HIGHLIGHTS OF 2020

Despite the challenges of lockdown, the Society still managed to run a full programme of events for 2020 and the new technology meant we had more people attending our talks and tours than in previous years

As with so many others, The London Society’s plans for 2020 were almost completely thrown by the successive lockdowns and social distancing measures. That we were able to put together a programme at all is thanks to the flexibility of our theme ‘curators’ and our speakers, adapting many of our scheduled meetings into ‘webinars’, and devising virtual tours in place of walks and visits.

Our main events for 2020 centred around the theme of ‘public’, with talks scheduled on public housing, art, transport, public space and even public houses. Although some events couldn’t happen, in many cases the repurposing of the talk for an online audience actually added to the experience. For example, The London Ambler’s (Mike Althorpe) planned walks about public housing translated well, with Mike able to have aerial shots, Google Street views and historical images to trace various areas’ development. And what David Knight’s ‘virtual pub crawl’ lacked in refreshment, it made up for in the breadth of the places that could be covered. And our regular Planning School was able to take an international perspective, with contributors from Paris, Tokyo and Boston USA joining us online to compare and contrast the experience of those cities with that of London. The Planning School will return this year, as will the Architecture School. The Society’s role as a forum for debate for London came to the fore in an event cohosted with the OnLondon website on Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs). This was - unlike the LTN arguments on social media - conducted with civility and with both sides genuinely engaging, demonstrating once again that Twitter is not real life. We also looked at how the city is experienced by different groups within it. We Made That’s events on the public realm examined how places are used differently according to age and to culture, and how they need to be designed accordingly. Professor Panikos Panayi talked further about the migrant experience of the capital in a discussion of his new book “Migrant City”, and Dominic Burris North charted the City of London’s links with the transatlantic slave trade in a virtual tour.

The most commented-on talk of the year was writer and broadcaster Robert Elms’s Banister Fletcher Lecture entitled “Cities Need Slums”. Several hundred watched the event live, and well over 1,000 have subsequently viewed the recording. A full write-up appears elsewhere in this Journal, but Elms gave a truly invigorating cry from the heart on how the rush to ‘improve’ the capital threatens to destroy the very things that give London its dynamism and creative energy. What the challenges of 2020 taught us was the resilience and flexibility of our speakers and experts and - more importantly - of our membership. Virtual attendances this year exceed the usual ‘physical’ numbers, and we had attendees from all over the UK and even further afield. The lessons we were hurriedly forced to learn when lockdown hit will allow the Society to extend its reach even once ‘normality’ returns, with plans in place to continue our online broadcasts of talks so that as many people as possible are able to access them.

We look forward to seeing you - whether in person or virtually - in 2021.