Travelling to Harlow

Me and Mrs Daggerdukc travelled out to Harlow in Essex, a new town I used to work in during my twenties - Piers Morgan and i apparently frequented the same college, though I was a teacher of sorts. Anyway, while I worked there, I kind acquired a liking for the place and every now and then I've been bored, I've visited it just to see what new thing are going down. I'm particularly taken with the layout devise for it by Frederick Gibberd (sorry if I've spelt his name wrong, I'm feeling too lazy to crossref). I like the sense of green space all around the centre, and, although it is unashamedly car-centric, out of the all the new towns I've visited, this one seems to be built on a human scale. Though it has its fair share of blight and decay, it has stood well the test of time by comparison with say, Craigavon, where Mrs D'D originates from. Of all the planned-for utopias our governments have indulged themselves with creating for us proles, Harlow seems to have come out of the potential for dystopia rather well and old Gibberd can congratulate himself for having the foresight to plan the spaces so well, in harmony with the countryside around it and for refusing compromise when the government was urging new towns to cram as many citizens in as they could.

So - things to like about Harlow:

The sense of space.

The contrast between the green landscape and planned city feel - eg, the tower blocks planted in the middle of town which look out over green hills. The Lawns, built in 1951, is Britain's first tower block and now a grade II listed built, deservedly so.

It feels like a proper community has grown up. This is perhaps because the original settlers were picked from the North London boroughs of Islington, Edmonton and Harringey. Peterborough never felt like much a community when I spent a good deal of time up there.

The way it has had good times, bad times, but never so bad that it has tarnished the residents' in the same way that happened in Corby.

The fact that it has some great civic architecture without allowing middle class artists' indulgences to get the better of it. The Passmore pavilion in Peterlee, Co Durham, for example, is a building I rather like, but it was plonked into a working class district, probably in a well meaning gesture to 'better' the lives of the scum who live there (I'm not saying that Peterlee residents are scum, but they, like 99 percent of the rest of us, are seen as such by the great 'n' good. Harlow experienced nothing in a way of vanity art, but it did get a massive and very gorgeous town park which really does feel like the grounds of a manor house and must be considered one of the most well laid-out in Britain.

The fact that it is a town. With boundaries, which end. So all the sprawl is planned for sprawl - it hasn't just drifted outwards and outwards, being filled in with execu-homes when and where the big building companies decree that they'll spill them there.

Bad things about Harlow:

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO THE WATER GARDENS AT THE SIDE OF THE HARVEY CENTRE? Could a Harlolw resident please answer me this question? This was my favourite bit of civic architecture OF ALL TIME and now the pisswits have killed them. Twunts. I almost cried when i saw the oh-so-average flats that now occupy the space. City centre flats are great and all that, but not at the expense this beauty.

The quite awful transport excuse-for-a-system. Not so much the transport links actually, which are up the crapola standard of any given provincial town in the South East, but the almost complete lack of information available. Like timetables on bus stops, you know. And the fact that its so close to London, but so inhabits a different world transport wise. My thanks must go to the chap(ess) who maintains the saucily named but essential www.harlowride.co.uk website. Despite it sounding like the punchline to an Essex girl joke, without the information which he or she must glean from thin air from what I can tell from looking around, a public transport user is screwed. Too many companies - no link, co-ordination or indeed anything between them. Typical mentally impaired Tory transport policies still in action. Kenny Livingstone, for making London's buses sane, for that in itself, I salute you.