| Topic: | Re:Re:Past their use-by date' | |
| Posted by: | Chris Veasey | |
| Date/Time: | 10/08/10 07:36:00 |
| That's because most of it was originally fronted by big houses like Mattock Lane is now, when Ealing was first developed as a commuter suburb in the depths of rural west Middlesex after the arrival of the railway. I've been stuck here long enough (I realise with horror) to remember when at least one of those houses was still there, at least as a degraded shell, as part of a petrol filling station - on the north side about halfway between the Kremlin and the start of the real world in West Ealing, before thet site too was obliterated by the tide of concrete and glass cubism. Most traditional shopping streets were developed on the sites of such old housing rows, often by building out a single storey extension at the front to house the retail bit - plenty of that can be seen in the likes of West Ealing - in other cases the sites were completely redeveloped with parades of shops. There's plenty of real 'architectural merit' in the variety of surviving details on many of those buldings in the likes of West Ealing and Southall, which would have been swept away for road widening to fit the tramway in. At least as importantly, those buildings accommodate a wide variety of useful niche shops and other businesses and services, which contribute so much to the attraction and usefulnes of those town centres. That's the essence Jane Jacobs message you have failed to take on board. And I doubt if any of those old buildings are 'dangerous' - I challenge you to show me any that show evidence of serious subsidence. IMHO there's planty of buildings in the pix on http://tfwl.org.uk/lido1.html and http://tfwl.org.uk/southall.html etc which look good enough and contribute enough to the townscape to be worth keeping on visl;au grounds alone, quite apart from the value and importance of the shops and other services they accommodate. So we'll just have to agree to differ, with respect - which at lesst we can, unlike some that have infested this thread. |