^ Interesting.
I took an Uber home from City Airport last night (we had luggage and couldn’t be bothered with the DLR and tube), so I drove through a lot of London that I don’t really see. Suffice it to say that almost the whole of that drive until you get to the Tower of London is better viewed from the air. The number of projects is impressive, but they have done nothing to coordinate them or create a real urban environment.
You can’t just convert docklands and factories to residential neighborhoods on this scale ad hoc. The whole road layout needed to be ripped out and rethought, as do the postwar developments from back when people were leaving London. Places like “London City Island” will not age well (see Roosevelt Island in NYC, which is horrible).
__________________
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." - Isaac Asimov
|