Shadows of Towers, Bishopsgate Goodsyard and 22 Bishopsgate

Proposed Bishopsgate Goodsyard towers will potentially plunge the Boundary Estate into peipetual gloom... ...

....but if they can have that much effect, how much more will the tall buildings in the City of London condemn the northern half of the City also

Proposed tower at 22 Bishopsgate and [insert] view from The Momnument looking north [image: Hayes Davidson]

church bells ring out the route of King John to Runnymede, to sign Magna Carta

There was bell ringing along the line of King John's progression from Odiham to Windsor and Runnymede.  Odiham ringers organised a ripple of ringing along the route King John may have taken.  The (church) towers along the way include Odiham, Rotherwick, Heckfield, Eversley, Yateley, Sandhurst, Hawley, Yorktown (Camberley), Bagshot, Egham, Old Windsor and Wraysbury. To hear the Odiham bells click on http://bbc.in/1In9gDO (BBC iPlayer, there may be some issues in some countries)

The event marks the commemoration of 800 years since the signing of the Great Charter (Magna Carta)   King John was compelled to sign the charter after the citizens of London had opened the city to rebellious barons

Odiham church, wikkimedia commons  

 
Although conceived of as a bell-ringing occasion and not an art event, in fact this was very much a site-specific sound installation on a landscape scale. It follows an event that was very-much conceived as art (and publicity), the "Wall of Sound" , live music relay across Hadrian's Wall. Click  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-33027659 for pictures.  The key elements to both were distance, linearity and relay.

Susan Lambert with clarsach, photo BBC

Housing Minister attacks "council estates" in London

“although London’s population topped its previous 1939 all-time high earlier this year, inner London boroughs still house fewer people than they did in the prewar period — owing in part to relatively low densities on housing estates.”
—
Housing minister Brandon Lewis who called for the demolition and redevelopment of council estates across London 

“Overcrowding was already a cause for concern in the public health and social reforms of the 19th century. By 1891 more than 10 per cent of the population were living at densities of more than two people to a room. Families huddled in damp basements consisting of one small room without drainage and little or no natural light. In these overcrowded conditions cholera and tuberculosis ran rampant and child mortality was high. The introduction of overcrowding standards for the first time in 1935 reflected two key concerns: decency through the separation of the sexes; and provision of adequate space. These form the basis of the current overcrowding standard. The standards are set out in Part 10 of the Housing Act 1985. “….    London Borough of Tower Hamlets Overcrowding and Under Occupation Statement

However, overcrowding was not the only factor in the disease environment that counted. The continuous urban fabric was thought to encourage disease transmission and postwar planning was for a series of “villages” with open space between   The legacy of which is Mile End Park    

In a recent oral history session I had at St Dunstan’s Stepney, 2 of the 4 participants had spent long periods of their childhood in sanitoriums with tuberculosis, 1 met her sister “on the gate” ( waiting to die - she survived).



the problem with slab-sided blocks of flats (of whatever tenure) is the well documented “Urban Canyon Effect”, (image from http://www.intechopen.com/books/air-quality-models-and-applications/urban-air-pollution-modeling )

In London our proportion of the 29,000 people a year who die from diesel particulates (government figures for 2008),  is 4,000+ . Multiply that figure tens, hundreds or thousands of times to measure the morbidity, ill-health or health effects of air pollution. The mechanism being an increase in stress hormones that flood the blood stream with cholesterol, leading to heart disease and heart failure, as well as diabetes. This is a higher mortality per year then obesity, or alcohol, or even obesity and alcohol combined.

So what could possibly go wrong?