Transformation of Exeter City Centre
There is apprehension in Exeter. In 12 days' time the city council meets to consider a £135m scheme to transform a chunk of the city centre, put forward by the developers Land Securities. Those in favour include most of the city council, the Exeter business forum and the chamber of commerce. They are apprehensive that if these plans don't go through, trade will be lost to Bristol. Against - damning the plans as out of scale with the city, destroying streets and buildings and proposing revolution when it ought to be evolution - are the local civic society, a group called Exeter People's Choice formed to fight these proposals, Friends of the Earth and the Twentieth Century Society.
I have to admit that if I were the Twentieth Century Society the first thing I'd say to Exeter would be: "sorry". That century did it few favours. Exeter's glory is its harmonious diversity. The close around the Gothic cathedral is a triumph that nobody could have planned: buildings of every age, style and texture, superb old houses congenially congregated alongside shops, a hotel and cafes.
You can see it too in the old high street, where almost every building is individual and different, some ancient, some bogus-ancient, some new, with little seductive alleys and sudden glimpses of the cathedral to tempt you to explore. But then you come to what the 20th century did after German bombs had torn out so much of the city in May 1942. ("We have chosen as targets the most beautiful places in England," an official bulletin gloated. "Exeter was a gem. We have destroyed it.")
After the war, the town planner, Thomas Sharp, was commissioned to muse on the future of Exeter, which he did in a visionary book, Exeter Phoenix. But though the subsequent reconstruction tried to absorb his teachings, much of what emerged is a sad affair. Where the old high street, in its diversity, was unified by the narrowness of the buildings, much of what was added was heavy, uniform, slab-like. And then came the most brutal insult of all: what is now the Debenham building, closing the view at the eastern end of the high street with a foul domineering tower block which makes one want to reach for the dynamite.
The contest now under way is part of a long Exeter tradition. The great local historian, WG Hoskins, fought notable battles here through the 1960s, complaining that his colleagues on the city council appeared intent on finishing Hitler's work for him. But the objectors haven't got Hoskins now. And crucially, they haven't got English Heritage either.
When plans for this redevelopment first surfaced four years ago, these watchdogs signalled "grave concern" and "profound disquiet". The scale was wrong, the threatened losses excessive. The fine late 18th-century street known as Southernhay was in danger; the "quietly pleasing" character of Sharp's Princesshay, England's first shopping precinct, would be sacrificed.
But this May, all that changed. English Heritage's urban panel had visited the city and met the leading protagonists (though not the objectors) and, having reviewed the changes which followed its earlier strictures, were delighted with what they saw. The visit had been "an unusual and exhilarating experience". The scheme as revised deserved to become an example for other towns and cities of how these things should be done.
Much of this represents a conviction that the 21st century may be about to atone for what went wrong in the 20th. That owes a lot to the drafting in of four separate architectural practices, one of them Wilkinson Eyre, creators of the Gates-head Millennium Bridge, to redesign different parts of the scheme - an acknowledgment, I think, of the need for harmonious diversity. But the Urban Panel's report also goes out of its way to emphasise, to Exeter and to the world, that the role of the organisation is not just to preserve, but to balance the way that cities worked in the past with the way they work now.
The consequent change of heart would seem to ensure that any wavering councillor can vote "Yes" on July 16 safe from the posthumous wrath of Professor Hoskins. If English Heritage thinks the scheme is so wonderful, how can voting for change be so philistine? It is strange in the circumstances that the city council hasn't done more to sell the scheme to the people of Exeter. It did stage an exhibition in April with people on hand to deal with complaints and queries but it only ran for two weeks. All there is now is a model in the planning department, but that's hardly a user-friendly experience. English Heritage has already had to rebuke the planners for not providing the documentation people need to understand what's being projected.
And so on July 16 the fateful decision is due to be taken by the very councillors who have backed the Land Securities scheme all along, and who stand to make a substantial amount of money out of it (though for council taxpayers, not for themselves). The notion that the new century might now atone for the mess which the last one made is very appealing. Yet were I an Exonian, looking back on the brave new worlds proposed in the past, I think I'd be feeling queasy too.
d.mckie@guardian.co.uk
I have to admit that if I were the Twentieth Century Society the first thing I'd say to Exeter would be: "sorry". That century did it few favours. Exeter's glory is its harmonious diversity. The close around the Gothic cathedral is a triumph that nobody could have planned: buildings of every age, style and texture, superb old houses congenially congregated alongside shops, a hotel and cafes.
You can see it too in the old high street, where almost every building is individual and different, some ancient, some bogus-ancient, some new, with little seductive alleys and sudden glimpses of the cathedral to tempt you to explore. But then you come to what the 20th century did after German bombs had torn out so much of the city in May 1942. ("We have chosen as targets the most beautiful places in England," an official bulletin gloated. "Exeter was a gem. We have destroyed it.")
After the war, the town planner, Thomas Sharp, was commissioned to muse on the future of Exeter, which he did in a visionary book, Exeter Phoenix. But though the subsequent reconstruction tried to absorb his teachings, much of what emerged is a sad affair. Where the old high street, in its diversity, was unified by the narrowness of the buildings, much of what was added was heavy, uniform, slab-like. And then came the most brutal insult of all: what is now the Debenham building, closing the view at the eastern end of the high street with a foul domineering tower block which makes one want to reach for the dynamite.
The contest now under way is part of a long Exeter tradition. The great local historian, WG Hoskins, fought notable battles here through the 1960s, complaining that his colleagues on the city council appeared intent on finishing Hitler's work for him. But the objectors haven't got Hoskins now. And crucially, they haven't got English Heritage either.
When plans for this redevelopment first surfaced four years ago, these watchdogs signalled "grave concern" and "profound disquiet". The scale was wrong, the threatened losses excessive. The fine late 18th-century street known as Southernhay was in danger; the "quietly pleasing" character of Sharp's Princesshay, England's first shopping precinct, would be sacrificed.
But this May, all that changed. English Heritage's urban panel had visited the city and met the leading protagonists (though not the objectors) and, having reviewed the changes which followed its earlier strictures, were delighted with what they saw. The visit had been "an unusual and exhilarating experience". The scheme as revised deserved to become an example for other towns and cities of how these things should be done.
Much of this represents a conviction that the 21st century may be about to atone for what went wrong in the 20th. That owes a lot to the drafting in of four separate architectural practices, one of them Wilkinson Eyre, creators of the Gates-head Millennium Bridge, to redesign different parts of the scheme - an acknowledgment, I think, of the need for harmonious diversity. But the Urban Panel's report also goes out of its way to emphasise, to Exeter and to the world, that the role of the organisation is not just to preserve, but to balance the way that cities worked in the past with the way they work now.
The consequent change of heart would seem to ensure that any wavering councillor can vote "Yes" on July 16 safe from the posthumous wrath of Professor Hoskins. If English Heritage thinks the scheme is so wonderful, how can voting for change be so philistine? It is strange in the circumstances that the city council hasn't done more to sell the scheme to the people of Exeter. It did stage an exhibition in April with people on hand to deal with complaints and queries but it only ran for two weeks. All there is now is a model in the planning department, but that's hardly a user-friendly experience. English Heritage has already had to rebuke the planners for not providing the documentation people need to understand what's being projected.
And so on July 16 the fateful decision is due to be taken by the very councillors who have backed the Land Securities scheme all along, and who stand to make a substantial amount of money out of it (though for council taxpayers, not for themselves). The notion that the new century might now atone for the mess which the last one made is very appealing. Yet were I an Exonian, looking back on the brave new worlds proposed in the past, I think I'd be feeling queasy too.
d.mckie@guardian.co.uk
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