Planning Permission Tricks #2: Whack-a-Mole Technique

 

 

Following from the last post we now look at another, similar way that developers alter their unpopular plans to give the illusion that concessions have been made. In this case we have the mind-bogglingly insensitive and worryingly foolish plan to build five staggeringly tall tower blocks in close proximity to each other over the Queensmere shopping centre (see this post for a depressing reminder of how this part of town has changed over the years). The initial plans were so ridiculous they seemed like a joke, and even Slough Borough Council, which is usually ready to green-light any hideous plan, complained about it, with councillors describing it variously as looking like “three UFOs” and a “mooning bottom”.

 

Like the aforementioned door-in-the-face technique, the planners had originally asked for a lot more– over 900 flats in total– but this had been reduced to over 670 in the early negotiations; again, the question should have been over whether the entire project was wise at all rather than the eventual number of flats. Then, at the stage of negotiation pictured above, they used the Whack-a-Mole technique: if complaints are raised about the height of your proposed towers, simply lower the tallest one while simultaneously raising the others, meaning that like the arcade game no sooner have you pushed one mole down in one place then another rises elsewhere. The first picture shows ‘before’, the second picture shows ‘after’: the plan has altered, but no great concession has been made, the project still takes up just as much space as it did before, and precious profit is conserved.

 

What you also see in the second picture is the new, utterly superfluous and face-palmingly ugly entrance to the Queensmere shopping centre; it seems the designers have augmented it either out of spite at having had to change their precious plans, or in an attempt to make the first tower seem less intimidating from the High Street by literally blocking all view of it. Like so much of Slough’s recent development it is grey, squared, featureless and cynical, playing perfectly into the expected image of Slough as a hopelessly mundane, soulless, functional business-home not worthy of warmth, wit, character or friendliness; these new developments fall on the Slough pedestrian like a boot on top of an ant, and are equally merciless. Its total lack of texture mirrors the grey paving slab desert before it (the refurbed Mackenzie “Square”) in a duet that adds to the cold, boring, unwelcoming feel of the New Slough. Councillors described this bit as looking like ‘silver duct tape stuck over the top of the towers’, but approved the plan anyway.

 

Mackenzie Street: Three Stages of Development– Past, Present & Future

 

 

Here we see three pictures taken from the same spot on Slough High Street, looking down Mackenzie Street. The first is from 1907, before the town’s major expansion with the Trading Estate; the second is how the view looks today, and the third is a CGI rendering of a development plan that Slough Borough Council have recently given the green light to. What is, what was, and what will be.

 

 

In the first picture we see all the charm of Edwardian Slough: wide, quite well-maintained streets, a variety of shop fronts and an ornate lamp-post that serves as a focal point between the two streets, evidenced by the chap leaning on the post next to it. Mackenzie Street extends away from the viewer with more shops and residential housing further on (the housing consisted of deep, triple-dickered Victorian buildings), and a healthy line of trees on both sides of the street. The street is wide despite this being before the age of the automobile– horse and trap was the preferred method of travel back then, as you can tell by what the horses have, er, left behind in the foreground. Overall, it’s a very open and uncluttered public street which retains a community feel thanks to the nearby residential houses, differing housing stock and the familiar charm of the greenery.

 

In the second picture, we fast-forward to today. As you can see, the street has completely disappeared. This is because it was entirely demolished in the mid-1960s and built over by a large shopping centre (called Queensmere, in yet another sycophantic attempt to claim kinship with the nearby royal residence of Windsor). The street is no more, and all that’s left is this small, grey-paved space in front of the centre entrance, optimistically called ‘Mackenzie Square’. The residential houses are gone, consolidating the town centre’s purpose as being purely for retail; gone too is that sense of community and identity (and also some prime real estate– if housing still existed in this central location today, it would be worth a fortune). Now there is only commerce, and a once public street has become a private operation, open only for business and closed entirely to the elements.

 

The only texture is that of hard, cold grey surfaces. Chilly metal poles provide the lighting and the ever-present cctv surveillance, and there are no trees, or indeed any greenery at all. Benches have been added, but they are of the unfriendly backless kind, metal poles and wooden slats suspended between monolithic blocks– boldly designed but cold and uncomfortable to sit on. Backless benches usually indicate to me a tacit admission that sitters aren’t welcome, like the seats in certain fast food restaurants that are designed to be uncomfortable so that you don’t linger too long on them. Overall, this feels like a resented public space, one that has been designed without warmth or softness specifically to dissuade people from stopping there. Imagine a broad leafy tree, with comfortable wooden benches in its shade and a gravelled patch around its base, serving as a focal point for the shopper to pause, rest or socialise; then open your eyes and wonder where all the optimism went. Still, at least the sky looks good.

 

Oops, spoke too soon! In the third picture we see the CGI wet-dream of what is to come, stretching to the heavens. Plans have now been approved to build five massive towers (with at least one having more than twenty storeys) in close proximity to each other and essentially on top of the Queensmere shopping centre. Residential space has returned, but in the worst possible way.

 

Slough property prices have skyrocketed in recent years as the town struggles with a housing shortage (a la the whole country), and so developers are keen to cash in by building as many properties as possible in the lucrative town centre (see these examples, for measure). Their recent mantra has been to pack in as many of these new apartments as they can into high-density, high-rise buildings; in the case of these five monstrosities, they are being dropped into what is already the most densely populated part of the town. With the busy dual-carriageway of Wellington Street being directly behind them, the shopping centre beneath and the High Street in front, humble little Mackenzie ‘Square’, a few square yards of Victorian repose, becomes practically the only public space around for these new buildings. With over six hundred new flats proposed and potentially a couple of thousand new occupants, they may need to fit in a few more benches.

 

PS: You will also notice in the plans a superfluously enlarged entrance to the shopping centre, designed presumably to obscure as much of the dismaying sight behind it as possible.

 

 

A Walk Around Tower House, Chalvey

 

 

View looking North up the Crescent, Chalvey.

 

The Crescent is a long, V-shaped street that is among Chalvey’s oldest, dating back to the late nineteenth century. Most of the houses along it are typical Victorian terraces, with some 20’s additions near the top. Overlooking it is Tower House, one of two tower blocks that were built here in 1966, one of only a few such high-rises to be built in Slough (until recently, that is). So in the same picture we have two different centuries’ approach to high-density housing: the tight-knit, compact Victorian terraces, with minimal but personalisable front ‘garden’ spaces (and a garden at the back), modest variations in visual design (but no difference in size)– and then the high-rise, characterised by its identical apartments with no distinction between different properties, minimalist verging on austere style, and a communal space at its foot to serve as ‘garden’ for all (not visible). Out of the two styles it is the low-rise, discernibly individual housing that has always won out as the favourite of the British public, but it is the multi-storey, high-density block that is once again being used as a myopic solution to the town’s housing shortage.

 

 

Close up of Tower House, Chalvey. Count the windows!

 

The mid-century obsession with high-rise building didn’t make much of a mark in Slough, but these two towers, built in 1966 (the heyday for such structures) remain as a reminder. Perhaps the ultimate expression of communal housing, the only marks of individuality come from the tiny views through each window– a patterned curtain here, a flag there. The sight of clothes awkwardly hung to dry by the window is the hallmark of these buildings. As you would expect, there is zero variation in window size or layout, no ornament (even the slight cornice halfway up seems more structural than aesthetic) and a minimalist, repeated colour scheme. The design is to act as a leveller of its occupants, allowing no differences in status and no visual sign of social mobility, upwards or downwards. This might have been a nice, humanistic idea had the chosen, default social level not been so unappealingly low and meagre: the end result simply became a twelve-storey tall advert for the occupants’ poverty.

 

It would be inaccurate to say that tower blocks fell out of favour with the British public, as they were never fully in favour to begin with. Occupants with aspirations of their own space and individualism could only look out the window at everyone else’s modest, but distinct properties, while parents complained that it was no place to raise a family; perhaps the only impressed tenants were people in need of affordable one or two bedroom accommodation who at best saw the flats as temporary and expedient measures.

 

And yet architects loved them– le Corbusier‘s Utopian talk of “streets in the sky” and socially-equalled communities enclosed in single buildings, plus an ecological desire to minimise built-up urban areas led to design after design for multi-storey monsters. Local authorities quickly latched onto the idea of housing large numbers of people in small, high-density concentrations that would be quick and theoretically cheap to put up, particularly at a time when slum-clearance was still a national housing goal. It was ironic then, that so many of these projects simply devolved into vertical slums, marred by disrepair, poor maintenance and monotony of design, and characterised by lack of social mixing and anti-social behaviour.

 

 

Communal area at the foot of Tower and Ashbourne Houses, Chalvey.

 

In lieu of a private garden, the occupants of communal housing such as these tower blocks get communal green space to go with it– fully communal, as the space is as open to the rest of the public as it is to the people who live in the towers. Here there are a few trees and some modest playground activities for the children, a slide, a swing, a frame, a childhood’s worth of play, activity and nature condensed to an area not much larger than the towers’ car park, a precious nugget amidst the drudgery.

 

This would make it all the more keenly felt, you would think. But alas, don’t get too used to this scene: Slough Borough Council have spotted it and, you guessed it, want to build over it. The plan is to demolish the two 60s tower blocks and build new housing over their stead and over this all-important green space. It is a sad indictment of the current thinking in town development that someone can look at the only public greenery in the neighbourhood for these kids and treat it as expendable or unimportant, thinking “we should squeeze more housing on there” instead. Why is the council always so quick to build on the few remaining green spaces when there are still so many undeveloped brownfield sites sitting around dormant?

 

As usual, the concerns of residents have fallen onto deaf, indifferent ears. The end result will be a dangerous density of people in an environment that will be even less dignified than what exists now. There is no point in trying to solve Slough’s housing shortfall by making it less habitable, as all the town will end up with is more misery shouldered by more people. There isn’t grass to graze a cow, Betjeman wrote, in his poem about Slough; in the future, you’ll be lucky if there’s enough to nourish a bunny.

Further details here: http://www.sloughobserver.co.uk/news/13619613.Community_pleads_with_council_help_to_save_green_land_in_Chalvey/