Non-Plan Revisited: Or the Real Way Cities Grow: The Tenth Reyner Banham MemorialLectureAuthor(s): Paul Barker

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Non-Plan Revisited: Or the Real Way Cities Grow: The Tenth Reyner Banham MemorialLectureAuthor(s): Paul BarkerReviewed work(s):

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Paul Barker

Non Plan

Revisited:

r

t h e a l W a y

i t i e s G r o w

The Tenth Reyner

Banham Memorial

Lecture

Thirtyyears ago, 'Non-Plan:An Experiment

n Freedom'was published s

a special ssue of New Society, the weekly

magazine f socialenquiry. t was

a collaborationetweenhe urbangeographer

eterHall, thedesignand architecture

historianReyner

Banham,hearchitectCedric rice,andPaul

Barker,hemagazine's ditor. t attacked

heperverse ndoften

futile effect fattemptso impose riteria f urbanormandaesthetic esignirom bove. ts own approacho popular hoice

was

social-anthropological.

ublishedhree earsbefore earning rom Las Vegas,

Non-Planwashighly ontroversial,ut

t

has had a continuing nfluence.Thepaper xamines ow

the concept rose,andspells out someof

its consequences,oth

ideologicalndpractical. wo

case-studies,

f NorthLondonnter-waruburbia

ndof a shoppingmalland ts surroundings,

areused o illustrateNon-Plan n therecentpastand thepresent.

t

is acknowledged

hatNon-Plan s inextricablyssociated

witha

verypopular

ut

often

riticized

esign orm,

suburbia. utthecase s

putfor

an

essentially

umble

pproach

o

design:

people's

wn choices houldbe

respected.

resent-day lanning nd designdogmas

may be no wiserthanthoseof the past.

Keywords:EdgeCity-Great

Britain-Non-Plan-sociology-suburbia-urban

design

One of these days, perhaps, a blue English Heri- 'Ideas were always more important than ideo-

tage plaque

will be

cemented

on the outside of the logy.'2

In

Too

Much,3 his

cultural

history

of the

'Yorkshire Grey' pub

in

Holborn,

at the corner of

1960s,

Robert

Hewison wrote that

New

Society

Theobalds

Road and

Grays

Inn

Road.

If

the became

'a forum for the new intelligentsia'.

It

plaque

ever fights

its

way through

the advisory drew, especially, on

the emergent disciplines

of

committees,

it will

commemorate

the fact that

sociology,

anthropology, psychology,

human

geo-

here

the

idea of Non-Plan-or,

at

any rate,

the graphy, social history

and

social

policy.

word-was

born,

one

day

in

1967.

Peter

Hall and

I

were

talking together

because

That

day,

the urban

geographer

Peter Hall and

I urban

change

was

always

one of

my own,

and the

went

out

from

the

offices of the

magazine

New

magazine's, deepest

interests.

My approach

was

Society-of

which

I

was

then the

deputy

editor

then,

and

remains

now,

that of social

anthropo-

and he was a regular contributor-to have a glass logy, respecting popular choice. I was always

of beer

and a

sandwich.

New

Society

was

a

maga-

much influenced

by

the

urban studies of Michael

zine

of

social

enquiry. One of its abiding passions,

Young

and

Peter

Willmott,4

which

focused on the

from

its launch

in

1962 to its demise

in

1988,

was patterns people

created for themselves.

From

the

to

try

to see

the world

as

it

was,

and

not how

it

other side

of the

Atlantic,

I

was influenced

by

the

was

supposed

to be.' The

magazine

was

usually writings

of the

sociologist

Herbert

Gans.

In

Sep-

perceived

as

centre-left,

but it

was

always

fiercely

tember

1967

I

had run

in New

Society long

extracts

non-partisan.

It was in the honourable tradition

of from

his

study,

The

Levittowners,5

in which

he

Dissent. One commentator

said

that,

in

its

pages,

showed

how

a

spirit

of

community

flourished

Journal of Design History

Vol. 12

No. 2

95



within a despised form of

American suburban ing

that Learningfrom

Las Vegas 1was not pub-

speculative housing.

Earlier

in

the year,

I had

lished

until

five years later, in 1972.

also published

Lionel March's

analytical defence

Between the two of

us, the idea emerged

of

of

building

in

lines (including

ribbon develop-

advocating a public experiment in letting

public

ment) rather than clusters.6

demand take

its course, and seeing

if it really

At that date, Peter

Hall and I had both

grown could be any

worse than what

was prescribed

disillusioned

with how urban

planning often by

government or by

local councils. A truly

worked out in practice. As Reyner Banham contemporary style might then emerge. The

noted in his book,

Megastructures,7 Hall

was to name Non-Plan

was, I think, mine.

But there

be just about the first

writer in Britain to blow

the was the usual

batting to and fro

that always

whistle on

tower

blocks

as

a form

of social hous-

takes place

in such circumstances.

I

would

not

ing.8 For my part,

I had lived in Stepney

for five want to claim

sole credit (or blame).

years,

at a time when

comprehensive

redevelop-

The concept

was

very

strongly influenced

by

ment, masterminded

first by the London

County

the essays which Reyner

Banham had been writ-

Council

and

then the Greater London

Council, ing for

New Society-many of them

reprinted

in

destroyed

huge tracts of perfectly

good terrace the

1997 collection A Critic

Writes12 -and by

the

housing. Later,

I

was

proud to encourage

Nicho- designs and

conversations of the architect

Cedric

las

Taylor

to write

his

path-breaking

book

The Price, who had also appeared

in the magazine. 3

Village in the City9 for a series I edited, defending Since

1965

Banham had been the regular design

such streets.

London

boroughs

like

Southwark

and

architecture

critic

in New

Society's

'Arts

in

and Lambeth were still pulling

them down

in Society' columns.

(It will help to give

a context for

the

1970S,

in

order

to erect such

nightmare

con-

this

if

I

note that the range

of

regular

critics

in

the

structions

as

the

Aylesbury

Estate

in

North

Peck-

magazine

included

John

Berger, Peter Fuller

and

ham.

Angela Carter.) 4

When we wondered

who our

So often,

and

this continues

to be true,

an urban other collaborators should

be, Banham and

Price

plan

was said to be fulfilled when

it had only been

were the obvious names.

Both of them agreed

completed.

No

one

checked whether it

did

the

job

immediately.

it

set out

to

do.

The same shortcoming pervades

Our idea

was

to

take

various tracts of country-

much

architecture: almost all

interest ceases,

side and hypothesize

what might happen if they

among the professionals, once the building is were subjected to Non-Plan. Naturally we chose

built.

The architecture

journals re-cycle

intermin- the rural

tracts whose apparent despoliation

was

ably

what the building

was intended

to

do, not

guaranteed

to

cause most

offence. We were trying

what it

has

actually

done.

Only

the users

continue to

make our

point

in

the most forceful

possible

to

worry

about

that.

The

journals keep

on

printing way.

The wider

polemic

would then be written

all discussion

accompanied

by pristine photo-

around

these three case-studies.

graphs

of the way the

building looked

the With his East Anglian

roots, Reyner

Banham

minute

it

was

opened.

One honourable

exception

opted

for

Constable Country (not

the Stour

valley,

to

this

approach

is Stewart

Brand in

his fine

study

but the area

around

Royston

and

Stansted,

which

How

Buildings

Learn.10

had

no

Foster

airport yet).

Cedric Price

opted

for

Over our

sandwiches

that

day

in

late

1967,

we southern

Hampshire,

which for these

purposes

asked ourselves the question: could things be any we called Montagu Country. Peter Hall opted for

worse if there were

no

planning

at all? America the

East

Midlands,

on the

edge

of

the

Peak

seemed

to offer

an alternative view

of what

could,

District;

to

maintain

the

pattern

of

fancy

nomen-

or

could

not,

be

built.

In

particular,

it

seemed

to be

clature,

we called

this Lawrence

Country.

It was

less

bogged

down

in

questions

of

aesthetics,

my

task

to write

an

introductory

overview. The

which

planners

seemed

then-and

seem

to me

conclusions were written

by

Peter Hall

and

now-ill

qualified

to

judge.

We

were,

in our own

myself.

But

every

section

contained

something

way, striking

a

blow

against

notions

of

'good

from

every

writer,

and we all

agreed

everything

taste'. As

a historical

footnote,

it

is worth

observ-

that

appeared.

96

Paul

Barker





Greenwich, Greenwich and

Greenwich.)

But

such ex-communist turned

Tory.

In

1974, he went on to

excursions turned out to bore

the visiting

Italian.

help Margaret Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph to

He

kept insisting

on

stopping

the

car, instead,

in

found a new

Conservative think-tank. After the

perfectly ordinary speculative

builders'

avenues first

Thatcher

administration

was

elected

in

1979,

and

drives

and

crescents of the 1920s, and enterprise zones

were introduced as a Non-Plan

exclaiming on their exquisite

design. Continental experiment. Without enterprise zones, we would

cities,

once

so

much

more

compact

than

London,

have no

MetroCentre Gateshead

and

no

Canary

have increasingly suburbanized themselves since Wharf. These are design icons, accurately sym-

then. The most

extraordinary example, perhaps,

is bolic of

social change.

Paris beyond the peripherique. In fact, ever since

it was published, Non-Plan

In his great book,

London: The Unique City,2 has kept flowing along as an idea-a kind of

Steen Eiler Rasmussen

emphasizes

that

London underground river.

It

has come

to the

surface

has always grown by adding suburb on to suburb. again recently, as

witness the Architectural Asso-

Many of these houses-and some of them are very ciation seminars on

the subject in 1997. Is this

attractive-have no known

architect.

In

many because we may again be falling into the trap of

cases,

even the

name

of

the builder is

a

mystery. over-detailed prescription, the English vice of

Many were put together from a kind of kit of bossiness?

Governments are again encouraging

parts.

All

the

houses

in

the

same neighbourhood planners to take

aesthetics into account;

that

is,

would share the same design of banisters or they are being encouraged to prescribe what is

cornices.

They might, however, pay

silent beautiful

for

you.

Perhaps

Non-Plan

is,

even

homage

to

some

distant

original which

counted

today,

a

counter-balance to the renewed mis-

as Art-with-a-capital-A,

in the

same

way

as acre

apprehension

that

planning

will

solve

all

our

after acre of English suburbia

pays homage

to

the troubles. How do we know which

urban

forms

houses

that

Voysey

built.

(Voysey's

own

houses

and

designs are really best?

Environmentalists

can

may be

few and far

between,

and

often rather be very dogmatic, and

very prescriptive for other

disappointing when you

find

them.

But

he and

people's lives.

But what

makes us think that

in

Palladio

are

probably unique

in

the extent of their this we are that much

wiser than those who, in the

influence.

And if

you were to

tot

up

the actual

past,

were convinced

they, too,

had

the monopoly

numbers

of

houses

created in Britain

under Voy-

of

wisdom?

seyian auspices-inglenooks, gables and all-

Voysey would

win

the competition, hands down.)

The

test of

a

house,

after

all, is

not

just its fitness

for

the

purpose

for which it was

built,

but

its

continued

fitness

and

adaptability

to the

purposes

There

are,

in

Britain,

thriving examples

of Non-

that will

come

along

down

the

years.

You

might

Plan

from

the

past.

There are also

examples

of

call

this

the

Non-Plan test.

something very

close to

Non-Plan

in the

present,

Non-Plan

had

very practical consequences. even outside the limited

experiment

of the

enter-

Peter

Hall

(now Professor

Sir

Peter

Hall,

of Uni-

prise zones. The inter-war London suburbs are the

versity College London)

carried

the thinking for- most striking example

of the former. The growth

ward.

In

our Non-Plan

special

issue

we

had

of

'Edge City'

around out-of-town

shopping

malls

acknowledged that our ideas might not be applic- is the prime example of the latter. In design, the

able

in

London. The

problem

of what to

do with inter-war suburbs are

unique to Britain and its ex-

Docklands

undercut

this

argument.

In

1977,

Peter

colonies. The malls

are,

in

essence,

an

American

Hall

gave

a

paper

at the

annual

conference of

the

import.

This

change

tells one

something

about

Royal

Town

Planning

Institute which

proposed

what

has happened

in Britain

during

the twenti-

'enterprise

zones'

in

the run-down

parts

of eth

century,

not

only

in

design,

but

also

socially.

cities;22

these were

small Non-Plan zones. When

Kenton is

just

such

an

inter-war

suburb,

and it

Non-Plan

was first

published,

one

of

the

few

is

fruitful

to see

how

successfully

it

has

evolved,

friendly

reactions came from Alfred

Sherman,

an

in

spite

of a

design

which has been as

much

98

Paul

Barker



1-2

The

driving forces in old suburbia and new. Left: Kenton

railway and

Tube station. Without this, no

North

London suburbia. Right: the mall at Lakeside (shopping centre postcard). Without this, no 'new community' of

Chafford Hundred,

Essex

mocked, down the years,

as the American Levit- in Wembley (now

bundled into the London

bor-

town was.

It was the Non-Plan of its day.

ough of Brent). The north

side was, and is,

in

Situated at the meeting

point of the London Harrow. For

many years-long before

anyone

boroughs

of Harrow and Brent, Kenton

is a place spoke about anything called

an electronic

vil-

that few people, other than

those who live there, lage-the offices

of the

Gramophone

magazine

have ever

heard of.23 It is classic Mike Leigh

were on Kenton Road. This

was the Bible

for

country: anonymous North London

suburbia. I every aspiring Kenton householder

who

invested

would like to focus here

on

Mayfield

Avenue, in a veneered

cabinet in order to play

shellac

Kenton, which dates from

1926.

The London

A to

78 r.p.m. records of Brahms or Al Bowlly.

Z lists thirty-two Mayfields

in many varieties, to Mayfield Avenue's

spec-development semis

are

suit an estate

agent's imagination. There are May-

now, perhaps, at the bottom of their

fashionability

field Crescents, Closes, Drives, Gardens,

Roads cycle. There is nothing smart

about them. But

they

and Avenues.

Suburban land companies in the

are amazingly adaptable containers. That

is one

first half

of this century liked vaguely rural names

test of the Good House they

pass with

flying

with undertones

of Housman, Elgar and morris-

colours. The beauty of them

is that you can

pour

dancing. There

are suburban Mayfields all over

into them whatever uses you want. They

were

England.

built for the

first generation to have

vacuum

The avenue

is a street of semi-detached houses.

I cleaners and valve radios. They

are now adorned

visited

it most recently in February 1998.

At that with lacy black satellite dishes.

They are the

kind

date, in some of the houses, the original

black and of houses- not only in London

but also across

the

white gable was still intact.

The avenue is handy whole of Britain-where

many people live,

much

for

the Underground

station which caused

Kenton

of the time. About a third of

the houses in

Britain

to burgeon and flourish like

a

leylandii cypress, or are semi-detached:

the

classic national

balancing

euonymus,

or

pampas grass,

or of course privet, act between privacy

and price.

the plant par

excellencef the suburbs.

Take No. 40 Mayfield Avenue

as a model

of

Like

many

such

places,

Kenton's location

is Kenton suburbia. The grass

in the

front garden

is

hard to pin down historically.

The main road is neatly mown.

There

is

a

flowering cherry and

a

lined with

shopping

parades.

The south side was privet

hedge,

behind which lurks a plaster

gnome.

Non-Plan Revisited:or the Real Way Cities Grow

99



ss~u Gm-'tAG't--as<<F-I'hurrock LA.KFSIDE

3-4 Left: retail as an extra. The shopping parade at Kenton.

Right: retail as central. The glass-sided crawler lift at

Lakeside

(shopping centre

postcard)

The pebbledash

facade

is

painted white. The gable

hiating

owner from owner. The most casual

tactic

has lost its black stripes, but the door has its is to stick

on the door-side those slanting

grey

original stained glass.

In the driveway stands a rhomboid numerals from DIY

stores. Other

battered

B-reg. Volvo

340.

owners go to town

with their house numbers,

At first glance,

Mayfield Avenue looks as if it like an arithmetician on

a

spree.

No. 8 Mayfield

had been stamped out with a template. In this, if Avenue, for example, has two sets of numerals.

in

nothing

else, it resembles a Georgian terrace One set, in brass,

is screwed on to the door itself;

(or, you could argue, a Barratt estate of 198os

or the other set forms part of a cast-iron

plaque,

19905 executive homes).

In another living tribute decorated with little flowers, and fixed on

to the

to Voysey, all the houses

in Mayfield Avenue are wall, between a ceramic squirrel

and a ceramic

bow-fronted semis with gables. The houses face

a fruit basket. Underneath, there are three

minia-

front garden and a grass verge of uniform width. ture leylandii

cypresses, one of them planted in

an

But if you walk alone, you see

that, over these past imitation boot.

seventy-three years, it

has become a design theme The door here is a sort of neo-Gothic.

Other

with innumerable

variations, doors have become neo-Georgian. Doors

matter in

It is

important,

for example, to mark off your the design-and-variation

pattern of Mayfield

territory

as your own. No. 40 is in fact the only Avenue. One

house has a brand-new door,

house in the avenue that

still uses privet, fronting which makes a deliberate gesture

to 1926 with

the pavement,

for this purpose. The alternatives leaded lights and stained

glass. For the spirit of

include a brick wall (perhaps covered with

vani-

1926 still

hovers over Mayfield Avenue. No.

10

egated ivy) or wrought-iron fencing. Evergreen

still has the classic front garden, with probably

the

euonymus

is another solid barrier. A pre-cast same layout

as in

1926:

a square of grass with

a

concrete balustrade, from

a builder's catalogue, single standard rose in the dead centre. But

few

can add a classical

touch. gardens survive in their original form or

with

Even the street numbers tell

a story, differen- their original purpose. There is a wild

prolifera-

100

Paul

Barker



5-6 The

designs are similar, across the

years; but space is now much

dearer, hence greater compression.

Left:

Mayfield

Avenue, Kenton,

looking across to the slightly superior

Becmead Avenue. Right: Barratt

houses at Chafford

Hundred

hion

of crazy paving. No

two layouts are thesame.

But the retail invention

that accompanied

the

It may be all one plain colour, or there may be a rise of the semi, the shopping parade, has not

licorice-allsorts

mixture

of pink, white, blue and survived

so well. In the

early days of

Kenton

grey.

Road, after

the husband went off

to the

station

The

crazy paving is highly functional.

It is for to catch

his commuter train into

work, his

wife

parking

on. Mayfield Avenue is

a paradise for went out

with her Silver Cross pram.

She

chatted

cars.

Every house was originally

built with double with the

shopkeepers and her

fellow-shoppers.

wooden doors alongside.

Behind these, the

They compared their

children's growth

and

owners

could keep their Bulinose

Morris or health.

They had a polite cup of tea

and a

buttered

Austin

Seven, which they only took

out at week- scone.

All that has gone. In Kenton,

as

almost

ends. Now, proper

garages have been con-

everywhere else, shopping

is done at

evenings

structed, in a

dozen baroque styles. But

most of and at

weekends.

the time, most cars-perhaps

becausemany of the

MayfieldAvenue runs

straightout into

Kenton

households seem

to own two or even three-sit

Road. If you turn

right, you go up a slight

rise

out in the open. At No.

22, aLondon taxi parkson

towards the railway bridge.

On the

Mayfield

the crazy

paving. At No. 39,

four cars areparked Avenue

side of the tracks,

there is still a

road-

on

the crazy paving;no front garden

is left at all. house

type of pub. But things

are going

downhill,

Vehicles are, by

now, centralto the look

of May- in every sense,

on the other side

of the

railway

field Avenue, as of almost

all other streets in

bridge. The 'Railway'fish

and chip shop

symbo-

Britain.

You may like this,

or you may not. But it

lizes this.

is a

fact of visual and social life.

Even where On the

'best' stretchof Kenton Road,

it is

Asian

householders have

integral or separate garages

shops that have

kept the main shopping

parades

(as in

Mayfield Avenue)

they aremore often

used from total collapse.

In the nearby streets,

includ-

for table

tennis or for storage-a

first move ing Mayfield

Avenue, many houses

now

belong

towards the American 'rumpus room'-rather to Indian families, most of whom were thrown

than

for putting

cars in.

out of East and

Central Africa by the new

black

The semi-detached

house, of course, gives

you regimes after independence.

For Kenton this

was

neighbours;but not too

many of them. As a social

a social version of Non-Plan.

When the

British

and design invention,

it is an extraordinary uc-

government

accepted the arrival

of these

refu-

cess story. Messrs

Berry Brotherssell a wine

they gees, it did everything

it could to make sure

they

call 'GoodOrdinaryClaret'.

MayfieldAvenue is a

were spread out nation-wide-this

was the

con-

Good

OrdinaryStreet.

ventional

anti-ghettowisdom

of the

day-rather

Non-PlanRevisited: r theReal

WayCitiesGrow

101



7-8 Directhomage:

neo-Tudor hen andnow, doffing the cap

to Voysey. Left:MayfieldAvenue. Right:

ChaffordHundred

than concentrating

in

Leicester

and

London,

This is Non-Plan

1926 and its evolution since.

which is what

eventually happened, regardless.

But what of Non-Plan now?

In

1969, we were

not

In Mayfield Avenue, the only

element this has attempting to

make predictions. Thirty years

later,

introduced into external design

is the occasional

it

is striking

how much change has taken

the

Indian motif

in new stained glass. For the shop-

direction we were advocating,

in spite of what

ping parades, however, the demographic change the planners decreed. (This is true internationally,

has been

crucial.

also. There are close parallels

in

the growth of

On Kenton Road, Asian shops (and

other cities,

in

spite

of wide

disparities

in

their planning

Asian-run services, such as estate

agents) flourish. regimes.)

In Britain, two main forces have driven

Their owners

worry about the future.

But

the

halal

us

far

more

in

the direction

of Non-Plan than

butcher, for example, still offers

'goat mix' at

98p

a

anyone else

foresaw when we wrote

in New

pound,

and

leg

of mutton at ?1.39. The facade of Society.

the

'Kasturi' restaurant has bright

white Ionic The first is the ever-expanding

passion for

capitals. Every service is

here, from cradle (an moving around.

Railway passenger travel

in

Brit-

Asian-run

toyshop) to grave (an Asian under-

ain has scarcely declined

at all

in

the past fifty

taker).

But when

I

counted them

in

early 1998,

I

years (recently,

in

fact,

it has

edged up slightly).

found that the Kenton Road parades had twenty But car travel has accelerated upwards, faster

and

empty shops.

Ben's

Bakery,

the Dallas Supermar- faster.

Nor

is

this likely to halt,

in

spite

of

govern-

ket, Jim's Fruiterer's,

even

a

small

Waitrose:

all

mental

finger-wagging.

The

continuing

increase

these have gone.

They have been killed off by

the in car ownership is not due to

a higher proportion

new Sainsbury's

which has opened

on

the

old

of

the population getting cars.

It is due to the rise

railway coal-yard. The tree planting

around the

in

the

number of second cars. And these second

new store

may be intended as a small environ-

cars, which tend to be slightly

smaller than the

mental

gesture,

but

it

also clearly

echoes the

style

other,

are

usually

driven

by

the

woman

in

the

of a Kenton suburban

garden.

house. Those

who

speak

of

cutting

back on second

102

Paul Barker



E-. 4 ? -,.,. . i

a_/rk

...................

.. . .....

_ i 's,;^ ................................................:....m1

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

..................

fVlly _

l m it _______-.

. X.

i _ _ |

_ . |:.: .......... ' . ....

3~~~~~~~~~~~~.. . ...

a S.VS SS.< .Ess:......................a:.i~~~~~~~~~~~~

C::~m_-s

- ~

war

.....

....

.

....... .. ................. -., ____

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.......... ._..

-:io The car-scape.Left:multiple parkingon the crazy paving which has increasinglytaken over Mayfield Avenue front

gardens.

Right: ree-standing

Barratt

arage

(rareexample)

at Chafford.Note that,

n

both cases,

thecarsare leftoutside. Garages

are more often used for

generalstorageor tabletennis

thanforcars:an approximation

o theAmericanrumpus

room

cars

ignore

the gender aspect

of car ownership.

If

increasingly

built a

petrol

station into what they

a young

mother is to continue to juggle

her job offer. The

little filling station has now

grown up.

(often

part-time),

her children (including

the

With its shed-like roof and

its standardized

school

run)

and

her

shopping,

it

is

very

hard to

design,

it has

become

one of the most obvious

do

it

without

a car.

Or,

come to that, without

a contemporary design features

of the landscape.

one-stop shop,

like

Sainsbury's

or Tesco. No one ever

intended

it

to be so.

But it is so.

This

retail revolution

is the second

force for Ever since the

first out-of-town regional shop-

change. The two, of course, are linked. Frank ping centre opened in Gateshead in 1986, these

Lloyd Wright

once said: 'Watch

the little filling Non-Plan

tendencies have been propelled

for-

station.

It

is

the

agent

of decentralization.'

I

wards like

a

Formula

One car. Being set up

in

quoted

this

in

the

preamble

I

wrote for

Non- enterprise zones,

both MetroCentre Gateshead

Plan.

At the

time,

we went on to guess

that: and the Canary

Wharf complex

were exempt

from planning controls

as well as having many

Like all

focuses of transport,

the

filling station could

tax advantages.

No one had expected the

London

be a notable cause of change. Self-service

automats, Docklands

to have anything other than

low-key

dispensing

food

and

other

goods,

could

spring

up

housing, worhops and ahing .

No r

t .

.~u

housing,

workshops

and

warehousing.

Nor

around

the

forecourt;

maybe

small

post

offices;

holi-

uld the

po

day-gear

shops, too; telephone

kiosks;

eateries

(not

wo

i a

restaurants).

and

Wearside

ever have

contemplated

anything

like

MetroCentre,

which

might

undercut

New-

The

language

has

dated,

but all this has even-

castle

city

centre or

push

Sunderland

even

further

tually

happened. Planning

officers tried to hold

downhill.

the

changes back,

but

they

failed.

In

many

vil-

I have become fascinated

by

the new

shopping

lages,

the

petrol

station has become

the

local

shop,

malls

which,

in

Britain,

Gateshead

MetroCentre

open

most

hours and

selling

everything

from

launched.

They

are

living examples

of

Non-Plan

fruit-flavoured condoms to

sliced bread.

It

is

in the

1990s, crushing planning

intentions

under-

also,

of

course,

the local National

Lottery

outlet.

foot. I was

helped

to

understand

them

by reading

Moreover, supermarkets

and retail

parks

have

Joel Garreau's remarkable book,

Edge

City:Life

on

Non-Plan Revisited:

or the Real

Way

Cities Grow

103





13-14

The classical touch. Left:

Indian restauranton

Kenton Road shopping parade. Right:pediment

high up on

Lakeside's

Marks& Spencerstore

Clacton radition.

But, externally,

most of the time

your eye from these

pleasant frivolities, you

see

it looks

much bleaker:the

main design feature

is again the stacks

of carparks.

These are a reminder

carparks,both ground level and stacked. that,in the gospel accordingto Garreau,A is also

I went into Lakeside

from

a

car park

through

for

Ample

Free Parking.

This is, he argues,

the

the glass

doors of

'Lillywhites of Piccadilly

touchstone

distinctionbetween

Edge City and the

Circus'.

This is a symbolic perception-shift.

This old downtown.

It is also why 'Lillywhites

of

store is,

of

course,

several

miles from Piccadilly Piccadilly

Circus'

is at Lakeside.

Circus itself.

It has a fine

East London display

of Garreau

works his way through

the alphabet.

white trainers.

The variousBritish

malls arenot as

He offers a handy

vade-mecum for

Lakeside

alike

as

they

first seem. They

all have

a

local, design.

B,

for

example,

is for Blue Water.This

is

almost vernacular

twist. After all,

very different

what is put

into

the

fountains of

malls, Garreau

people

use them.26

reports,

o offset

the

unsightliness

of the coins

that

In his Americanresearch,

Joel Garreau

rapidly

people throw in,

as well as the grout

that washes

discovered it was no use talking to architects off from the tiling. All the decorativewater inside

about

shopping

malls. They mostly

despised the

Lakeside mall is blue.

them, and knew

nothing about them.

The people

Let

me move further

down the alphabetical

ist.

to talk to

were the developers.

But

this was not to

E

is

for

Epaulets.

These

are

highly

characteristic

f

say

there

was no

design

to the

malls.

Garreau

the

malls. Horizontal

stripes,

in

a

contrasting

gives an entertaining

ist of

the design principles

colour of brick,

are inserted

at the

corner,

or

of American

malls and

their

surroundings.

You

'shoulder',

of

a

building

to make it look

less

big

can

see their

equivalents

at

Lakeside,

which

was and less bleak.

At Lakeside

they

feature,

for

ex-

designed

by Chapman

Taylor ollowing

American ample,

on the exterior

of Mark & Spencer's

models.

'anchor' store. (This

store also

nods

in

the direc-

Garreau

begins

with

A

for

Animated

Space.

tion of a

specifically

British

design.

On

the

top

of

This

is the place

in

which

an attempt

is made to one end

of the Marks & Spencer

brick shed,

there

overcome

barrenness

and

sterility

by

the

addition is

a

classical

pediment.

It

is a

historicalgesture

to

of

anything

that

suggests

life, especially

flats.

I all those

high-street

neo-classicalM&S

store

fronts

passed

a

set of flags

on

my way

into Lakeside.

A

is

designed by

Edwin

Lutyens'son,

Robert. t is also

also for Active

Water Feature:

any man-made

a

clue

that this

particular

entrance may

be

body

of water from which you

are not

supposed

intended

as the

facade.

This is a

strange

notion

to drink.

A

fountain bubbles

up

next to the

Lake- at

Lakeside,

or

any

mall,

where the

retail fronts all

side

flags.

At

Lakeside's

lake,

there is some

more

face

inside.

Even

here, you

would not

pick

up

the

Active

Water:

a

high-rising

jet.

But if

you

move

clue unless you looked straight up

in the air.

The

Non-Plan

Revisited:

or the Real

Way

Cities

Grow

105



15 i6 Dividers

as

decoration.

Left:

balustrade

instead of

the more usual

hedge or brickwork)

mn

rontof a Mayfield

Avenue

semi. Right.

the fountain ('active

water

feature')marking

of

a Lakesidecar

park

pediment

does

not leap

to the eye.

No other

With theirNon-Plan

impetus,

the malls

destroy

formalclassical elements lead up to it across the some town centres but not others. MetroCentre

brickwork.)

Gateshead

has

not, in fact,

destroyed

the centre

of

And

so Garreau

continues,

all through

the

Newcastle-upon-Tyne,

which

on the

whole

relies

alphabet.

The biggest

of all

the British

malls has

on a better-off

group

of customers

and

on

cus-

now opened

in an

old chalk

quarry outside

tomers

who

want to slip

out to shop

during

their

Dartford

in Kent.

It is actually

named

after one

lunch hour,

or

on their

way home

from

work.

of Garreau's

isted features:

Bluewater.

MetroCentre

has, however,

undercut

many

other

The impact

of the various

malls

on concepts

of places.

And

this is no

surprise.

If the

alternative

urban design

is profound.

To combat

Lakeside,

were Sunderland's

miserable

high

street,

or

the

the

Oxford Street

Association

has seriously

dismal

shopping

precinct

in Peterlee

New

Town,

thought

of covering

Oxford Street

over, and

man- you

too would

prefer

to go to

MetroCentre.

nmngt with private security guards. In his coun- PeterleeNew Town is a sad failure, in spite of

a

ter-attack

against

the easy critics

of the

malls, first

master-plan

by Lubetkin,

and

subsequent

Garreau

quotes the

patron

saint

of inner-city

aesthetic

control

by Victor

Pasmore.

It is a

living

regeneration,

JaneJacobs.

In The

Death and Life

of (or,

rather,half-dead)

lesson

in the

advantages

of

Great American

Cities,27

she

stated that

'The bed-

Non-Plan

over planning

and

design from

above.

rock of

a successful

city district

is that

a person

At

Dagenham,

the London

County

Council

must feel personally

safe

and secure

on the

street

built its dreary

inter-war

Becontree

estate.

The

among

all these

strangers.'

n a mall,

you meet

no design

of the houses

is

a diluted version

of

Arts

alkies,

beggars

or pickpockets.

Shoppers

do

not

and Crafts.

It would

be fine if

there were

not

so

need

to wear their

handbags

slung

across their

many

of them.Becontree

covers

four square

miles,

chests.

One of the characteristic

design features

of

with hardly

a pub

or a decent

shop.

Building

the

malls-the

glass-sided

crawler ift-was

intro-

began

in

1923. Seventy

years

later,

and

five

duced

in theUnited

States,

not because

of the view

miles

away, Becontree

acquired

a

substitute

out,

but because

of the

view in.

Women,

it was centre:

Lakeside

Thurrock.

thought,

would

not fearbeing

groped

or rapedin

a Campaigners

weep

fordying

high street

shops.

glass-sided

lift. In Britain,

this may

no longer

be

But these

were a nineteenth-century

invention

the argument

used,

but they

are

in~

very

design.

If which

has often

had its day.

Beforethat,

general

it is a mall,

the design

must include

a glass-sided

goods

were bought

at markets,

not shops.

A

crawler lift.

Customers

expect

it. By now,

it has

differentkind

of market

has overtaken

them:

on

become

partof the

fun-fair.

the one

hand, places

like Lakeside;

on

the

other,

106

Paul

Barker



car boot

sales-a favourite Sunday leisure

activity Mayfield Avenue is

striking, though space is

in

Britain.

much

tighter. There is less space.

Land

in

and

Down

the years, architects' drawings

of their around London is

now much dearer, thanks

urban

projects have always included

little partly to the invention

of the Green Belt. There

sketches

of

happy citizens

enjoying a glass of are

terrace houses at Chafford Hundred.

These

wine

and an

interesting conversation at

a cafe may be an 'East Anglian

Vernacular', with appro-

table,

beneath a brightly coloured

umbrella. This priate flint and

tiling. But these

are simply a

is, they are certain, the good life. It is what they transit zone. A terrace, here, always means 'starter

themselves

always enjoyed in Urbino or

Arezzo. homes': the

bottom-rung option, before you move

In

reality,

you seldom see this paradisal

scene

in

up to an executive

home with overtones of May-

Britain. The weather does not

encourage it.

But

field

Avenue.

you do

see

this scene, for

example,

at

Romano's Edge

City, following

in

the Non-Plan

footsteps

Italian

restaurant,

in

the themed area

called of Kenton, adds up to

the final suburban triumph.

'Mediterranean

Village',

at

MetroCentre Gates- Malls

move

everything nearer

to suburbia. A

head. The customers

share a bottle of wine recent

retail index gave national

trading ratings.

before their

lunch. Their unopened linen

napkins The top four

locations, judged by turnover and

are folded into neat

triangles. There is the happy

profitability per square foot, were

England's first

murmur of

gossip. The

umbrellas duly complete four

malls,

in

this order: MetroCentre

Gateshead;

the picture-though, up above, the only light Meadowhall Sheffield; Lakeside Thurrock; and

comes

from

electric bulbs

in

the grey roof of Merry

Hill,

at

Dudley

in

the West Midlands.

MetroCentre. The

sun

never

shines on Romano's. Oxford

Street was

in

eleventh

place,

and

Princes

But then

it

never rains either.

Street,

Edinburgh, came twelfth.

Though MetroCentre was

the

first of

its

kind

in

Britain, you have

to

come

much further south

The

Continuing Significance

of

Non-Plan

than

Gateshead to see

Edge City

in

full

vigour.

In

and around

Lakeside (or Bluewater, or

Cribbs Edge City is only

the most extreme example of

Causeway, Bristol), the economic

pressure

is

what is

happening. Everywhere has

been subur-

much

stronger.

In

Garreau's

alphabetical list, banized, both town and

country, both socially and

one

crucial

component

is E for

Executive

(often)

in

design. Non-Plan

unashamedly implies

Homes. These gravitate towards the malls, like suburbanization. Few English villages, for ex-

bees towards nectar.

They began building them at

ample, now contain

many inhabitants who have

Bluewater, even before the

mall

opened. Lakeside

anything to do with

agriculture. The villages are

has

its 'new

community'

of Chafford

Hundred,

stuffed

either with

second-home owners, or com-

which

is

springing up about

300 yards from

the

muters, or both. Around the village

edges, you

mall.

A

primary school,

a

family pub

and

a Safe-

find

two new kinds of

dwelling: yet

more

execu-

way's

are

already

in

place.

A

private

health

and

tive homes and

the mobile homes

park.

Of the

sports

club and

creche

are

promised

soon.

two, the mobile

homes park is the harder to

find.

In

1998,

all

the

big

house-builders

had

their

own

It is

nearly always

hidden

behind a

discreet

plots

in

this

East London creation of

Edge City. hedge. But it

is always there.

Mobile home

The car

is as

cherished as

in

present-day Mayfield parks, which

are

Non-Plan

incarnate,

cry

out for

Avenue. Fashion has moved away from semis. further study. They are amazingly ingenious, and

'Executive

homes'

are

always detached, but

only

a

always very suburban.

The

wheels

are hidden by

few feet

apart

from

one another.

At

Chafford little

modesty

screens

of

brickwork.

Baskets of

Hundred,

however,

the

designs

often evoke

flowers

hang

beside the

front

door. Plastic wind-

inter-war suburbia.

There is, for example, Wim- mills

turn,

and

cement rabbits

gambol,

on

every

pey's

'Tudor'

style.

Or

there is what

I think

of

as

patch of

grass.

'Barratt

Conventional',

a

style

in

which

houses

Everywhere

in

today's

Britain

you

see

subur-

(with

garages)

with

steeply pitched

roofs are

ban

pride

of

ownership.

There

is

further

evidence

tucked

up

in

line. Here

again

the resemblance

to in

any

council estate-of

houses,

not flats. A

Non-Plan Revisited:

or the

Real

Way

Cities Grow

107



personal version of Non-Plan

has chipped away for a weekly column I had been writing

in the New

at the

planned design

certainties

and monotonies. Statesman

magazine.

And I have

increasingly

Front doors tell the story

of right-to-buy. The come to endorse the conclusions

we came to, all

council's doors have been

removed. The subur- those years ago. Growth that happens

without too

banite replacements vary between Costa Brava much

prescription is best. It is, of course, fine to

(the heavy Spanish style,

with bright varnished lay down some very basic negative rules, and Non-

panels) and Barbara Cartland (neo-Regency, with Plan

was never hostile to this; for example, this

a glazed fanlight). Both versions are tougher than belt of land shall not be built on; or no building in

the old doors. There is no glass you can easily this

city centre shall be higher than ten storeys.

knock in. The woodwork is stronger. But the But,

outside that, as little should be done as

main

point

is to

say:

this is my house, not possible. Positive planning is all too

often a dis-

anyone else's. The message is rubbed in by the aster.

For a start, it is usually based on incorrect

carriage lamps,

the

new

paint,

even (sometimes)

a

forecasts about the future. No

one is clever

little oriel window above the

front door. enough to know, in advance, how

cities will

The Non-Plan imagery of suburbia can crop up grow.

You cannot tell which innovation will

in

rather surprising places. In Brussels, for ex- germinate

and multiply a thousandfold (like the

ample, they

have built a Gargantuan new home mobile phone), and which hopeful

idea will just

for the European Parliament. But, looking at its die

(like Reyner Banham's beloved Moulton

cliff-like glass sides, and its mini-Crystal Palace bicycle). Nor can we tell how people will decide

roof, you would think it was a particularly ill- to organize

their lives, or how their tastes in

designed shopping centre,

if

you

had

not been patterns of living

will

develop.

A city is not a

warned first-ill-designed because there is abso- computer

program. It has a life of its own.

lutely no element of fun,

or frivolity, about it. Non-Plan, as a concept, is essentially

a very

Again:

in

many inner-city regeneration schemes-

humble idea. At the heart of Non-Plan, in both

beginning

with

the London

Docklands-I

am

social

and design terms, is the thought

that it

is

struck

by

the fact

that

much of the

housing,

so

very

hard to know what is

good

for other people.

far at

least,

follows a suburban model. Sir

Lawrie Notoriously,

few architects live

in the

kinds

of

Barratt

was,

at

first,

one of the very few devel- house they have advocated

for others to

live

in.

opers

who

thought

it was

worth taking

a bet on Few

planners

have

hung

around to see the effect

the eventual success of Docklands. Docklands' of the plans that looked so delightful on the

role as a postmodern playground came later.

In

drawing

board.

I

think, for example, of the

any

architectural or

design history

of

Britain

in

the

destruction of the centre

of

Liverpool by

well-

late twentieth

century,

Barratt

will

deserve as

meaning planners

like Graeme Shankland.

many pages

as

Sir

Norman Foster.

Nor has

this

stopped.

I

was

tempted

into

think-

To reflect

on Non-Plan

and on its suburban

ing

back

about the

significance

of Non-Plan

by

a

manifestations

is

inevitably

to

reflect

on the

cycli-

walk

I

took around Bedford.

The town has been

cal nature

of fashion. These

manifestations

may

be

turned into

a

rancorous

system

of

one-way roads,

attacked as

un-aesthetic,

even

anti-aesthetic,

and

interspersed

with

desolate

pedestrian

precincts.

It

the

very opposite

of

good

taste.

But

it is

a safe

is a

pleasant town, destroyed by planning.

A

long

prediction that,

in

the normal course of things,

list of such towns could

easily

be drawn

up,

from

suburban semis like Mayfield Avenue's, and even every region of Britain: for example, Derby, Brad-

executive

homes

like

Chafford

Hundred's,

will

ford,

Coventry.

All have

been

destroyed by

an

idee

come

to be cherished

aesthetically, just

as indus-

fixe

of

planning. Contrariwise,

there

are towns

like

trial terrace houses-which

were

also

once

York which

have

been

destroyed by

obsessive

mocked,

and

destroyed,

as

slums-are now cher- conservation-a

later

idWe

ixe,

York

has become

ished. By

the same

token,

I

await

with

confidence

a

theme

park

with

medieval

trimmings.

The

the

first Grade

II

listed

regional shopping

mall. conservation

obsession

has this

advantage:

it

is

Since

1996,

I

have done

a

great

deal

of

walking

reversible.

around

British

cities,

towns

and

villages-partly

Bedford was

John Bunyan's

town. But it is now

108

Paul Barker



a very long way

from being the House or the

City

Beautiful.

As I

made

my

own

Pilgrim's Progress

around it,

I

wondered again

if

things could con-

ceivably

have been

any

worse

if

there

had

been

no

planning at all.

They might even have been better.

As

an idea, as a form of

liberation, Non-Plan (I

decided)

was

still

very much

alive

and kicking.

PAUL BARKER

Instituteof Community tudies,

London

Notes

This paper is a revised

version of the tenth

Reyner

Banham memorial lecture

which

was

held at the

Vic-

toria

and

Albert

Museum

on

13

March

1998.

1

For a fuller account of

the ethos and history of

the

magazine, see Paul

Barker, Paintingthe

portraitof

The Other

Britain :New Society

1962-8', Contem-

poraryRecord, ol. 5, no.

i,

Summer

1991.

2 Melanie

Phillips,'Commentary',

Guardian,

6

Febru-

ary 1988.

3 Robert

Hewison, Too Much: Art and

Society in the

Sixties,Methuen,

London, 1986.

4

Michael

Young

and

Peter

Willmott's

collaboration

began with Family and

Kinship in East London,

Rout-

ledge & Kegan Paul,

London, 1957.

5 Herbert

J. Gans, The Levittowners:

Ways of Life and

Politics in a

New Suburban

Community, Allen Lane,

Penguin Press, London,

1967.Extractspublished

in

New

Society

as

'An

anatomy

of

suburbia',vol.

10,

no.

261, 28

September 1967.

6 Lionel

March,

'Let's build

in

lines',

New

Society,

vol. lo, no.

251,

20 July 1967.

7 Reyner Banham, Megastructures:Urban

Futuresof the

Recent

Past, Thames & Hudson,

London, 1976.

8

Peter

Hall, 'Monumental

olly',

New

Society,

ol.

12,

no. 317,

24 October

1968.

9

Nicholas

Taylor,

The

Village

in

the

City, Temple

Smith,

London, 1973.

10

Stewart

Brand,

How

Buildings

Learn:

What

Happens

After They're Built,

Viking,

New

York,

1994.

l1

Robert

Venturi,

Denise

Scott

Brown

&

Steven

Ize-

nour, Learning from Las Vegas, MIT Press, Cam-

bridge,MA,

1972.

12

Mary

Banham

ed.),

A

CriticWrites:

Essaysby Reyner

Banham, niversityof California

Press,Berkeley, 996.

An

earlier

New

Society

selection appeared

in

Paul

Barker

ed.),

Arts

n

Society, ontana,

London,1977.

13

Cedric

Price, Pop-up

Parliament',

New

Society,

ol.

6,

no.

148,

29

July 1965; 'Potteries

Thinkbelt',

New

Society,

ol.

7,

no.

192,

2

June

1966.

14

Some

of

John

Berger's

and

Angela

Carter's

essays

were included

in

Arts in

Society, op. cit. Others of

John Berger's New

Society essays

were

in

John

Berger, Selected

Essays

and

Articles: The Look

of

Things, Penguin,

Harmondsworth, 1972; a wider

collection was Lloyd

Spencer (ed.), The White Bird:

Writings by John Berger,

Chatto

&

Windus, London,

1985. Several of Angela

Carter's essays appeared

in

Angela Carter, Nothing Sacred: Selected Writings,

Virago,

London,

1982;

for a fuller

collection, see

Angela

Carter, Shaking

a

Leg:Journalism

and

Writings,

Chatto

&

Windus,

London, 1997.

Peter Fuller's

essays

were

reprinted

in

Peter

Fuller, Beyond

the

Crisis

in

Art, Writers

&

Readers, London, 1980,

The

Naked

Artist, Writers &

Readers, London, 1983,

Images of

God: The Consolations of

Lost Illusions,

Chatto &

Windus,

London, 1985,

and

elsewhere.

15

Reyner Banham, Paul

Barker,

Peter

Hall & Cedric

Price,

'

Non-Plan: an experiment in

freedom', New

Society,

vol.

13,

no.

338,

20 March

1969.

The

intro-

ductory section is reprinted in Andrew Blowers,

Chris

Hamnett

&

Philip

Sarre (eds.), The Future

of

Cities,

Hutchinson, London, 1974, and

in

Jonathan

Hughes & Simon Sadler

(eds.), Non-Plan: Essays in

Freedomand

Choice

n

Modern

Architectureand Urban-

ism, Architectural Press,

Oxford, forthcoming.

i6

Christopher Booker, The

Neophiliacs, Collins,

London, 1969.

17

Cedric

Price, 'Pop-up Parliament', op.

cit.

i8

Colin Ward, quoted

in

ContemporaryRecord, op. cit.

See also

Colin

Ward, Social

Policy:

An Anarchist Re-

sponse,

London

School

of

Economics,

London, 1997.

19

Michael Hebbert, London: More by Fortune than

Design, John

Wiley &

Sons, Chichester, 1998.

20 J. M.

Richards,

The

Castles

on

the

Ground, Architec-

tural

Press,

London, 1946.

21

Steen Eiler

Rasmussen, London:

The Unique City,

Penguin,

Harmondsworth, abridged edn. 1960.

22

Peter Hall,

'Greenfields and grey

areas', paper pre-

sented at

Royal

Town

Planning Institute annual

conference,

Chester, 15 June 1977;

reprinted

in

Peter

Hall, The EnterpriseZone:

British

Origins,

Amer-

ican

Adaptations, Berkeley, Institute of

Urban and

Regional

Development

Working Paper No. 350,

1981.

Colin Ward followed up Non-Plan from a

different

perspective

with his

concept

of

a

'Do-It-

Yourself

New Town'

(first proposed

in

1975).

This

linked the

experience

of

the pre-war

'plotlands'

in

the English

countryside

with

'the

post-war adven-

ture

of the

self-built settlements

that

surround

every

city

of

Latin

America,

Africa or Asia.' See

Colin

Ward,

'The unofficial

countryside',

in

Anthony

Bar-

nett

&

Roger

Scruton

(eds.),

Town and

Country,

Jonathan

Cape, London, 1998.

Non-Plan Revisited:or

the Real Way Cities Grow

109



23

Kenton is touched on in the classic study of Lon-

don's twentieth-century spec-built suburbia: Alan

A. Jackson, Semi-DetachedLondon:SuburbanDevelop-

ment, Life and Transport,

i900-39,

Allen & Unwin,

London, 1973.

24

Joel Garreau, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier,

Doubleday, New York, 1991. For a longer historical

perspective,

see Kenneth T.

Jackson, Crabgrass

Fron-

tier:

The Suburbanizationof

the

United States, Oxford

University Press, New York, 1985.

25

I have visited

MetroCentre

Gateshead twice. Ex-

amples

in

this paper

relate to my most

recent visit

in

July

1996.

26 In 1998, after

this paper was delivered,

BBC Televi-

sion broadcast

a

documentary

series

about

the

Lake-

side Thurrock

mall, called 'Lakesiders',

which

underlined my

East London point.

27 Jane Jacobs, The

Death and Life of Great

American

Cities: The

Failure

of

Town Planning,

Random

House,

New York, 1961.

110

Paul

Barker

Non-Plan Revisited: Or the Real Way Cities Grow: The Tenth Reyner Banham MemorialLectureAuthor(s): Paul Barker

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