The place seems desperate to move you on as discreetly as possible. Indeed that is how most people first experience Croydon – travelling through. On a journey into or out of London, you find yourself in this hidden metropolis with its strips of tower blocks scything out through the south of the city, its post-industrial sprawl. It’s like a town from the future. Perhaps it is a peephole into a future of British townscapes where all commercial space has been let to vast retail warehouses or towers of business. If that is the case then the car is the natural vantage point to observe it from, that is how it designed to be seen. In the future, all towns will be viewed from a car window.
Post-industrial is the key term. Croydon was a response to the decline of British industry. It was a blueprint for a new kind of economic development: one where the mass retail and service sectors would propel the economy forward. This goes some way to explaining the disdain it is held in by many people. As your pass through it, the landscapes screams “Nothing is made here! We move objects back and forth, we sell information and services, but neither hand or machine will give life to something new.” The smokeless chimneys of Ikea serve only to throw the absence of production into high relief.
The development is anathema to the fading dream of this country as a workshop of honest labourers and skilled artisans. This alienation is what drew me to Croydon. It had been positioned – has positioned itself outside of the expectations of all self-respecting towns. It has sought its own path and it doesn’t care what its peers think. It has at its heart a dream of being the first of a new wave, of being the trailblazer for 21st century living. Croydon dreams of being the avant-garde, an outsider artist making strange sculptures from it own flesh.
Towards Croydon
Are we there yet?
The place seems desperate to move you on as discreetly as possible. Indeed that is how most people first experience Croydon – travelling through. On a journey into or out of London, you find yourself in this hidden metropolis with its strips of tower blocks scything out through the south of the city, its post-industrial sprawl. It’s like a town from the future. Perhaps it is a peephole into a future of British townscapes where all commercial space has been let to vast retail warehouses or towers of business. If that is the case then the car is the natural vantage point to observe it from, that is how it designed to be seen. In the future, all towns will be viewed from a car window.
Post-industrial is the key term. Croydon was a response to the decline of British industry. It was a blueprint for a new kind of economic development: one where the mass retail and service sectors would propel the economy forward. This goes some way to explaining the disdain it is held in by many people. As your pass through it, the landscapes screams “Nothing is made here! We move objects back and forth, we sell information and services, but neither hand or machine will give life to something new.” The smokeless chimneys of Ikea serve only to throw the absence of production into high relief.
The development is anathema to the fading dream of this country as a workshop of honest labourers and skilled artisans. This alienation is what drew me to Croydon. It had been positioned – has positioned itself outside of the expectations of all self-respecting towns. It has sought its own path and it doesn’t care what its peers think. It has at its heart a dream of being the first of a new wave, of being the trailblazer for 21st century living. Croydon dreams of being the avant-garde, an outsider artist making strange sculptures from it own flesh.