If London has one overriding virtue, it's its sheer size. You don't ever really tire of the old place because it would take more than your allotted three and a half score years to become familiar and jaded with it. This was further evidenced for me today as I had a wander around a then uncharted part of the Isle of Dogs. I've worked on the isle for five and a half years, but this spot, which is only 10 mins' walk from my desk, is completely new to me. It's an idyll of suburban calm alongside an old dock, right in the centre of a formerly grimy part of docklands.
I've had stuff like this happen to me in the centre of London too, which is extraordinary when you consider that I'm a native Londoner of some 46 years, who spends all his free time in Soho and environs. But now and again I'll find myself strolling down some new avenue somewhere, thinking "where the fcuk am I?". That's what keeps the magic alive. You can't do that in a town of 5,000 inhabitants, sadly - sorry bucolic types. You need at least 8 million punters.
My worry about the present construction projects ongoing in Londres, and there are loads, is that the architecture takes no account of the area of London it's proposing to blight. London, as has been well-documented over the years, is a collection of disparate villages, not a uniform entity. Each area has its own look and its own ambiance. When architectural homogeneity takes over, everywhere looks and feels the same. Take Canary Wharf for example. It's perfectly fine. The buildings are well designed and it's clean and easy to navigate, but it has no USP, no birthmark to distinguish it from any other moneyed part of a major world city.
There are developments of this CW kind in both Soho and Fitzrovia, two historic, low-rise areas of central London that thus far have maintained their unique identities. The new stuff is their to attract Russian money, I'm told. And our esteemed mayor, Boris, is only too happy to accept their nouveau largesse. This dolt is going to be remembered in London for centuries, but not for the reasons he supposes.
"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."
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