Playing the Environment Game - ACE042.2

Caption: "The Arts Council is concerned with all the arts. Architecture is the art that determines our environment. In 1973/4 the Arts Council mounted and toured an exhibition called ‘How to play the Environment Game’. It looked behind the appearance of our cities and named the forces that shaped them. This film examines some of the issues raised by the exhibition." St Paul’s Cathedral with clouds speeding past in time-lapse cinematography. The side of a large concrete and glass office block, traffic, road-building. Demonstration with banners saying "London belongs to us – The People", "Covent Garden Community", "People not Cars", etc. Speakers at rally include Peggy Ashcroft. The Angel of Peace statue on Wellington Arch; commentary introduces three groups campaigning against changes to "London’s fabric". Christopher Booker and Bennie Gray who challenged a large corporation over plans for Tolmer’s Square; a member of the Covent Garden Community Association talking to residents about redevelopment plans; local community group in Notting Hill making a video about an enquiry into local housing problems. The statue seen to be surrounded by cranes. Commentary says that "the rules favour the developer and make our cities almost unrecognisable". Housing. Immigrant communities. Overhead photographs of St Paul’s and surrounding area, pre-war and after post-war rebuilding. Commentary says it is not so much change itself but the scale and speed of change that is causing problems today. Huge office buildings. Redevelopment in London docks area and elsewhere. Big businesses want to be in London, and government offices occupy enormous space. The possibility of making large financial gains has "inflated commercial rents, disrupted the fabric of old-established communities, and … created … speculative development". The Euston Centre. Commentary names the developer, Joe Levy, and claims that he plans such programmes over many years. It describes the nature and results of deal Levy made with the London Country Council which enabled them to widen the Euston Road in exchange for planning permission for a much bigger site than the one he relinquished to them. Tolmer’s Square, near the Euston Centre, the land for which is now too valuable for the Council to build housing on it. On a roof-top, Christopher Booker introduces himself and Bennie Gray, and points out Tolmer’s Square and the surrounding area. He says that Levy is doing a deal with Camden Council in which he will get permission to build another office block while subsidising a Council housing development on land he has been buying up for many years. Run-down houses in Tolmer’s Square, many now empty. Gray talks about an offer made to one woman for title to her property, far less than the building is now worth in the context of potential redevelopment, and describes this as one facet of the technique of "site assembly".