John Dales laments the lack of grandeur in UK streets, but sees potential in central London’s Holborn Kingsway
I begin this month with an apology – to which the response of readers familiar with my stuff may well be, “About time, too”; and the reason for my apologetic state is that this article is guilty of repetition on two counts – to which the response of those same readers is probably, “Only two?”
Repetition number one relates to the fact that, for the second time in less than five months, I want to talk to you about a street called Kingsway; while repetition number two relates to the fact that, for the second time in less than four months, my focus is on a street in the London Borough of Camden. As to the first count, I trust that you’ll forgive me, since the former Kingsway is in Swansea and I can hardly be held responsible for the coincidence; and, as for the second, it’s not on this occasion to praise said London Borough that I write, and in any case the street in question is also partly in the City of Westminster.
The reason I bring central London’s Kingsway before you is simply that it was one of only two answers that I received from my Urban Initiatives colleagues recently when I asked via a company-wide email if anyone could name a street in Britain that they thought could qualify as a ‘boulevard’, or at least a grand ‘avenue’. The other answer I received cited the three streets in central Milton Keynes that have ‘boulevard’ as the second part of their names: Midsummer, Silbury and Avebury. However, though relatively large of proportion, I consider these three to be boulevards in name only, and indeed recall having stated my reasons for this in print many moons ago.
There is, as far as I know, no common agreement as to exactly what constitutes a boulevard. The two dictionaries on my shelf offer, “A wide usually tree-lined road in a city” and, “A broad street with rows of trees along it”. Put these together to form, “A broad, tree-lined city street” and you’ve probably got as good a working definition as any; although purists are also probably looking for the street to be important in the city’s overall structure, and to have a sense of grandeur and even of je ne sais quoi!
In their Boulevard Book (2002), Messrs Jacobs, Macdonald and Rofé describe three types of boulevard design, each of which stresses the width, tree and ‘address’ factors. The grandest of these types – ‘multiway boulevards’ with a central carriageway for through traffic and one-way service lanes to each side – are probably what come to most people’s minds when the word ‘boulevard’ is mentioned. Which, also probably, is why I drew such a relative blank when asking my colleagues for their UK nominations. We’ve simply never done it like that here.
Now, you may be thinking, “Is the man blind? Has he never been to…?”; you may be thinking, “It’s because we never had a Baron Haussmann, dummy!”; or you may be scratching your head, like me, and thinking, “Do we really have nothing that qualifies?” Whatever you’re response, do please let me know, via the usual channels, if you want to nominate a street you know. I’ll be all ears, I promise you.
While I’m waiting, and ignoring the possible claims of Park Lane – a street whose traffic dominance currently trumps all its other actual and possible qualities, including its Monopoly-founded ‘address’, let me tell you about Kingsway. First of all, stretching from its junction with High Holborn by Holborn tube station in the north to the Aldwych in the south, it’s a half-kilometre-long, generously-proportioned, tree-lined street in central London that is the home of a number of important and famous institutions; is well activated by ground floor activities; is thronged by pedestrians moving along and across; carries a large volume of motor traffic of all types; and currently does a respectable job of keeping all these characteristics in some kind of appropriate balance. However, it could, in my view, do a truly spectacular job of same, and I’m convinced this could be done without the expenditure of the alarming sums often cited in connection with other street improvement schemes.
Kingsway will never have ‘multiways’ but it has the potential to fulfil all the other characteristics expected of a boulevard. But if this is true, what’s currently holding it back? Well, a number of matters: the most challenging of which is that the southern end of Kingsway is rather disfigured by the northern portal of the highway tunnel that runs under the Aldwych and links to Waterloo Bridge. That’s probably not going to disappear any time soon, but I believe it would actually be a surprisingly minor drawback if attention were paid to the other areas of opportunity.
These consist primarily of a relatively modest reallocation of carriageway width to footway or median, focused attention to the area where the Kingsway tunnel carriageway hits the main street level, a once-over in terms of decluttering and providing consistent footway paving quality, and ongoing TLC (tender, loving care).
Delivering Kingsway’s potential ought to be a no-brainer in the context of: both Camden’s and Westminster’s track record of, and ongoing commitment to, improving their streets; the London Mayor’s and Transport for London’s commitment to great streets, as most recently expressed in the former’s draft Transport Strategy and Better Streets publication; the lack of the need for a comprehensive, top-to-toe make-over; the absence of particularly challenging capacity issues; and, one would hope, the fact that bigwigs from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment – one of the nation’s foremost promoters of public realm excellence – regularly walk along the street to get to the CABE HQ just round the corner.
So, perhaps the main challenge is simply for those with the power to realise what a gem they’ve got in Kingsway, and that’s it’s high time to get this diamond out of the rough. Now, where’s my address book…?
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