Ian Martin. Rethinking London as a molecular clump of sad pretension

摘要

MONDAY. It is with heavy heart that I join the M6 at junction 33 and head the wrong way. I'm in London for the week. Mental checklist: have I got everything? Passport. ID card. Grand a day cash for sandwiches and social drinking. Readiness to be awed by 'cutting-edge design'. Stab vest. A sense of being a privileged guest in what the 2008 Oligarch's Gazette calls 'the world's most vibrant and civilised city after Copenhagen, Madrid, Munich, Tokyo, Zurich, Helsinki, Paris, Seoul, the floating part of Dubai, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, Beijing, Montreal, Tamworth and Berlin'. I've been invited to look at a radical new 'green development in Clerkenwell, a discrete agglomeration of luxury flats for wealthy singles. If you factor out the environmental impact of building them, they're ecologically majestic. Triple-glazed, insulated from the rest of the neighbourhood, each 'passive' apartment can be heated for a month by the sanctimonious glow of a single dinner party. My beloved North recedes in the rear view mirror. I leave behind a stubborn urban landscape where Earth's Precious Resources are conserved by not demolishing terraced housing. Where residential density is increased, and carbon divided, by everyone budging up a bit to make room for extended family members. I know, it's primitive. We might as well be living in a Flintstones cartoon.