‘Can we live the green spaces dream?’ – London Open City

Can we live the green spaces dream?
Torange Khonsar, Public Works
Walking tour, Lea Valley. 8th March 2008

[Public Works fanzine cover]

The walk took in a number of existing green routes in East London which are to be incorporated in Design for London’s ‘Green Grid’ strategy – a means of connecting London’s green spaces in some kind of meaningful way. Torange began by talking about Sir Patrick Abercrombie’s County of London Plan of 1943, and its vision of being able to travel somehow from one’s own back yard to a complete experience of countryside, with the city in between serving to make this connection possible, and how this idea continues to inform London’s strategies and goals.

Along the way, we passed through a series of left-over, quirky spaces which are mostly invisible on plan and therefore unprogrammed even in such visionary schemes. This for me places importance not only on the professional’s responsibility to know their site, but more importantly on the value of local knowledge – walking the dog being in this case more important than knowing the plan.

A key point made here regarded how the ‘top-down’ strategy of the ‘Green Grid’ is practically crying out for organised action on the part of local or community groups.

Torange is a member of the Public Works artist/architect collective and is an architect. She has set up her own community group in relation to a local area of open space and felt it vital not to brand herself as an architect in meetings or presentations, but instead as the Chair or other official of the group. In her view, use of the term ‘architect’ would have placed her in a difficult expert position in relation to the place concerned, and moreover the group as a whole had more power as a unit than a loose gathering of expert professionals. In this instance, her professional knowledge helped her in research and in ‘phrasing things’ – the model is of the professional as a bridge between community and authority. There are interesting parallels here with the exhibition ‘Double Agent’ (link) at the ICA currently- which brings up issues of identity and truth in relation to the public or to communities.

Emphasis was placed very much on how a constituted or official group has extraordinary power when compared to a single individual or a loose group. Lucy Musgrave of General Public Agency suggested, as I understood it, that some form of case study documentation might be a useful ally in this present situation – not telling people what to do but providing useful and flexible information about things that have worked in the past.

The message really, I guess, is that the green dream can only be lived if it is dreamed of, and actively created, by the locals, who become participants in rather than recipients of the dream.

It was interesting for me to hear critiques of the ‘top-down’, strategic approach. In my understanding, the authority, though it may have a ‘top-down’ rather than ‘bottom-up’ approach, is different to that of Fontainhas where no such dream or aspiration seems to exist. Maybe such a strategic vision is needed in some level of government in order for ‘bottom up’ to be allowed a voice.