Sean Thomas Sean Thomas

Rebuild our cities

British architects have been too impotent for too long

Derby in the 1930s. Credit: Pathe News.

For an ancient city with an illustrious industrial history, Derby doesn’t get much attention. But it does boast at least one famous, possibly apocryphal story, known to scholars of urbanism.

Sometime in the 80s or 90s (accounts differ), a party of visiting German VIPs was given a tour of the city’s sights: the humdrum housing schemes; the corners of concrete bleakness; the sad disjointed malls and random multi-storey car parks.

Struck near-dumb by the ugliness, the Germans apologised profusely for the damage clearly wrought on poor Derby by the Luftwaffe: wiping away a venerable city centre, leaving behind such tragic hideousness. At this point the local bigwigs laughed, perhaps awkwardly, and said ‘Oh no, Derby was barely touched in the war, we did all this to ourselves, when we redeveloped.’

I’ve been thinking of this story of late, as I’ve watched the repulsive assault on Ukraine’s ancient cities, Kharkhiv, Kyiv, Odesa. Beyond the emotions of helpless empathy and human horror, the tale of Derby’s destruction makes me wonder: how will these Ukrainian cities be rebuilt? And then I think: well, when they are rebuilt, whatever the Ukrainians do, they mustn’t do what Britain did from 1945 to 2015.

That is to say: the Ukrainians must not repeat the period when, thanks to poverty, perversity, greed, corruption, incompetence, narcissism, and outright political evil, we British managed to wreck many of the loveliest towns in Europe. Our own.

Back in 1945 Britain faced a tough architectural task: we were a nation fit to burst with cities already wrecked by war. Precisely because Britain stood firm against Hitler, Britain took the full force of Hitler’s bombers. Contrast with France, which briskly surrendered, and thus escaped with many of its cities unscathed (this is one reason French urbanism seems so enviably gracious today).

Moreover, some of Britain’s most poetic cities were attacked precisely for their architectural value.

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