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Walking through Soho with a friend the other day, I found myself lamenting the delicatessens, butchers and ironmongers that dotted its streets 30 years ago.
It’s never good to give into nostalgia but conservative sentiments seem right when it comes to the West End. After all, the urban grain of the area has hardly changed since it was laid out during the 18th century and it has retained much of the giddying mix of activities — homes, shops, restaurants, bars and theatres — that has long marked it out. It’s these qualities that give the West End its uniquely convivial character and make it the successful place that it is. I have a lot of sympathy for Stephen Fry and other stalwarts of the Save Soho campaign, and the many other civic groups who can be relied upon to protest against almost all new development.
Yet a rigid nimbyism would be fatal to the West End. London’s population is growing by 100,000 people every year. Commuter and tourist numbers are also on the up. When Crossrail opens in 2018 the number of passengers using the Underground spilling on to the West End’s streets will increase by 40 per cent.
The effect of banning new development would simply be to make the area ever more expensive, thus further squeezing the middle-income residents and smaller businesses that the area needs to thrive.
So the West End needs to grow, with more homes, shops, offices, clubs and eateries. But we can develop in ways that enhance rather than destroy its character. Yes, we should resist tall towers but we should worry less about the skyline and more about the street line — new development needs lively frontages, with lots of small shops, and front doors opening on to the streets, not walls of blank brick or glass. There is a strong case for encouraging greater experimentation with markets, pop-ups and temporary spaces.
We can’t build new streets through the West End to take extra traffic but we can make better use of the ones we have. We need to think of the West End’s great thoroughfares, such as Tottenham Court Road, Oxford Street and Park Lane, not as roads but boulevards, with wide pavements and tamed traffic, and to invest more in the subtle improvements in the public realm that can knit the area together and encourage people to walk and cycle.
Maintaining the West End’s character will take culture, skill and determined leadership from the many powers — boroughs, Mayor, developers and business groups — who control the area. Above all, we need a change in public investment, not least to secure additional private investment. And there’s the rub. For though the West End generates extraordinary wealth for the UK as a whole, with successful development it could generate even more — our ridiculously centralised system of government in this country means that almost all the power over taxes and all the tax taken from the West End goes to the Treasury.
The West End needs to change to remain the same. And powers need to be devolved from Westminster government to the Mayor and the boroughs before that can happen.
Ben Rogers is director of Centre for London and editor of London’s Global Neighbourhood: the Future of the West End