I Am Here (in a Haggerston council estate)

Back in May I went for a walk round the Regents Canal. The building below stood out: brightly marked as condemned a target for regeneration, yet nothing actually generating there - nothing, in fact, happening since April 2007. It is set for demolition in 2011, so what a strange four years for its remaining residents.



That's what Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Lasse Johansson and Tristan Fennell thought too. They live there, and have been documenting the Haggerston estate in a programme they are calling FLAT (see http://haggerston-kingsland.blogspot.com/. This is what they did:

Boarded-up and half-empty housing estates have become familiar landmarks in the contemporary urban landscape. Their façades function as projection screens for collective fears and fantasies of troubled and dangerous environments that may lurk behind. This perception is all the more emphasized when rapid redevelopment encircles such estates with new luxury loft apartments and live–work spaces.

I Am Here intervenes in this dynamic of preconception and projection, replacing the 67 bright orange boards – which have covered the windows of empty flats in Samuel House since April 2007 – with large-scale photographs of residents on the estate.

"I am here", echoing the signs around the estate that inform you that "You are here". Perhaps critiquing this representation of 'here' as a geometric diagram, as if that's ever what being-in-place was really about. Claiming subjectivity, "I" - an assertion, an ownership, the right to the city - for all the people who aren't on the map bar a little red dot labelled "You".

WalkScore: Quantifying urban experience

WalkScore is a piece of genius that quantifies a neighbourhood's 'walkability'. Enter your street address or postcode, and it uses shop and amenity data from Google Maps to give your specific address a walkability score out of 100.

So what does this concept of 'walkability' entail? They say:

Walkable communities tend to have the following characteristics:

* A center: Walkable neighborhoods have a discernable center, whether it's a shopping district, a main street, or a public space.
* Density: The neighborhood is dense enough for local businesses to flourish and for public transportation to be cost effective.
* Mixed income, mixed use: Housing is provided for everyone who works in the neighborhood: young and old, singles and families, rich and poor. Businesses and residences are located near each other.
* Parks and public space: There are plenty of public places to gather and play.
* Accessibility: The neighborhood is accessible to everyone and has wheelchair access, plenty of benches with shade, sidewalks on all streets, etc.
* Well connected, speed controlled streets: Streets form a connected grid that improves traffic by providing many routes to any destination. Streets are narrow to control speed, and shaded by trees to protect pedestrians.
* Pedestrian-centric design: Buildings are placed close to the street to cater to foot traffic, with parking lots relegated to the back.
* Close schools and workplaces: Schools and workplaces are close enough that most residents can walk from their homes.

However, their algorithms are not this complex. (That'd be some pretty hardcore GIS!) Instead, they're working off Google Maps to assess the distances from a particular location to its nearest amenities, then combining these figures and finally ranking that location's cumulative walkable accessibility from 0 to 100, bad to good. This means it doesn't actually address most of the criteria of 'walkability' above. So is it any use - does it provide any assessment that makes real-life sense when compared with our own detailed, lived knowledge of places?

I'm impressed. I currently live in the City's northern inner suburbs in a nameless locale not quite part of half a dozen districts. My address gets a walkability score of 60, which I think bang on. 24-hr petrol station & grocery store 500m up the hill; a medium size Tescos 10 minutes walk a way, as is the tube. Bus stop outside the door, tailors and dry-cleaners 100m away, bank and library and coffee shops (aka civilisation) about 15 minutes up the hill and down again. Of course there are innumerable chicken'n'chips and pizza takeaways in walking distance - or should I say fat-arsed waddling distance? re. issues of obesity and food poverty - as easy access to cheap fried grease make up the very fabric of the City's 'burban fringes! But 60% walkable? I think so. Day-to-day maintenance is by-and-large local & walked - but for work, pleasure, socialising it's straight on the bus into Central.

Does me good. First place I've lived in this City that I've remained in for more than six to nine months...

...Though damn, yes, I still miss the yuppie student brat pad I shared in Bloomsbury a while back, affordable courtesy of a friend with a daddy who was 'something in mineral extraction'. Not quite up there with LSE's Russian oligarch-spawn and their penthouses in Covent Garden, but not miles away either... Walkability score 95% + Soho in 12 minutes = bliss.

Grew up on the edge of the City's commuter belt in a supposed market town that was more one big dormitory 'burb. Now, it's clear that Google Maps doesn't provide such good shops/amenities tagging outside the City - the library's not tagged, the sports centre's not tagged - and, more generally, there's a problem that newsagents don't seem to get tagged, when they're the standby saviour shop for residential areas. So perhaps the WalkScore for my childhood home of 5% is a little harsh - but shit, it felt that cut-off from any life, so I do not criticise too far!

My friend Ash: "I say keep hating your hometown: it encourages aspiration."

WalkScore currently works for the UK, the US and Canada - with more countries to be added soon. So give it a shot and tell me - how's its alogrithms compare to your subjective feel for your neighbourhood's walkability?