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Hamish has gone on a winter journey (Winterreise) along the redirected River Lea. Check it out!

Winterreise #56 - a journey along the Lea - the little guardians… in middle earth again

#wanderings #towpath #winterreise #rivers #psychogeography #newtopographics #middleearth #riverstort #locks #knomes #walking #millenium_images https://www.instagram.com/p/Bscp3DCAMKB/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=bss1pvuaouqt

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#walking like a boss

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The Regent canal

Walking the canal. Delving into the history and the different functions the canals fil in London, by looking at a stretch in the borough of Hackney. Is feeling safe in urban spaces perhaps the upside to gentrification?

The Regent canal ia an observable reminisce of east London’s industrial past. The canal was completed in 1820 and was in industrial use until the 60s. The rich history of the canal and the story of the how the people spent their domestic and working life traveling along this network is filled with social issues. The bargees who run most of the transport along the system were historically shunned by the local communities. This group differs from the British travelers, a term more suitable than Gypsies as the term currently carries a stigma and is in itself a debate. The bargees differed in the sense that the work was what brought them to a life afloat. The transportation of steel and coal fuelled the industrial revolution in this country and it was initially the canals, not the railway, that made this possible. The work was very well paid compared to salaries in the towns and the bargees would travel through breathing contempt for these individuals and families in local areas not due to lifestyle choice but rather affluence  

The state of the property market in London in such that it is hard for most people to get on the property ladder. This is one of the causes of an overall growth in people choosing to live on boats. This has lead to what researcher Darren P. Smith calls an atypical gentrified space. He theorizes a way of looking at this increasingly popular living style and its impact on the wider city claiming that, even though the aesthetics and ideals of boat living are surrounded by a sense of being outside society, the people who choose this way of life are in terms of class are more connected with the middle classes. They are perhaps not associated with displacement but, as we will see, they still contribute to a change in the environment they inhabit.

Different uses of the Canal

On the towpath it's not always easy to walk in peace. Joggers, cyclist, boaters, and pedestrians share the space and view it very differently. We will come back to this point, but first I would like to imagine this stretch of canal 15 years ago. Hackney up until the mid-2000s and had a bad reputation with certain places gaining nicknames like the murder mile. The canal in this area was usually empty, being viewed as dangerous and difficult to navigate for boats due to the local residents being rumoured to be dumping rubbish directly into the canal.

With the decline in crime and a growing populating calling boats home, the canals became seen as safer. The nature of the regulations put on boaters and the requirement for boats without a permanent mooring to move every 14 days meant that a community emerged on the eastern part of the regent and Hertford union canal. A constant cruiser pays a license fee somewhere between 50 and a 100 pounds a month for the right to use the waterways. A little further towards the Broadway market a spot for permanent mooring was auctioned off for 12.500 pounds this year. On the opposite side of Broadway market, there is a community of squatters that do not pay for the privilege of mooring their boats, nor for the license. But if you didn’t know this it would be hard to differentiate between the boats.

The now lively place lost its reputation of being a place of crime where kids would hang out looking for fun and became viewed more as a secluded place of leisure. Although positive for the communities sharing the space, this kind of change has brought us to today where the demand on the space is a source of conflict. Through an assumably random act of an algorithm, London cyclist are directed towards the towpath and, while on the towpath, the ring their bells to warn other canal users to clear their path in order not to loose their speed. It's interesting to look as we walk along to take note of the hostile response to this behaviour from pedestrians. Some pedestrians refuse to move and even fling out their arms to block the path.

The speed limit of the boats restricts them to something close to walking pace and they can only be observed as main players in the scene when mooring up or filling water. At other times, the boat residents camouflage as the other players that have been mentioned. There is an aspect of belonging that features here. If the towpath is your daily route of commuting or the place where your Sunday walk is set, much like with traffic on roads, there is nothing as annoying as the people using other forms of transportation.

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London’s only lighthouse

Flaneusing from a viewpoint at Trinity Buoy Wharf

Today we are exploring a micro space, we wish to explore the development in and around the Docklands, but also reflect on time and the impact of different visions of the future. What is valued and invested in? How does London balance between art, heritage, and tourism?

The site the lighthouse stands on was historically an important industrial space. The material produced there helped make Britain the important seafaring nation it once was, but as technology progressed it was left derelict and abandoned. As a result of this industrial shift, thousands of people lost their livelihood at the docks, which in turn meant the displacement of many local residents and subsequent redevelopment. We will mostly be looking at the failed dreams represented by the O2 Arena and the Emirates Airline. In this entry, we will try to give a sense of the ways the lighthouse at Trinity Buoy Warf can be a good starting point for sociological exploration, and without delving too deep, highlighting some of the issues of birds-eye view Flaneusing.

The experimental lighthouse in Trinity Buoy Wharf stands rather modestly in an urban art filled environment on the banks of the Thames. Through a number of narrow staircases, members of the public are invited into the curious space. The building was originally used to test maritime lighting equipment and train lighthouse keepers. Like most lighthouses, this one built in 1864 has a rounded glass wall, allowing river-farers to see the bend of the river clearly at night. In this day and age and perhaps more importantly, visitors to the lighthouse can gaze out at this historic area of London. The space is designed in such a way that if you stand in the middle of the room, you can hear a strange delay of your voice - a poetic feature when thinking about the all the things that have happened around the room in the last 220 years.

The Docklands has a rich history leading back to the Roman era. Trinity Buoy Wharf was established in 1805, and employed a variety of workers, loading and unloading ships, working on batteries for the light houseboats and in the production of buoys. The sixties and the advent of shipping containers saw the docks no longer able to accommodate large ships, and it lost its role as a larger-scale employer. The development of the area started almost at the same time, and its residential population has doubled in the last thirty years. The fact that developers have largely focused on building luxury flats rather the affordable housing has led to friction between the local community and new arrivals. This is a process described by Slater as Developer‐led gentrification (Slater, 2006).

London Docklands Development Corporation bought the site in the nineties, with plans to develop it for housing. But In 1998, Urban Space Management took over the site and was given a 125-year lease. Through cooperation with the local borough a creative space has emerged, but is by no means a non-profit structure, making large amounts of money through the letting of spaces and the development of new creative workspaces. In terms of the area’s main contributing funder, 25% of the Wharf's income is paid to a Trust to be used for promoting arts in the area. Thus the prominence of street art in the enclave upon which the lighthouse stands.

The group that today call themselves Urban Space Management has historically been a key player in redevelopments such as Camden Lock market and Old Spitalfields Market, but was pushed out when other parties saw the great potential for profit-making. This highlights the different modes of development threat, visible from the broken glass windows of the light house.

Tower Hamlets, the borough housing this site, rates the second highest in London in terms of unemployment, and nationally it is the local authority with the highest child poverty rate. What makes this even more of a crucial point in thinking about the significance of the place, is the towering vision of Canary Wharf. A report commissioned by Tower Hamlets shows the discrepancy between the majority of its residents compared to those close to this financial centre. Some of the best-paid individuals in the country living side by side with some of the poorest.  

So who should be responsible for preservation or for guiding change? From the windows of this little outpost, you can make out Narrow Street to your right. This street features heavily in works by people such as Twain and Dickens, and houses the Grapes pub, now owned by Ian McClellan. The Grapes is the only bar left on the street and was bought by the actor to secure preservation.

This links to another current issue in the neighbourhood. Not directly visible from the lighthouse but right behind the Grapes, lies a set of warehouses with small cultural venues inside, that are currently in the process of being evicted. So while Tower Hamlets pours money into heritage sites, it is still not willing to make a political decision to save local, culturally significant places, going against the advice of London’s Night Czar, Amy Lamé. She called clubs like Jamboree that is currently housed on this site a community asset, the preservation of which is critical in guiding redevelopment.

A feature of the Internal space of the lighthouse is the piece of music playing inside. The ‘Long Play’ as its called, is a piece of music that is programmed to play for 1000 years, having started its run on the stroke of midnight on the 1stJanuary 2000. This is a rather profound concept when overlooking the failed dreams visible from the viewpoint, as well as the rich history and the slow movement of the river below.

Time plays a key role when standing in the lighthouse. The biggest landmark that can be seen is the O2 arena, or the Millennium Dome as it was named when being built for the Millennium Exhibition in 2000. The building itself is a circle with a diameter of 365 meters, one for each day of the year. The monstrous yellow beams are numbered twelve, on for each month of the year, or each hour on the clock face. This in itself echoes the experience of the lighthouse quite well. With substantial financial investment, the dome was anticipated to draw a crowd of 12 million people in the first year, but in reality, it only attracted 6.5 million and was generally regarded as a flop by the media and government. The statement dome was put up for sale and subsequently bought by the telecom company O2, that now lends its name to the tent-like structure. 

The Emirates Airline cost the British taxpayer £24 million plus, back in the era of Boris Jonson as Mayor of London. The cable car is the tallest gondola line in the country, and was originally sold as an alternative to commuters, costing only £1.70 if you were willing to buy in bulk for ten tickets. The cable cars were intended to link two Olympic sites together, stretching from Royal Victoria Docks to North Greenwich, but much like the Millennium Dome, it has not lived up to the grand promises it was meant to fulfil. It is tempting to think about the links between wealthy non-residents of London buying up property in the area, and the corporation that runs the cable cars together with Transport for London.

The many uses of lighthouse, the conflicting rhythms of the surrounding area, and the value this gives the local community makes Trinity Buoy Wharf stand out. With both the Millennium Dome and the Emirates Airline being built largely with tourists in mind, there is a dissonance between the politicians’ views of what this part of London could be, and the quality of life for the surrounding community. But from the lighthouse it’s hard to get a real feeling of the space, and much like a tourist one is left feeling like an observer and not a key player. It would be interesting to see who truly feels like this space belongs to them, as from this view it seems like a vision, a piece of jewellery independent from the history of the place in which it is situated.

Go forth explore!

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Nancy Sinatra

These Boots Are Made For Walking

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160322°

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Introducing the Flaneuse

Walking or Practicing Psychogeography?

Psychogeography sounds difficult. It sounds like the subject of professors stuck away in stuffy, dusty and cramped offices in forgotten University departments.

In truth, however, it’s a practice a few dudes came up with to glorify their aimless walking.

Just about anything that takes pedestrians of their predictable path and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban space around them is psychogeography (or Unitary Urbanism as it used to be called…).

Both DaDa performers and the surrealists have claimed that they invented the concept but the history of psychogeography can actually be traced back further, to the Victorian flaneur: someone who observes and learns from what they see along the streets of towns and cities they wander.

This figure has historically been male, and arguments against there being a female form, ‘a flaneuse’, have been made often and loudly.

The power of the flaneur is their invisibility.

It lies in being the ‘every man’.

This is a luxury woman are not granted.

So can there be an East London Flaneuse?

On the point of the existence of a flaneuse Lauren Elkin writes in her book ‘Flâneuse’

This remark is at the same time unfair and fairly accurate:

‘we would love to be invisible the way a man is’.

We are not the ones that make ourselves visible in the sense they mean, as, in this structure, a women on her own can create.

It is the gaze of the flaneure that would make his female counterpart that would like to join his ranks to visible, to slip by unnoticed.

But if we are so conspicuous why have we been written out of the history of cities.  It’s up to us to paint ourselves back into the picture in a way we can live with.

The flaneuse is not merely a female flanure, but a figure to be reckoned with and inspired me all on her own.

She voyages out and goes where she's not supposed to. She forces us to confront the way in which words like home and belonging are used against a woman.

Psychogeography is a fancy word for the exploration of cities that emphasizes playfulness and "drifting".

Famous Psychogeographers includeGuy Debord Walter Benjamin, Baudelaire, Alan Edgar Poe, Alan Moore, and Will Self. They have in their work and practice explored the way cities impact us and hold history. They have been allowed to tell its stories and makeup what good rambling looks like.

Not surprisingly the female flaneuses and Psychogeographists are not as celebrated, but note their names: George Sand. Agnes Varda, Virginia Wolf, Jean Rhys, Marta Gellhorn, Sofie Read.

This broad definition and rich history should let as all embrace our inner flaneuse!

Ladies go forth and explore!

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instagram.com/bodyposipanda

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yes, she was.

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be strong

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Motorcyclists and woman walking on the road from Nam Dinh to Thai Binh. Indochina, Vietnam. Photo by Robert Capa, 1954

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Upside Down

Bahnhofstrasse Zurich, 2017

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Simetrías

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Psychogeographic Map

Psychogeography (Debord, 1955)

“The study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.”