1960's/70's "New Town" Horror and Control

[pandamania]

I have been reading a lot lately about how many city planers all over Europe (in every case toffs, Lords, millionaires...) destroyed established traditional urban communities in city cetres and moved them to either high rise towers in the city centre, or banished to distant suburbs with no amenities/public transport our even shops.

I am starting to think this was a strategic move by the elite.

I myself was a victim of this "progessive modenisation" twice in my childhood and I am convinced the more I read about it, the more I hear other people's stories about their own "urban planning" misery that this was a planned systematic programme on behalf of the elite to destroy these tight-knit communities. To use a US Deep South saying "burning down the woodshed and the Ni***ers can't whisper to each other".

Sure, we hear about how their lived in slums, but they were moved to slums. Just slums made of pre-cast concrete rather than ones made of brick. But with one main difference, they were slums which would not be self sustaining and dependent on supplied access or exit either via lifts or limited roads.

Has anyone of this forum been a victim of this working class inner city social and cultural holocaust? Or have any information on the govement ministers, architechs and other guilty parties? I feel there is a whole hidden history behind this New Town/Urban Resettlement stuff of the 60's and 70's which has a very sinister motive.

If you look at revolutions and uprising they always came from such communities. I suspect that stacking potential trouble makers in giant towers or in distant suburbs would make any logistical or tactical efforts to fight the system almost impossible. In a tower block you block the lifts and stairs and the defenders are starved, in a remote suburb you block the few access roads in same thing. Whereas in a network of inner city streets and alleyways, escape and supply is much more easy and looking at Stalingrad do you think the elite learned a lesson on how to build cities in such a manner "the problem communities" were unable to defend during times of social upheaval.

The blueprint for these new towns were from the 1930's with Albert Speer the Nazi's favourite builder and Robert Moses another individual with some very interesting connections.

I also suspect that herion was trafficked into poor British and Irish communities during the 1980's for the same reason.

Comments?

[xxxx]

sounds plausable enough. communitys don't exist within tower blocks people are afraid of each other. and theres always a drilling sound coming from somewhere at 8.30am on a sunday morning. always.
the thing you said about heroin being introduced to the poor brits and irish in the 80's sounds right too, like crack was introduced into the black ghettos. drugs are a sedative and if they're illegal then they appeal to the segment of society that 'needs' sedating. and also they're a great reason to lock people up too. double whammy.

[bicycle]

I have been reading a lot lately about how many city planers all over Europe (in every case toffs, Lords, millionaires...) destroyed established traditional urban communities in city cetres and moved them to either high rise towers in the city centre, or banished to distant suburbs with no amenities/public transport our even shops.

I am starting to think this was a strategic move by the elite.

I myself was a victim of this "progessive modenisation" twice in my childhood and I am convinced the more I read about it, the more I hear other people's stories about their own "urban planning" misery that this was a planned systematic programme on behalf of the elite to destroy these tight-knit communities. To use a US Deep South saying "burning down the woodshed and the Ni***ers can't whisper to each other".

Sure, we hear about how their lived in slums, but they were moved to slums. Just slums made of pre-cast concrete rather than ones made of brick. But with one main difference, they were slums which would not be self sustaining and dependent on supplied access or exit either via lifts or limited roads.

Has anyone of this forum been a victim of this working class inner city social and cultural holocaust? Or have any information on the govement ministers, architechs and other guilty parties? I feel there is a whole hidden history behind this New Town/Urban Resettlement stuff of the 60's and 70's which has a very sinister motive.

If you look at revolutions and uprising they always came from such communities. I suspect that stacking potential trouble makers in giant towers or in distant suburbs would make any logistical or tactical efforts to fight the system almost impossible. In a tower block you block the lifts and stairs and the defenders are starved, in a remote suburb you block the few access roads in same thing. Whereas in a network of inner city streets and alleyways, escape and supply is much more easy and looking at Stalingrad do you think the elite learned a lesson on how to build cities in such a manner "the problem communities" were unable to defend during times of social upheaval.

The blueprint for these new towns were from the 1930's with Albert Speer the Nazi's favourite builder and Robert Moses another individual with some very interesting connections.

I also suspect that herion was trafficked into poor British and Irish communities during the 1980's for the same reason.

Comments?

Reminds me of when I stayed in Belgrade for a couple of weeks, rows upon rows of ugly looking high rise flats. Whilst the elitist planners mostly live in big mansions out in the countryside with high security.

[truthseeker1980]

Very good points, have never thought of it that way, but due to your points, it made me think this could be why they are knocking down all the pubs to build more flats, so there is nowhere to go and meet socially and discuss the problems we all face, other than town centres where you have to stand up all night and cant communicate due to the really loud music in these pubs.

Has anyone else noticed that social places seem to be knocked down and never replaced, there was a bowling alley in my area for years they knocked it down to build flats but haven't replaced it, together with pubs, swimming pools, leisure centres and cinemas, there are hardly any ameneties anymore, they expect us to stay locked up in our houses.

[pandamania]

Very good points, have never thought of it that way, but due to your points, it made me think this could be why they are knocking down all the pubs to build more flats,

In Ireland the pubs remain, but what they have become is some kind of SKySports Delivery System. Every pub in Ireland has a giant TV with some pointless football game from the UK blasting as incredible volumnes.

I was in a pub in a small Irish town last week and the place was tiny. Perhaps 25 feet long by 12 foot wide with a bar running the whole lenght. On one end of the bar was a Plasma TV with one Sky SPorts Channel on the other end of the bar the same thing, but tuned to a different Sky Sports Chanel. A radio was also blasting at incredible levels and there were 2 blokes in there enjoying a "nice quite drink after work". To use the term "madness" would be an understatement. This is 90% of all the pubs in Ireland now. There are impossible noisy shitholes of SKYSports and 4 brands of mass produced piss beer.

Not too long ago Irish pubs were quite places of conversation and often traditional music. Now they are sensory assulting shitholes were the some Budweisers-filled moron in a Premiership jersey getting emotionally involved and shouting at a TV match between Crystal Palace and Wigan.

The days when Irish families went to pubs and "talked a little treason" are long gone.

This is all done with the Government blessing as many of our elected representatives are publicans or from publican families.

[steevo]

Great thread pandamania.
I am always talking to people (including my other half) and mentioning that the breakdown of our communities are to blame for all the anti-social problems and I explain how they are closing down our pubs which in the past were used to meet up and chat to put the world to rights.
TV programs (especially from the US) from the 70s and 80s and right up to the present day (eg the TV program "Friends") always were glamourising high rise apartments and it worked on me SORT OF in that I sort of thought of apartments as glamourous but I could never understand WHY people liked them and what the supposed attraction was in them.
There are tons of "APARTments" being built right now and there are even new ones being planned that cost only £50,000 each. People will think "what a bargain" but little do they know what lies in wait for them in the future .

Another reason for making apartments atractive is to brainwash people so that they dont want a garden. Gardens are social places and also allow a certain amount of self sufficiency.

[pandamania]

TV programs (especially from the US) from the 70s and 80s and right up to the present day (eg the TV program "Friends") always were glamourising high rise apartments and it worked on me SORT OF in that I sort of thought of apartments as glamourous but I could never understand WHY people liked them and what the supposed attraction was in them.

To be fair, I lived in a high rise apartment in the USA and it had a doorman, was spotless clean, thick walls and well finished. But it was not cheap. But it was a nice place to live. It was my choice to live there.

The council tower block I grew up in early 80's Dublin had a the obligatory junkie with AIDS dying in the doorway, the lifts were broken, women gave birth on the filthy stairs because the lifts were always broken and walls were thin and weird endless noises all night long which never stopped. More importantly, nobody lived in them by choice.

Still it was better than when the family was sent to a New Town far outside Dublin city proper, with 4 buses a day, one shop for several thousand people, no jobs, no nothing and a pointless bleak green belt between it and any outpost of civilisation. That was much worse.

In both these cases the concept of social engineering was very much a driving factor. Well off city "planners" and architects were treating human beings like cattle. Many of these sociopaths with PhDs were paid massive salaries and toasted as men of vision with no consideration given to the communities they destroyed.

Many of them would later bemoan the lack of the "traditional family structure among working class communities" in modern society, yet it was these creeps who caused it.

The theme of bizarre and unexplained noises which destroys sleep within these council tower blocks is such a common tale that it almost seems at times that this was engineered into the design on purpose!

[pandamania]

Also shouldn't Semi-Detached be really called "Complete Attached to the Side of Another House"?

[cruise4]

"I am starting to think this was a strategic move by the elite."

It certainly was. They are long term planners. Cities are designed to be what exactly? That's the question that would concern me now, at this time. They have ensured most people live in completely unnatural environments, from houses, shops, schools, to work locations and conditions.

Another prime example of 'incrementalism' and ideal breeding grounds for Problem reaction Solution scenario's.... and haven't we seen them... Immigration, knife crime, inner city slums, inner city development (Ha), hanging about on street corners, drugs, surveillance, congestion, supermarket's, parking... it goes on and on and on.

ALL planned.

[sevenworlds]

The council tower block I grew up in early 80's Dublin had a the obligatory junkie with AIDS dying in the doorway, the lifts were broken, women gave birth on the filthy stairs because the lifts were always broken and walls were thin and weird endless noises all night long which never stopped. More importantly, nobody lived in them by choice.

Ha, sounds very familiar.
I grew up in a similar environment in Edinburgh from the mid-80s until about 4 years ago. A council estate with 3 hi-rise blocks, built in the 60s (originally advertised as luxury apartments! :D) and eventually pulled down just a few years ago. I'm told there was a good community feel when they were first put up but by the 80s, it all started going downhill, junkies being shoved in from anywhere, lifts increasingly broken, noisy neighbours (really strangers by then).

The biggest problem in my time there was the dampness. Towards the end it was ludicrous that people in this day and age were living in conditions like that. We lived on the 7th floor but the dampness got so bad they moved us down to the 2nd in the mid-90s and it didn't take long to appear there as well. After a long fighting campaign by residents they eventually pulled them down to build new houses. The demolition was shown on a cable channel and they mentioned the Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier as the main culprit for these tower blocks springing up all over Europe in the 60s and 70s. Apparently he had these visions of "communites in the sky". As has been mentioned, I suspect there was more to it than that.

Here's a nice little clip of them coming down:

Oxgangs Allermuir and Caerketton Demolition - YouTube

[pandamania]

Amzing the same story with the place in Dublin I lived. There were 7 towers and dozens of smaller blocks - some are still up. There are now building a new city there and it is a vast improvement I must admit, but it was also a land grab for Developers to build luxury apartments as it's halfway beteen central dublin and the airport and is on the new metro line. So they only regenerated it so they could move people with money in. Otherwise the original residents would of been left to rot.


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Ballymun_tower_2007.jpg
One of the Dublin 1960's tower blocks. Just like thousands of other similar failed "communities in the sky" all over Europe. Failed through no fault of the people who were transported to them.

[the seeker]

The move is away from such things. I think it was more a lack of understanding and poor judgment than some sort of planned conspiracy. You want to help unskilled and disenfranchised people live better lives, but in the long run you have to help them help themselves, not force an agenda upon them.

In the 1990's in the U.S. I was involved in developing communities of low income housing that were designed to be real, livable towns. We faced roadblocks at every turn, not because individuals did not approve of what we were doing, but because it was difficult to overcome the local codes and government agencies which had arisen out of earlier misguided attempts to help people. Wall Street was with us and our financing was strong, but still we struggled to overcome inertia. In the end we won, because now this movement is slowly overcoming old ideas.

All is evolution.

[pandamania]

Seeker, I think the US experience with "projects" is very different than the European one. The US is almost a racial classifaction thing. I took an American friend to where I grew up and he was amazed to find out "white people living in them projects!"

That's not what happened here in Ireland, UK and rest of urban Europe. It was nothing less than ethnic cleansing. Centuries old established communites were torn from city centres and put into these towers and New Towns.

The working class culture of inner city Dublin prior to the 1970's was incredibly rich and diverse. It had it's own musical and artistic legacy - there were songs, poems and endless other examples of folk culture and yet it happened in a very urban environment and not the countryside. There was also incredible bonding and kinship between these people. It was not uncommon for a mother and father of 10 child if they died of TB - that the neighbours would take one child each and raise it as their own, even if they were impoverished themselves. Did not matter, their humanity shone through. The seeds of Irish independence was born in centre of cities like Dublin, Belfast, Derry - just like the Paris Commune, the Glasgow Rent Riots...

This is why these communities were destroyed, they were too close for comfort for the elite and not fully accesible to police. The darkened alleyways and snugs in old pubs were breeding grounds for revolutionary ideas. Put them in a tower block or distant suburb and stick Murdochvision in front of them and make sure they do not know nor trust their neighbours around them.

Result: Instant control.



During the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland this wall really meant something. Hence why the British Army were sent in to shoot dead civil rights protesters on Bloody Sunday (and no, I am not an Irish nationalist or anti British in that sense, just saying what happened and why) - It's also no coincidence that you meet the nicest and warmest people in places like the Bogside in Derry.

Compare that to the respectable middle class suburbs were they are all behind closed doors switching the TV to the outside CCTV camera if a person walks their dog past the house. But hey, "it's a great place for raising a famliy!"...

http://www.mindfirerenew.com/AB_0_007__________Free_Derry_Mural.JPG
This is what "they" fear the most. A Free area in all cities.


One interesting and revealing transcript of the Bloody Sunday massacre was that the IRA intelligence unit intercepted a phone call between the British Army Officer on that day and Max Hastings the BBC reporter. The British Army officer were clearly distressed at the events and Hastings in his best BBC accent stated "I hear your boys happen to make a few stiffs in the Bogside....Splendid!" To which the British Army officer replied. "No, it's not splendid if they are civilians which it looks like they all are...this is terrible!" And then Max Clifford of the BBC in his best public school accent responded "My congradulations to you and your boys on a job well done."

CLICK..........................................dia l tone.

The tragic irony is that the people who were shot that day were paying Max Hasting's massive salary via their TV licence fee.

"They" have it well wrapped up don't they.

[steevo]

This is why these communities were destroyed, they were too close for comfort for the elite and not fully accesible to police. The darkened alleyways and snugs in old pubs were breeding grounds for revolutionary ideas. Put them in a tower block or distant suburb and stick Murdochvision in front of them and make sure they do not know nor trust their neighbours around them.
http://www.mindfirerenew.com/AB_0_007__________Free_Derry_Mural.JPG
This is what "they" fear the most. A Free area in all cities.

I totally agree with this. This is the sort of stuff I say to people/neighbours all the time.