The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

Part IV: Tactical Filters
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Patrick Wright
PW: I do think historically; indeed, I reckon that one of the main pleasures of
writing lies in pulling forgotten threads of the past through into present visibility.
But I am also aware of the saddening fact that the endeavors of previous
generations do often seem to disappear into nothing, or leave just an
empty street full of cars, which seems to be where we are ending the century.
In the 1980s, with all those changes going on, history came to seem weirdly
disconnected. The old postwar machinery of “progress” had ground to a halt,
and there was a morbid sense of ruin everywhere. I was eager to bring a fuller
sense of history into view, to show the causes and effects that were often obscured
by this new gothic sensibility, and perhaps to clarify options too. But I
wasn’t about to prescribe a future in the manner of the old thinkers of the Left
who behaved as if history was some sort of magic carpet ride.
I once received a note from the dramatist David Hare. He told me
that I seemed to have an appetite for mixing up the jump leads, that having
read A Journey Through Ruins, he didn’t know what to think and, if I remember
correctly, that his head hurt. My response was to say that when it comes
to Left and Right, the jump leads are confused, but that it was history, rather
than just me, that had muddled them up. The confusion is the reality that
we’re in, and we had better come to terms with it.
I’m not good at divination, but a future of sorts is now engulfing Dalston
Lane, and I’m not so sure that I’m entirely innocent. My book came out
in 1991, and was soon being cited in the background of Hackney Council’s
successful application for City Challenge funding—as further evidence of deprivation,
I’m afraid. And now Dalston City Challenge is remaking the place.
The old Town Guide Cabinet—a timewarped guide to the borough next to
which I put Sir Alfred Sherman and Lord Joseph—has been removed and replaced
by tasteful York stone. And I gather that the vast old music hall, a
building that houses the New Four Aces Club and also the Club Labyrinth,
and which David Widgery once described as a dub cathedral, is due to be demolished
and replaced by yet another new shopping mall.