Peter Bishop: “It was a tremendous lifeline having the Qataris come in to buy the Olympic Village.”
By Denise Marray/Gulf Times Correspondent London
Qatari investment in major London developments is having a beneficial impact on improving areas of capital such as the South Bank and the East End, according to Peter Bishop, a Professor of Urban Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL).
He expects the development of the Shell Centre site on London’s South Bank to improve and revitalise the rather rundown and depressing area around Waterloo station. The provision of 80,000sq ft of retail space on the site will give the area a boost.
“The pedestrian circulation will be improved. As it draws more people in, it will act as a great investment kick for the South Bank,” he commented.
With regard to Qatari investment in ensuring that the 2012 Olympic sites benefit the local communities in the years to come, he said: “It was a tremendous lifeline having the Qataris come in to buy the Olympic Village. The park is brilliant, as was the strategy for scaling down the stadia, and I’ve every confidence the London Olympic legacy will be the best ever.”
However, he added that it is too soon to make a full assessment of the legacy, because it has to be seen in the context of the whole development of the site over the next decades.
There is a lot of debate in the capital over how the city should look and how best to ensure that historic sites are protected. Bishop noted that London takes a very different stand to iconic cities such as Paris and Rome when it comes to planning. Paris within its centre has few buildings over seven storeys high. Aside from the Pompidou Centre and Montparnasse, he observed, high rise modern buildings are few and far between. Major, high rise commercial developments such as La Defense are built on the periphery.
But London aims to accommodate old and new.
“London has always been a global trading city from Roman times. It has built its wealth on being an open city that looks outwards. We encourage trade and inward investment. The Shell Centre development is a continuation of that tradition.
“London has been quite successful in incorporating very large scale developments into its historic centre without damaging its essence. It is an amazing hotchpotch; it is the most visited city in the world – people like seeing the dynamism and the juxtaposition of old and new. We preserve the heritage and character as well as accommodating very new cutting edge architecture,” he said.
However, a dangerous development in recent years, Bishop cautioned, has been for governments to expect developers to take on the role of social policy upholders responsible for providing affordable housing. That approach is simply not working. There is a housing crisis.
He noted that even middle income professionals are being driven out of the city by unaffordable house prices and a lack of social housing. This trend if allowed to continue, he said, would have a disastrous effect on the economy of the capital.
“We have lost the balance. There is a degree of exclusion not just of people on low incomes but people on relatively high middle incomes. That is going to result in a very severe labour shortage – not just for the lower end jobs. You need to be earning £100,000 plus to live London and then you have to save up a huge deposit. That has to impact on the London economy,” he said.
He added: “Developers should be building – not providing housing for people on low incomes. The bizarre view that is now becoming orthodox is that the development sector should pick up social policy. It’s a bit like saying developers should deal with healthcare or education.
“Development is difficult and risky enough at the best of times without having huge amounts of money diverted into providing affordable housing. And in any case that is not happening. The Shell Centre is 20% (affordable housing) with only 12% on site and that is consistent with a lot of other developments.
“There is a need either for large scale government subsidy or land acquisition to ensure we get a mix of housing because if not then London’s economy will grind to a halt eventually.”
He observed that when one drives around London in the evening you will see many luxury developments shrouded in darkness because they are properties bought for investment and not living purposes. The affordable housing, meantime, will be all lit up and fully occupied.
London is in danger of losing its mixed communities; ghettoes of poor are a recipe for riots. Public services tend to degrade without the pressure of the better off to drive quality.
Bishop also pointed to the tremendous social cost of driving people out of the city centre through lack of suitable housing. Some people are having to commute up to three hours a day to travel to their jobs in the capital. He pointed to a study done in Stockholm that concluded that people who commute more than 45 minutes each way are 45% more likely to have their marriage end in divorce.
“There’s no quality time; people are exhausted and probably spend the short time they do have to communicate moaning about their journey,” he said. It is the duty of government, he concluded, to lead on social policy.
