1
00:00:14,840 --> 00:00:19,000
Out of all of Britain's cities,
there's one that stands alone.

2
00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:21,120
London.

3
00:00:27,080 --> 00:00:30,760
Looking down in the capital today,
what's obvious is the sheer scale

4
00:00:30,760 --> 00:00:34,360
and complexity of this
sprawling metropolis.

5
00:00:36,400 --> 00:00:39,160
But how London
came to look the way it does

6
00:00:39,160 --> 00:00:42,160
can also be seen from above.

7
00:00:43,240 --> 00:00:45,520
Because, 60 years ago,

8
00:00:45,520 --> 00:00:50,600
the Royal Air Force photographed
the whole of London from end to end,

9
00:00:50,600 --> 00:00:56,680
and left us a unique record
of a city torn apart by war.

10
00:01:02,160 --> 00:01:06,280
Now exactly the same process
is being repeated,

11
00:01:06,280 --> 00:01:09,880
matching the original survey
shot for shot.

12
00:01:14,240 --> 00:01:18,480
And by directly comparing
London then with London now,

13
00:01:18,480 --> 00:01:21,280
we can tell the story
of the greatest transformation

14
00:01:21,280 --> 00:01:23,520
in the city's history.

15
00:01:25,640 --> 00:01:28,520
It's a transformation that continues

16
00:01:28,520 --> 00:01:32,240
faster now than at any time
since the war.

17
00:01:34,880 --> 00:01:38,600
This is the future face of London,

18
00:01:38,600 --> 00:01:42,720
a future that's being
designed and built already.

19
00:02:05,600 --> 00:02:10,640
London's transformation began
on September 7th, 1940.

20
00:02:10,640 --> 00:02:15,960
300 German bombers
flew in from the east,
following the line of the river.

21
00:02:18,840 --> 00:02:24,560
They arrived here at
6.45 in the evening,
and looked down on their target,

22
00:02:24,560 --> 00:02:26,440
the heart of London's docks.

23
00:02:35,400 --> 00:02:38,160
It was the end
of a beautiful summer's afternoon

24
00:02:38,160 --> 00:02:41,600
and London was about
to change forever.

25
00:02:46,800 --> 00:02:51,280
We know exactly what happened,
thanks to a series of photographs

26
00:02:51,280 --> 00:02:56,240
taken by the German planes as they
dropped the first bombs on London,

27
00:02:56,240 --> 00:03:00,120
on day one of the Blitz.

28
00:03:00,120 --> 00:03:04,040
What you see in this sequence
of pictures, which runs

29
00:03:04,040 --> 00:03:08,720
from Woolwich more or less
to just east of the Isle of Dogs,

30
00:03:08,720 --> 00:03:12,600
are a formation of bombers.
Then you see the bomb load

31
00:03:12,600 --> 00:03:15,680
being dropped by the aircraft
which is carrying the camera.

32
00:03:15,680 --> 00:03:19,560
You can see also the impacts
trailing across from
the other aircraft,

33
00:03:19,560 --> 00:03:22,200
falling short in the river -
you can see the splashes there -
and the flashes

34
00:03:22,200 --> 00:03:27,640
of impact in the steelwork
of the gasworks, which, of course,

35
00:03:27,640 --> 00:03:31,480
is THE major supplier of gas
to London at that time.

36
00:03:31,480 --> 00:03:36,480
Subsequently, you see the impacts
of the bombs hitting the river,

37
00:03:36,480 --> 00:03:40,640
and you can see the fires
beginning in the docks,

38
00:03:40,640 --> 00:03:45,560
which were part of the great
conflagration of 7th September.

39
00:03:48,000 --> 00:03:50,720
What you're looking at here
is probably

40
00:03:50,720 --> 00:03:56,160
the most devastating change
to London since the
fire of London in 1666.

41
00:03:56,160 --> 00:04:00,000
You're looking at, effectively,
half a millennium

42
00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:02,960
or a quarter of millennium of
history about to turn,
about to change.

43
00:04:04,560 --> 00:04:08,720
For five years, on and off,
London was bombarded by aircraft

44
00:04:08,720 --> 00:04:13,720
and rockets, killing or injuring
a quarter of a million people,

45
00:04:13,720 --> 00:04:18,320
and ripping huge holes
in the fabric of the city.

46
00:04:18,320 --> 00:04:21,680
By the end of the war,
it was realised that
if London was to rise again,

47
00:04:21,680 --> 00:04:24,880
the first essential step
on the road to reconstruction

48
00:04:24,880 --> 00:04:28,720
would be to record the damage -
all of it.

49
00:04:28,720 --> 00:04:32,720
And the only way to do that
was from the air.

50
00:04:40,720 --> 00:04:46,960
Between 1945 and 1949, the RAF flew
more than 200 missions over London,

51
00:04:46,960 --> 00:04:50,080
shooting 50,000 individual frames,

52
00:04:50,080 --> 00:04:53,200
recording every square inch
of the capital.

53
00:04:55,440 --> 00:04:58,440
Now every single one of these images

54
00:04:58,440 --> 00:05:02,280
has been scanned, and all the scans
have been pieced together.

55
00:05:02,280 --> 00:05:04,920
For the first time,
we have a comprehensive

56
00:05:04,920 --> 00:05:08,160
aerial picture of wartime London.

57
00:05:13,280 --> 00:05:14,920
The London you're looking at
is still

58
00:05:14,920 --> 00:05:19,160
the London that had to, er,
it felt it had to be
self-sufficient in food.

59
00:05:19,160 --> 00:05:24,320
Virtually every open space
is given over to allotments.

60
00:05:24,320 --> 00:05:26,640
Here you can see in front
of the Imperial War Museum,

61
00:05:26,640 --> 00:05:30,960
you've got a really quite
substantial area just given over

62
00:05:30,960 --> 00:05:33,320
to growing vegetables and so on.

63
00:05:33,320 --> 00:05:36,480
In fact, almost all open spaces
in London

64
00:05:36,480 --> 00:05:39,120
were used for cultivating food.

65
00:05:43,520 --> 00:05:46,600
While the parks are
full of vegetables,

66
00:05:46,600 --> 00:05:49,720
the streets appear strangely empty.

67
00:05:49,720 --> 00:05:51,640
The only vehicles in evidence

68
00:05:51,640 --> 00:05:55,560
are trams or buses
or a few essential trucks.

69
00:05:57,880 --> 00:06:00,680
Barely 10% of Londoners
own their own car,

70
00:06:00,680 --> 00:06:04,320
and those that do are kept
off the streets by petrol rationing.

71
00:06:05,880 --> 00:06:10,240
These are the details of daily life
where the bombs didn't fall.

72
00:06:10,240 --> 00:06:14,840
Where they did,
the picture is rather different.

73
00:06:17,160 --> 00:06:21,240
Tens of thousands of buildings,
like these riverside warehouses,

74
00:06:21,240 --> 00:06:23,680
were totally destroyed.

75
00:06:23,680 --> 00:06:27,560
If you go across the town,
some parts of it are
largely unaffected,

76
00:06:27,560 --> 00:06:30,640
but then when you look at it in
detail, certainly with the City,

77
00:06:30,640 --> 00:06:35,120
you've got really
very substantial destruction -

78
00:06:35,120 --> 00:06:38,320
whole blocks have been
basically trashed.

79
00:06:38,320 --> 00:06:42,240
If you look at the area
around St Paul's, for example,

80
00:06:42,240 --> 00:06:45,200
you can just see the stubs of
the walls which have been left,

81
00:06:45,200 --> 00:06:49,360
preparatory to the redevelopment
of this particular area.

82
00:06:49,360 --> 00:06:53,240
Effectively, it looks like
the ruins of Pompeii.

83
00:06:53,240 --> 00:06:57,680
And it's not just
public buildings that were hit.

84
00:06:57,680 --> 00:07:01,840
A third of London's homes
had been badly damaged.

85
00:07:01,840 --> 00:07:06,400
In some areas, 85% of the housing
stock had simply disappeared.

86
00:07:06,400 --> 00:07:11,680
1.5 million people
had nowhere to live.

87
00:07:11,680 --> 00:07:14,440
It was clear rebuilding
would take years,

88
00:07:14,440 --> 00:07:19,040
but there was a desire
to do more than just rebuild.

89
00:07:19,040 --> 00:07:22,720
In the ruins of London
lay an opportunity

90
00:07:22,720 --> 00:07:25,840
to completely redesign the city.

91
00:07:29,080 --> 00:07:31,560
And there was a plan to do it -

92
00:07:31,560 --> 00:07:34,200
the Abercrombie plan.

93
00:07:37,480 --> 00:07:43,040
As early as 1943, a team of
designers under Lord Abercrombie

94
00:07:43,040 --> 00:07:47,960
had begun work on a new city
that would rise from
the ashes of the old -

95
00:07:47,960 --> 00:07:52,840
a clean-lined, open and
thoroughly modern metropolis.

96
00:07:55,040 --> 00:07:57,440
London grew up without
any plan or order.

97
00:07:57,440 --> 00:08:00,360
That's why there are all those bad
and ugly things

98
00:08:00,360 --> 00:08:04,480
that we hope to do away with
if this plan of ours is carried out.

99
00:08:05,560 --> 00:08:09,720
The plan was a top-down reordering
of the entire city

100
00:08:09,720 --> 00:08:14,600
that would solve the housing crisis
and produce more efficiency.

101
00:08:14,600 --> 00:08:18,240
Down here, near the boundary,
would be a trading estate

102
00:08:18,240 --> 00:08:21,320
where many of the people
living in the district would work.

103
00:08:23,320 --> 00:08:27,080
The city would be
reorganised into zones.

104
00:08:27,080 --> 00:08:30,080
There would be zones for living,
zones for working,

105
00:08:30,080 --> 00:08:32,520
zones for retail and commerce.

106
00:08:32,520 --> 00:08:35,560
All these different zones
would be connected together

107
00:08:35,560 --> 00:08:39,240
by a vast network of new highways
that would speed workers

108
00:08:39,240 --> 00:08:43,920
to their destinations and
bring raw materials in to
the working city.

109
00:08:43,920 --> 00:08:46,760
Cars and roads would
be the way forward,

110
00:08:46,760 --> 00:08:50,760
as Abercrombie had seen in America.

111
00:08:50,760 --> 00:08:53,440
It's a pretty gigantic scheme,

112
00:08:53,440 --> 00:08:56,960
affecting the future
of the whole of London.

113
00:08:58,520 --> 00:09:03,400
But this new city would do more than
just work better than the old one.

114
00:09:03,400 --> 00:09:08,560
At its heart was a desire for space
and order for its people.

115
00:09:08,560 --> 00:09:12,200
For every 1,000 inhabitants,
there should be at least four acres

116
00:09:12,200 --> 00:09:17,200
of open green space -
roughly twice as many as before.

117
00:09:17,200 --> 00:09:20,640
To liberate that space,
much of the housing

118
00:09:20,640 --> 00:09:23,880
that hadn't already been destroyed
would be demolished.

119
00:09:25,640 --> 00:09:28,400
And the people in them
would be collectively rehoused

120
00:09:28,400 --> 00:09:33,760
in thousands of
new apartment blocks,
stacked in rows across the city.

121
00:09:33,760 --> 00:09:38,200
Just like Churchill Gardens.

122
00:09:38,200 --> 00:09:41,600
In Pimlico,
not far from the Thames Embankment,

123
00:09:41,600 --> 00:09:44,160
a giant skeleton of steel
is going up,

124
00:09:44,160 --> 00:09:46,280
the framework of a block
of bright, modern flats

125
00:09:46,280 --> 00:09:50,680
that are to
transform living conditions
in this quarter of London.

126
00:09:50,680 --> 00:09:55,280
This vast housing estate
near central London was
the first great test

127
00:09:55,280 --> 00:09:56,920
of Abercrombie's vision.

128
00:09:58,320 --> 00:10:03,760
Brand-new homes for over 3,000
people in a single development.

129
00:10:06,280 --> 00:10:08,840
Paul Finch was one
of its early inhabitants,

130
00:10:08,840 --> 00:10:12,840
now returning after 40 years
to the estate he lived in
as a child.

131
00:10:14,120 --> 00:10:15,720
It was quite exciting.

132
00:10:15,720 --> 00:10:20,360
I mean, we came here to go in
the playgrounds and to mess about.

133
00:10:20,360 --> 00:10:23,640
Churchill Gardens was the new thing
that was being built,

134
00:10:23,640 --> 00:10:28,760
and I think we just accepted it
as...this is how it is.

135
00:10:30,560 --> 00:10:34,240
I had a school friend
who lived in Lutyens House,

136
00:10:34,240 --> 00:10:38,680
and I can remember standing
on the balcony outside his
front door,

137
00:10:38,680 --> 00:10:44,080
looking down at a terrace of
houses opposite that were
being demolished.

138
00:10:44,080 --> 00:10:48,200
I remember his brother
saying he wasn't sure why
they were being demolished

139
00:10:48,200 --> 00:10:49,840
because people still lived there.

140
00:10:49,840 --> 00:10:52,320
I thought it was pretty obvious
why they were knocking them down,

141
00:10:52,320 --> 00:10:55,920
cos they looked really old
and dilapidated

142
00:10:55,920 --> 00:11:01,120
and kind of clapped out, compared
with all these modern blocks
that we now lived in

143
00:11:01,120 --> 00:11:05,320
with hot and cold running water
and central heating.

144
00:11:05,320 --> 00:11:09,360
It was the idea of something modern
and new and clean.

145
00:11:09,360 --> 00:11:15,400
I think when you look back at films
of people who occupied
new council housing,

146
00:11:15,400 --> 00:11:20,320
'40s, '50s, even '60s,
what you see is people who are very,

147
00:11:20,320 --> 00:11:25,000
very happy with what they've got,
and the reason for that is,

148
00:11:25,000 --> 00:11:27,640
which we all forget now,
is what they came from.

149
00:11:27,640 --> 00:11:33,680
By and large, fortunately
for most people, they don't
have to experience

150
00:11:33,680 --> 00:11:36,720
the conditions, certainly,
that their grandparents did,

151
00:11:36,720 --> 00:11:40,840
where what we would now regard
as basic and essential facilities

152
00:11:40,840 --> 00:11:43,040
were simply not available.

153
00:11:45,960 --> 00:11:51,800
The late 1940s was a radical time,
when Britain first turned old ideas

154
00:11:51,800 --> 00:11:55,840
of a National Health Service
and a full welfare state
into reality.

155
00:11:55,840 --> 00:12:00,320
It was an era that deliberately
and unashamedly promised

156
00:12:00,320 --> 00:12:03,320
a brave new world for everyone.

157
00:12:08,200 --> 00:12:11,080
This is Churchill Gardens today.

158
00:12:11,080 --> 00:12:15,880
What's clear is that it's totally
different to everything around it.

159
00:12:15,880 --> 00:12:19,840
If this is as far
as the housing revolution got,

160
00:12:19,840 --> 00:12:23,680
what happened
to the rest of Abercrombie's plan?

161
00:12:29,920 --> 00:12:32,640
The only way to find out
is from the air.

162
00:12:32,640 --> 00:12:37,320
Archaeologist Chris Going
has been documenting
the changing face

163
00:12:37,320 --> 00:12:40,440
of London from the air
for the last five years.

164
00:12:43,320 --> 00:12:46,160
We have nine frames on
the second run, I think.

165
00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:52,080
By flying exactly the same route
the RAF did 60 years ago

166
00:12:52,080 --> 00:12:56,360
to create the first aerial surveys,
Chris hopes to create

167
00:12:56,360 --> 00:12:59,360
an identical modern survey
of his own.

168
00:12:59,360 --> 00:13:03,000
What we are doing today is
we are producing imagery which,

169
00:13:03,000 --> 00:13:07,360
when we compare with the 1945
material, gives you in one go,
if you like,

170
00:13:07,360 --> 00:13:11,200
all the changes we've seen
in the city of London,
in the centre of London,

171
00:13:11,200 --> 00:13:13,240
in the last 60 years.

172
00:13:13,240 --> 00:13:14,800
It's effectively a time machine.

173
00:13:23,800 --> 00:13:27,480
By lining up the two complete sets
of images, Chris is able to switch

174
00:13:27,480 --> 00:13:29,880
between the past and the present.

175
00:13:31,000 --> 00:13:34,800
Between the London
Abercrombie was about to change,

176
00:13:34,800 --> 00:13:38,440
and what we actually ended up with.

177
00:13:38,440 --> 00:13:43,320
Overall, there appears to be
very little difference.

178
00:13:43,320 --> 00:13:48,000
The basic matrix of roads
is largely unaltered.

179
00:13:52,000 --> 00:13:55,680
There's certainly no sign
of any great unified vision.

180
00:13:55,680 --> 00:13:59,200
If the population of London
in the later '40s or the '50s

181
00:13:59,200 --> 00:14:06,080
could look at the London of 2008,
of the 21st century, I think

182
00:14:06,080 --> 00:14:11,360
the thing they would most clearly
say is how incoherent it looks.

183
00:14:12,520 --> 00:14:15,480
It does not that like
the sort of envisaged city

184
00:14:15,480 --> 00:14:17,000
of the planners of
the '40s and '50s.

185
00:14:20,080 --> 00:14:22,640
When it came to housing,
local authorities never followed

186
00:14:22,640 --> 00:14:27,040
the Churchill Gardens model,
but took to building clusters

187
00:14:27,040 --> 00:14:30,280
of high-rise tower blocks instead.

188
00:14:30,280 --> 00:14:32,640
While around them,
private housing remained

189
00:14:32,640 --> 00:14:35,520
almost entirely pre-war vintage.

190
00:14:35,520 --> 00:14:39,760
Exactly the opposite
of Abercrombie's vision.

191
00:14:39,760 --> 00:14:41,280
The plan to double the total area

192
00:14:41,280 --> 00:14:46,480
of green space in the city produced
just one notable south London park.

193
00:14:48,320 --> 00:14:50,560
And the transport revolution
that promised fast access

194
00:14:50,560 --> 00:14:54,160
along multi-lane freeways
throughout the centre of the city

195
00:14:54,160 --> 00:14:56,640
never reached that far.

196
00:14:56,640 --> 00:15:01,320
Today, congestion blights the
motorways running into London,

197
00:15:01,320 --> 00:15:05,640
because the centre
is just the same old maze of streets

198
00:15:05,640 --> 00:15:07,560
from before the war.

199
00:15:08,560 --> 00:15:12,160
And in the heart of the city, where
a great modernist capital was meant

200
00:15:12,160 --> 00:15:14,120
to stretch along the Thames,

201
00:15:14,120 --> 00:15:17,880
only the centrepiece,
the Royal Festival Hall,
was ever built.

202
00:15:19,400 --> 00:15:22,560
Ultimately, Abercrombie failed.

203
00:15:22,560 --> 00:15:27,920
But his failure should be judged
in the light of history,

204
00:15:27,920 --> 00:15:31,760
because London had tried
this kind of thing before.

205
00:15:33,960 --> 00:15:38,280
300 years earlier, after the
great fire, Christopher Wren

206
00:15:38,280 --> 00:15:42,480
came up with a grand new vision
for London.

207
00:15:46,800 --> 00:15:51,000
A formal European capital
that would radiate out

208
00:15:51,000 --> 00:15:54,240
from the glorious centrepiece
of St Paul's Cathedral.

209
00:15:56,080 --> 00:16:02,720
But just as with Abercrombie,
the centrepiece was
all that got built.

210
00:16:02,720 --> 00:16:05,880
Neither man managed to get the money
or the political backing

211
00:16:05,880 --> 00:16:09,280
to tear down the city
and start again.

212
00:16:09,280 --> 00:16:13,840
Wren had a big vision for London,
which he was not able to fulfil

213
00:16:13,840 --> 00:16:17,760
because of the competing interests
of people who, basically, just
wanted

214
00:16:17,760 --> 00:16:19,520
to get back to what
it was like before.

215
00:16:21,040 --> 00:16:24,360
After the Second World War,
Abercrombie had a plan.

216
00:16:24,360 --> 00:16:27,960
But London
is resistant to grand plans.

217
00:16:29,800 --> 00:16:33,680
Yet London has been
transformed all the same.

218
00:16:33,680 --> 00:16:36,240
From the city of the 1940s

219
00:16:36,240 --> 00:16:40,240
to the city of today,
there's a world of difference.

220
00:16:40,240 --> 00:16:43,360
And far from following
any central plan,

221
00:16:43,360 --> 00:16:48,880
it's largely the result of barely
controlled economic forces.

222
00:16:48,880 --> 00:16:51,440
What London responds to is trade,

223
00:16:51,440 --> 00:16:56,920
commerce, money, markets,
prosperity and movement.

224
00:16:56,920 --> 00:17:01,400
And in the end, what has made
London is precisely those things.

225
00:17:06,320 --> 00:17:10,280
Money changed London
in ways no-one in the 1940s

226
00:17:10,280 --> 00:17:16,240
could ever have imagined,
because London changed
the way it made money,

227
00:17:16,240 --> 00:17:19,560
and nowhere shows this more
clearly than here.

228
00:17:19,560 --> 00:17:25,080
The modern, geometric blocks of
Canary Wharf now hide what used

229
00:17:25,080 --> 00:17:27,760
to power this city - the docks.

230
00:17:29,960 --> 00:17:31,600
Since Roman times,

231
00:17:31,600 --> 00:17:36,160
London's docks had been the engine
room of the city's economy.

232
00:17:36,160 --> 00:17:41,600
Stretching for ten miles along
the Thames, by the late 1930s,

233
00:17:41,600 --> 00:17:45,520
the port of London had grown
to be the largest in the world.

234
00:17:45,520 --> 00:17:50,520
This was where the whole of
the British Empire brought
its goods to trade,

235
00:17:50,520 --> 00:17:56,800
which is why, when the war ended,
the docks were rebuilt immediately.

236
00:17:56,800 --> 00:18:00,920
Dock workers had to make do
with living in prefabs.

237
00:18:04,160 --> 00:18:07,800
And for 30 years after the war,
life in the docks went on,
more or less,

238
00:18:07,800 --> 00:18:12,880
as it had before, and looked set
to continue, unchanged, forever.

239
00:18:12,880 --> 00:18:16,440
What they didn't see coming
was this.

240
00:18:16,440 --> 00:18:20,720
By the 1970s, what the world's
economy demanded for shipping

241
00:18:20,720 --> 00:18:25,680
was giant bulk containers carried
on giant container ships

242
00:18:25,680 --> 00:18:30,920
that could only be processed
in giant container ports,
like Felixstowe.

243
00:18:32,160 --> 00:18:35,000
None of which would fit into
London's tight, narrow river,

244
00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:38,720
with its densely packed,
labour-intensive docks.

245
00:18:43,440 --> 00:18:47,400
As the last dock facilities finally
closed at the end of the '70s,

246
00:18:47,400 --> 00:18:50,040
the remaining 10,000 jobs
went with them,

247
00:18:50,040 --> 00:18:56,280
leaving behind
a vast, derelict wasteland.

248
00:19:04,040 --> 00:19:08,360
When the docks became redundant
in the early 1970s,

249
00:19:08,360 --> 00:19:12,800
there was a great think
about what to do with this area.

250
00:19:12,800 --> 00:19:16,800
There was a public sector body
set up, which was going nowhere,

251
00:19:16,800 --> 00:19:19,760
and then suddenly the hand
of commerce intervened,

252
00:19:19,760 --> 00:19:21,760
because people who were
having a problem

253
00:19:21,760 --> 00:19:25,080
getting sufficient office space
in the City of London,

254
00:19:25,080 --> 00:19:28,240
at the sort of rents they thought
they should be paying,

255
00:19:28,240 --> 00:19:32,280
suddenly looked at Canary Wharf
and thought, "Why don't we
do it down there?"

256
00:19:32,280 --> 00:19:35,920
And this great private sector
experiment began.

257
00:19:37,560 --> 00:19:42,080
This was the first time in hundreds
of years that eight square miles

258
00:19:42,080 --> 00:19:47,400
of prime building land had appeared
so close to the centre of London.

259
00:19:48,760 --> 00:19:54,720
There was an unrivalled opportunity
to think through

260
00:19:54,720 --> 00:19:58,640
what the whole development would be
over its entire lifespan

261
00:19:58,640 --> 00:20:02,000
and to plan for that
right from day one.

262
00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:04,320
This was very unusual.

263
00:20:06,920 --> 00:20:10,160
By the end of the '80s,
the wasteland had become

264
00:20:10,160 --> 00:20:12,880
the biggest building site
in the world.

265
00:20:12,880 --> 00:20:17,640
I remember first arriving here
and seeing a forest of tower cranes

266
00:20:17,640 --> 00:20:21,360
and very little else.
We recognised that at the beginning

267
00:20:21,360 --> 00:20:26,120
we would have to build a certain
number of buildings to start with

268
00:20:26,120 --> 00:20:29,800
just to get people to move here
and to realise

269
00:20:29,800 --> 00:20:34,240
that this wasn't just an office
building in the middle of nowhere,
but a place,

270
00:20:34,240 --> 00:20:40,480
and I think the risk was in creating
that first group of buildings

271
00:20:40,480 --> 00:20:44,040
and expecting that companies
would actually move here
as a result.

272
00:20:46,360 --> 00:20:51,920
Prospective companies were lured
by huge Government incentives,

273
00:20:51,920 --> 00:20:56,280
effectively giving the land
to anyone who'd build on it,

274
00:20:56,280 --> 00:20:58,400
as well as paying for
new transport links

275
00:20:58,400 --> 00:21:00,440
to bring City workers
to their new offices.

276
00:21:03,000 --> 00:21:05,560
At first, all went swimmingly.

277
00:21:08,600 --> 00:21:12,400
Then the country was hit by
recession and, suddenly,

278
00:21:12,400 --> 00:21:17,520
no-one would take the risk
of relocation to a giant
building site.

279
00:21:17,520 --> 00:21:21,440
The first Docklands developers
went into receivership.

280
00:21:29,280 --> 00:21:32,400
When the economy
did finally turn round,

281
00:21:32,400 --> 00:21:36,760
the developers
had their master plan waiting.

282
00:21:36,760 --> 00:21:38,880
And the result was this -

283
00:21:38,880 --> 00:21:43,840
what's often been likened to a piece
of Manhattan, dropped from the sky.

284
00:21:46,360 --> 00:21:48,560
People say,
when they're in Canary Wharf,

285
00:21:48,560 --> 00:21:50,320
"This doesn't quite
feel like London,"

286
00:21:50,320 --> 00:21:54,760
and the reason why it doesn't
feel like London is because
it isn't like London.

287
00:21:54,760 --> 00:21:57,280
And the reason it's not like London

288
00:21:57,280 --> 00:22:02,640
is because it was master-planned
by American architects and planners,

289
00:22:02,640 --> 00:22:08,120
working in a tradition of a grid,
working, right from the beginning,

290
00:22:08,120 --> 00:22:11,680
with the idea
that you should integrate transport

291
00:22:11,680 --> 00:22:16,440
and employment in one seamless way,
which it does extremely
successfully.

292
00:22:16,440 --> 00:22:19,840
In fact, the only problem it has
is maybe it's a little bit too
successful,

293
00:22:19,840 --> 00:22:22,800
but that's better
than not being successful enough.

294
00:22:22,800 --> 00:22:28,400
Where 100,000 men once handled
cargo at the end of the war,

295
00:22:28,400 --> 00:22:32,520
just as many people now
earn a living in financial services.

296
00:22:35,560 --> 00:22:40,120
By the turn of the century,
this alien-looking invader

297
00:22:40,120 --> 00:22:45,160
had become a serious rival to
London's old financial centre,
the Square Mile.

298
00:22:45,160 --> 00:22:49,040
The old City was bound to respond
to the challenge.

299
00:22:50,600 --> 00:22:52,120
And it has.

300
00:23:07,760 --> 00:23:14,080
This is the Square Mile today,
in the midst of a colossal
building boom,

301
00:23:14,080 --> 00:23:18,640
the most obvious feature of which
is that its jumble of structures

302
00:23:18,640 --> 00:23:22,640
looks very different to
the organised blocks of Canary
Wharf.

303
00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:27,920
And that's because new buildings
here don't stand on
a regular grid.

304
00:23:27,920 --> 00:23:31,880
They stand on a street plan
that hasn't changed radically

305
00:23:31,880 --> 00:23:33,360
in 1,000 years.

306
00:23:33,360 --> 00:23:36,240
The streets of London,
which is really the
geography of London,

307
00:23:36,240 --> 00:23:37,760
especially the heart of London,

308
00:23:37,760 --> 00:23:42,800
is rooted in medieval history.
They're narrow, and, basically,

309
00:23:42,800 --> 00:23:45,080
they're for horses
and people who are walking.

310
00:23:45,080 --> 00:23:48,760
We've kept to that
in most areas in the centre.

311
00:23:48,760 --> 00:23:51,160
This gives some
pretty big constraints for -

312
00:23:51,160 --> 00:23:55,400
1,000 years later, shall we say -
where movement has completely
changed.

313
00:23:55,400 --> 00:24:00,200
We don't have the classical streets
that you see in Paris,

314
00:24:00,200 --> 00:24:02,640
or the grid forms
we see in New York.

315
00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:06,520
We have grown very much ad hoc,
piece by piece.

316
00:24:06,520 --> 00:24:12,400
The name of the game here
is to squeeze bigger
and bigger offices

317
00:24:12,400 --> 00:24:14,840
into these irregular spaces.

318
00:24:14,840 --> 00:24:18,920
One of the best examples
of how this can be done
is the Gherkin,

319
00:24:18,920 --> 00:24:22,960
which cleverly creates more space
in the air than it has
on the ground,

320
00:24:22,960 --> 00:24:24,320
with its bulging shape.

321
00:24:28,640 --> 00:24:31,880
Others are twisted
into a variety of strange forms

322
00:24:31,880 --> 00:24:35,000
to maximise the limited space
they have.

323
00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:38,240
Architecture has developed
out of constraints.

324
00:24:38,240 --> 00:24:42,160
The real art of architecture
is getting a constraint -
you can't avoid them -

325
00:24:42,160 --> 00:24:45,640
and then turning them upside down
and seeing how they fit.

326
00:24:52,240 --> 00:24:57,640
But there's more in the City
than just a street plan to
challenge an architect.

327
00:24:57,640 --> 00:25:00,080
There are dozens of
ancient buildings,

328
00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:06,320
none greater than the looming
presence of St Paul's Cathedral.

329
00:25:06,320 --> 00:25:09,640
For 350 years,
St Paul's has been the jewel

330
00:25:09,640 --> 00:25:11,640
in the architectural crown
of the City,

331
00:25:11,640 --> 00:25:16,760
and is now so venerated
that even the views of it,

332
00:25:16,760 --> 00:25:21,000
from miles across the city,
are protected by planning laws.

333
00:25:23,080 --> 00:25:27,960
Fortunately, there's a new visual
tool to help architects
avoid the problem.

334
00:25:29,200 --> 00:25:34,440
This picture, and thousands like it,
form part of a giant
3-D graphic model

335
00:25:34,440 --> 00:25:38,000
showing the whole city,
with St Paul's at its heart.

336
00:25:39,920 --> 00:25:41,960
These are the sight lines,

337
00:25:41,960 --> 00:25:45,560
where the greatest restrictions
on building are enforced.

338
00:25:47,640 --> 00:25:51,080
It was in one of these corridors
that Richard Rogers was asked

339
00:25:51,080 --> 00:25:52,920
by developers British Land

340
00:25:52,920 --> 00:25:56,880
to create what would be the tallest
office block in the City of London,

341
00:25:56,880 --> 00:26:00,600
a structure that would stand
right behind the cathedral.

342
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:03,920
The only way to get out of the view
is to slope backwards,
out of the views.

343
00:26:03,920 --> 00:26:07,440
So when you're looking,
specifically,
from the west side of London,

344
00:26:07,440 --> 00:26:11,400
you would block St Paul's
if the building was straight up.

345
00:26:11,400 --> 00:26:13,200
So we move it sideways

346
00:26:13,200 --> 00:26:18,960
and you get a sort of A-shape,
or, as it's been termed,
a Cheese Grater.

347
00:26:24,800 --> 00:26:27,280
This is it - the Cheese Grater,

348
00:26:27,280 --> 00:26:33,960
at 122 Leadenhall -
a 225-metre, 48-storey office block,

349
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:39,240
London's newest skyscraper,
as it will look very soon.

350
00:26:42,920 --> 00:26:49,560
What's made this possible
is the creative power
of 3-D graphics.

351
00:26:49,560 --> 00:26:52,520
Rogers' design partner, Cityscape,

352
00:26:52,520 --> 00:26:55,600
built a virtual 3-D model
of the whole of the City of London

353
00:26:55,600 --> 00:26:57,640
and then plonked into it

354
00:26:57,640 --> 00:27:00,720
a millimetre-perfect vision
of the Leadenhall Building,

355
00:27:00,720 --> 00:27:03,600
proving, before the first stone
was ever laid,

356
00:27:03,600 --> 00:27:06,680
that it would fit
into the existing city.

357
00:27:06,680 --> 00:27:08,680
And the Leadenhall Building

358
00:27:08,680 --> 00:27:12,520
won't be the last to make use
of this new technology.

359
00:27:14,280 --> 00:27:16,960
Each one of these structures

360
00:27:16,960 --> 00:27:22,200
is set to "grace" the skyline
in the next few years.

361
00:27:22,200 --> 00:27:26,040
There must be change, always change,

362
00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:30,280
as one season, or one generation,
follows another.

363
00:27:30,280 --> 00:27:35,480
When Lord Abercrombie first proposed
building a new city after the war,

364
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:38,120
it was assumed it could only be done

365
00:27:38,120 --> 00:27:41,680
by tearing down and starting again,
with a great plan.

366
00:27:43,520 --> 00:27:47,840
In the late 1940s,
people believed in planning,

367
00:27:47,840 --> 00:27:51,280
and they believed that planning
was going to create a better London,

368
00:27:51,280 --> 00:27:53,120
a better Britain and a better world.

369
00:27:53,120 --> 00:27:59,960
London did change, but not through
grand designs or utopian ideals,

370
00:27:59,960 --> 00:28:05,160
but by commerce and opportunity
and the creative energy
of its people.

371
00:28:05,160 --> 00:28:07,360
Today, London is the greatest
capital in the world.

372
00:28:07,360 --> 00:28:09,000
The only competition is New York.

373
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:10,400
So it's a big change,

374
00:28:10,400 --> 00:28:12,600
not only in economics,
but in social as well,

375
00:28:12,600 --> 00:28:15,080
in the vitality of the city.
So that's fantastic.

376
00:28:15,080 --> 00:28:20,400
And it comes out of that marriage
of 1,000 years between old and new,

377
00:28:20,400 --> 00:28:22,400
the more formal -

378
00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:25,120
the churches, the town halls,
city halls, and so on -

379
00:28:25,120 --> 00:28:28,440
and the wonderful
medieval structures and
the modern buildings.

380
00:28:28,440 --> 00:28:30,360
So they all sit together.

381
00:28:30,360 --> 00:28:33,000
Not everyone loves
the way London is changing,

382
00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:37,040
but London is simply doing
what London always has -

383
00:28:37,040 --> 00:28:38,480
making money,

384
00:28:38,480 --> 00:28:41,080
making compromises,

385
00:28:41,080 --> 00:28:43,320
evolving.

386
00:28:51,640 --> 00:28:54,720
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

387
00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:57,680
E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk