and Many Politicians
and Many Steeped in Nostalgia – in Hock to old Hatred of Change
Maintenance is a totally necessary, but very boring, part of Life. It is much easier (and in the UK at least, heavily subsidised) to Build New. And it is much more fun, so much so that politicians for instance often choose to set-up photo opportunities at which they can seen, of course, wearing a ‘hard-hat’ and probably wielding some instrument of labour such as a trowel or a spade, illustrating just how close they are to the common man. This, added to determinants in the Planning system such as restrictions upon population densities, can mean that quite large buildings (and indeed whole Estates) are destroyed to make way for replacements that are not necessarily much better and are, of course, subject to the same laws of nature, the (quite probably unfulfilled) needs of maintenance just as with what was replaced.
Peter Deakins friba cld.ucl - NOTES from BATTERSEA 