London’s ego
Masterplanning a city that resists masterplans
Back in 2014, David Michon asked me to write a piece for the new issue of The Journal of the London Society. It appeared in print in their issue 466, the Autumn/Winter issue; this is the original edit, from 12 October 2014. David asked me to address the relationship between the masterplan and London, between the planner’s ego, and this city’s pattern of development.
Ego
The idea of London and the idea of planning have an awkward, contradictory relationship to each other, at once inspired and haphazard, progressive and reactive, visionary and ignored. From Christopher Wren’s redesign of London after the Great Fire to Richard Rogers’ 1986 London As It Could Be, plans have often influenced without actually being enacted, as if the city itself is too impatient for what it might perceive as well-meaning but misguided interventions in an otherwise organic process of growth. It has things to do, people to see. The architect Richard Weller characterises the suburbs of Australian cities as “the city cars built when we weren’t looking”; London is like the city London built when we weren’t looking. The ego of the planner — attempting to dictate the city’s evolution via the drawing board — is generally no match for the ego of London itself.
