City observation 3: the other side of the Westway, Acklam Road

The neighbourhood is both bisected (west-east) and bordered (on its eastern side) by major and intrusive transport infrastructure. The west to east Hammersmith & City underground line is still above ground in this area: the line cuts across Portobello Road via a bridge, descends to ground level immediately thereafter (Westbourne Park Station), and only goes underground a couple of miles further east towards central London.

Immediately parallel to “the tube” is the Westway [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westway,_London] – a 4-6 lane elevated highway completed in 1970, and a shining example of brutalist traffic management, which carries the great majority of car and truck traffic entering London from the West. Bordering the area to the immediate east is the multiple-line railway coming from the west into one of London’s main rail stations, Paddington. Just beyond the railway lines, and intersecting with the path of the Westway, is the Grand Union Canal [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Union_Canal], one of the major transport routes of 19^th century London.

The traditional urban residential forms of “old” and wealthy Notting Hill are therefore overshadowed and dominated by these transport infrastructure projects, only one of which, the tube, serves the local residents. The Westway and the tube also mark a sharp border between the largely 19^th century housing stock to the south and the predominantly post-World War II, mainly public (or, in the UK, “council”) housing stock to its north. The area is dominated by Trellick Tower [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trellick_Tower], an iconic modernist 31-story high rise, designed by Erno Goldfinger and completed in 1972.

Our area of focus is how the fabric of urban life intersects and interacts with these massive intrusions. Are they unmitigated negatives for the immediate area or has the neighbourhood been able partially to adapt to, or even been hybridised by, these structures, with advantages to be gained from their presence? Also, the strengths of the area reside in its cultural mix (white British, African-Caribbean, increasingly Moroccan, Somali, Spanish

and Portuguese) and its history as an incredibly vibrant and dynamic “incubator” of youth culture in fashion and particularly music. For anyone interested in punk rock in the late 1970s-early 1980s, some of the great bands of that era (The Jam, The Clash) had close associations with the area, as can be seen in some of their album covers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dB-OMDwoO0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jas0vAzFP20

From the top of Tavistock Crescent (about 100m from the end of All Saints Road) you can cross over the tube tracks via a pedestrian footbridge just short of Westbourne Park Station, which leads you under the Westway to Acklam Road. At the moment the footbridge is little used – mainly as a shortcut to and from the housing estate; and as you can see from the pictures, as you continue down the footbridge over the concrete base of the Westway’s foundations onto Acklam Road, the road itself is currently barely a service alleyway for the rear of the housing estate. The area appears to be something of a triangular dead zone: trapped between the looming shadow and noise of the Westway on the southern edge, the railway lines to the east, and with the housing estate built (for good reasons) with virtually blank facades and minimal entry points facing the road to minimise the impact of the flyover and railway on the life quality of its residents.

 

 

 

However, I would argue that there are a couple of very interesting indications that there is much more to Acklam Road than appears at first glance, and that it has good potential to develop into something much more useable and valuable. One of the most interesting things about the Westway, despite its massive intrusiveness into the neighbourhood (visual and in terms of noise) is the degree 

to which it has been “colonised” over time by human activity, a bit like a jungle reclaiming an abandoned settlement. The spaces under the Westway have been used as sports grounds,

climbing walls for rock climbing practice, pony and horse riding schools, and have in many places around Portobello new building construction has taken place for workshops, offices, and market stalls. The immediate area around the footbridge is awful, simply a fenced-off car park for local council vehicles and the cctv cameras necessary to make them more “secure”. But if you walk 30m down the road you will see one of the best skateboard parks in west London has been built in under the roadway, attracting a constant stream of teenagers.

 

 

Looking in the other direction, you can also see a couple of interesting indicators. First is a small modern complex of office and mixed work space (Westbourne Studios, which backs onto the tube station and faces a small fenced-off area of waste land). Second, directly next to it, is a recently-built Islamic centre, constructed to a high quality. Lastly, following Acklam Road further up with the train tracks to the right, there is a small row of light industrial/warehousing buildings. None of these uses, either individually or combined, is sufficient at the moment to attract a critical mass of people. However, a planned intervention by the local council in conjunction with a private developer could potentially transform the area. There is plenty of space directly under the Westway that, as has been done elsewhere, can be retrofitted with built space – for example a mixture of retail, bars and restaurants on the ground floor, linking with the tourist traffic on Portobello Road, with rental workshop or office space on the floors above, with Acklam Road being largely pedestrianized. There is also a high level of demand in west London for affordable but decent hotel space – a reasonable sized hotel aiming mainly at young and budget tourists, with good

access to Portobello and Westbourne Park tube station, could easily replace the light industrial buildings and provide additional all-day and evening activity to the area once it has begun to develop. Any buildings would have to be built with high standards of sound insulation for obvious reasons. Another key problem would be light: being to the north of the Westway, Acklam Road is in permanent shadow and this could only be addressed by, for example, the use of industrial scale light tubes to provide reflected sunlight.

In addition, there is nearby the major potential feature of the Grand Union Canal. At the moment (except around the wealthier Little Venice area of west London about a mile to the east) it is largely unused. But there are many good examples of former industrial waterways being redeveloped to provide major enhancement to the local urban environment.

I won’t go into the history of Trellick Tower’s descent into a slum in the 1980s and its recent re-emergence as a sought-after residence and cult object, but will say that it is a good example of how a city of the size and variety of London can absorb and successfully integrate a variety of urban forms, so that most of them somehow work ok in the end. I leave you with The Clash performing 'London Calling' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfK-WX2pa8c] and two pictures involving Trellick Tower, the canal and the Westway.