How truly valuable is history? Can we put we put an empirical value on sites containing significant history from humanities past? This is something which planners have to contend with when designing within complex urban landscapes, but can fall into opposition of another of their goals; meeting the needs of the local population. From the scale of a singular structure to a whole city, this presents challenges. The debate then arises: Should we focus on preserving historically significant urban sites or meeting the needs of the current population? In this essay, I will attempt to analyse the benefits and flaws of each of these arguments, then apply it to two developments within London which I argue demonstrate positive and negative outcomes, and finally conclude with a formula of what I believe urban planners should keep as their primary concern when shaping our future urban habitats.

The value of architectural history is undoubted, with historical urban areas being described as the memory of the city.[1] They allow us not a windowed experience into the past, which we’d see in a museum, but instead an immersive experience that provides a great deal more historical resolution. This allows both historians to better be able to analyse our past, but also architects to learn from mistakes made in the past, something which is easy to overlook in the 21st with the Computer Aided Design led studio pedagogy which are becoming ever-present within architectural practise. I believe that this can be shown clearly by a report by the European Commission, which stated: "The past as embodied in the architectural heritage provides the sort of environment indispensable for a balanced and complete life,"[2]

Another benefit of architectural history being around us is it provides a greater feeling of belonging, something that could be becoming lacking in our ever-diversifying international cityscapes. This persistence of the sense of place, created though historical landscapes, can be expressed in different dimensions of human life: emotions, biographies, imagination, stories, and personal experiences, but its unifying role is to bring us closer together and to our cities.[3][4]

The final benefit I would like to discuss is the increased approachability of historical architecture when it surrounds us as opposed to being caged within a museum or other such institution. These public locations increase the ease of engagement with architectural history for people outside the fields of architecture. This helps preserve the field for future generations, and fosters inter-disciplinary learning, a vitally important occurrence.

However, whilst there are clearly a number of benefits to preservation of historical urban sites, it is clearly not the only consideration when enacting planning policy within cityscapes. The primary conflict that I wish to analyse is the friction between preserving these sites and meeting the needs of the current population. This creates frustrating yet intriguing planning issues globally.

One of the primary issues with preservation of historical urban landscapes is a financial one. To keep structures of historical significance requires a great deal of expenditure, due to the fragile nature and difficulty to repair that is associated with them. According to research by The Higher Education Funding Council costs of maintenance for historical buildings are roughly “£15.50 a year for every square metre of floor space in pre-1914 buildings. For pre-1840 buildings, the rate is £19 a square metre”[5].

This clearly regionally can vary, especially correlating to the local cost of labour, but is clearly still significant. There is on the other hand a benefit to this maintenance requirement; the skills and craft required to keep these buildings functional prevent these techniques from being lost. It also fosters artisanal talents, such as can be found in thatchers in certain parts of the rural British countryside, whom keep a 3000-year-old construction method alive, through maintenance requirements on thatched cottages. Assistance can also be found in paying for this preservation work to occur, through NGOs such as The Getty Conservation Institute (GCI), try to provide funding to reduce the strain on the aforementioned nation’s governments.[6]

The second major issue with the conservation of historical urban structures is a more literal one; space in cities. By 2050, the United Nations projects, almost three-quarters of the world’s population will call urban areas home.[7] This will pressurise an already strained real-estate market in many of our world’s cities, which will further drive up the cost of keeping historical structural elements within cities.

This spatial based issue also has more human centric effects. Historically preserved areas of cities cause a number of issues. In particular, these areas can divide neighbourhoods, preventing equal developmental opportunities. It can also force less well-off communities out of cities, due to rising land prices and a drastically reducing number of houses available, particularly effecting families and minority communities.[8]

To illustrate these effects, I will use the case study of The City of London. Specifically, I chose this city and sites as its culture and historical urban areas stretch back before the Romanic period, and it features many of these historical structures to this day. A second London has examples of all different forms of historical urban landscapes, areas and structures, along with sites where interventions have been made. I will focus on two sites, one that demonstrates the flaws of preservation of historically important urban landscapes, and a second that shows what the potential that the regeneration of these areas of architectural history can be.

I selected two sites within the city, The Kings Cross Regeneration Project and The Nine Elms Development. I plan on using multiple sites within the same city to illustrate my point as it reduces the variables when analysing the success and/or failings of the 21st century management strategies of urban sites of historical urbans structures, such as corruption of governance, funding and resources available to planners, and most importantly other external factors such as wars or natural disasters.  I chose these sites in particular, as The Nine Elms Development and Kings Cross project both occurred around similar times, with proportional levels of funding. They both contain historical urban sites, and both had similar yet complex requirements that the projects had to fulfil. The sites differ however, as I argue that the Nine Elms re-development was significantly more successful, due to its focus on the human needs that were address within the areas in which the development occurred.

We cannot fix a date where the first settlement was built upon the site of Londinium. The first structures built in within the site of Londinium that have been dug up during archaeological were timber remains that predate the Roman settlement. According to Simon Denis, the oldest remains of an archaic bridge were located near Thames and come from as far back as the middle Bronze Age. The bridge went from the south bank at Vauxhall and was made out of two parallel pieces of oak.[9] However, whilst there is evidence of a scattering of Brythonic tribes and settlements in the vicinity, the earliest verified settlement was the Roman City of Londinium. It was initially founded in roughly AD 47, by roman legionnaires’,[10] The city grew throughout the roman period, until it began to decline in the 5th century along with the roman civilisation, but the settlement was re-founded by the Anglo-Saxons. Its importance was increased in the 11th century after the Norman invasion of 1066, when the new ruler William the Conqueror made it his capital and constructed the tower of London. The city then continued to developed over the following 950-year period, with elements of it remaining from each historical sector.[11]

The first site I will analyse is Kings Cross. This is a sector of north London that has had multi billons of pounds invested in it over the last 30 years, originally being a Tudor era meeting place north of the city of London.[12] There are a number of historical urban landscapes within the site, such as the denotation cross itself, dating from 1415. It also housed a historically high migrant population within its terraced Victorian era housing.[13] In 1985, after a destructive fire at the main railway station, resulting in a high number of fatalities, it was decided to heavily invest in the Kings Cross area. A number of plans were drawn up for mixed use housing, office and retail space, and a large amount of money was invested between 1987 and 2017.

This redevelopment, however, was plagued with a number of issues. In particular, large swathes of the immigrant community areas were purchased for redevelopment, with the promise of affordable housing in the area for them after the completion of the development. However, due to over budget spending trying to regenerate the historical landmarks and the new surrounding structures, the house pricing skyrocketed, causing the permanent displacement of the previous local population.[14] The second major issue has been that, due to the lead of the project being to no block precious sight linings and intrude on the space of protected monumental areas (predominantly the historically important areas), much of the new build commercial space is impractical to be used, and lies empty despite subsidies from both local development cooperation and the government, and footfall to these historically protected monuments has actually fallen. I would therefore deduce that the failings of this project are due to the approach that was taken by the developers, that preservation of history should not only be even with meeting 21st century needs, but should actually trump it.

In comparison to this, The Nine Elms development for me is an example of how we can positively intervene in a modern city environment to better meet the needs of the population whilst preserving historical elements.[15] This site is located within Vauxhall, on the south bank of the river Thames, and is currently the biggest re-development project within London. This site contains Battersea Power Station, a large former coal fired power station and an iconic element of the Londoner’s skyline.[16]

This redevelopment project began at a similar time to the previous one, slightly later beginning it’s planning stage in the early 1990s, and for the first re-incarnation of the area appeared to fall into the same pitfalls the was experienced on the other development. It initially focused heavily on the preservation of the power station, cranes, and other industrial equipment, which caused the site to lack proper housing, and become unprofitable. This plan and developer however went bust, and so was taken on by an international group of rich investors and designers. They drew up a radically different plans, which rather than attempting to perfectly preserve the power station, using the structure only as an events space, instead built housing inside and around it. This caused the building to lose some of its visual appeal, and industrial style, and so was met with controversy. However, it proved to be a lot more financially viable, which allowed a greater amount of affordable housing, and afforded a unique convergence of past and present. This inspirational architecture has won numerous awards, but the overall positive outcome of this project can be seen to a greater extent in my opinion with the fact that, whilst meeting the needs of the local residents, the historical structure has kept itself rooted in the past.[17]

So, in conclusion, I feel that I’ve show that it is not as simple as to be able to state that we should focus purely on meeting the needs of the population or preservation of historical urban areas. These issues cannot be considered in isolation, but instead as a complex interwoven issue within the fabric of the city. However, particularly in those cities with high levels of historic architectural sites, such as London, we should take a human-centric approach, as history has shown that we have a habit of sacrificing the living conditions within urban areas in an effort to preserve history, and in doing so, inhibits historical learning, which is vital today. This people lead design process has been shown to be possible in the Nine Elms Development, and it’s difficulty has been seen in the Kings Cross Development, and I believe that vital lessons can be learned from these examples.

References

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Denison, Simon. "First `London Bridge' in River Thames at Vauxhall." British Archaeology, July: 1. 1999: 75-79

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United Nations. World Urbanization Prospects. Methodology , New York: The UN. 2018: 43-47

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Walkowitz, Daniel J., and Lisa Maya Knauer. Contested Histories in Public Space: Memory, Race, and Nation. Durham: Duke University Press. 2009: 66-77

Wang, Jinghui. "Problems and solutions in the protection of historical urban areas." Frontiers of Architectural Research I (1) March 2012: 40-43.

Watts, Peter. Up in Smoke: The Failed Dreams of Battersea Power Station. London: Paradise Road. 2016: 99-105