‘This sketch is made as much in anger as it is in hope.
Its an aerial view of a low rise street based high density neighbourhood…the way that London’s brownfield sites should be developed and a counterblast to
-the disgusting donut blocks going up everywhere
-the anti social high rise shit that people are building
-and the morons who want London to sprawl in to the countryside
It is an idea for the house builders and pension funds, the corporations and absentee landlords, lazy architects and weazely planning consultants who are screwing up this beautiful city…… in Vauxhall and Nine Elms, down the City Road, up in West Hampstead and Cricklewood, at Battersea Power station…in the destruction of entire urban block in Soho and the generic apartment blocks going up in Metroland from Colindale to Croydon.
It is also a critique of the prevailing functionalist planning orthodoxy and its tick box space and light standards…..enshrined in ever proliferating policy which consigns these kinds of sociable, walkable, properly compact urban forms to the historical scrap heap.’