I had a few days’ rest in London last week. One interesting overnight was way over east by the DLR station “Prince Regent” which is on the northern side of the Royal Victoria Dock. I suppose the last time I was in this part of London was around 1987, soon after the abolition of the GLC. (The Greater London Council). It’s amazing to think that from then until 2000 there was no overall administration of the city…most of the powers were devolved to the boroughs. This area remains part of the borough of Newham. It’s a good spot to consider planning as the new Labour government promises to “get Britain building”. There’s a nice article on the conflicting priorities of the time in Tribune from May 2022. I was lucky to find some bits of the artwork by Jessie Brennan mentioned in this article, presenting photos and documents from the period before the decision was made to create the London city airport. One of the panels is the argument in favour of using the dock itself as a transport hub where goods arriving on the river could be transferred to road and rail.
Here’s a quotation from the People’s Plan, produced with the input of local people:
“in our plan for the docks, it is cargo, not passengers that our water, rail and road networks will carry. And the cargo will not simply pass through the area, like the businessmen rushing to their international meetings. The cargo will be stored, divided up for distribution, and sometimes, be processed and turned into finished articles.”
Of course, that wasn’t how it turned out. Here’s my photo of the Royal Victoria Dock. The Albert Dock and the City Airport are behind me:
What’s noticeable, is that no particular use is made of this enormous stretch of water. To the right is the new ExCel exhibition centre. Even if some kind of strategic decision had been made to focus on services rather than goods, you would think a sensible planner would connect the services with the existing dock in some way… floating restaurants, summer watersports, why not even fishing? An extension to the ExCel exhibition and conference centre is going to open in the autumn. With views over the, presumably still empty, dock.