Demolishing South Kilburn

South Kilburn Estate, 22-05-18

On South Kilburn Estate new concrete shells are rising from the rubble that was once Gloucester House and Durham Court. I've written before about Brent Council's 15 year estate regeneration scheme, and the implications of the changes of tenure that are at its core, but none of that captures the extraordinary visual impact made by the tearing down of people's homes, whatever the tenure. The most recent demolition phase lasted around six months. A bigger selection of images from that period is here. More words and pictures here.

South Kilburn, 22-3-18

South Kilburn Estate, 1-5-18

 

South Kilburn, 22-5-18

More at The Corner

Over recent months Speakers' Corner has taken on a new lease of life, not all of it healthy. The 'home of free speech' has become the arena for a weekly gladiatorial contest between Islamophobic English nationalists and a fluid group of young Muslim men, as eager to defend their religion as their opponents are to insult it. The result has been much noise, little enlightenment.

The conflict began in March, when the Austrian far-right Generation Identity leader Martin Sellner was refused entry to the UK and deported. The following week English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson and a large number of his supporters descended on Speakers' Corner to protest at what they regarded as a denial of their right to free speech. Some of them have been around ever since, apparently happy to have found an easily accessible target for their anger.

Testosterone levels are high (very few women are involved), and police intervention has become a regular feature. After some years during which there were often none to be seen at the Corner on a Sunday afternoon, police are now present in force, their vans strategically parked and rows of constables lined up to step in and separate the two groups when they overheat.

In another new development, the clashes are now available to the world beyond in the form of hours of mostly unedited, often chaotic footage posted on YouTube. Everyone is either filming or being filmed, sometimes both at the same time, and the resulting broadcasts can pick up 20,000 or more views within hours of posting.

So the place has got a lot busier, and although endless religious arguments remain its most prominent (and least interesting) feature, crowd numbers are well up, there are still some discussions worth a listen - and still the occasional frisson when the police go on manoeuvres. More 2018 pictures here, older photos from my book here.

The London Clearances (continued)

Walterton Road, North Paddington 1975

My first useful work as a photographer came about through involvement with housing campaigners at the tail end of the slum clearance programmes of the 1960s and 70s. In London, streets of poorly maintained, privately rented Victorian terraces were being torn down and replaced by a brave new world of modern homes in publicly owned estates of concrete apartment blocks.

Forty years on, that world has turned full circle. Now it is the 'castles in the sky' that are coming down, streets are all the rage, and council housing, now renamed 'social', is struggling to survive.

Gloucester House and the rubble of Durham Court, South Kilburn Estate, 2018

Across the road from the sub-standard flat that was my home back in 1975 (toilet and cold water sink on the shared landing, no bathroom), work has begun on Phase 2b of Brent Council's 15 year South Kilburn Estate regeneration scheme. Demolition of the low rise Durham Court blocks is underway, and the now deserted 18 storey Gloucester House awaits the wrecking crew.

If all goes according to plan, by 2029, when the final phase is scheduled for completion, 2400 new homes will have been built, 1200 for private sale, and 1200 let at social rent to existing secure tenants.

Partly demolished blocks, Durham Court, South Kilburn Estate

The buildings and landscaping completed so far are impressive, a big improvement on the bleak brutalist concrete they have replaced, and the scheme has attracted much praise. The council has also been lauded for its financial strategy, using income from the private sales to fund the homes let at social rents.

So what's not to like? In a convincing piece on Haringey's controversial partnership deal with Australian developer Lendlease on the Red Brick blog, Steve Hilditch argues that the most straightforward criterion for assessing the wave of regeneration deals being done by councils across the capital should be the number of social rented homes there will be at the end of the process.

“Thousands of mainly social rented homes will be knocked down and thousands of mainly private homes will be built. There will be many more homes overall, but, how will the proposed mix of market and sub-market homes tackle homelessness and the needs of people on the waiting list?  The type and tenure of new homes is as important as how many homes are built in total. Social rent remains the only truly affordable option for many people on lower incomes.”

On that measure, the figures for South Kilburn don't stack up. By 2029, 2400 new homes will have replaced 1610. Of the latter, 1420 were occupied by secure tenants and 190 by leaseholders. It's hard to know whether the prices leaseholders are getting for their compulsorily purchased homes match the prices demanded for the new (unlikely). But it is certain that 1420 secure tenants will not fit into the 1200 homes available for social rent. It is probable that enough of them will have been rehoused elsewhere to make the scheme work, but the net effect will be to reduce the number of social rent homes available across the borough, and to clear even more people on low or average incomes out of central London.

Kilburn Quarter, completed phase 2a of South Kilburn Estate regeneration scheme

Brent, like many others London councils, has been forced into this trade-off between private sales and publicly owned social rentals by central government funding cuts and the long-term disempowerment of local authorities. The new estate looks like it's going to be a nice place to live, and will provide much improved homes for the tenants who are rehoused on it - albeit at higher so-called 'target' social rents.  It will also increase the number of homes available for private sale and market rental – in itself not a bad thing, as long as they're occupied once bought. It's just a pity it won't be of any help in cutting the waiting list and housing the homeless.  More pictures here. More words and pictures here and here.

No Resting Place

At the beginning of this year, prompted by what seemed to be a recent significant rise in the numbers of people sleeping rough in central London, I set about documenting some of the many dark doorways and uninviting corners in which anxious, disturbed or destitute men and women now spend their days and nights.

I decided to focus on the places, rather than the people who use them, in order to highlight the harsh locations in which rough sleepers find themselves, without identifying the often vulnerable individuals who use them.  Not all the photographs succeed in doing this - parts of faces are visible in one or two. 


 
The pictures were taken on and off from January through March, and now the Greater London Authority has released figures for the numbers of rough sleepers recorded in the capital during that time. I was not surprised. They showed an increase of 7% on the same period last year - to 2,751 individuals over the three months. Nationally, rough sleeping has risen by 37% since 2010.

Each person has their own story, but together the bodies trying to keep warm on cold hard pavements are the most visible symptoms of the current crises in housing and adult social care provision in one of the richest countries in the world.  Shameful.  More pictures here.

More Market Failures

Nine Elms regeneration zone

 There is a striking disjunction between the desperate shortage of affordable housing in the capital, and the extraordinary panorama of cranes, pile-drivers and high-rise residential blocks in various states of construction visible from almost anywhere in the city with a view.

Even more extraordinary, at least to someone unfamiliar with London's dysfunctional property market, is the fact that many of the newly completed apartments transforming the skyline are empty, bought off-plan by overseas investors as convenient assets in which to stash their cash. But now it appears that all is not well in the luxury homes trade.

Battersea Power Station

Last month Morgan Stanley warned that prices of new, upmarket London flats could fall by as much as 20% this year, and the International Business Times reported that Chinese investors who bought apartments off-plan in the Battersea power station development are having second thoughts now the time has come to pay the balance on their relatively small up-front deposits. Those in the know are clearly expecting trouble: although pre-tax profits at the estate agent Foxtons only fell by 3% last year, investors knocked 33% of the share price. If these are the first signs of a bursting bubble, it would be good news for anyone who thinks of four walls and a roof as home, rather than an offshore shelter for their dodgy money.

More pictures here.

Construction of Alto Apartments, Wembley

The Eye of the Beholder

A building I photographed by chance last week has hit the headlines. A poll conducted by Building Design magazine has voted 20 Fenchurch Street winner of the Carbuncle Cup 2015, awarded annually to what the voters consider to be the ugliest building in the UK. The 37 storey City of London tower, designed by Rafael Vinoly and built by Land Securities, and more widely known as the Walkie Talkie building, has had its problems, but it was its distinctiveness and prominence, rather than its awfulness, that struck me when I took the photo (above). It doesn't seem to me to be significantly more objectionable than a number of other grandiose British architectural follies.  But I'm an unreliable witness, easily seduced by an all-to-rare shaft of London sunlight.

The Greater London Clearances (again)

Cressingham Gardens residents protest outside Lambeth Town Hall, July 2015

Last night's decision by Lambeth Council to proceed with demolition of Cressingham Gardens estate in Brixton is of a piece with similar 'regeneration' schemes across the capital. To maximise the use of increasingly valuable central London real estate, the Labour council plans to demolish 306 homes to make way for 464 new ones. Most of the 158 additional units will be sold off, with only 15% let at council rents.

Tenants and leaseholders in the 1960s low-rise blocks bordering Brockwell Park fear they will be priced out of the area many have lived in for decades. Meanwhile the council is caught between a rock and a hard place by central government funding cuts. On paper at least, the scheme looks better than those currently under way in Tory-led Barnet, but that is no consolation to the residents, who stand to lose their homes with no certainty over where they will be put during and after the rebuild, or at what cost.

The trend towards displacement of social renting from an ever-widening area of the city is undesirable for a whole host of reasons – including the break-up of long-established communities, unsustainable pressures on public services in the outlying boroughs, and rising transport costs for low-paid workers forced to commute long distances. Resolving all this cannot be done by the local authorities, Labour or Tory, now left to make the best of a bad job. It requires massive changes in central government housing policy. Don't hold your breath.

Cressingham Gardens residents protest outside Lambeth Town Hall, July 2015

Speakers' Corner: Book Publicity (Part One)

Martin Besserman 1996

I have a photo book coming out in May and, following a year-long hiatus (it was accepted for publication in February 2014), am now beginning to grapple with the practicalities of publicising its arrival.

Speakers' Corner: Debate, Democracy and Disturbing the Peace contains around 100 black and white photographs taken on Sunday afternoons in London's Hyde Park between 1977 and 2014. The place has a worldwide reputation as the home of free speech, and a parallel one as (to quote George Orwell) the resort of preachers, eccentrics and "a large variety of plain lunatics". That's a promising combination, and the pictures, many accompanied by excerpts of speeches, heckles and arguments that I recorded at the time, are my attempt at documenting the extraordinary mixture of serious public debate, off-the-wall religiosity, whacky humour and self-regulating anarchic mayhem that has repeatedly drawn me back there.

Stuart Wheeler 1978

Although it's a book that I hope will attract photo enthusiasts, I would be disappointed if it didn't also appeal to a much wider audience: to anyone interested in London history (it is being published by The History Press), politics, religion, popular culture, public debate and opinion. The publicity needs to reflect this, and it seems that social media, of which I am currently only a moderate user, will play an essential role. I'm working on it: this piece is a first step.  More anon.  

And more pictures here.

Argument 2014

The Siege of Silicon Roundabout

  Demolition site, Hoxton     

The Old Street roundabout is surrounded. The wrecking crews are converging from all directions. The traffic island whose geometry lends its name to the London home of tech start-ups, skinny jeans and wall-to-wall wall-art, is under siege. The decaying Victorian buildings which have incubated the successes and failures of the new information economy over the last few years are being torn down to make space for gleaming new steel and glass towers.

Silicon Roundabout was always a convenient, but somewhat misleading moniker. There are tech start-ups all over the city, with a significant number already housed in steel and glass at Canary Wharf – a very different social space from the coffee houses and boutiques of Hoxton and Shoreditch. Nevertheless the area does have a distinctive buzz, which it would be a shame to lose. According to one local estate agent, much of the new residential property is being bought off-plan by overseas investors looking for a safe haven for their cash, and may well remain empty once completed. And the office blocks creeping up Bishopsgate are mostly devoted to corporate finance and its besuited offshoots. Will the rather appealing well-heeled bohemian vibe survive the London property boom, or will the relentless march of investment capital clear yet another piece of the capital of lowlifes with less than six figure incomes?

 

  Demolition site, Hoxton                                        Private apartment block, City Road

Thanks to Steve Nathan for the estate agent research.  More pictures here.

Citizens, not customers

Pancras Square, 2014

Last month Camden Council took possession of a new office building containing a “state-of-the-art and sustainable” leisure centre, a relocated library, and other welcome community facilities. The council estimates its 14 floor tower, the construction of which was financed by selling off ageing and unwanted parts of its property portfolio, will save it between £2.5 million and £4.5 million a year in running costs.

5 Pancras Square sits in a corner of a major new development that has transformed the once notorious area behind King's Cross station. Ed Smith, writing in the New Statesman, described the change as one “from derelict wasteland to caffeinated utopia”. The place is buzzing with local office workers, passing travellers, and students from Central St.Martins art school in neighbouring Granary Square, built on part of the long disused goods yard. There's even a canal running through the middle to add that apparently essential waterside appeal.

I well remember the “derelict wasteland”. Twenty-five years ago I spent several weeks photographing it, and some of the people who lived and worked in it, for an exhibition. I would hesitate to now call it a “utopia”, but it is undoubtedly much improved.

Culross Buildings, 1989

So what's not to like? Not a lot. I just have a slight resentment at being regarded by my elected local authority as a 'customer' (top), rather than a 'citizen' (even if that is my status in the rest of the largely privately owned and managed development). And a nagging feeling that the rough sleepers, short-life tenants and small businesses that I photographed back then are not among those who have benefited from all this. More pictures of the 'derelict wasteland' here.  Caffeinated utopia to follow.

Young homeless man, Pancras Road, 1989

New Soapboxes For Old

Yesterday's Royal Parks press launch of revamped landscaping at Speakers' Corner offered a refreshing spectacle: a senior politician (Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport Sajid Javid MP) attempting to face down two experienced Hyde Park regulars angry at a lack of consultation over changes to their Sunday afternoon meeting place. He didn't stand a chance.

Face-to-face argument, rarely possible between governors and governed, is what the place is about, and this one took place in front of the TV cameras. Tony Allen and Heiko Khoo, who have been speaking in the park since 1978 and 1986 respectively, heckled Javid mercilessly through out his brief speech, and then confronted Royal Parks senior management (above). The Hyde Park speakers are a hard bunch to organise, but there is resentment at the noise from the rock gigs held throughout the summer on the nearby field, the cycle lane that runs through the concrete area on which speakers and crowds currently gather, the lack of toilets, and the failure to screen out traffic noise from the Marble Arch roundabout.

A small temporary exhibition, visible as the backdrop to the bespoke wooden soapboxes from which Royal Parks CEO Linda Lennon CBE and the Secretary of State addressed the assembled media (below), included material from the Sounds From The Park archive, and pictures from my Speakers Cornered project, so as well as being hugely entertained, I got to photograph my own photographs in the place they were originally taken.

Sounds from The Park

Sounds from the Park is about to launch a unique archive documenting the post-war history of Speakers' Corner.

The project, a collaboration between oral history group On the Record and the Bishopsgate Institute, was funded by the National Heritage Lottery Fund, and over the last year has collected oral testimony, historic and contemporary photographs, recordings and other material from orators, hecklers and other regular frequenters of the public speaking area in Hyde Park.

The formal opening of the archive, an exhibition and an accompanying booklet, includes a free lunch and contributions from the archivists and other participants.

I have a vested interest:  I've been on the project steering committee for the duration, and the collection includes around 150 of the photographs I have taken at Speakers' Corner since 1977, a number of which feature in the exhibition.  The experience has greatly enriched my own archive, enabling me to put names and stories to faces in photographs shot more than 30 years ago.  I feel a book coming on.

You can book a free place at the launch on 020 7392 9200.
It runs from 1pm - 5pm on Saturday 7th December, in The Great Hall, Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 4QH.  The exhibition continues until 30 April 2014.  More details here.

Foodbank

Patrick Butler reports in the Guardian this week that the government has launched an inquiry into the recent explosion of foodbanks, soup kitchens and school breakfast clubs. The country's finest minds will seek to understand why, with falling wages, cuts in benefits, and rising prices, increasing numbers of people are having problems feeding themselves and their families. It's real puzzle.

Foodbank was the result of my own inquiry, conducted last year. It was prompted by outrage that such widespread charitable giving should be necessary in one of the wealthiest countries in the world – particularly one with a well-established welfare system set up to act as a supposed safety net. The video is a quick snapshot of some of the problems faced by users of three London foodbanks, all run under the franchise of the Christian charity the Trussell Trust, and of the work of the volunteers who run them.

Foodbanks shouldn't be necessary, and many of the volunteers feel the same way. Watching these (mostly church-based) charities giving handouts to the needy seems like a throwback to Dickens, and the horrors of pre-welfare state Britain. It is a glimpse of what the country would look like if the coalition government succeeds in its attempt to dismantle state provision, leaving philanthropists and charities to pick up the pieces. A preview of what they mean by 'The Big Society'.

The very existence of these centres is shocking, and I set out to make a critique. But I found it difficult to say anything other than the totally obvious – much like the inevitable outcome of the forthcoming government inquiry – and cut the project short. For although I have strong reservations about the return to church-based welfare provision, I couldn't fault the generous impulse that lies behind it. The video ended up almost looking like a promo, and has been used as such by those that took part. Make of that what you will.

The People's Library

Local residents and a group of activists from Occupy London, who took over the empty Friern Barnet Library a few weeks ago, have already filled its shelves to overflowing with books donated by supporters. The newly restocked People's Library and community hub is open six days a week and hosts a range of events for children and adults, as well as running a trust-based book-lending service.

A court hearing in December will determine whether Barnet Council can evict the community librarians and sell off the building as part of its One Barnet £1 billion outsourcing programme. Until then, at least, volunteers and users have an opportunity to demonstrate how such a service might operate without local government support. A couple of months is one thing, but it's hard to see how it can survive in the long term without a regular source of income. In the meantime, it's a great advert for community solidarity and co-operative action. More pictures here (and more to follow).

Don't Applaud, Just Throw Money

Down the road from the Tate Modern gallery in Southwark, London, is an animatronic sculpture by the public art collective Greyworld. Monument to an Unknown Artist (above) looks out over cranes and the rapidly rising towers of a new residential development called Neo Bankside. Apartments in the blocks are on sale for prices ranging from £1m to £6.5m. A quick Google search (my Latin is rusty) reveals that the inscription on the monument - Non plaudite modo pecuniam jacite - translates as: Don't applaud, just throw money. Neat placement.

Grassroots Government

Last week the residents of Queen's Park ward in Westminster won a two year campaign to establish a Community Council, the first such local elected authority in London since parish councils were abolished in the capital in 1963. In a referendum made possible following a change in the law introduced in 2007, 64% voted in favour of a precept which will add between £39 to £44 a year to typical council tax bills and provide the new body with a budget of £100,000.

The area has a long history of community activism. Its current most visible manifestation is Queen's Park Neighbourhood Forum, a residents' organisation set up with the help of Paddington Development Trust. The forum began the campaign for the new council after its funding was cut by the coalition government. Although situated in one of the wealthiest boroughs in the country, the ward is one of the 10% most deprived - in marked contrast to the 'other' Queen's Park, the upmarket area across the tracks in Brent.

Elections for the new council will take place in 2014. More pictures here

Smart Phone

Passing through the new extension of Kings Cross station for the first time yesterday, I was struck by the roof and the light, but the only lens I had on me was the one peeking out of the back of my Android smartphone. Although I've had it for almost a year, I've hardly used the inbuilt camera, unwilling to waste time making images with its tiny sensor. Seen in full magnification, the 14.5MB files reveal sharpening artefacts, highlight clipping and a fair bit of noise - but the Kings Cross ceiling looks surprisingly good on a screen at normal viewing size. I can see the attraction of the Instagram, Lightbox, and Urbian's Retro Camera apps – all ways of acknowledging the limitations of the form, whilst at the same time making the most of them. It's pretty obvious why sales of compact cameras are plummeting, but I won't be getting rid of my Nikons any time soon.

London Calling

At last night's Mayoral Accountability Assembly, tightly orchestrated by London Citizens, the four candidates seeking election to City Hall were asked to commit to the community organisers' 'City Safe' programme, and to policies on the Living Wage, social housing and youth employment.

Boris Johnson did his usual Billy Bunter act, blustering his way through awkward detail, waving his arms about and generally playing the buffoon. In sharp contrast, Ken Livingstone responded carefully to each of the points put to him by the selected delegates, but looked worn down by his non-stop electioneering schedule. With only a week to go, it's neck-and-neck.

The other two candidates on show, Jenny Jones of the Green Party and Brian Paddick for the Lib-Dems, seemed eminently reasonable. Neither stands a chance. More pictures here and here.

Something is Happening Here

Anyone taking a stroll around the area to the east of London's Old Street roundabout for the first time might well start feeling like Bob Dylan's Mr Jones: you know that something is happening here, but you don't know what it is.

From high up on gable ends, right down to pavement level, sprayed onto walls, doors, shutters – flat surfaces of any kind – a painted army of the grotesque and the bizarre marches across the built environment. The buildings themselves are a contrasting mix of Victorian dereliction and the smartly modern. In between crumbling onetime industrial premises, recently converted factories and warehouses now host offices and apartments whose occupants are served by a growing number of minimalist galleries, fashionable bars, and Macbook-infested coffee shops.

The demographic is mostly young – twenty to thirtysomething – techy, tapered jeans and T shirts, some strange haircuts. The place is buzzing. Builders' cranes break up the skyline. The massive new concrete viaduct of the East London Line sweeps over road junctions and vacant lots. It doesn't feel like the recession has reached these parts, despite its proximity to Threadneedle Street.

But what's driving all this is not visible from the street. Hidden away in the new workspaces are between 300 and 600 tech 'start-ups' (estimates vary), some already pulling in big money, others hoping to justify the faith of their venture capital investors. People call this 'Silicon Roundabout'. The government prefers 'Tech City', but either way it's clearly thriving - the closest thing we've got to an economic success story.



Of course, economic crisis and government-induced austerity are not far away. Rough sleepers and rougher drinkers still hang out in the subways leading out of Old Street tube (it has free public toilets, an important facility for the homeless); at lunchtime, beggars sit on the ground by sandwich bars and cash machines. Not everyone is an IT entrepreneur: there are car washers and security guards, bar workers and shop assistants - and the occasional older resident or passer-by who may have lived there all their lives, but look about them as though they have strayed inadvertently onto another planet.

Why here? Immediately to the south, the steel and glass towers along Bishopsgate appear to be creeping relentlessly northwards; to the east, Stratford City is being sterilised in preparation for the Olympics. But for the moment rents are relatively cheap, and this, together with what Wired has described as 'a critical mass of available programming talent, and just enough outside investment', has combined to produce a place that actually makes stuff.

This is what unplanned regeneration looks like. It's not consumption-led, like Westfield's mega-mall in Stratford, or reliant on ever-inflating property prices, like the speculative scorched earth schemes favoured elsewhere in the capital (Hammersmith & Fulham's proposals for Earls Court, for instance). It's organic, a by-product of a new industrial revolution. There are still boarded-up buildings, makeshift conversions, and scrappy rubble-strewn corners, but it's a lot more interesting than the monolithic conceits of top-down re-development. And even if Mr Jones doesn't know exactly what it is, it's definitely not Desolation Row.

More photos here.

The Next Big Thing?

Since photo-blogging website Lightbox launched in June 2011, two million users have downloaded its Android mobile phone app.

According to co-founder and CEO Thai Tran (above), the site was originally conceived as a photography bolt-on to Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. It soon evolved into something rather more ambitious when it became clear that many photographers – both amateur and professional - were using it as a stand-alone gallery for their work. Version two, launched in December, added social features enabling following and sharing, and very quickly established its own stand-alone community.

As well as direct access to the Lightbox website, the Android app contains an optional integrated QuickSnap camera. Like the popular Instagram and Hipstamatic apps for the iPhone, it offers in-phone image editing tools, but allows a choice of less stylised image outputs than the iOS programmes.

Tran isn't worrying about income streams – both access to the website and the app download are free. Twitter took three years to turn a profit, and Facebook took five, by which time it had 300 million users worldwide. For now, and for the next eighteen months, the priority for him and his eight-strong team is building the Lightbox user community, not revenue.

Will it be the next 'big thing'? The venture capital funded company is unusual in being so directly focussed on photography, but it is just one of several hundred tech start-ups now operating out of what has been dubbed 'Silicon Roundabout', the run-down but rapidly gentrifying commercial district around the Old Street roundabout, just north of the City of London. The government is hoping the area will become a London version of California's Silicon Valley, birthplace of some of the biggest businesses on the planet, and set up its Tech City initiative in 2010 to help make this happen.

Tech City has its critics, but IT entrepreneurs are widely seen as crucial in rebalancing the UK economy away from its over-reliance on the financial sector. Whether this happens, and whether Lightbox makes it up there with the global US brands, we'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, take a look at the Lightbox website. There's a surprising amount of interesting stuff on show.

More pictures of Silicon Roundabout are here.