Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
The Hell that is Wood Green
Yesterday, I had the misfortune to find myself in the shopping mall. Walking out the big automatic doors and into the crowd of Star Wars pub extras who were smoking, spitting and squabbling on the footpath I witnessed what for me sums up the whole carbuncle on the arse of Haringey that is Wood Green High Road. One of the characters stormed through the crowd with his status dog in tow. I was reflecting on the fact that ‘status’ dogs don't seem to work (as the people who have them only ever seem to be what everyone else in society would consider low status). Everything suddenly went quiet except the ever present sirens. The status dog had stopped and released its copious bowels all over the footpath. It was like turning on the light in an HMO; the cockroaches screamed and scattered. The dog owner laughed and walked on. It was probably one of the most disgusting things I have seen or smelt in London. Eventually the crowd returned and watched the next horde trample the mess up and down the road. There was no-one to turn to, no-one to clean up and more importantly no-one with the authority to challenge and/or shoot the dog owner. Things just returned to normal.
The whole experience made me think how the council, local police and traders believe that we're all animals if they are happy for us to have to deal with this every time we go to the High Road. It's easy enough for me to hop on a bus and head off to Crouch End or Islington or even Enfield to shop but if you're older or disabled and have trouble getting around or not enough money for the bus it must be pretty grim to face it every day. Imagine how the standard little old lady dreads heading out into the crowds, litter, phlegm, smoke and anti-social behaviour of Wood Green every morning to get the milk.
Short of manning water cannons at each end of the High Road and employing some mercenaries with batons to control the crowds, I don’t know what can be done. Are there any clever ‘nudges’ or interventions that could improve Wood Green? Is it a matter of tarting the place up and hoping that the crowds respect their new surroundings? Is it signage to remind, and in many instances educate, people that spitting, littering and barging into other people is just not the done thing? Or do we just give up, bulldoze the lot and install a waterhole in the middle and let the law of the jungle and the status dog owners prevail?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Dominic on
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It's not necessarily the architecture that's to blame IMO. I think the building itself could be better (particularly the staircases up to the car park, etc.), but the shop units are pleasant enough. The two centres you mention (Barbican and Brunswick) are both surrounded by affluent residents, this can't be a coincidence. Maybe as the gentrification of Haringey pushes ever Eastwards Shopping City will get caught up in the wave of change? It's still a way off and will need some serious investment to make it happen, but I'd love to have a Waitrose in Wood Green, a Lego Shop would be even better!
Baby steps though. Maybe the first thing is a zero tolerance approach to the behaviour that kicked off this thread? Why don't the council track down the perpetrator and heavily fine him, and destroy the dog in the process? Why don't the owners of the "Mall" lend a hand in tracking these people down? It really isn't rocket science... I can't imagine this behaviour being accepted at Westgate.
Overall though, despite my earlier statement about the architecture not being the problem, I agree with one of the views in the c20 article that these shopping centres "are amongst the least happy monuments of post-war British modernism."
Bluewater for me! :)
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Permalink Reply by Finsbury Park Ranger on
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There are lots of room for more tree's and vines, that would make a massive difference. It's like a gardener was never let near the place.
I would aim for a general post apocalyptic overgrowth over the whole 'city' and add a massive fish tank somewhere and a large family of parakeets just for fun.
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Permalink Reply by Rachella on
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My question to the "no traffic" camp is: Where should the traffic go? People live in Victorian homes on both side of Shopping City. I live in one of them: Noel Park, the historic conservation area to the north/east of the high road. Would you have our homes bulldozed and a highway diverted through our neighbourhood?
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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That's what the council want to do. Modern traffic theory says that it just magically disappears. I don't buy that 100% of it will disappear of course and I would rather it went past the shops than people's houses.
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Permalink Reply by EMC2 on
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Todays Ham & High:
New figures have revealed that breathing the air in Haringey is almost twice as likely to cause your death as breathing it in Cornwall.
The figures, published by Public Health England (PHE) last week, showed 81 deaths in Haringey in 2010 were attributable to long-term exposure to “particulate air pollution”.
It means 7.1 per cent of all deaths in the borough were in some way due to bad air quality.
In comparison, 3.8pc of deaths in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly were associated with pollution.
Across London, it is estimated fume-filled air can be blamed for causing more than 3,000 deaths, while across the UK it accounts for almost 29,000.
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Permalink Reply by Sharon on
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On the other hand though, Eugene, one would probably die early of boredom living in Cornwall, which, let's not forget has its own social problems at the moment. High levels of unemployment and poverty.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Lol
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High Road this evening...
Folk with status cars are definitely more dangerous than folk with status dogs...
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Permalink Reply by Protheroe O'Shea on
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Was he trying to jump the busses?
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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"As the gentrification of Haringey pushes ever Eastwards".
Yes, that seems to be more or less the solution as seen by developers and our Tory-policy Council. But in one of the most unequal - if not the most unequal - boroughs in London, that's not much of an answer for perhaps half of the present residents, is it?
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
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