Of Self-interest & Islands (in the City).

Dear Islington Councillors,

I am writing to express my disappointment, as I think you might be being em., well, played a bit.

The LTN rollout takes sudden, crafty advantage and ends hurting the disabled & the elderly? It is using the  disruption playbook to purge the city? You really could do better. This (government initiative) triggers ableism (cycling verging on a cult, self-preservation in world made tougher for all?) and the self-interest of the housing boom, to grow an orgy of the divisive and the other, in what should be a city we all share? 

You must know how development economics displaces, and how much easier a big block is to develop than one which is criss-crossed by untidy routes, with smaller land parcels, "grain"? To now, how little real interest is there in pedestrian comfort or public space that is not adjacent high profit urban blocks. Granite kerbs for all? Doesn't seem so just now..

Good city building is not done by edict, or sorry it can be actually (Eg. Barcelona, Paris...), but not successfully by edict & super-blocks alone, it has to be inflected around real sites & people, otherwise... 

                                        (Archis Magazine-"Floods" Issue)

It is not dogma even if it has been in the past, and it should not grow division. You must report honestly on your trials, you must call for investment for locations and inject expertise where it is needed. You should resist the “targets” and blatant overreach. You are laying foundations that could undermine a piece of real city in favour of hubristic suburbia, hurting real people, damaging heritage and apparently failing to even really stop to accurately project outcomes instead of promising "mitigation"?

I have a vested interest living in/over the shop, on a boundary road perhaps, but as the raingardens proliferate and the harms, the neglect grows, I believe you are seriously going in the wrong direction now.