Hamlet without the Prince: whatever happened to capital in 'Working Capital'?

This is one of a number of papers in the same issue of CITY on the theme "How should we write about London?" This paper is a critical discussion of Working Capital: Life and Labour in Contemporary London, by Nick Buck, Ian Gordon, Peter Hall, Mike Harloe and Mark Kleinman (with Belinda Brown, Karen O’Reilly, Gareth Potts, Laura Smethurst and Jo Sparkes). Routledge, London, 2002. It expresses great admiration for the book but criticises it for being somewhat trapped within orthodox approaches and it suggests both missing topics and missing interpretations, evident when the book is read from a marxist point of view

What if? the next London Plan were better?

The paper presents a critique of procedures and substance in the London Plan, summarising and extending evidence the author was invited to give to the Examination in Public of the Plan

The struggle against the development plan in the King's Cross area

My story is essentially about economic power and the displacement of people, and the displacement of activity on the land by other activities, all driven by economic forces. I begin with some history of the origins of the story, and then relate two separate phases of intense political struggle, during which time the nature of activism changed and we encountered some serious problems. I will conclude with a description of where we are now, still in the midst of this 20- year struggle

City design: what went wrong at Milton Keynes?

Practitioners need evaluations of why the intentions in plans fail in implementation. This paper seeks to identify and explain how the plans for neighbourhood layout in Milton Keynes so comprehensively failed in the process of realization. The 1970 plan should have generated dense development along urban main streets, lined with shops, services, bus stops and turnings. In the city as built, densities are lowest along the main roads; shops, services and bus stops are ensconced within residential and other blocks where they work badly; traffic is much faster; buses struggle to operate viably; and social mix objectives have probably been sacrificed. This failure is attributed to the Corporation's mistakes in traffic planning, to short-sighted private housebuilders, to rigid and unscientific DoE density controls and to slack thinking, drafting and drawing by the initial planning team, of which the author was a member. Suggestions are made for avoiding such disaster