A Comparison of Urban Boundaries
Here we see the interface between two different worlds– the sequestered, modern complex of Pickfords Gardens on the left, the back garden walls of Baylis Road, a tired, seen-better-days 1920s street-full-of-semis, on the right. Pickfords Gardens comprises a fenced-off cul-de-sac of large modern apartment buildings with private parking and an adjoining patch of bland green space for the residents; Baylis Road, on the other side, is a fairly busy through-road with identical semi-detached houses on both sides. The street itself offers little in the way of public or private space, but the houses have modest back gardens and the slightly dingy Baylis Park is nearby.
Fences are faintly fascinating things, at least they are to friendly-bombs; in an urban setting, they speak volumes about the properties they protect and the neighbourhood they cross. They are a visual representation of the socio-economic status (both real and pretended) of the resident, plus the fears, paranoia, conceit, pretensions, stylish fancies, social mobility, local pride and even DIY skill of the owner. The rule is generally simple: barriers at the front are for show, barriers at the back are for security.
The barrier on the left is a uniform metal palisade, too high and spiky to be scaled, with a hedge on the other side; those inside will see a line of greenery, those outside the impassive railings. What is interesting about it is that it is not actually a complete wall– there is an entrance just behind the picture that is open to all, meaning that even from this pedestrian path, everywhere on the left of the picture can be easily accessed. The barrier is therefore more for show, a psychological wall that discourages trespassing without physically prohibiting it, and that doubles up as a display of the well-maintained modernity and relative wealth of Pickfords Gardens.
The hedge running next to it is telling: all developments seeking to appear upwardly mobile will use greenery in their boundaries– privet hedges and amateur topiary in the housing of yesteryear, slender garden trees and exotic bushes in today’s; greenery is in fact an indication of wealth generally, with the most deprived areas being immediately recognisable as such by the absence of plants and trees, while the socially-ambitious areas are keen to show off their carefully-curated vegetation– even the very name of this development is Pickfords Gardens.
On the right, it’s every man for himself. Jerry-built breeze-block walls, corrugated iron, patches of old wooden fencing and rotting vegetation make up the boundary; there’s even an old door nailed across a gap at one point. Successions of residents have used any modest means available to shore up their back walls against intruders– they’re not so much walls as barricades. Local ne’er-do-wells use the path at night and daub the haphazard walls with graffiti, something that the Pickfords railings are naturally impervious to.
The natural consequence of having short stretches cared for by different owners, coupled with the insufficient income of the residents and apathy of the landlords, means that the Baylis Road side is an unordered, ramshackle mess, but also a quite human-looking one too. The resourcefulness of those on modest means faces off against the pre-prepared tidiness of the modern estate, where you simply move into a environment where everything has already been taken into account– the security, the view, the gardening, where you will park– by unseen designers and absent administrators. Looking at the two barriers together it is as if the sterilised, hygienic functionalism of the Pickfords Gardens boundary is a reaction not just to the possibility of crime, but to the unpredictable, erratic nuisance human society that lurches haphazardly on the right, overgrown and graffiti-ed, rusting and genuine, unbothered by pretension and comfortable with its imperfection, warts and all.
