally sham, unrealistically financially privileged, and markets generally do not thrive in aspic.
CAF events in the second half of the year exemplified the changes the City is experiencing. We visited Fletcher Priest’s refurbishment of One Exchange Place on the north east flank of Broadgate now underway for La Salle Investment and a Malaysian pension fund. This behemoth was one of SOM’s larger experiments in Post-Modernism when completed in the early 90s, contrasting with the robust modernism of Exchange House which bridges the rail tracks. New cladding, extra floor space, reduced atria, the introduction of a much more generous public link, with retail, penetrating through the scheme will create vital connections between Exchange Square and Bishopsgate, omitted from the original design, and vastly improve what this very large building has to offer, crucially avoiding redevelopment. A fruitful combo’ of good architecture and more powerful urbanism.
A joint presentation from Fleet Street Quarter Business Improvement District and the City’s Built Environment team at Temple Bar later in the autumn proved popular and revealed how the area will be transformed. The Corporation however now has no less than five BIDs competing to transform their respective areas and this caused some concerns to be raised by members at a meeting of the Policy and Resources Committee in November, not least around the Corporation’s capacity to deliver the public realm improvements the BIDs are promoting and the one-size-fits-all model for BID management which has rapidly evolved.
To cap the second half, CAF’s annual dinner in November was a sell-out. The Corporation’s New Built Environment director Katie Stewart confirmed she is a breath of fresh air, promising collaboration between public and private to achieve the City Plan’s aims. She paid tribute to Michael Cassidy who had announced his resignation on the same day. Her co-speaker, 20th Century Society Chair, Hugh Pearman, had a pragmatic proposal. Why not treat City office buildings as the temporary structures they appear to be, as the planning system treats large industrial plants, and by-pass all that agonising about whether and how they should be redeveloped? They could be cheaper and more adventurous…and there goes another squadron of flying pigs. He also gave a sneak preview of City buildings now sufficiently ancient (more than 30 years old) for the Society to be receiving petitions for their listing. The Gothic PoMo cathedral Minster Court, for example. You have been warned.
With revived energy and waxing influence, the Forum will continue to offer an enjoyable space for debate, learning, and observation of the new momentum in the City’s long life – the new schemes emerging, the market and social forces and policies shaping its future. Membership of the City Architecture Forum is one of the best places to acquire and augment knowledge of what the City and its built environment is all about. Essential, in fact.
With seasonal felicitations, Lee Mallett, CAF Committee member
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