It is a truism that the destruction of London wrought by the Luftwaffe has been exceeded in the decades since World War II by the destruction wrought by developers and planning authorities. Among other things, London has been consecrated to the automobile. I remember a few years ago traveling from the blessedly car-free Venice to London. That first day in the English capital, I thought I would have a nervous breakdown. I momentarily despised the place, until I was reacclimated and felt, as I always do in the glow of London’s peculiarities, that I was, spiritually, at home. Recent decades have seen London doubly ravaged, by the new architecture, often of the most hostilely Corbusian variety, and by the automobile.

It was conceived thirty-five years ago, and has been under construction for fifteen years.

Nowhere is London more ravaged than in the...

 

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