"The most astonishing and destructive thing never to happen to London," says the man who has spent twenty years researching the first true map of the unbuilt Ringways.
Really brilliant to shine a light on this! It's an interesting contrast to the story of New York I was introduced to by the recent 99pi podcast series rereading Robert Caro's biography of Robert Moses, 'The Power Broker.'
I spent a year of my life wading through the 700-odd very dense pages of The Power Broker which feels like a sort of hazing ritual, so I would definitely take a podcast version of it. (A few days after I finished it I read an interview with Donald Trump who claimed it was his favourite book ever, to which I go and how many chapters on Long Island freeways did you read.)
I listened to the podcast series too, and as a result I’m three quarters of the way through the Power Broker now. It might be one of the best things I’ve ever read.
Still unsure if it really is the greatest book ever, as certain men claim, or if once you’ve finished something that long we all feel the need to praise it or look silly. Could’ve done with an edit is all I’m saying.*
*applies to 98% of written word pieces in any format
Apparently when he first delivered it to the publisher they said it was too big to bind into a single volume and if he wanted it to be one physical book he had to make some cuts. He then took out 300,000 words. So in some ways we were lucky.
Similarly, I have always been interested in this. The excellent Jay Foreman did a great video on this many years ago which you can see on YouTube. https://youtu.be/yUEHWhO_HdY?si=YtdFyGx6vkQ6_kBR
Jay’s video is great and includes a piece of real insight which I love - he points out how the roads would have shaped the way we think about the shape of London. Today we talk about the M25 as if it’s the boundary of London and we refer to places by which travel card zone they’re in - if the boundaries had been as physical and obvious as this we’d all be talking about places being “just inside Ringway 2” etc.
Tremendous stuff on the Ringways. I’ve long had a bit about how cars don’t really work in London because so much of the city’s layout is millennia older than the infernal combustion engine, and this is also an interesting example of how that’s true.
These days I increasingly think that the private motorcar should be banned inside the north circular* and the city pedestrianised from Archway to the imperial war museum, and from
Notting Hill Gate to the Tower. We have the public transport infrastructure to make this work.
As someone living in Bethnal Green currently fighting to keep our LTN which the council wants to rip out, it's a relief that the plans to put a massive motorway right on my doorstep never happened. And linking to another of your stories Jim, it would probably have been a lot harder to make so much out of music festivals in Victoria Park if there had been the planned road building through the middle of it!
As a longtime South London resident this explains a lot - great article, thankyou!
Have to say I do wish they had built at least the Southern half of this. The ‘South Circular’ is an absolute joke compared to North London and most other large cities.
Jane Jacobs' 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities' sheds great light on this lunacy, the Ringway project heavily influenced by the works of Robert Moses in New York. Like Corbusier, Moses tended to oversimplify the human element of city life - the utter chaos he brought to New York's traffic system finally halted after demolishing the grand old masterpiece of Penn Station. Had he been allowed to continue razing districts, Moses would have eventually demolished the SoHo and Greenwich Village districts in favour of another expressway, presaging the lunacy of the Ringway.
As with all English imitations of American influences, ours was to be cheaper and more sinister (the layered, ablative facade of Southwyck House was designed to attenuate traffic sounds - the homes of nearly 150 families used as a living sound barrier).
Mercifully, the Ringway remains a horror for another age (though readers who regularly drive through Blackwall to Hackney via Eastcross may note that the A102 from Kidbrooke also has a section along Wick Road).
The East Cross Route adjacent to Victoria Park and south to the Blackwall Tunnell WAS built and destroyed much of Poplar. The borough was bisected and it deeply affected community life. My understanding is that Tower Hamlets was one of few boroughs that was willing to implement the proposals - I guess it made more sense in the context of the second Blackwall Tunnel being opened.
I have read about public protests on Cadogan Terrace who wanted a bypass as pedestrians/children were getting killed crossing the road by the Blackwall Tunnel traffic. It would be great to read more detail on this.
What an excellent read. Is there enough archive material to make this research into a book? The GLC illustrations are particularly striking, and really bring the consequences home. I posted the illustrations of the planned motorway dive-under at Highbury Corner to local social media recently and people were astonished that this was ever contemplated. It’s hard to put your head into a mindset where this kind of thing was possible. We have much thank the protestors for.
Really brilliant to shine a light on this! It's an interesting contrast to the story of New York I was introduced to by the recent 99pi podcast series rereading Robert Caro's biography of Robert Moses, 'The Power Broker.'
I spent a year of my life wading through the 700-odd very dense pages of The Power Broker which feels like a sort of hazing ritual, so I would definitely take a podcast version of it. (A few days after I finished it I read an interview with Donald Trump who claimed it was his favourite book ever, to which I go and how many chapters on Long Island freeways did you read.)
See David hare's "Straight Line Crazy" next time it comes to town.
Like Trump can read anything longer than a McDonalds box.
I listened to the podcast series too, and as a result I’m three quarters of the way through the Power Broker now. It might be one of the best things I’ve ever read.
Still unsure if it really is the greatest book ever, as certain men claim, or if once you’ve finished something that long we all feel the need to praise it or look silly. Could’ve done with an edit is all I’m saying.*
*applies to 98% of written word pieces in any format
Apparently when he first delivered it to the publisher they said it was too big to bind into a single volume and if he wanted it to be one physical book he had to make some cuts. He then took out 300,000 words. So in some ways we were lucky.
Similarly, I have always been interested in this. The excellent Jay Foreman did a great video on this many years ago which you can see on YouTube. https://youtu.be/yUEHWhO_HdY?si=YtdFyGx6vkQ6_kBR
Jay’s video is great and includes a piece of real insight which I love - he points out how the roads would have shaped the way we think about the shape of London. Today we talk about the M25 as if it’s the boundary of London and we refer to places by which travel card zone they’re in - if the boundaries had been as physical and obvious as this we’d all be talking about places being “just inside Ringway 2” etc.
Tremendous stuff on the Ringways. I’ve long had a bit about how cars don’t really work in London because so much of the city’s layout is millennia older than the infernal combustion engine, and this is also an interesting example of how that’s true.
These days I increasingly think that the private motorcar should be banned inside the north circular* and the city pedestrianised from Archway to the imperial war museum, and from
Notting Hill Gate to the Tower. We have the public transport infrastructure to make this work.
*With exemptions for mobility issues.
How very Robert Moses
As someone living in Bethnal Green currently fighting to keep our LTN which the council wants to rip out, it's a relief that the plans to put a massive motorway right on my doorstep never happened. And linking to another of your stories Jim, it would probably have been a lot harder to make so much out of music festivals in Victoria Park if there had been the planned road building through the middle of it!
This is excellent and so fascinating, thanks Jim!
As a longtime South London resident this explains a lot - great article, thankyou!
Have to say I do wish they had built at least the Southern half of this. The ‘South Circular’ is an absolute joke compared to North London and most other large cities.
Jane Jacobs' 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities' sheds great light on this lunacy, the Ringway project heavily influenced by the works of Robert Moses in New York. Like Corbusier, Moses tended to oversimplify the human element of city life - the utter chaos he brought to New York's traffic system finally halted after demolishing the grand old masterpiece of Penn Station. Had he been allowed to continue razing districts, Moses would have eventually demolished the SoHo and Greenwich Village districts in favour of another expressway, presaging the lunacy of the Ringway.
As with all English imitations of American influences, ours was to be cheaper and more sinister (the layered, ablative facade of Southwyck House was designed to attenuate traffic sounds - the homes of nearly 150 families used as a living sound barrier).
Mercifully, the Ringway remains a horror for another age (though readers who regularly drive through Blackwall to Hackney via Eastcross may note that the A102 from Kidbrooke also has a section along Wick Road).
Leon Rosselson wrote a song about the Ringways: https://youtu.be/_w2pu6fixjE?si=SUfq2uP7BLrL0psk
Oh wow, I didn’t know this! Thank you
The East Cross Route adjacent to Victoria Park and south to the Blackwall Tunnell WAS built and destroyed much of Poplar. The borough was bisected and it deeply affected community life. My understanding is that Tower Hamlets was one of few boroughs that was willing to implement the proposals - I guess it made more sense in the context of the second Blackwall Tunnel being opened.
I have read about public protests on Cadogan Terrace who wanted a bypass as pedestrians/children were getting killed crossing the road by the Blackwall Tunnel traffic. It would be great to read more detail on this.
What an excellent read. Is there enough archive material to make this research into a book? The GLC illustrations are particularly striking, and really bring the consequences home. I posted the illustrations of the planned motorway dive-under at Highbury Corner to local social media recently and people were astonished that this was ever contemplated. It’s hard to put your head into a mindset where this kind of thing was possible. We have much thank the protestors for.
I’d love to write a book on it and I keep threatening to. There’s a lot more behind it, I think it would be well worth doing.