Upfront Take back the Thames Gateway

The Thames Gateway is sliding towards a future that excites no one and is profitable only for a few. In a rerun of 1980s Docklands, new development will sap the economic potential of this land so close to the centre of London, rather than adding to it. I blame it on the packaging. Why bundle up and promote this territory as a place to be ransacked?

What disturbs me is the absence of direct and communicative imagery. Right now I get no sense that people are actually thinking on the ground. When it comes to physical things you need not just to think, not just to write, but to draw, with pencils on paper. When lots of people do that, you can generate some good proposals. So far, this step is missing. Design for London writes lovely prose and these words tend to be allied to soulful photographs of flatland desolation. But their aspirations don’t stretch to any kind of hard proposition. You cry out for simple cartoon sketches with stories to tell, drawn proposals that can open up a dialogue about alternative futures. Instead you get dozens of intricately colour-coded gateway plans that look like variations on a logo. How can you argue with a logo, especially one that is patently delivering important-looking information? It is strangely disempowering.

Meanwhile Yvette Cooper is like Dr Seuss’s Birthday Bird promising “the best of the bestest”. New housing will be better and greener. New communities will be happier and safer. She tells us “the inspirational power of the very best are encouraging innovative new design”. It seems the “very best” are to prove themselves indirectly, not through a straightforward process of collaborative design, but by somehow radiating inspiration and encouragement to large complex development partnerships, quangos and apartment builders. It all sounds wildly telepathic.

You cry out for drawn proposals that can open up a dialogue about alternative futures

What can be done? I suggest we recognise that the government is trapped in doublespeak and that we, as foot soldiers in an army of consultants, are spawning jargon too. No one is addressing how exactly home builders should “rise to the challenge of the new targets”, while simultaneously ensuring that local people are “involved in all areas of the debate”. So let’s put aside this kind of millennial politics that fits so comfortably with a lazy idea of getting things sorted.

SEEDA should learn from Ken Livingstone’s 100 public spaces initiative. They should identify 1,000 places that already have names all across the Thames Gateway and allow each of them open design competitions to find out what kind of places they ought to be. After all, if some people are going to play out there, let’s make it people who actually care about the place: the people who want to live there and the architects they want to work with.

We need a lot more talent and commitment applied to this wonderful place before the market gets it in its dreary grip.