A Decade of London in Google Street View
ianvisits.co.uk
ianvisits.co.uk
I haven't been there for years until recently, and the change there is crushing. It became cramped, insanely large buildings everywhere, Lloyds barely visible and tiny with the Cheesegrater next to it. It was an eye opening experience how much can change in a relatively (building age wise) small time.
EDIT: 2009 vs 2019 views of the LLoyd's building:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5140007,-0.0812995,3a,75y,...
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5139823,-0.0812983,3a,75y,...
The newish ones - eg 22 Bishopsgate, The Scalpel, The Cheesegrater, The Walkie-Talkie - are BIG in every dimension. They dwarf the Heron, despite the fact that the Heron is taller.
I've never been to NY though.
All seems a bit 'too much, too quick'.
Come on, Kings Cross was a dump 15 years ago. It's much nicer now. There are lots of generic-looking glass buildings, sure. But they've also removed the horrible 60s/70s concrete structures covering Kings Cross station and restored St Pancras Station and the associated hotel. If you don't think that the area has improved overall, I'd have to say that there's no pleasing you!
For those without that prior frame of reference what is now will just be what it was and they'll add their own complaints next decade. And thus time marches on and we cannot change it.
Coal drops yard and the new St Martins are very pretty, and certainly striking and elegant but I do worry that they're quite synthetic and sterile and what impact that will have on the students.
Whether or not the future students of St Martins will be any better or more successful than the ones who studied at that cold building in Holborn, I don't know.
- ed typos
I really think you must not be familiar with Kings Cross at all to say this. I mean, can you name any specific business or building that you miss?
It astonishes me sometimes what a bunch of whiners us Londoners are when it comes to new developments. It's a city, not a museum.
I even stated in my first response here that "London doesn't sit still" and that it's "a bit 'too much, too quick'" that concerns me. I wonder if we forgot certain lessons from 60s architectural adventures.
As for an answer to your question - Bagleys and The Cross spring to mind.
Not a very impressive response. Clubs often open in run-down or otherwise unattractive areas. They move when the area changes. I don't think we want to keep Kings Cross as a complete poohole just to keep a couple of clubs open. I say this as someone who used to live there. It might be fun for you to go to the run down part of town to go to a trendy club, but it's not so great for people who are in the area on a day-to-day basis.
I can see what you're saying in general, but to use Kings Cross as an example is borderline trolling. No-one misses the old Kings Cross.
Cities like Budapest, Prague, Vienna have quite strict regulations when it comes to buildings. Eg. Budapest still doesn't have anything taller, than 30 tiers.
Respecting and maintaining a certain look doesn't mean it'll become a museum, rather that it has a personality and everyone agreed to keep that personality.
London, at this point, is the other end of this spectrum: no personality, no regulations on look/height/etc based on values. (Sometimes I wonder about regulations at all, knowing the case of the melted Jaguar with the Walkie Talkie: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-23930675 )
Do you know why the cheese grater is the shape that it is?
I do not.
Personality is an interesting topic. I love Hackney or the area around Wapping; there's certainly a personality around Muswell Hill and Highgate; the Barbican is brilliant and unique, etc. But the Liverpool Street Station area? Nah.
Not that for example Budapest has a face everywhere: it has a decent amount of socialist blocks that you can find anywhere in the former Eastern Block, and a lot of generic housing areas, but the inner circle is quite heavily regulated, especially on the height of buildings.
As for regulations: regulations on what looks are allowed. The question mark for the walkie-talkie was because it's a collector mirror, and whoever designed it should have realized that it's dangerous.
Again, you seem to be polarising the engagement here into absolute terms - of course I wouldn't for a second agree with keeping "Kings Cross as a complete poohole just to keep a couple of clubs open", but the loss of those clubs and that culture surrounding it are to my mind indicative of a change in the city that inevitable as it is, is pervasive, permanent and in some ways saddening.
I can't be right or wrong in this opinion, just different to your perspective and that's ok - neither of us need 'win' here.
I do actually think it's important to keep whining in check because it holds London back. The fact that people are even willing to pretend that they want the old Kings Cross back (lol) is indicative of how deeply ingrained the whining culture is.
My stated concern here is in the density and pace of development - the change in what (I feel and believe) should be a more organically-grown locality, rather than some mass vision impressed upon the area.
That seems like a broadly negative reaction to the changes. If you think the changes have been for the worse, then it seems fair to presume that you'd rather they hadn't happened.
If you actually like the changes overall, then we are in agreement.
As for organic change - well, Kings Cross had decades of opportunity to deshitify organically, and it didn't. How long do you wanna wait?
But that doesn't mean I 'want the old kx back', it just means I wish it hadn't developed as so.
The front end development of KX itself and St. Pancras is absolutely gorgeous. So too coal drop yard and the area around CSM.
It's the density of high rise apartments around that is, to me, saddening.
- ed
and i mean 'saddening' in a perhaps melancholic whistful way - if it is inevitable and must be so, then so be it. doesn't mean i have to like it. and doesn't mean that my not liking it is in any way relevant.
The name comes from horse-carts digging such deep ruts in the mud by 1300 it became known as the hollow way.
I love that Joe Meek wrote 'Telstar'[1] from a tiny flat in Holloway. It sounded like the future in 1962, and sounds like the past now. It's the same with the built environment.
Street View is an amazing resource. Google, please don't cock it up. :)
Some of my favourite places are unrecognisable now. I remember Shoreditch being slightly edgy and going to art shows there in pop-up galleries.
I spent quite a bit of time in a pub called the Bushranger in Shepherd's Bush. I knew the staff and regulars and could relax there. It was quite dark and had sawdust on the floor. I had heard that it had been turned into a wine bar called the Stinging Nettle and looking at Google Maps now it's a Costa Coffee.
London's population today (8.7 million) is only marginally more than it was in 1939 (8.6 million). For much of the 20th century the population decreased - there's no reason that can't happen again, especially if people migrate out of London for work.
I've been living near or in big cities for many years, communing is impossible, in some cities it is completely full on the road, on public transportation. People become more and more aggressive on the road because they lose their mind spending so much time just sitting there and waiting for other cars to move.
I think it is a shame that so few companies do full remote work, especially in IT. It could really change things.
In terms of London though up is good, its way too much of a sprawl and would benefit from greater density.
The older generation would use day to day items (pots, pans, glasses, radios, TV sets, vehicles, even clothes) for what would feel like an eternity, repair till they wanted a well deserved upgrade and even then would either sell or donate the same.
Now I hear young people boast about how they upgrade their iPhones every year (or their cars every 3 years) and don't even sell the previous one because there's no point in getting $300 for it :(
While not everyone can afford to do that, but it does make it aspirational (in the minds of those vulnerable to herd mentality) to be a wasteful consumer h*e, smh.
[1] This mass cultural and spending to saving ratio shift is in the best interest of the government, who wants our economy to grow—at any cost.
Whilst the world population keeps growing and we keep moving forwards towards hire world average incomes we'll still be looking for growth.
Maybe I'm wrong here, but I'm afraid that shifts towards sustainability in developed parts of the world can only lead to less growth _in those parts of the world_. There will always be a buyer in a less developed country that will keep a less sustainable economy going. And the less-developed world is growing.
Efforts towards sustainability are neccessary for reasons too obvious to mention, but ongoing growth does seems inevitable.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/c5d3e0ae-36eb-11ea-ac3c-f68c10993... (in here http://archive.ph/https://www.ft.com/content/c5d3e0ae-36eb-1... for those who don't have access)
It will take a paradigm shift to make location irrelevant.
Its a coping mechanism for dealing with death and you'll see many people as they age fall into it.
Sure, there are likely many factors but I would argue a pretty strong one is that the opinion is just preparing the oldie for acceptance of death by turning it into something more palatable.