Granite City is in thrall to the Philistines
Published in Sunday Herald on 24 Jan 2010
A Russian oligarch with a taste for bling has a new vision for Edinburgh.
He wants to fill in historic Princes Street Gardens, along with a good part of the Haymarket to Waverley railway line, and use the space created to build a car park and retail park, right in the heart of one of the world’s most architecturally-distinguished cities.
Horrified? Keep your wig on, that couldn’t happen in the capital. True, the city council there has shown serious lapses of judgment – 17-storey skyscrapers and the like – but it isn’t quite that stupid.
A scheme of comparable folly, however, is being advanced in reality in the Granite City, and despite its grotesque ridiculousness, it still hasn’t been knocked on the head. Anywhere else, it would be laughed off as the vainglorious fantasy of a man with a hubristic ego, deep pockets and nil aesthetic sense. But in Aberdeen, it is being taken deadly seriously by the city’s elected representatives and planners.
Sir Ian Wood, right, a home-grown billionaire whose not inconsiderable fortune comes from North Sea trawling and oil, has offered to donate £50 million for a “City Square” project, to which ratepayers and taxpayers would be expected to contribute a further £70m. This would fund the covering over of the unique green park at Aberdeen’s core, Union Terrace Gardens, to create two-and-a-half acres of underground shops and car park on three floors, plus five acres of flat concrete space at street level. If you are struggling to envisage this bloated proposal, the resulting space in the city (population 200,000), would dwarf even Red Square in Moscow (population 10.5 million).
Union Terrace Gardens are the linchpin in Aberdeen’s distinguished cityscape. They occupy a natural amphitheatre, a sylvan, yet urban space, accommodating a road, a railway, a river, numerous flights of steps, all interspersed with enviably mature trees. They ought to be a non-negotiable part of the city’s heritage. They afford us a quintessentially Aberdonian vista, that beautiful contrast of greenness and solid classicism created by brilliant architects of the past such as Archibald Simpson and John Smith.
From the domes of St Mark’s Church and His Majesty’s Theatre to the symmetry of the public library, many of the city’s monumental granite buildings are set off by their juxtaposition with the natural softness these gardens provide. Sir Ian’s scheme, which has been championed by Aberdeen City and Shire Economic Future, a body comprised largely of business interests, wants to throw away this irreplaceable civic heritage to create yet another utilitarian, functional development that will debase everything around it. And for what? So that it is even easier than it already is to stagger a few feet from your car into a shopping mall? The word “philistinism” springs to mind.
There are those who subscribe to the view that there is something retrogressive about leaving public spaces such as Union Terrace Gardens or Princes Street Gardens pretty much as they are. I am not one of them. Following the rule now borne out by repeat observation that the newer the development, the worse it is, and noting how the car-centred retail developments of today routinely turn out to be the under-performing, mouldering white elephants of tomorrow, I am inclined to stick with the cityscape bequeathed to Aberdeen by the more enlightened urban planners of the past.
Even if you think change is desirable, there is an altogether more enlightened alternative plan on the table in the form of the Peacock Visual Arts scheme for a new cultural centre. It is a design that is unarguably modern, but capable of blending in harmoniously. The gardens could be retained but regenerated, at a fraction of the cost to the environment and the public purse. This project has full planning permission and 75% of the funding is already assured. But if it does not get the go-ahead by March, then Aberdeen will lose most of the £9.5m it has raised, and over £1m of taxpayers’ money that has already been spent on developing the scheme will go down the drain. It is quite staggering to think that the council is in danger of pulling the plug on this credible, approved scheme, while it pussyfoots around with an oil tycoon’s folly.
So it’s make up your mind time for Aberdeen.The oil years have changed the ethos of this fine town, whose enlightened city fathers once had the vision to plant trees they would never see reach maturity for the benefit of future generations. Today the city is all about materialism, bling cars, big steaks and bugger the past. Even within Scotland, Aberdeen and its surrounding area now looks like territory all but ceded, by fawning politicians and planners, as playgrounds for new-money magnates – the Trumps and Woods of the world. These days, the Granite City seems semi-detached from civilised European culture and ever more enthralled by the unhealthy consumerist values of corporate America. Is that how Aberdeen wants to be seen? The thousands of signatures stacking up on the petition to save Union Terrace Gardens suggest otherwise.
Pulling the tartan down over our eyes
Published in the Sunday Herald on 7th June 2008
HAVE you noticed how Donald Trump has suddenly come over all Scottish?
En route to Aberdeen to convince a planning inquiry to OK his precious housing development and golf course on a rare and fragile site of special scientific Interest, he means to remind us of his frankly rather weak Scottish credentials, by visiting the Lewis home of his dear old mum - may she rest in peace - who left the island in her teens to pursue the American dream.
While he's on Lewis, Trump has conveniently agreed to "discuss" the restoration of Lewis Castle, near Stornoway, a baronial pile built in 1847 that Western Isles Council wants to revamp as a hotel and museum. The inference to be drawn is that Trump just might - though no guarantee is given - consider digging into his deep pockets to help the restoration effort.
Trump likes inferences. He more or less flounced off in a huff when Aberdeenshire Council's planning committee turned down his development on environmental grounds, letting it be known that he was speaking to Ian Paisley (now there's an unpleasant thought) with a view to taking his development to Northern Ireland. That's classic Trump: exit stage left like a Shakespearean character, muttering dark threats, then trying to persuade local bigwigs to clinch the deal behind closed doors.
And surely there's a further inference we are meant to draw from Trump's PR tactics? If we humour him by granting permission for his hopelessly inappropriate Menie Estate development, then he might feel more inclined to support Lewis Castle's restoration. Who knows, keep him sweet enough, and Trump might turn into a latter-day Andrew Carnegie, endowing the length and breadth of Scotland with concert halls and libraries.
Western Isles Council may well be delighted to entertain him. It is trying to drum up £7.5 million for the project, so any publicity and all notes of interest, however speculative, are to be welcomed. Doubtless council representatives will smile their way through Trump's cheesy press conference, designed to cast him in a favourable light. Trump, the Scottish emigré, returned home as a billionaire. Trump, doughty defender of our romantic but crumbling heritage. He'll be instantly added to the ranks of great Scots in the diaspora, along with the likes of Sean Connery and Gordon Ramsay, people who do not live in Scotland but nevertheless make it part of their brand.
But hang on a minute, have we got the right guy here? Trump is not to be confused with HRH the Prince of Wales, environmentalist and tireless defender of antique buildings from Beijing to Basingstoke. True, they both have hair issues. Charles's mop is somewhat lacking on top. Trump's forward-combed, Liberace-esque coiffure may look like a bad wig, but if internet trichologists are to be believed, it is a different matter entirely, a grizzly case of inappropriate, outmoded hair replacement techniques.
No, hair apart, Trump and HRH are very different kettles of fish. I can't see Trump going for long improving walks admiring dry-stone dykes, unless he's measuring out the perimeter of his latest development. Nor making cultural visits to National Trust properties and nature reserves. No, romping around in the penthouse suite of some 42-storey luxury gated skyscraper apartment block with a Botoxed blonde former 1970s Playmate of the Month is more his style.
This tartan crusader wouldn't happen to be Donald Trump, he of skyscraper, airline, condominium and casino fame, owner of the Miss Universe Organisation, author of books including Think Big And Kick Ass In Business And Life, How To Get Rich, The Art Of The Comeback and The Art Of The Deal? This wouldn't be the man who devised the US prototype for Mean TV's bullying and nasty programme The Apprentice, would it? The guy so puffed up with his stratospheric wealth and importance - between bouts of bankruptcy, that is - that he tried to patent the phrase "You're fired"?
It looks like Trump is already working on his next book title - How To Get Away With Building Whatever You Like. Step one: pick a small, impressionable country for your development, one with a slight inferiority complex that's keen to strut its stuff on the world stage. Step two: play it off against another small, impressionable country with a slight inferiority complex that's keen to strut its stuff on the world stage. Step three: threaten it with the stick of losing potential revenue and world renown for a glittering top-drawer development. Step four: dangle lots of carrots, or sweeteners, that cast you in a suitably philanthropic light. Step five: sit back and let local worthies fight your corner for you.
Somehow, I just can't take Donald Trump any more seriously as a Scot or a benevolent, visionary developer than I can believe Shell is really a company with family roots in the Niger Delta, wholeheartedly committed to the environment and championing the rights of indigenous peoples.
What are we in Scotland? A dignified people with respect for our natural environment and heritage, or a bunch of gullible chumps who will sell it down the river whenever the first Flash Harry shows up in town?
