Walk With Jane

Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) was an urbanist and activist whose writings championed a community-based approach to city building. She had no formal training as a planner, and yet her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961 introduced ground-breaking ideas about how cities function, evolve and fail, that should be common sense to architects, planners, and politicians but is it?

"Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody." Jane Jacobs

and us listen to House sparrows

Kingston town centre- my home town of more than 40 years; who does it belong to?

Who decides if it should be a 'concretopia'?

Certain species reach a tipping point where they can no longer subsist;

How can we ensure that valuable natural assets will be retained in major new developments?

The last 27 years; this district has been my home but now it is fast becoming a dormitory

Towards the end of the 1960's the council decided to remove 100's of people from their homes - using 'Compulsory Purchase Orders' to create 'The Cambridge Road Estate'. Roads such as Burrit, Piper and Washington- were severed- Cambridge Grove Road used to connect to Cambridge Road, as can be seen from this street plan. Pubs such as The Feathers, which sold beer from Hodgsons, a Kingston Brewery were also lost.

Businesses, including two scrap metal merchants, as well as the 'rag and bone man'-the recyclers in any community were demolished. A church on the corner of Hampden and Vincent road where resdients were baptised or married - gone. A tree separated the churchyard from the Old Windsor Laundry, probably the oak which is still hanging on, the only remnant of former days.

One of my neighbours went to the infant school next to Bonner Hill Girls school, where both his sisters as well as children of local residents attended. His Grandad lived two doors from their home on one side and next door to an aunt. He used to run erands for the family to the local shops.

A favourite was a visit to the Kingstonian Ice cream parlour; not a shop but two serving hatches. There was a barbers near the Cambridge Arms for haircuts and a bakers down Gladstone Road from where the smell of rising bread permeated the homes of rising residents.
Jane's message as echoed by Robert Elms Cities need slums

I was Fine Foods

I was your laundry

I was the Peel Pub

Listen again House sparrows

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Walk with Jane

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