Archive for the 'Urban Life' Category

I find it fascinating how people use public spaces in urban landscapes. This is a video I grabbed of some amazingly talented young girls practicing a dance routine at More London Riverside. They told us their group is called Esteem and they were in a show at the Unicorn Theatre in March. (The ambient sound on the vid is from inside the restaurant where I was having lunch when I happened to glance round and see them strutting their stuff - for music, they were in fact playng tracks from their mobile phones!)

This is a post that I wrote for Dulwich OnView that may be of interest to you if you’re visiting London and fancy a semi-countryish walk in the big city.

The sprawling mass that we call Greater London is actually made up of lots of little villages, which is often easy to forget as we are worn down by trying to get around this built up metropolis. But every now and then, it’s nice to be reminded that there are in fact many green spaces and quaint little corners to enjoy - especially when you get out to the farther edges of the city when the original ancient villages still bear some traces of their rural origins.

Dulwich Village is of course one of those but if you fancy a pleasant walk to discover other villages in London, we did this good one is from Blackheath to Greenwich. It’s around 2 miles as the crow flies but you can extend it by taking meandering detours around either of the villages and exploring Greenwich Park.

Take the train from London Bridge to Blackheath (about 10 mins) and from the station, turn left and walk up the slope towards the heath. There are plenty of smart boutiques, cafes and restaurants to browse en route. At the heath, take the little path to the left of the church and aim for the rooftops of Canary Wharf across the open expanse where Wat Tyler gathered his men to invade London during the Peasants Revolt in 1381.

Cross the main road towards the ornamental gates of Greenwich Park. (There are toilets here for those of you who worry about that sort of thing - I do!) If you then head straight on down the avenue, you’ll get to a viewing point over the river but it’s much more fun to have a wander round the park first - heading right will take you alongside a charming flower garden, for example.

We found One Tree Hill where Elizabeth I apparently came to think and meditate. In her day, she would not have had the site of the Millenium Dome or the Maritime Musuem or Canary Wharf or the Gherkin to clutter up the view north across the river to London!

From here, you can head downhill to the University of Greenwich and it’s rather grand buildings before making your way into Greenwich village by the Thames path, via the Cutty Sark (sadly still under wraps for restoration). There are food stalls in the covered market and also restaurants and coffee shops, though the latter seemed less smart than the ones in Blackheath (no doubt primarily catering to tourists and students).

The train from Greenwich takes you back to London Bridge - again around 10 mins.

My verdict: A pleasant morning out, with gentle walking and great views. But next time, we’d do it the other way round - climbing the hill from Greenwich and ending up in Blackheath for lunch at one of the smarter restaurants there, good food being one of our priorities on such excursions!

Do you have a South London walk or outing you would recommend? Pls email us (dulwichonview[at]googlemail.com) with a description such as the one above and include any photos and map* and if it’s right for the blog, we’ll publish it!

* To create your map, use Gmap Pedometer, save the route of the map you create and send the link to us.

My cousin Joanne is CEO of the Clean Air Network (CAN) in Hong Kong, an independent NGO that encourages the public to speak out about the health impacts of air pollution. She sent me CAN video above via Facebook the other day. It doesn’t pull its punches and made me feel asthmatic even just watching it!

I blogged last week about the idyllic fake English town, Thames Town, being built outside Shanghai to recreate for the aspiring Chinese middle classes the loveliness of an English market town. The purpose seems to be to escape from “loud and dirty Shanghai” to this fantasy of an English way of life. The clean air issues for the congested island of Hong Kong are no doubt repeated in the megacity that is Shanghai, with its population of over 8 million people. In fact, clean air is a vital issue for all cities around the world, not just in China. It seems to me that the answer to the hustle and bustle and dirt of Asian cities is not escape to an idealised suburban sprawl (which actually adds to the problem by adding more cars and concrete to the setting) but to address the noise, congestion and dirt by implementing sustainable policies.

Here in the UK, the hot topics of the century (pun intended!) are climate change and sustainable communities. There is a huge public drive towards clean energy, recycling, minimising our carbon footprint and livable neighbourhoods and cities. We aspire towards walkable environments, pavement cafes (weather permitting!), neighbourliness and community, safety and good health for all - places that people want to live in and can thrive in. Sure, there’s a long way to go in many parts of the country but the journey has started and even dirty old London has electric buses, electric cars and campaigns to encourage more bicycling and walking; recycling schemes; windmills on top of some buildings; green roofs and more.

So for Hong Kong, Shanghai and any other city in the world whether it’s London, New York or my hometown of Kuala Lumpur, I hope very much that sustainability is or will become part of the DNA of their evolution. With people like my cousin Joanne (whom I’m very proud of, by the way) taking a lead in one such factor for sustainability in a major Asian city - and I am sure there are many other passionate advocates for livable cities around the world - I am optimistic for the future.

Looking at the images in the slideshow above (taken by British documentary photographer Dave Wyatt), you’d think they were snaps of a quaint English market town or a Dutch or German village. And you’d be wrong. The photos were taken in China. Shanghai, in fact.

Shanghai?

But where are the pagodas and curly slate roofs, rounded doorways, bright red paint and lavish dragons of old Shanghai? Or even the imposing, megalithic skyscrapers and roaring highways of new Shanghai, proclaiming here is a modern city of the East?

Well, this is Thames Town China. Its website says, “Loud, dirty Shanghai seems a far cry from the yew and plane- lined avenues and cobbled pedestrian-friendly streets of ThamesTown. Here the broad sun-hats of the Chinese workers putting the finishing touches to the development are the only indication that you are on the outskirts of China’s biggest city. Not in a posh commuter town in the stockbroker belt of a British city.”

The blurb goes on: “Residents can sip their bitter in a traditional English pub, “The Thames Town”, as children scamper across the medieval market square to a bilingual school, while red-brick warehouses form a commercial area on the waterfront. Developers are targeting British companies such as Tesco and Sainsbury to add to the authentic high-street feel so the town’s expected 10,000 residents can shop in true British style. There are sporting facilities and everything a town of its size should have.”

This is apparently one of nine towns in this area modelled on European market towns, including Dutch Town, German New Town, Nordic Town and Italian Town (with Venetian style canals!). Unnervingly, the website declares proudly that German New Town, was designed by Albert Speer, the son of Hitler’s favourite architect….

I find it curious that the aspirations of the rising Chinese middle classes would be to live in a mock-European setting rather than in surroundings inspired by their own heritage and perhaps re-modelled for the 21st century. I could understand the desire to live in modern houses with all modern comforts and facilities but it’s the recreation of Victorian or Tudor houses that are then modernized with fake modernized medieval streets that is odd in my mind. There is also the fantasy of what England is - or perhaps should be - like that seems straight out of an Enid Blyton book: lovely local colour down at the pub while The Famous Five and Secret Seven scamper safely in the market square.

Meanwhile, in the real England, Victorian terraced houses are pokey and dark, Tudor houses are impossible to upkeep because of Grade II listing, youths are knived outside pubs, others vomit and piss in the street on a Saturday night, the homeless sleep in the streets and cars clog up the market square and medieval streets.

Hmm, maybe we in the UK should all move over to China to the sanitized version of our towns…!

And perhaps that’s the point of these fake places. People can live the idyllic lives they imagine in “exotic” surroundings, without ever leaving home and without ever having to deal with the real natives of those “exotic” settings. Who needs reality when these days, money can buy you your dreams…

But having said all that from the cynical Brit part of me, being an Enid Blyton fan, there’s a part of me that fancies living in a fantasy version of Old Blighty! What about you? Would you like to live in Thames Town or Italian Town? Or what about if an Old Shanghai Town were to be built next to Surbiton just outside the real London?

Slideshow photos: thanks to DaveWyatt on flickr.com