The Developing City: a Tweet Review

On Wednesday 5th I visited The Developing City, an exhibition documenting the changing configuration and architecture of the City of London, from its Roman origins through present day construction, before speculating on its future development up to 2050.

Looking east along the Thames toward the City circa 2050?

Yesterday I recorded a number of my scathing thoughts about their 2050 vision in a series of tweets. Today it occurred to me that this ‘mini-review’ could be recorded on this blog using WordPress’ recently added ‘Twitter Embeds’ function (update 8th Sept: this function is erratic, so I eventually gave up and decided to use the html embed codes generated by Twitter itself—see comments below). So, here we go:

Visited #developingcity exhibition at the Walbrook yesterday. Nice architectural models. Hilarious vision of the City of London circa 2050.

— Jonathan Waring (@jonathanwaring) September 6, 2012

Some weird pre-2008, New Labour, CSR fantasy. Art & cultural quarters, greenery on the Thames & a wind turbine or two will save us.

— Jonathan Waring (@jonathanwaring) September 6, 2012

Guys, the future will *not* look like that. At best it will look totally different (aka #fullcommunism), at worse…

— Jonathan Waring (@jonathanwaring) September 6, 2012

Lots of big developers & City of London Corp sponsoring—0% corporation tax zone exactly what we need then—who would that be to benefit, eh?

— Jonathan Waring (@jonathanwaring) September 6, 2012

The future vision part seems to come from architecture / store-design firm Gensler. There’s an iOS app of their vision: bit.ly/Od61qp

— Jonathan Waring (@jonathanwaring) September 6, 2012

LOL, Gensler ‘2nd largest architecture firm in the US’ has flash-based website. And you’re predicting the future for us, are you? Dream on.

— Jonathan Waring (@jonathanwaring) September 6, 2012

Exhibition runs until Sunday. As I said, nice scale models (inc. full scale model of the City & environs), some interesting historical maps.

— Jonathan Waring (@jonathanwaring) September 6, 2012

But looking into the future, a grim chuckle is the best you’re going to get. #developingcity

— Jonathan Waring (@jonathanwaring) September 6, 2012

So, that’s my little experiment with Twitter Embeds. They could be put to more interesting use recording discussions, such as this Twitter conversation I documented manually a few years ago. However the authenticity of using the ‘actual tweets’ would need to be balanced against the possibility that the tweets, or the tweeting account, might be deleted at some point in the future.

A new financial centre at Aldgate, set within a landscaped ‘high park’…