Les transports à Londres

BARD                                                                                                                       11/10/17

Daphné

TS4                                        

 The challenges of a global city

In order to stay a global metropolis, a city faces major urban challenges.

The first document is a text drawn from Regenerating a Global City written by Tim Butler and Chris Hamnett in 2010 and the text talks about London’s transportation issues. The second document is a caricature drawn by Cluff in 2008, criticising South East Londoners’ living conditions.

What are the challenges faced by London, and how does it try solve them?

       As a global city, London is facing issues in its public transportation system such as permanent congestion and a lack of affordable housing near stations.

With the increasing population and tourism, the needs are different than they were nearly a hundred and fifty years ago, when the system opened in 1863 without the oversight of a planning commission. So the old network lines are not as effective as before. They lack “uniformity and reliability and to not have sufficient transport capacity”. The West and North parts of London are well connected to the transport network, but the subway is very overcrowded between Oxford Circus and Canary Wharf (more than 4 people/m2)

Also, Cluff's caricature shows how ridiculously overcrowded the South and East housing situation is. The South and East districts are where poverty and social insecurities still persist, they are historic industrial centres where workers and foreign populations live in difficult conditions. The politicians and greedy developers are saying that they dont see any problem packing yet more people into the South East and the Londoners are compared to dogs living in kennels. This is caused by the housing rents rising more and more every year; the rising cost of rents and real estate is due to gentrification.

London has considered solutions for these issues, but their solutions have limits.

As a solution to the transportation problems, the city has installed a new project that should be finished by 2017, the Crossrail project (compred to the Parisian RER). 2 years ago, the Thameslink project was completed, widening the network lines to the east and the west. The Crossroad projects wants to expand the public transport the the north south and east area, so they are developing the new line in cheaper parts of London where they were poorly served.

But this project is causing a controversy because of the impact it may cause on “some formerly impoverished neighbourhoods” : gentrification. If the South East area is better distributed by the public transports, it will be a lot more accessible, so the prices in rents and real estate will increase. As a result, the poor can no longer afford to live there, and wealthier households will replace them. But some parts of the South East will stay “isolated” so the that’s where the politicians and developers will “stack” the poor, workers and foreign populations.

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