Patten 1978: Londres 1500-1700 - ocupações e economia

PATTEN J, English towns, 1500-1700. Folkestone [England]: Archon Books 1978.
https://archive.org/details/englishtowns15000000patt/page/22/mode/2up

Chapter 4, Town Occupations and Town Economies - London (pp. 182-189)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14d9gtrmZ7ev6gv-wXiCILBj7sVgkimVSQmtkFRT28a8/edit?usp=sharing

Fonte: Financial Times

https://www.ft.com/content/51705e73-bfa2-43ee-b288-98d4773f3fae

(..) The sixteenth and seventeenth century was the period in which London permanently consolidated its position in the country, so that not even the growth experienced by the great centres of the industrial revolution like Birmingham or Manchester could ever come near it. It was also during the period that London rose from being merely the most important town in England to becoming one of the great European cities, on a par with Paris or Naples. (..)

(..) London was important for its essential marketing facilities, its refining and entrepot role, and specialized luxury manufactures that were unique to it, but also for the growth of a new mode of trade occupation, the shop and shopkeeper, and for the growth of a new strata of activity, the services and professions.

The increasingly specialized retail shop, slowly disentangling itself from craft and manufacturing activities, was a creation of sixteenth-century London. From there it was to spread to the rest of the country. There had been places that were earlier called shops, letting down boards and awnings from house fronts on which goods were displayed, as well as being the ‘workshops’ from which the term ‘shop’ is undoubtedly a contraction. In most sixteenth-century provincial towns such places operated as retail outlets, mostly on market day; for the rest of the time they were concerned with making and fabricating in the back regions. (..)

2025-01-22

O inferno (ou paraíso?) dos alugueis

Não tenho a pretensão de saber as causas desse grave problema. Mas para uma publicação da natureza, tamanho e prestígio da FT, a explicação apresentada é nada menos que risível: 

“(..) Rents have been rising sharply for the past two years as landlords passed on rising costs, amid a shortage of properties to rent and strong demand from tenants who could not afford higher mortgage payments. (..)”

Observando o gráfico abaixo, extraído da própria reportagem, a primeira pergunta que me ocorre é: o que é que Londres tem que as demais regiões não tem? Minha resposta: um imenso afluxo de estrangeiros endinheirados - a negócios, estudo, turismo - boa parte deles em caráter temporário. Uma bênção dos céus para as finanças do Reino, por sinal. O resto vem depois.

Clique na imagem para ampliar

2025-01-05

"Clapham Junction"

Fonte: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2142240399343434

2023-07-30

Lei e desordem

Evening Standard 05-07-2021, por Sophia Sleigh

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-crumble-workers-office-work-from-home-covid-b944137.html

City will crumble if workers don’t start going back to the office, expert warns

Foto: Getty Images / Evening Standard

Com todo o respeito ao recém-falecido mestre, todos esses alertas sobre a iminência de uma catástrofe urbanística e econômica derivada de algo tão razoável, e até certo ponto previsível, como a maré do trabalho remoto sempre me trazem à mente a proposição, que me parece insustentável, de Flavio Villaça sobre a relação entre anarquia na produção e desenvolvimento urbano, à página 77 de sua obra magna Espaço Intra-Urbano no Brasil:

Não é possível associar aqui a aglomeração urbana à desordem da concorrência que Marx diz existir na sociedade. Numa visão social mais ampla, as cidades são uma força produtiva e, como tal, trabalham segundo uma lei, uma lógica, e não em desordem. [1]

Ora, as "leis / lógicas" da produção capitalista e a “desordem / anarquia” que ela promove na economia com um todo não se excluem absolutamente: são um antagonismo gerado pelas forças motrizes do mesmo processo, como na relação entre concorrência e monopólio e, em outro plano, entre liberdade individual e controle social. A contradição entre o planejamento rigoroso no âmbito da empresa privada e a competição predatória no da sociedade, ambos voltados à obtenção do máximo lucro sobre o capital investido, tem um lugar nada menos que central n'O Capital de K Marx.

A convicção de que as grandes metróp0les são imprescindíveis à riqueza das nações tornou-se tão avassaladora em nossa época que tendemos a esquecer o caráter tsunâmico de suas deseconomias e a escassez, virtualmente insolúvel para a imensa maioria dos cidadãos trabalhadores, de seu bem mais precioso: a terra urbanizada e adequadamente localizada.

Sim, a reprodução das cidades modernas está sujeita a certas leis da economia e da sociologia, mas nem por isso deixa de ser anárquica - errática do ponto de vista das necessidades do presente, temerária quanto às possibilidades do futuro e mais ou menos alheia, a depender do país e das circunstâncias, aos ideais de apuro estético, justiça social e sustentabilidade ambiental de urbanistas-planejadores, reformadores e legisladores. Não há, aliás, nenhum motivo para crer que o desenvolvimento das cidades em geral seja menos anárquico do que o das próprias economias nacionais e mundial.

Mesmo que não venha a realizar-se, o espectro da súbita desvalorização e obsolescência dos hipercentros financeiros, alguns recém-construídos sob a rubrica dos Grandes Projetos Urbanos, é um augúrio de que a tragédia de Detroit pode não ter sido "um raio em céu azul". 

2021-07-05

___

[1] VILLAÇA Flavio, Espaço Intra-Urbano no Brasil. São Paulo: FAPESP 2001, p. 77

Tecnologia de transporte e estrutura urbana

HALL P (1992), Urban and Regional Planning. Londres e Nova York: Routledge 1996, p. 26 – Cap 2, “The Origins – urban growth from 1800 to 1940” 

(excerto)

(..) The precise impact of this sort of development upon the urban structure can be well seen by comparing the maps of London, in 1914 and 1939 (..). London in 1914, as we already noted, had he characteristically tentacular shape associated with the early public transport city – the city of the steam train and the horse bus. By 1939 London had assumed a completely different shape: growth was much more even in any direction, producing a roughly circular city with a radius about 12-15 miles (19-24 km) from the centre. The basic reason for this was a change in the technology of transportation. First, electric trains were more efficient carriers than the steam trains had been: accelerating and decelerating rapidly, they could serve more frequently spaced stations. Secondly, and even more importantly, the motor bus allowed a fairly rapid urban-transport service to penetrate in any direction from these stations, along existing roads, without the need for elaborate capital investment on the part of the operator; it therefore served as a highly efficient feeder service. These changes altered the pattern of accessibility within the urban area. The isochrones (lines of equal accessibility to the centre, in terms of time) were in 1914 very irregular; they fingered out a long way along the rail lines. By 1939 they had become more even and circular (or concentric) in form; and the development of the urban area followed accordingly. This form we can call typical of the later public transport city; it was not at all a creation of the private car, since in London by 1939 only about one family in ten owned owned one. (..)

2021-03-12

Mal-estar social ou sociedade do mal-estar?

The Guardian 27-09-2020, por Rowan Moore 

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/27/housing-crisis-planning-converting-office-blocks-homes-catastrophe-jenrick

‘It's like an open prison’: the catastrophe of converting office blocks to homes

A policy designed to open up the planning system has left thousands in tiny flats, far from schools and shops. And with more deregulation coming, things will get worse

Terminus House in Harlow, Essex, a former office block converted into housing. 

Photo: Bex Wade/The Observer

Excelente (e longa) matéria sobre os efeitos da desregulação urbanística na Inglaterra, cujo sistema é de difícil entendimento para nós, latino-americanos. Recortei e resumi o melhor que pude. 

A mesma Inglaterra que demole os conjuntos habitacionais dos anos 50 e 60 como "usinas de mal-estar social", parece replicá-los pela via do mercado habitacional desregulado. 

Fico a pensar: é o mau urbanismo que cria o mal-estar social ou é a sociedade do mal-estar que tortura o urbanismo com dilemas insolúveis? 

*** 

Shield House is just one example of “permitted development”. It is an outcome of a government experiment in deregulation, which allows homes to be made out of old offices and shops without planning permission, that has been going on for some years. An estimated 65,000 flats have been made in this way. The experiment has been catastrophic in several significant respects, but the government has recently decided to double down on it, expanding their policy such that office blocks may now be replaced with entirely new buildings without permission. This means that undersized and badly planned and located flats can now be realised at a larger scale.

(..) Permitted development means local authorities and local residents cannot oppose or alter proposals. They have no power to insist on adequate room sizes or daylight or influence the look of a building. With these safeguards removed, predictable consequences followed. There was a race to the bottom on size, with some flats created of 20, of 15, or even 10 square metres (a standard parking space is 11.5 square metres) in which a bed might end up 30cm from a washing machine. Such things as balconies or gardens would become virtually extinct.

(..) The main role of permitted development was once to ease the path of conservatories, small domestic extensions, garden sheds, and other uncontroversial works. But over the past few years the government (in England only, as the other nations of the union have devolved planning regimes) has turned it into a machine for driving up housing numbers, no matter how drastic the effects on people’s lives.

(..) In three reports in 2011 and 2012 the rightwing thinktank Policy Exchange had a prolonged lightbulb moment. What, they asked, if permitted development rights were extended, so that they would allow worn-out office buildings to be converted into housing, without the need for full planning permission? Since seeking planning permission can be an inefficient, expensive, risky and sometimes capricious process, there were attractions to the idea. Why not cut red tape and unleash the power of a deregulated market, to release a plentiful supply of residential units that would be relatively cheap, whether or not they were especially cheerful? “No one is going to mind if an office becomes a home,” said Policy Exchange. “We need to systematically change the planning system. Our current planning system, designed as part of a socialist utopia in the 1940s, has to be modernised for a 21st-century economy.”

(..) Lockdown has highlighted the importance of adequate domestic space and access to the outdoors. Covid-19 has also changed patterns of work, with the likelihood that demand for offices will in some places decline. There will be an opportunity to make them into homes, but it will take thoughtfulness and planning to do it well. There seems to be no chance of either from the government. Instead we hear this from Jenrick: “These changes will help transform boarded-up, unused buildings safely into high-quality homes at the heart of their communities.” But the buildings are not always unused, the homes are not high-quality and they are not in any positive sense at the heart of communities.(..)

2020-10-09

Apontamentos: Engels 1845 - as grandes cidades britânicas

ENGELS F [1845], “As Grandes Cidades”, em A Situação da Classe Trabalhadora na Inglaterra. Boitempo, São Paulo 2010, pp. 67-116
https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/4662435/mod_resource/content/1/ENGELS.pdf

Clique na imagem para ampliar

Friedrich Engels dedicou um capítulo inteiro de sua obra A Situação da Classe Operária na Inglaterra, publicada em 1845, às condições da habitação proletária nas grandes cidades britânicas. Seus termos são duros, suas imagens dolorosas e suas descrições até enfadonhas de tão repetitivas - porque a miséria era a mesma em toda parte.

Passados quase dois séculos e a despeito do próprio Engels ter declarado, no prefácio à edição alemã de 1892, que “o estado de coisas descrito neste livro – pelo menos no que se refere à Inglaterra – pertence hoje, em grande parte, ao passado”, cumpre dizer que o problema habitacional, quando não as condições sanitárias dos bairros proletários, jamais sequer equacionados nos países pobres e intermediários, voltam neste início de século XXI a assombrar as grandes cidades do mundo desenvolvido, povoadas de trabalhadores precarizados oriundos, em sua maior parte, como por um efeito-bumerangue, de suas periferias semicoloniais. A estagnação econômica mundial aberta pela debacle financeira de 2007 e agravada pela pandemia de coronavírus não augura dias melhores.

Deixando, porém, de lado por um momento esses fatos sumamente perturbadores, quero dizer que o capítulo “As Grandes Cidades”, além de libelo político e investigação sociológica, é também um pioneiro dos estudos de organização espacial urbana. Nele, o jovem Engels legou aos urbanólogos do século XXI uma boa coleção de observações sobre o atualíssimo tema da segregação socioespacial nas principais cidades da Grã-Bretanha de sua época e, no caso de Manchester, um esquema completo daquilo que hoje chamamos “estrutura urbana”, com indicações mais ou menos explícitas da disposição radial do conjunto, da relação entre centro, bairros e acessibilidade, dos gradientes de valores do solo, dos arranjos socioespaciais, da tipologia e mercado da habitação proletária e, ao final, um comentário bastante esclarecedor sobre a relação entre o regime inglês de propriedade da terra, a indústria e a qualidade da construção.

Esmiuçar o texto de Engels sob a ótica das estruturas espaciais pode ser uma experiência bastante enriquecedora para o estudioso da cidade.

(O mapa acima é uma versão tecnologicamente atualizada do mapa original da Engels à pg. 88, que ajuda a esclarecer algumas descrições do original, sobretudo a configuração do Centro comercial)

2020-08-13

Efeito bumelangue

UOL Economia / Bloomberg 10-01-2020, por Deirdre Hipwell e Jack Sidders

https://economia.uol.com.br/noticias/bloomberg/2020/01/10/mansao-a-venda-por-us-262-mi-em-londres-pode-superar-recorde.htm

Mansão à venda por US$ 262 mi em Londres pode superar recorde

Imagem: Internet

Um magnata chinês do setor imobiliário está perto de quebrar o recorde de Londres com a compra de uma mansão de 45 quartos em Knightsbridge por mais de 200 milhões de libras (US$ 262 milhões).

O family office privado de Cheung Chung Kiu fechou um acordo para comprar o palácio localizado na 2-8a Rutland Gate, com vista para o Hyde Park, disse um porta-voz em comunicado por e-mail. O acordo poderia dar impulso ao moribundo mercado imobiliário de luxo da capital e sinalizar que abastados estrangeiros estão sendo atraídos pela libra desvalorizada diante da iminente saída do Reino Unido da União Europeia (..) Nenhuma decisão foi tomada sobre se a propriedade continuará sendo uma única casa ou se será convertida em apartamentos de luxo. (..)

2020-01-21

Leia também

“Bilionário do pôquer aumenta coleção de imóveis em Londres”, Uol Economia 23-01-2020, por Venus Feng e Jack Sidders

https://economia.uol.com.br/noticias/bloomberg/2020/01/23/bilionario-do-poquer-aumenta-colecao-de-imoveis-em-londres.htm

Senzala pós-moderna

The Guardian / Cities 03-09-2019, por Will Coldwell

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/sep/03/co-living-the-end-of-urban-loneliness-or-cynical-corporate-dormitories

'Co-living': the end of urban loneliness – or cynical corporate dormitories?

Imagem: Web Urbanist

(..) Each company presents its accommodation as a solution to the urban housing crisis. Here, at last, is a way to provide affordable homes for younger people cut out of the market, while at the same time pooling resources, fostering community and catering for an increasingly mobile generation. With 4.8 million Britons now self-employed, co-living is pitched as a utopian response to a rapidly changing society.

But what from one angle looks like a revolutionary proposition can just as easily be seen from another as a cynical ploy by property developers to cash in on a generation living in the “age of loneliness”, locked in a perpetual struggle to find a place they can call home.

(..)“Co-living is purely a new way for developers to squeeze profit from an already broken housing market,” says Hannah Wheatley, researcher on housing and land at the New Economics Foundation. (..) 

 https://weburbanist.com/2017/11/24/7-students-1-tiny-apartment-ultra-compact-co-living-design-by-fabrica/

2019-09-05

Lei da selva: uso rentável ou demolição

The Guardian / Cities 17-07-2019, por Paul Talling

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2019/jul/17/the-city-has-changed-beyond-all-recognition-derelict-london-in-pictures

‘The city has changed beyond all recognition': Derelict London – in pictures

Paul Talling photographs the land of long-forgotten tube stations, burnt-out mansions and gently decaying factories

The Cinematograph Theatre, Shepherd’s Bush W12

The cinema first opened in 1910. It stopped showing films in 1981. After standing empty for several years, it was converted into a live music venue, the Bottom Line, and later as an Australasian-themed bar called Walkabout, which closed down in 2013. The council has refused permission to demolish and replace it with a 16-storey block

Fonte: The Guardian / Cities

2019-07-27

Missão: Tudo é possível

The Guardian 29-04-2018, por Robert Booth e Frankie Crossley

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/apr/29/nearly-100-london-councillors-have-links-to-property-industry

Nearly 100 London councillors have links to property industry

Almost one in 10 councillors work for consultancies involved in planning or construction firms 

Ravi Govindia, Wandsworth Council

Elected by the Conservative Council Group in 2011

Councillor since 1982

https://www.putneyconservatives.co.uk/people/ravi-govindia

Montagem: à beira do urbanismo

Some of the councils with the highest levels of hospitality or declared interests in property companies are producing levels of affordable housing that fall short of the London Mayor’s 35% target in the capital. In Wandsworth, where 17 councillors declared interests or entertainment with property companies, 19% of new homes built between 2013 and 2016 were affordable. In the City of London, where 12 councillors declared interests, only 3% were affordable.

Ravi Govindia, the leader of Wandsworth, strongly denied any link, stating that 1,700 affordable homes will be completed in the next three years and that “to suggest that we are not playing our part in delivering the low-cost housing London needs is complete and utter fallacy”.

Govindia, who is director of a gorilla safari business, was entertained by property companies 11 times in 2016 and the first half of 2017 including at Simpsons in the Strand and the Ned. He said: “It is important that we engage with property companies, housing associations and senior government officials so that they better understand our housing needs and priorities.” Govindia said he was “wholly open and transparent in my dealings”. (..) 

2018-05-02

Acesse o Relatório Anual de Monitoramento do Plano de Londres 2015-16 pelo link
https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/amr_13.pdf

Cidade privada: Londres

Deu no The Guardian online

24-07-2014, por Chris Michael, editor; Jack Shenker, reporter; Naomi Larsson e Athlyn Cathcart-Keays (Guardian), Julie Cox e Chloe Smith (GiGL), pesquisa; Nick Van Mead, produção; Pablo Gutierrez, gráficos

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jul/24/revealed-pseudo-public-space-pops-london-investigation-map

Revealed: the insidious creep of pseudo-public space in London

A Guardian Cities investigation has for the first time mapped the startling spread of pseudo-public spaces across the UK capital, revealing an almost complete lack of transparency over who owns the sites and how they are policed.

The Granary Square, Londres

Pseudo-public spaces – large squares, parks and thoroughfares that appear to be public but are actually owned and controlled by developers and their private backers – are on the rise in London and many other British cities, as local authorities argue they cannot afford to create or maintain such spaces themselves.

Although they are seemingly accessible to members of the public and have the look and feel of public land, these sites – also known as privately owned public spaces or “Pops” – are not subject to ordinary local authority bylaws but rather governed by restrictions drawn up the landowner and usually enforced by private security companies.

(..) As things stand, corporate authority over who can and can’t access open spaces in the capital is only set to grow. Nearly all of the city’s ongoing major redevelopment projects, from the mammoth Nine Elms neighbourhood in Battersea to new construction and at Shoreditch’s Bishopsgate Goods Yard, is set to include new pseudo-public space, but details of what rights Londoners will enjoy there – or the ways in which they can expect to be policed – remain a mystery. (Continua)

Acesse a matéria completa pelo link
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jul/24/revealed-pseudo-public-space-pops-london-investigation-map

2017-07-30

Paris contra-ataca

Deu no Le Monde Économie

17-10-2016, por Isabelle Chaperon

http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2016/10/17/brexit-paris-en-ordre-de-bataille-pour-attirer-les-exiles-de-la-city_5014778_3234.html#IIvxFeLeRHyBAgE3.99

Brexit : Paris en ordre de bataille pour attirer les exilés de la City

«Le Brexit est une véritable opportunité pour Paris-La Défense. Un certain nombre d’entreprises internationales aujourd’hui installées à Londres vont sans doute chercher à se relocaliser, notamment celles de la banque, de la finance et des assurances », explique Marie-Célie Guillaume, directrice générale de Defacto, l’établissement public gérant le quartier d’affaires des Hauts-de-Seine.

La Defense

Et d’ajouter : « Paris-La Défense entend tirer son épingle du jeu concurrentiel européen et se positionner comme la seule réelle alternative à la City.»

Fini le temps des complexes ou des scrupules. Cette initiative conjointe de Defacto et du département des Hauts-de-Seine s’inscrit dans le cadre d’un vaste plan de conquête déployé par la France, dans un rare moment de collaboration public-privé. En ligne de mire, le transfert depuis Londres vers Paris d’activités à haute valeur ajoutée et de cadres à fort pouvoir d’achat, avec des créations d’emplois à la clé. (Continua)

Leia a matéria completa clicando em

http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2016/10/17/brexit-paris-en-ordre-de-bataille-pour-attirer-les-exiles-de-la-city_5014778_3234.html#IIvxFeLeRHyBAgE3.99

2016-10-25

Rearranjo no mapa das cidades globais?

Deu no Le Monde Économie

17-10-2016, por Cécile Boutelet

http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2016/10/17/brexit-francfort-veut-devenir-le-premier-centre-financier-europeen_5014902_3234.html#Ck0yitY62xakSe4l.99

Brexit: Francfort veut devenir le premier centre financier européen

Dans la compétition européenne pour drainer les emplois de la City post-Brexit, la région de Francfort est persuadée qu’elle est une des mieux placées. Bien avant le référendum britannique, elle avait d’ailleurs préparé minutieusement son lobbying, avant de l’intensifier ces derniers mois. A tel point que certains banquiers se sont montrés « impressionnés » par les présentations organisées récemment à Londres par l’agence de promotion de la ville allemande, rapportait récemment le Financial Times (FT).

Selon le quotidien britannique, les membres de la délégation de la région de Francfort sont allés jusqu’à évoquer un assouplissement du droit du travail allemand s’agissant des très hauts revenus, afin de faire tomber les craintes des établissements financiers de la City. (Continua)

Leia a matéria completa clicando

http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2016/10/17/brexit-francfort-veut-devenir-le-premier-centre-financier-europeen_5014902_3234.html#Ck0yitY62xakSe4l.99

2016-10-17

Canary Wharf: enclave privado com ajudinha do governo

Deu no CN Construction News
30-03-2015, por Robyn Wilson
https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/markets/sectors/housing/canary-wharf-receives-crucial-200m-government-loan-for-new-development/8680647.article

Docklands housing scheme to start after Canary Wharf Group secures government loanWork on a major housing development in London’s Docklands can now get under way after developer Canary Wharf Group received a £200m loan from the government.

2015-31-03

Grandes Projetos Urbanos: Canary Wharf - linha do tempo

Deu no The Guardian 28-01-2015, por Julia Kollewe 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/28/canary-wharf-timeline-london-building-docklands-thatcher

Canary Wharf timeline: from the Thatcher years to Qatari control

Docklands estate, now home to financial heavyweights, is the creation of Canadian tycoon Paul Reichmann.

Canary Wharf is to be bought by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund and Canadian investor Brookfield Properties for £2.6bn after Songbird, the owner of the Docklands estate, admitted defeat.

Cleveland Bridge, CanaryWharf, Londres
Concluída em junho de 2013

http://www.clevelandbridge.com/our-work/canary-wharf-station-crossrail-/ 

Canary Wharf takes its name from the quay where fruit and veg from the Mediterranean and Canary islands was once unloaded. The disused Docklands site, formed by a loop in the Thames, was turned into a second financial district to rival the City of London after 1987.

Today, Canary Wharf’s cluster of skyscrapers in east London is home to some of the world’s biggest banks, such as Citigroup and HSBC.

1988
Construction began.

1990
The 244m Canary Wharf skyscraper at One Canada Square, topped by a pyramid, was the first tower to rise out of the docks in 1990. It was Britain’s tallest building for two decades until it was overtaken by the Shard in 2010 (architecture critics thought it was too tall and Thatcher and Prince Charles didn’t like it either).

1991
The first tenants moved to Canary Wharf in 1991. The banks Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse First Boston, HSBC and Citigroup, and the Financial Services Authority all moved to the Docklands in subsequent years. Barclays was the last clearing bank to leave Lombard Street in the City for Canary Wharf, in 2005. Much of Fleet Street also decamped east, including the Telegraph, the Mirror and the Independent, although only the Mirror remains.

1992
But it wasn’t all plain sailing. In 1992, following a property crash, Olympia & York filed for bankruptcy and Canary Wharf was placed in administration.

1995
Undaunted, three years later Reichmann pulled together a consortium of wealthy investors (including Saudi Arabia’s Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal and the American media mogul Larry Tisch) to buy Canary Wharf back from the banks for £800m.

As the property market recovered and more firms moved to the Docklands, the business floated on the London stock market.

2004
Reichmann finally lost control of Canary Wharf during a fierce 11-month takeover battle, ending his 20-year involvement with the project. Canary Wharf Group was acquired by Songbird Estates, a consortium led by US investment bank Morgan Stanley.

2009
The Qatari Investment Authority became a major Songbird shareholder, after coming to the company’s rescue with China’s sovereign wealth fund in 2009, when Songbird almost collapsed under the weight of its debts.

2014
Canary Wharf is now spreading east, the first expansion of the estate since the 2008 financial crisis. There are plans for 30 buildings at Wood Wharf, including a 57-storey cylindrical residential skyscraper facing the waters of South Dock, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the Swiss architects behind Tate Modern and the Bird’s Nest in Beijing.

The eastern extension is set to almost double the number of people working and living in the area within the next 10 years. It will get a big boost from Crossrail, the £16bn railway running east-west across London that is due to open in 2018.

2015-02-05

Incorporação globalizada

Deu no The Guardian 

17-09-2014, por Oliver Wainwright

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/sep/17/truth-property-developers-builders-exploit-planning-cities

The truth about property developers: how they are exploiting planning authorities and ruining our cities

Battersea Power Station

Across the country – and especially in superheated London, where stratospheric land values beget accordingly bloated developments – authorities are allowing planning policies to be continually flouted, affordable housing quotas to be waived, height limits breached, the interests of residents endlessly trampled. Places are becoming ever meaner and more divided, as public assets are relentlessly sold off, entire council estates flattened to make room for silos of luxument units, to be sold overseas and never inhabited, substituting community for vacancy. The more we build, the more our citry safe-deposit boxes in the sky. We are replacing homes with investies are emptied, producing dead swathes of zombie town where the lights might never even be switched on.

(..) Councils just don’t have the expertise to challenge viability reports,” says one senior planning officer. “We can’t argue back.” Instead, they can commission viability assessments, produced by the same consultants that work for developers, to determine whether the report is accurate – but not to propose an alternative. The figures may well stack up, but it doesn’t mean the scheme could not be designed in a different way, which would still guarantee the developer’s 20% profit margin. (Continua)

2014-09-20

Canary Wharf: um enclave à beira do Tâmisa

Deu no Financial Times

22-07-2014, por Andy Sharman

https://www.ft.com/content/97d1808a-1167-11e4-b356-00144feabdc0

London’s Canary Wharf gets greenlight for expansion

Canary Wharf, London’s second financial district, is set for a big expansion after the local council gave the go-ahead for the construction of more than 3,000 homes.

Songbird Estates on Tuesday said it had won planning permission for the first substantial extension to the business centre since the financial crisis, when the rapid growth of the area was arrested as banks and other financial groups retrenched staff.

Illustration of Wood Wharf's design by Herzog & de Meuron
Financial Times

The 4.9m sq ft project, formerly known as Wood Wharf and equivalent to about a third of the existing Canary Wharf footprint, will feature parkside town houses and high-rise buildings, including a cylindrical residential tower designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the Swiss architects behind the extension to the Tate Modern art gallery and the Beijing “Bird’s Nest” Olympic stadium.

Britain’s biggest commercial real estate companies are keen to increase their exposure to the country’s rapidly rebounding housing market, with about 40 per cent of their development programmes focused on residential schemes.

High-end property in the capital has been a particular focus, as developers rush to build luxury homes in London to take advantage of the capital’s rapidly rising house prices – though some fear there are signs the red-hot market is cooling.

Canary Wharf Group, the Songbird subsidiary, has been readying plans for the Wood Wharf site for much of the past decade as part of a move to open the area to residential use. It won approval for the first dedicated residential building at Canary Wharf in March, a 58-storey, 566-apartment development known as Newfoundland. (Continua)  

Acesse a matéria completa pelo link
https://www.ft.com/content/97d1808a-1167-11e4-b356-00144feabdc0

2014-07-25

Grandes Projetos Urbanos: Canary Wharf

Deu no The guardian

15-05-2012, por Owen Hatherley

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/15/canary-wharf-east-london-myth 

The myth that Canary Wharf did east London any good

There are few places so utterly implicated in our discontents as this symbol of the ludicrousness of 'trickle-down' economics

Foto Oli Scarff / Getty Images / The Guardian

Canary Wharf, the "second City", an "evil twin" to London's financial district, has overtaken his ancient rival, according to the Financial Times. It wouldn't be altogether surprising if some saw this as a cause for celebration. Canary Wharf, and the 1980s Docklands development of which it was the most successful part, was an enterprise zone, an idea that the current government is trying to revive. As an enterprise zone it was deliberately unplanned, low-tax, and in theory low on "big government", except for the not-so-small matter of massive public investment projects such as the Docklands Light Railway or the cleaning, dredging and decontaminating of the old industrial sites. Regardless, if it has "worked", then surely the coalition's new zones can point to it as some kind of model. One form of industry, the dock labour of the Port of London, was replaced with another, financial services. Around 80,000 jobs in the former, 150,000 in the latter. What could possibly be wrong with this?

Everything. Canary Wharf has been for the last 20 years the most spectacular expression of London's transformation into a city with levels of inequality that previous generations liked to think they'd fought a war to eliminate. Very, very few of the new jobs went to those who had lost their jobs when the Port of London followed the containers to Tilbury; those that did were the most menial – cleaners, baristas, prostitutes. The new housing that emerged, first as a low-rise trickle in the 80s and 90s followed by a high-rise flood in the 00s, was without exception speculatively built. Inflated prices, dictated by the means of a captive market of bankers, soon forced up rents and mortgages in the surrounding areas, a major cause of London's current acute housing crisis. (Continua)

Acesse a matéria completa pelo link

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/15/canary-wharf-east-london-myth

 2012-05-17

Plano da Grande Londres 1944, por Roosmalen 1998

ROOSMALEN Pauline van*, “London 1944: Greater London Plan”, em Bosma K e Hellinga H, Mastering the City: North European City Planning, 1900-2000. Roterdam: NAi Publishers / EFL Publications, 1998
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282815561_London_1944_Greater_London_Plan

* MA Art and Architecture History, Free University, Amsterdam; PhD History of Architecture and Town Planning, Delft University of Technology

London 1944: Greater London Plan

In 1943 Patrick Abercrombie (1879-1957) presented the Country of London Plan. He designed this plan in collaboration with H.J. Forshaw, who was working at the time as an architect for the London County Council, the administrative body responsible for commissioning the plan. The following year Abercrombie presented the Greater London Plan, a plan for the London region commissioned by the Ministry of Town and Country Planning. The Greater London Plan, as well as the County of London Plan, attempted to offer solutions to London’s rampant growth, incoherent architectonic development, increasing traffic congestion, inferior housing conditions, inadequate and poor distribution of public open space, and entangled housing and employments functions. Both plans have been called the most significant contributions to the practice of urban planning in Great Britain. (..)

2009-02-20