Single aspect flats
February 9th, 2010
UPDATE: 7/4/17 Now these dreadful things at Barnet House
Here’s the Guardian take on it:-
Dog kennel flats Barnet House smaller than Travelodge room
“no better than back to back terraces”
One of my bugbears as a layman taking an interest in housing is the number of modern conversions that take a former office building, usually rectangular, and convert it into flats in the cheapest possible way by putting a corridor along the centre of each floor and apartments off each side like hotel rooms. Access is via lift and stairs at either end and results in what the Americans call double loaded corridors. The flats are then by design single aspect and sometimes North facing. Inevitably the others are South facing and suffer solar gain to the same extent that the former almost never see the sun. I found the following article on the Internet recently whilst looking for Parker Morris links.
The current Part L of the Building Regulations focuses more on heat loss through windows than light levels into a house. Regulations allow us to get away with deep plan single aspect apartments, in my mind no better than back to back terraces, or windowless bathrooms, kitchens and corridors, despite the fact that everyone knows these spaces would be better with natural light and ventilation. House builders generally do the minimum required of them by the regulations, which is not necessarily what makes for good housing. Sustainability is more than just environmental performance.
The idea of rooms lit only from one side with no through ventilation and intended not as an overnight stay as with a hotel room, nor as temporary student accommodation as in halls of residence, but as a family dwelling is to me entirely unsatisfactory. They make a frequent appearance in the projects of the social housing company A2Dominion with Woods House being but one example and I feel unsettled that it should be the most vulnerable in society that have poor standards of design imposed upon them for it is those with least assets who have no other choice. Note the concrete columns at the perimeter of the plan which further compromise the design. It may be nice to live in Pimlico but not at any price.
Not suprisingly there are developers who balk at the idea of providing dual aspect flats. Here’s this from the AJ
Dale Sinclair, director at Dyer, questioned the report’s prejudiced criticism of single-aspect flats: ‘Dual-aspect units require additional stairs, lifts and external walls or an increase in deck access. With developers unable to offset risk, will this also increase costs?’
UPDATE: I was in Glasgow this week (w/e 11th June 2011) and went to see where Dale Sinclair lives. It can’t be his only house. It is a small single aspect house built into the side of the hill on which stands Park Terrace and Park Circus. I am left wondering whether the experience of doing up and living in (or at least occasionally staying in) a former mews house has informed the views expressed above about single aspect flats.
UPDATE: Please see my page on back-to-backs taken from the Housing Act 1909.
I found this today (5/7/2010) an article from Building Magazine by David Birkbeck that gives hope for the elimination of single aspect flats, and mentions Alice Coleman in passing. See also Design Disadvantagement
How you manage movement to and from apartments is tearing the industry apart at the moment. A proposal in the London Housing Design Guide threatens to outlaw single-aspect flats, the default setting for apartment blocks built in the past decade. The guide also recommends a maximum number of homes per floor that can share the same access.
https://www.building.co.uk/comment/unexplainable-homes-access-to-flats/3157211.article
Mapping existing housing standards from CABE
https://www.cabe.org.uk/files/mapping-existing-housing-standards.pdf
From Sean Macintosh:-
Rooms can be either naturally ventilated or mechanically ventilated (by fan or other system). Under current regs toilets are required to have a fan even if they also have a window. A dual aspect flat can benefit from cross ventilation and this means that you can have a much deeper plan. There is nothing preventing single aspect flats ventilating effectively as long as there is sufficient window area (ideally both low and high level) and that this is proportional to the floor area and occupancy. Nowadays we measure this through computer analysis.
Dave Hill of the Guardian has alluded to these in new developments, citing the ones planned for Earls Court:-
Of the 690 total, 287 units would be “single aspect” dwellings, meaning that light can only enter them from one side. Single aspect dwellings are controversial. As the council officers’ report notes (see page 188), they are “generally discouraged by both local planning policy and the [Boris Johnson] London Plan”. The report further records that the council’s own planning rules state that single aspect units which face north are particularly frowned on – they “should be avoided wherever possible”. Yet 103 of Capco’s 287 single aspect units – 15% of the 690 total within H&F – would be north-facing.
Good reason to reject the plans? The officers’ report thinks not. It assures us that north-facing single aspect units have been “avoided where possible”. It says that most of the north-facers are within two of the eight buildings proposed and that, of these, “almost” all the ones that “infringe the council’s standard” would only do so by a few degrees and, anyway, their windows are quite large. Does this conform to the “decent neighbourhoods” requirement for good design?
The Psychology of Housing – Alice Coleman
January 1st, 2010
First seen in the Salisbury Review
Psychologists blame parents for their children’s problems but overlook an even stronger influence — the design of the home. The mid-19th century crime peak arose from tenement buildings, a steady fall of crime to a record low accompanied the great spread of late Victorian single-family houses. Yet the 20th century reverted to tenements in unprecedented numbers and crime has soared in parallel as well as becoming vastly more vicious.
The leader of the new tenement psychology was Le Corbusier, whose 1923 book, Vers Une Architecture, introduced the Modern Movement. He argued that throwing people together in blocks of flats would create communities — an idea which won global support. Its validity went unchecked and Labour’s 1948 planning control facilitated its enforcement, as the popular semi‑detached house was dismissed as out-dated and up to 90,000 Victorian houses were demolished annually for comprehensive redevelopment with flats.
Grahame Park Hendon
October 17th, 2009
A pleasant afternoon spent walking around an estate in North West London with the C20th Society, not far from the RAF Museum and the Met Police training centre. An estate due to be largely (75%) demolished and rebuilt owing to problems of anti social behaviour.
We were shown the plans on an exhibition board in the library foyer.
Photos on Flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/singleaspect/sets/72157627588975782/
Plans here
https://www.barnet.gov.uk/regeneration-grahame-park
Garrison Estate Purfleet
September 26th, 2009
UPDATE: Bi-monthly meetings -> Purfleet on Thames Community Forum
Whilst looking for a cheap ex local authority flat to buy in or near London I came across the Garrison Estate at Purfleet and went down to have a look one sunny Saturday.
Click for larger image
Sunlight study – Vue2
September 25th, 2009
I did some examples on Vue2 in Bletchley MK. Pictures linked from the table below:-
From August 17th 2008 until April 20th 2009 the sun never rose within sight of Vue2 NNW facing flats.
Where does the sun rise between those dates? Let’s take halfway, say 136 days from 17/8/08 to New Year then 109 days from New Year to April 20th. 136+109 = 245. Half that is 122.5. 136 – 122 = 14 so 14 days before the end of 2008 is our halfway point. This is about 17/12/2008, showing the sun rising to the South-East nowhere near the NNW facing flats.
The picture is taken at noon showing the arc of the sun sweeping South from sunrise SE to SW on setting at this time of year.
For only 365-245=120 days does the sun rise within sight of the NNW facing flats, and then only remaining visible for a short time
On Midsummers day the NNW facing flats would get just two hours of sunlight 0440-0640 from the East at a time when many people will be asleep, but that afternoon they will get five hours of sunlight from 16:23 to sunset at 21:29.
On 11-11-2009 the sun sets along the alignment of Vue2 and for two months it is not to be seen from the west, until 11-1-2010.
| 17/08/2008 | 17/12/2008 | 20/04/2009 | 11/11/2009 | 11/01/2010 | 21/06/2010 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Click individual photos above for larger versions
Here’s the sun calculator, you drag the pointer around then zoom in to your house and change the date to winter or summer.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/solcalc/
This is the old one which no longer works
https://www.iesmith.net/tools/solarcalc.html
If you use it please be aware of the following to get the best out of it.
01) Open it up
02) Type in the name of a town and click the Go button
03) Zoom in with the vertical slider on the left or click the + button repeatedly.
04) Drag the red pointer to your street (note in Firefox the map started scrolling on its own so I switched browsers)
05) Drag the map across and drag the point separately to get the black X on your window
06) Switch from terrain to satellite (Map | Satellite | Terrain) to get a better view, zoom again and drag the pointer again
07) Once you’ve settled on the location click the calendar, set a date and tick the Daylight saving box if it’s the summer
08) Click calculate
09) At the point the map will probably switch to “We’re sorry etc . . . ” click the satellite button and you’ll have your picture back
10) Look at the sun position and sunrise and sunset positions for the date you chose
The Smithsons – transcript
February 23rd, 2009
AS: Society at the moment asks architects to build these new homes for them but I
0:22
mean this may be really stupid we may have to rethink the whole thing it may
0:26
be that we should only be asked to to repair the roofs and add the odd
0:31
bathroom to the old industrial houses and just leave people where they are to
0:36
smash it up in complete abandon and happiness so that nobody has to worry
0:41
about it anymore
0:43
PS: We still feel under an obligation to give the absolutely that the to provide
0:50
the best possible quality irrespective of what people expect and what treatment
0:57
it it’s going to get.
1:02
Narrator: Yet another building site in the East End of London. An East End rebuilt almost
1:08
out of recognition to those who knew it before the war but this site is
1:12
different there are no tower blocks for one thing. It’s by allison and peter
1:17
smithson virtually the only british architects to have an international
1:21
reputation and whose influence on architecture since the war’s been out
1:25
of all proportion to the relatively small amount of their work to be built.
1:28
their school at Hunstanton Norfolk and the economist office building in St
1:33
James’s London embodied significant innovations but their chief interest
1:37
is housing and they’ve done much important theoretical work on it. This
1:41
site at Poplar however represents the first opportunity they’ve had to put
1:45
their ideas on housing into practice and inevitably perhaps it’s very far from
1:49
being just another lot of council flats.
PS: We regard it as a demonstration of a more
1:55
enjoyable way of living in an old industrial part of a city it is a model
2:01
an examplar of a new mode of urban organization and we think we have here a
2:09
site big enough so that when it’s finished you’ll be able to smell feel
2:15
and experience the new life that’s being offered through your full range of
2:20
senses.
AS: A general objective when we get a new site is to knit together what is
2:28
good in the surroundings by the insertion of a new building to inject
2:34
thereby new life even to buildings and things that are old and tired. Right from
2:42
the start we began to identify with a site to put down mental roots hooking
2:50
onto rosebay willowherb, the children overturning wrecked cars, the smell of
2:55
curry on the stairs, rejected tenements, oddments of past character or obvious
3:04
large identifying fixes of the district or the city or even the region in our
3:11
case, the big power stations. In the late forties and early fifties when we first
3:19
started thinking about housing the lack of identity and the lack of a pattern,
3:25
any pattern of association we used to talk of objects as found, that is
3:32
anything and everything can be raised by association to become the portrait of
3:38
the ordinary and in this way an industrial site is very easy to identify
3:46
with compared with a semi detached housing estate a site on an industrial
3:52
blight or ones industrial heritage depends how you look at it can very
3:59
easily be used to renew a district to re-identify and become a real piece
4:07
of urban renewal. This is something to do with urban scale and that industrial
4:14
sites are somehow forthright and honest. This may be a personal thing as coming
4:22
from the Northeast we see the ships as connectors of people to their district
4:28
and to the world outside. On this side the ships can be a decoration to the
4:35
urban scene – the ships on the Thames approach the Isle of Dogs turn at right
4:42
angles and go past. The river is the biggest fix of all a big geographical
4:50
fix there are also two historical fixes which affect our site. The East India
4:57
dock of 1806 and the 1844 railway.
5:04
AS: When we started work three and a half years ago and you could still walk up to
5:10
the fifth floor the now-demolished tenements you could look over the
5:15
upcoming roar the tunnel traffic into the East India dock. Calm sheet of water a
5:24
few ships. Now when we’ve reached the fifth floor level again it’s being
5:30
filled and when you should be able to see it from the houses you won’t be able
5:36
to. We’ll be left with a handful of China shards on the site maybe ballast from
5:45
the East Indiaman, maybe cargo fallout used locally
5:52
This is not to say we relied on the East India dock or any other fix for
5:58
support.
5:59
We realize you’re in a situation of flux and change. The life has gone from the
6:09
two historical fixes on site and the ships on the terms are literally passing
6:18
either down to TIbury if the container port opens or to Antwerp and
6:26
Delta port if it doesn’t. We realize you have to be strong enough to be
6:33
self-supporting. Big enough to be self-supporting, that you have to carry
6:40
the full responsibility for renewal of your part of the district and ultimately
6:47
of the city
6:48
PS: The site is bounded on three sides by very heavy traffic on the left the
6:55
northern approach to the Blackwall tunnel at the bottom the east in your
6:59
dock road which shared you to grow from a four-lane to a six-lane highway and on
7:04
the right by Cotton street the main feeder road to the Isle of Dogs.
7:10
We’ve tried to overcome the problems of this high level of traffic noise in a
7:15
number of ways. At the edge of the back line of payment as near as we can get
7:20
the source of noise we put an acoustic wall which is higher than motorcars
7:25
which throws the noise back towards the road instead of allowing it to pass
7:30
through towards the building. But to stop it looking like a prison, the wall panels
7:36
have angle gaps between them – so if you walk along you can seek keep seeing
7:41
through but there is no direct path for sound to pass through. Inside this a line of
7:49
trees helps to break up the sound of traffic, and the building’s themselves
7:54
have been deliberately organized to create an area in the center of the site
7:58
protected from noise. A stress-free zone. The buildings are not organized like
8:04
filing cabinets one after the other.
8:06
The site has been split like a kipper with the same functions on the inside in
8:12
each building on the outside we put the noisy next to the noisy that is the
8:18
walkways or decks and the living rooms – but the living room themselves are
8:24
protected by these vertical pieces which stop noise traveling across the face of
8:29
the building and by designing the windows so that they can check in a
8:33
position that admits air at the top but present prevents the entry of direct
8:38
noise at the bottom. With these various devices we can get the noise level in
8:44
the living rooms down to a reasonable level. On the inside away and protected
8:51
from noise we place the bedrooms and the kitchen. The kitchens are so planned that a
8:56
mother can keep an eye on a two to three year old child playing out on the access
9:01
deck on one side and also from time to time
9:05
look down on the other side into the into these play spaces which are
9:10
intended for the somewhat older children. In the middle of the stress free zone
9:15
the ground is modeled upwards to discourage people from playing football
9:19
and so making excessive noise though provision for
9:23
football is made elsewhere on the site. The mound doesn’t look very large on the
9:29
model but it is in fact two stories high and it will be surprising eminence
9:34
within the flat landscape of the site. There is already in London one place
9:39
that has a central stress-free zone and that is Gray’s Inn. Gray’s Inn is still an
9:47
extraordinarily civilized place. It has become more livable as traffic has got
9:54
worse by contrast to the areas surrounding it.
9:57
Its little pool of calm in central London is one of the real discoveries
10:03
almost of the last 10 years. The idea that one could having rooms,
10:09
chambers there looking out onto this quiet central tree-filled area is marvellous.
10:14
AS: London has these simple good spaces but above this scale there’s virtually nothing.
10:22
London really has never faced up to being more than a collection of villages.
10:27
PS: No, the idea that you could have a collection, a scatter of events
10:34
as a city it is quite acceptable to us providing of course that the
10:39
communication systems work well. But, when the city becomes big when the city
10:46
becomes an urban region the scale of the parts, the scale of these events that the
10:51
pieces of the scatter, the scale of them’s got to be increased so that it
10:56
matches the scale of the urban region and that the scale of the communication
11:00
systems the scale of its leisure areas the scale of the zones of operation of
11:06
the city all about to get bigger and more obviously structured and inter
11:11
related to one another
11:13
Structured and interrelated so that they can be read as easily by ordinary people
11:18
as we hope our building will be read. This site is just big enough for us
11:24
to say and for people to read a whole sentence in the language of architecture.
11:29
The language of architecture is something that can both explain and
11:34
enhance the use of a building.
11:36
Thus in an old building you recognize where the door is because it
11:41
is identified by portico. In a new building we have to produce equivalent
11:46
symbols which indicate where you’re supposed to walk in, where you drive, where you bring
11:52
the dust cart and so on.
11:54
On this site we’ve cut moats in the ground on the traffic side of the buildings and
12:01
there all vehicular movement and garaging take place. So coming to the
12:06
building as a walker from a bus stop
12:09
you never come into contact with vehicles and conversely the driver of the
12:13
dust card has no fear of knocking down an old lady.
12:17
Similarly the building’s themselves explain how they are intended to be used.
12:21
These long horizontal recesses can only be decks for walking along, and the entry
12:27
points to them by way of lifts and stairs the vertical movements are clearly
12:32
indicated by the change of scale and volume. On the decks there are what we
12:37
call “eddy places” outside the front doors where the dwelling takes a piece
12:42
of the deck for itself so your doormat is not kicked aside by the passers by
12:47
and you can put out a few pots of plants or leave parcels. This “eddy places” is out of
12:54
the general flow of movement along the deck. The deck itself is wide enough for the
13:00
milkman to bring his cart along, or for two women with prams to stop for a talk and
13:05
still let the postman by, and the building also explains its use in that
13:10
wherever you need to take hold of something or move around some woodwork
13:14
of concrete element then there’s a smooth rounded corner. Its form will
13:22
respond we hope to the way people want to live now with their equipment, their
13:27
domestic appliances, and their cars. In a way it would be like the first Georgian
13:34
Square in london it will be to outsiders something that they can, they can
13:40
immediately see is a new form and to the people who live in it it’s it offers a
13:47
a place with a special character that in which will release them and change them
13:56
and be capable of being lived in generation after generation. At the turn
14:05
of the century architects dreamed of garden cities and in every town and village in
14:15
England we see council houses built, built, and building right up till
14:19
today which are the children of the garden city idea – and in the twenties in
14:27
the heroic period of modern architecture the models, the prototypes, developed on
14:34
the continent for a simple clean sun giving architecture are now being built
14:40
in England in the Sixties. What we have now is people living in these clean
14:47
sun-drenched boxes with fitted carpets inside and vandalism outside.
AS: The
14:57
realities of our working life are going to be traffic, noise, air pollution,
15:04
vandalism, lack of quality.
PS: And the theory developed in the twenties and thirties
15:11
the simple architecture in which there will be few cars. This, this dream this
15:20
model has been overrun. Overrun by the glut of the supermarts and the glut
15:26
on the roads.
AS: The accuracy of the brief given to architects makes for the reality. It
15:37
aids the architect’s accuracy in pinpointing the dream.
15:42
The brief given to our outside architects by the Greater London Council
15:48
is continually being revised by feedback from tenants and from their own
15:55
maintenance people. The GLC are probably the world’s best briefers of Architects
16:01
in this sense certainly I, I’ve never heard of any better. But although this is
16:07
done very responsibly the building of this mutated dream by all the people
16:13
concerned, it seems that the GLC really got very small thanks from Society for
16:18
this because when we take foreign visiting architect around these sites
16:24
they’re literally horrified at the amount of vandalism we see.
PS: But
16:30
funnily enough that doesn’t seem to change one’s own attitudes towards
16:34
building. That is that we we still feel under an obligation to give the absolutely
16:39
that the – to provide the best possible quality irrespective of what people
16:47
expect and what treatment it it’s going to get,
16:50
nevertheless it’s very depressing for the contractors and the buil, the
16:57
builders, the contractors, the subcontractors and the architect to feel
17:01
that all the effort they’re putting in is going to be – much of the effort that
17:05
that they put in is going to be smashed up.
17:07
AS: I mean society at the moment asks architect to build these new homes for
17:14
them but I mean this may be really stupid we may have to rethink the whole
17:20
thing it may be that we should only be asked to to repair the roofs and add the
17:26
odd bathroom to the old industrial houses and just leave people where they
17:31
are to smash it up in complete abandon and happiness so that nobody has to worry
17:36
about it anymore. You know we may be asking people to live in a way that that
17:43
is stupid. They may be just want to you know be left alone.
17:49
PS: One of the men are inside said that this
17:51
what we were trying to do with too good for the people that were going to live
17:54
in it and we find this a unacceptable but to say that it’s too good but one
18:04
wonders why that’s what why one feels like that and I suspect that it’s partly
18:09
historical, that is that architects have always felt the need to build not for
18:18
the occupying generation but for, to sort of body out the ideals of their period in a
18:25
way that they could be felt by the by generations that follow. In the East
18:32
London there are five or six very famous churches. One of them is close to this
18:38
site St Annes Limehouse by Nicholas Hawksmoor. Now Hawksmoor couldn’t have
18:46
cared I suspect why he was asked to build these churches. They were built
18:51
buy having a coal tax with which the program for building them
18:59
was abandoned halfway through
19:00
in fact the things that happened him, the way the money was raised very similar to
19:05
the situation now, but he built in the best possible way and the building has
19:11
lived on through 10 or 15 generations into the present carrying the kind of ethos
19:17
of the early 17th century to us now and we feel in the same way an
19:24
obligation which is outside of the present financial or economic situation
19:29
to build for successive occupying generations.
AS: Unless a building outlasts
19:36
its first users we get no body of choice that is there’s no pool of housing from
19:44
which people can choose how to live, where they want to live
19:49
and more important you get no buildup of a comparable body of quality. This was
19:59
the situation we stepped into after the war completely vandalised environment of
20:05
anything will do, make do, you know there were no possible standards because
20:12
there was nothing – nothing decent to compare things to. Therefore maintenance
20:19
of quality objects is a real cultural necessity. Londoners are not particularly
20:26
good at this I don’t think they really know about it, that is if culture of cities was a
20:31
criteria for joining the common market, any African state would have as good a
20:37
chance as Londoners have.
PS: If we’re not to be torn apart by our differing
20:43
individual natures as makers and destroyers society has to to to to make
20:48
a framework so that the that the the makers can get ahead of the destroyers.
20:55
AS: Although it’s not the architects business to talk about, think about up mechanisms
21:03
for changing the responsibility for housing in order to combat vandalism it
21:12
is our duty to speak about it in order to safeguard the architects dream of what
21:19
housing could be like and there are obviously understood ways, such as giving
21:26
a tenant full responsibility for keeping the house and the outside the
21:30
door step and the grounds in perfect condition to hand onto the next
21:37
generation who after all are an extension of ourselves they’re not some
21:42
nebulous character
PS: At the moment there is a terrific lack of fit between those
21:50
things which people own, the way people treat things they own and the, the way
21:55
they think about and treat what is in the public
21:59
area of ownership.
22:03
This is reflected terribly obviously in the, when you go to any, any dwelling
22:09
any house in any part of the country the inside is almost always well-kept well
22:15
furnished, clean. The outside, particularly in state housing. Broken lifts, smashed-up
22:24
glass in entrance halls, all the things we all know, know about. The architect is in
22:31
a strange situation, but he can recognize that the peoples aspirations about how
22:37
they wish to behave.
22:41
That’s a funny way of putting it, are
22:45
changing that is in spite of the vandalism, that people are learning to
22:51
expect a style of life which has more quality, and in a sense more control
23:02
and this is most clearly seen in the leisure pattern.
23:06
Ironically enough an opportunity to extend this leisure pattern on a huge
23:11
scale is being missed not far from our site.
AS: The scale of the London Docks is the
23:16
sort of scale we’re talking about this is an area equal to medieval London and
23:22
yet it’s a tiny area scene in the whole greater london in region. A few water
23:32
parks at that scale not needing grass-cutting no trouble with
23:36
footballers wearing the surface off. This water as leisure pleasure structured
23:44
housing groups is the european fashion at the moment. For Tower Hamlets such a fashion
23:51
is an economic bonanza like having an oil well in the back garden, or backyard
23:57
in their case. France has a regional plan
24:01
which is Rousillon to Languedoc virtually Marseille to the Spanish border
24:06
of water pleasure structured towns. As well as this there’s development all
24:17
along the coast, and architects Spoerry has built his dream of what housing could be
24:26
like in relation to water using for this town traditional provincaI materials
24:33
and the peasant language of architecture, but his dream was of a pedestrian town
24:40
and the house owners in Port Grimaud take the cars into load/unload but take them
24:48
outside to park. Therefore this town is a pleasure to use, it works it’s a real
24:56
economic success the sort of place you can take your children to to the beach
25:01
and they can go get an ice cream and you just don’t have to worry about it – and it
25:06
only started in June 1966. We, we could allow ourselves such
25:14
pleasures in London we needn’t be so puritanical about the fact that
25:19
the dock water is right next the River Thames and so near the Lea Valley leisure
25:25
pleasure grounds. Venice sinks in the mud, they’ll be round collecting to save it.
25:32
Prop it up. We could have a a new Venice in London. It’s virtually the same size if
25:42
you take from St Katharine’s dock by the tower to East India Dock which is by
25:49
our site.
25:50
The people who will live in Robin Hood gardens will use this way out of London
25:56
in their cars. They’re the privileged few in our society they enjoy the welfare
26:06
state they don’t have heavy taxes to give them angst and it’s not for them to
26:13
worry about the quality of the motorway, the fact that the fences are inconsistent the
26:20
lampposts are ugly or there are too many signs the bypassed and the bypasses are
26:29
unprotected, the generation younger than ours extremely depressed about the lack
26:36
of quality in the road program, considering so
26:43
many roads are being built in Germany and in America. It’s as if we were a country of
26:48
ostriches but our attitude to motorways, ring ways is at last, a chance of a great reversal.
PS: A chance
27:01
at last to get all traffic out of domestic environments. We are longing for
27:08
the day in which the motorway pattern and the mass transit system lines can settle
27:15
down so that we can get on with the job of rebuilding a quiet more humane living
27:22
environment.