Philobiblon

I was leafletting yesterday in some local tower blocks. I was last there canvassing in April, just after a major restoration was completed, and they were really looking quite good. Although my fellow canvasser found the wholly internal staircases, and the level of deprivation of some of the residents depressing, I was asked into a couple of flats for a chat and found them lovely inside – well-lit and airy, and was feeling quite positive about the future of the blocks.

Going back, however, was depressing. The stairs are now covered with a wide range of bodily fluids, spliff butts, beer bottles, etc, and I found that most residents are simply ignoring their door buzzers.

Part of the estate restoration involved expensive installation of an extensive security system – outside gates and door security, but clearly this has failed. (And general report is that it is frequently not working (probably not helped by the thoughtless installation of a gate blocking a major pedestrian and cycle route that used to be used by many and is unsurprisingly now frequently vandalised).

Clearly the lock-it-down approach has failed, and probably only encouraged a fortress, fearful mentality.

So what would help? Well clearly one aspect of the problem here is our society’s massive failure to deal with the problems of drug use (including alcohol) – the “war on drugs” is clearly part of the problem.

And this would surely be a case for a concierge system (installed in an excellent tower block I know not far away). And proper daily cleaning – some of the dried vomit had clearly been there for quite some time – would help to improve the atmosphere.

And no doubt the flats would benefit from community-building efforts – why I wonder is the uninspiring half-dead lawn around the flats not a community garden?

But there is clearly a major problem with these structures: there’s only four flats on each floor, and residents use one of the two lifts, which means they only take a couple of steps from their front door to the exit – they’re highly unlikely to meet their neighbours, and no one (except the odd leafletter like myself) is likely to use the stairs, leaving them as orphan territory, an invitation to illicit use.

The human impact of this all was brought home to me by a young girl, perhaps nine or so. She was with two friends who were knocking on the door of a flat, calling for a friend, as I approached down the stairs. I opened the lobby door to three frightened faces, cowering back. As I left, the fear was explained: “I thought it was the ‘maddie'”, one of them said to the others. Those stairwells are clearly having a real impact on their lives.

My general approach is to try to salvage all buildings – the environmental and social cost of demolition is enormous and usually undercounted. But I do wonder if we wouldn’t be better off without those particular blocks.