Anna Keay: prediction

Transcript context

…If we look at most of the Western world, it seems to me that after World War II, there are very few, really very few beautiful new neighborhoods created. A lot of spectacular individual buildings, but it’s very hard to find neighborhoods that are as nice as what was built in the 1890s, the 1910s. Depends on the country, the era. What happened to neighborhood architecture? Why did it so radically decline in wealthier societies? Such a good question. I was talking about this with somebody only the other day. I think there are clearly places where you do see it and you do see it work now, but they’re pretty few and far between. I think there’s a lot of work going on with young architects in the field and really trying to crack this business about neighborhoods and housing, not least because, in this country, there’s a real housing crisis, because we’re a small country with a lot of people, and challenges of building are very great. But it is really stark. I don’t know the answer to it. I think there are observations I would make. One, I would say that the idea of the philanthropic neighborhood development scheme has really gone, but there was a lot of that that happened in the late 19th, early 20th century, with landowners — and also company directors, and so on — doing things that were going to be beautiful. There’s a wonderful place up near Liverpool called Port Sunlight, which was all laid out by a great industrialist — absolutely the most beautiful place that you could imagine — for people who would be working for him. There’s something about the aspiration of beauty and a sense of responsibility for creating it. It feels like that has really diminished in the world of either the state does it, and they’re trying to do it as cheaply as possible, or developers do it, and they have another reason to do it as cheaply as possible. I agree, it’s something to really regret. It’s something we have to decide we care about, or we’re not going to make it any better. If the House of Lords were abolished, as Labour has proposed — as you know — would that make it harder for policy to protect heritage in Britain?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.