**Gove’s levelling-up mission has to include adding more colour and greenery to ugly urban landscapes that blight lives**
Britain is in its glad rags: the tinselled corner shops, the bauble-hung vaccination centres, the strings of emerald and ruby lights twinkling away on the greyest high streets. In the bleak midwinter these charms warm the soul and remind us of a deep desire for beauty, a desire not only reserved for those with the money for fine art and fine houses but felt by all of us. We want to look on things which delight the eye, to live in places which lift our spirits and make us proud.
This desire must be remembered by the government as it embarks on its big levelling-up push in 2022. After a couple of years of being bandied around, levelling up is finally to get some policy flesh on its bones with the publication of a white paper in January. This will doubtless contain reams of plans to transform skills provision, reboot transport links and, of course, “revolutionise” housebuilding and job creation, but if it is to be a full strategy it must also contain plans on the less concrete areas of beauty and civic pride. As well as tackling economic inequality, the levelling-up government must aim to tackle what we might call aesthetic inequality.
Many of those places in need of levelling up — not just in the north of England but all over the country — are ugly, bleak and dispiriting. They are lands of boxy developments, dank bus stations, graffitied walls, littered alleyways and boarded-up shops. They are places where several-storey slabs of concrete loom over windswept plazas, where residents scuttle under gloomy underpasses or along shadowy alleys.
While those with money can afford to flock to leafier, lovelier areas — or press the ejector seat out of ugliness by going on holiday — those at the sharp end of aesthetic inequality are condemned to spend their days confronted by 50 shades of grey. In typical British fashion we have tended to make light of urban ugliness, to view the wretched places with a kind of affection born of familiarity. “Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!” begged John Betjeman in the 1930s, and decades later the town’s ugliness was the butt of jokes in The Office, its opening credits a montage of Slough’s most unlovely roundabouts and industrial estates. The Crap Towns series of books took delight in cataloguing the ugliest shopping precincts and high streets in the land, skewering Basingstoke, Liverpool, Morecambe, Cumbernauld and Hull.
It’s easy to laugh if you don’t live there, but what if you do? What does it do to people’s spirits to live in bleak “crap towns”? How does it corrode aspiration when everything around you is decrepit or poor quality? Does it seep into your sense of self-worth when the environment outside your front door is shabby and grim? “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us,” said Churchill, and he was right. These environments aren’t the passive backdrops to our lives. They shape how we feel. Countless studies have shown how beautiful and nature-rich places slow heart rates and lower cortisol levels. Conversely, living in uncared for and ugly places increases stress and grinds people down. It makes them less safe, too. Poor urban design has long been linked to high levels of crime; the walkways and shadowy stairwells that are features of many postwar developments are a breeding ground for criminal activity.
The look and design of a place matters intensely and thankfully we have a minister for levelling up who knows that. In a recent speech Michael Gove said that “when we think of new building . . . [we should] think of the potential to create something of grace and beauty, to ravish the eye and lift up the soul”. There could be no better politician to lead this mission.
Part of his task will be to ensure that as we “build, build, build” new homes, retail and office units we prioritise quality as well as quantity. We need no more hulking developments that make public places alienating rather than inviting, no more bleak plazas where no one communes except pigeons. Instead we must have developments on a human scale that are designed with high-quality and beautiful materials, that are thoughtful about where people will actually congregate. In short, the kind of places that the Prince of Wales would approve of.
Given that we can’t afford to rip out all of England’s ugliness and start afresh, the levelling-up wonks must also think about how we can revive existing town centres. A cut in business rates would be a good start, injecting more economic life into high streets. We should also explore how to grant every high street the respect given to listed ones. In Ye Olde Historic Townes of Englande, big-name stores have to tone down their usual shouty style to fit the local look, whereas in deprived towns it is a corporate free-for-all. Can’t we be more discerning about how retail presents itself?
Another lever for beautification may be Section 106 agreements between planners and developers, (or the national levy that the government is reportedly planning to replace them with). Is there scope for wealthy developers to contribute to aesthetic improvements? We might feel more sanguine about Tesco building a large car park if it has also been obliged to build a small park. You have heard of carbon offsetting; this would be aesthetic offsetting.
Beyond this there are a couple of easy, affordable and effective levers for beautifying Britain. The first is greenery. The planting of trees is relatively inexpensive and can transform public spaces, as we experience in those tree-lined squares and boulevards on the Continent. We must have a great push for greenery and flowers across our town centres, so often talked about but not often done at the scale where it makes an impact.
The other lever is colour. It baffles me that in a country which suffers from frequently leaden skies so many of our building materials are picked from the drab family too: beige, grey, beige, grey. In those rare spots which are covered in colour — candy-coloured streets in Notting Hill, Portree on the Isle of Skye, Lavenham in Suffolk or Cliftonwood in Bristol, the effect is enchanting. Why don’t we do more of this? For inspiration, look at pictures of colourful buildings in Tirana, Albania, where a load of grey Communist-era housing blocks were painted in a riot of yellow, green, pink and blue. As the mayor who led the project observed: “I love the joy that colour can give to our lives and communities.” Amen, sir!
For those living in Britain’s less lovely places, we must resolve to do better, not just to shrug or smirk at “crap towns” as though ugliness were an inevitability of living on these islands. It isn’t. With more thought, care, a lick of paint and a greening of trees we can create places that lift spirits rather than trample all over them. Some people describe themselves as house-proud. It is time we were all more nation-proud, too.
Yeah, bollocks. A bunch of consultancy firms will be given a shovelfull of public money, will produce some plans for new urban parks, 90% of them will be quietly shitcanned and the 10% thst do get made will be mediocre at launch then quickly fall into disrepair since local councils will still have bugger all money to maintain them. No one will resign, consultants will get a nice bonus, government will come out with a new superficial plan for levelling up. Rinse and repeat.
What a crock of shit. Aside from the Gove arse licking, which I suspect is the point of the “article”, the whole thing boils down to plant trees, paint stuff.
I’d much rather a functioning, livable country than spend a single penny on vanities, thanks; there’s no point putting fresh paint down on a wall that’s crumbling.
Let’s polish a turd, because all we need is a pretty view and more faith in Great Britain…
Always the same, when faced with the choice of fixing problems or painting over them this government unfailingly chooses a lick of paint and some accompanying propaganda
I’ve love to see what they do to Newham, the only way you’ll improve this mess is with a nuke and then throwing sprinkles over it.
Oh a cosmetic distraction from the very real, very ugly problems with the country. Fab.
7 comments
**Gove’s levelling-up mission has to include adding more colour and greenery to ugly urban landscapes that blight lives**
Britain is in its glad rags: the tinselled corner shops, the bauble-hung vaccination centres, the strings of emerald and ruby lights twinkling away on the greyest high streets. In the bleak midwinter these charms warm the soul and remind us of a deep desire for beauty, a desire not only reserved for those with the money for fine art and fine houses but felt by all of us. We want to look on things which delight the eye, to live in places which lift our spirits and make us proud.
This desire must be remembered by the government as it embarks on its big levelling-up push in 2022. After a couple of years of being bandied around, levelling up is finally to get some policy flesh on its bones with the publication of a white paper in January. This will doubtless contain reams of plans to transform skills provision, reboot transport links and, of course, “revolutionise” housebuilding and job creation, but if it is to be a full strategy it must also contain plans on the less concrete areas of beauty and civic pride. As well as tackling economic inequality, the levelling-up government must aim to tackle what we might call aesthetic inequality.
Many of those places in need of levelling up — not just in the north of England but all over the country — are ugly, bleak and dispiriting. They are lands of boxy developments, dank bus stations, graffitied walls, littered alleyways and boarded-up shops. They are places where several-storey slabs of concrete loom over windswept plazas, where residents scuttle under gloomy underpasses or along shadowy alleys.
While those with money can afford to flock to leafier, lovelier areas — or press the ejector seat out of ugliness by going on holiday — those at the sharp end of aesthetic inequality are condemned to spend their days confronted by 50 shades of grey. In typical British fashion we have tended to make light of urban ugliness, to view the wretched places with a kind of affection born of familiarity. “Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!” begged John Betjeman in the 1930s, and decades later the town’s ugliness was the butt of jokes in The Office, its opening credits a montage of Slough’s most unlovely roundabouts and industrial estates. The Crap Towns series of books took delight in cataloguing the ugliest shopping precincts and high streets in the land, skewering Basingstoke, Liverpool, Morecambe, Cumbernauld and Hull.
It’s easy to laugh if you don’t live there, but what if you do? What does it do to people’s spirits to live in bleak “crap towns”? How does it corrode aspiration when everything around you is decrepit or poor quality? Does it seep into your sense of self-worth when the environment outside your front door is shabby and grim? “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us,” said Churchill, and he was right. These environments aren’t the passive backdrops to our lives. They shape how we feel. Countless studies have shown how beautiful and nature-rich places slow heart rates and lower cortisol levels. Conversely, living in uncared for and ugly places increases stress and grinds people down. It makes them less safe, too. Poor urban design has long been linked to high levels of crime; the walkways and shadowy stairwells that are features of many postwar developments are a breeding ground for criminal activity.
The look and design of a place matters intensely and thankfully we have a minister for levelling up who knows that. In a recent speech Michael Gove said that “when we think of new building . . . [we should] think of the potential to create something of grace and beauty, to ravish the eye and lift up the soul”. There could be no better politician to lead this mission.
Part of his task will be to ensure that as we “build, build, build” new homes, retail and office units we prioritise quality as well as quantity. We need no more hulking developments that make public places alienating rather than inviting, no more bleak plazas where no one communes except pigeons. Instead we must have developments on a human scale that are designed with high-quality and beautiful materials, that are thoughtful about where people will actually congregate. In short, the kind of places that the Prince of Wales would approve of.
Given that we can’t afford to rip out all of England’s ugliness and start afresh, the levelling-up wonks must also think about how we can revive existing town centres. A cut in business rates would be a good start, injecting more economic life into high streets. We should also explore how to grant every high street the respect given to listed ones. In Ye Olde Historic Townes of Englande, big-name stores have to tone down their usual shouty style to fit the local look, whereas in deprived towns it is a corporate free-for-all. Can’t we be more discerning about how retail presents itself?
Another lever for beautification may be Section 106 agreements between planners and developers, (or the national levy that the government is reportedly planning to replace them with). Is there scope for wealthy developers to contribute to aesthetic improvements? We might feel more sanguine about Tesco building a large car park if it has also been obliged to build a small park. You have heard of carbon offsetting; this would be aesthetic offsetting.
Beyond this there are a couple of easy, affordable and effective levers for beautifying Britain. The first is greenery. The planting of trees is relatively inexpensive and can transform public spaces, as we experience in those tree-lined squares and boulevards on the Continent. We must have a great push for greenery and flowers across our town centres, so often talked about but not often done at the scale where it makes an impact.
The other lever is colour. It baffles me that in a country which suffers from frequently leaden skies so many of our building materials are picked from the drab family too: beige, grey, beige, grey. In those rare spots which are covered in colour — candy-coloured streets in Notting Hill, Portree on the Isle of Skye, Lavenham in Suffolk or Cliftonwood in Bristol, the effect is enchanting. Why don’t we do more of this? For inspiration, look at pictures of colourful buildings in Tirana, Albania, where a load of grey Communist-era housing blocks were painted in a riot of yellow, green, pink and blue. As the mayor who led the project observed: “I love the joy that colour can give to our lives and communities.” Amen, sir!
For those living in Britain’s less lovely places, we must resolve to do better, not just to shrug or smirk at “crap towns” as though ugliness were an inevitability of living on these islands. It isn’t. With more thought, care, a lick of paint and a greening of trees we can create places that lift spirits rather than trample all over them. Some people describe themselves as house-proud. It is time we were all more nation-proud, too.
Yeah, bollocks. A bunch of consultancy firms will be given a shovelfull of public money, will produce some plans for new urban parks, 90% of them will be quietly shitcanned and the 10% thst do get made will be mediocre at launch then quickly fall into disrepair since local councils will still have bugger all money to maintain them. No one will resign, consultants will get a nice bonus, government will come out with a new superficial plan for levelling up. Rinse and repeat.
What a crock of shit. Aside from the Gove arse licking, which I suspect is the point of the “article”, the whole thing boils down to plant trees, paint stuff.
I’d much rather a functioning, livable country than spend a single penny on vanities, thanks; there’s no point putting fresh paint down on a wall that’s crumbling.
Let’s polish a turd, because all we need is a pretty view and more faith in Great Britain…
Always the same, when faced with the choice of fixing problems or painting over them this government unfailingly chooses a lick of paint and some accompanying propaganda
I’ve love to see what they do to Newham, the only way you’ll improve this mess is with a nuke and then throwing sprinkles over it.
Oh a cosmetic distraction from the very real, very ugly problems with the country. Fab.