Every street has a story

London is without doubt one of the most fascinating and complex cities in the world. It is not the most beautiful. It is no longer the largest by a long chalk. It is an old city and bears the marks and accretions of time, yet accepts change and renewal. Unlike many an altstadt in Europe it is not set in aspic; it is not an archaeological collection like Rome, or a museum like Paris. 

While at its heart lies the rough gridded plan of the Roman castra set up in AD43, throughout its history London has eschewed grand plans. It has grown, as behoves a city of villages, out of the ancient landscape of rivers and fields, land ownership and drovers’ routes.

Sir Christopher Wren’s grand plan for the City of London after the great fire failed when merchants demanded to get back to business rather than waiting around for the planners to reshape the streets.  Every now and then this palimpsest of past cultures is carved through by new works - at Regent Street  John Nash demolished large tracts of medieval streets to create London’s great boulevard from the Park to the Mall. The 19th century railway builders reshaped parts of the capital to suit the requirements of the iron horse, and in the post war era large areas of bombed sites were redeveloped with plans that bore little relation to the existing street pattern and today sit anomalously within the surrounding urban fabric.

This year at NLA we are studying two key elements in the development of London - infrastructure and London’s estates. Today, unlike the Victorians and the road planners of the 1960s, infrastructure is generally threaded through the city with minimum disruption to the existing fabric and character of the place - although meeting the demands on London’s airports will require major and disruptive works on the periphery. As London goes through a period of major growth with a population possibly as high as 10 million by 2030, it will require investment in infrastructure on a 19th century scale; how this will be integrated into the existing city will be a major challenge but the way that Crossrail is taking shape bodes well for the future in this respect.

Much of the story of the development of London since the Great Fire can be traced through its estates. Not grand plans like Paris, Berlin or Moscow; not blocks like Barcelona, New York or Washington but pieces of land based on historic ownership.

The legal processes and methods of development of the aristocratic estates of the 17th and 18th century set a pattern that impacts not only on those areas themselves but on new developments as well. Places like Mayfair, Regent Street, St James's, Belgravia and Chelsea are the result of the vision of the Crown, the Grosvenors, the Berkeleys, the Cadogans and the Portmans. Through the ongoing ownership of freehold assets and their lease terms, they create a cycle of change and renewal; while Leasehold Reform of the last century decimated the estates' residential holdings it did prompt  a new professionalism in the way they were run.
 
Today, as London develops large areas of brownfield sites, the estate is once again coming into its own with areas like Broadgate, Canary Wharf, Kings Cross, East Village, More London and Regents Place.

At the same time there is a realisation that the economies of mixed use areas of the city can be more effectively managed by the sort of coordinated management that arises from majority ownership - thus we have seen the rise of landlords like Shaftesbury who own Chinatown, Seven Dials and St Martins' - a pattern now being followed by Soho Estates, among others. The regeneration of Marylebone High Street by the Howard de Walden estate in the 1990s had a significant impact on our understanding of High Streets and how independent retail areas can survive in the face of competition from tightly managed malls.  In Victoria, Land Securities are continuing and expanding their role as the area's largest landowner and developer, bringing new life and an improved environment to this tired part of the city, while in Covent Garden and Earl's Court, CapCo is reshaping large areas of central London.
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I frequently show groups of Chinese planners and politicians around the model of central London at NLA; they invariably want to discuss three issues - Congestion Charge, sustainability and how to integrate new buildings into historic environments. The melding of old and new is not an easy task, it creates conflict and argument but it is at the core of much of what we do at Store Street. The secret of NLA’s success is that our subject of study is so endlessly and intellectually fascinating. Every street, every corner, every square has a story to tell, a story that is continually updated and one that we are proud to be telling. ​