Whether or not Boris Johnson runs for another term as London Mayor or whether he heads off to the shires to prepare his assault on Downing Street, he will have left a very peculiar built legacy in London. Where Ken Livingstone saw letting developers get their way as something of a Faustian pact, attempting to extract “planning gain” – public realm works, affordable housing, etc – in exchange for permission to build, Boris has no qualms about giving rich builders carte blanche, and is fond of a good old-fashioned vanity project.
First came the ArcelorMittal Orbit, the utterly pointless and aesthetically inept viewing platform for the Olympics, and then it was the Emirates Air Line, the similarly pointless cable-car river crossing. There is the New Bus For London, a bigger, heavier, more pointless bus than what Londoners had before, not to mention the ill-fated Barclay’s sponsorship of Cycle Hire. Johnson’s usual strategy is to find a mega-wealthy sponsor to contribute some – but not all – of the funds required to build his urban trinkets, in exchange for branding opportunities and no doubt various other negotiated preferences. And in Sydenham, south London, it looks as though Boris might be trying to build his grandest, most pointless project yet.
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