On Corporate Green
It is 8.47 and the 172 bus is clawing its way through the steel mess of Elephant & Castle. I am late for my 9 a.m. lecture and can barely see through the misty window I’ve been pressed up against on the bottom deck of the bus. I cannot see the cyclists leering through stagnant traffic only inches away but I can make out red lights emitted from cranes, and in particular, the very same red lights at the top of what seems to be at least a thirty-storey building. It is, for the time being, a concrete shell - travelling up and up through morning fog so it appears that the building has made it into heaven. I want you to feel the weight of this building, God’s gates are crimson above me and they loom over a roundabout that has been stuck in time, the cranes have been frozen and commuters struggle to move along in icy coats. I find it ironic that the developers of buildings like these have made it closer to salvation than the rest of us below.
It is no mystery that London is in dire need of housing. In Elephant and Castle alone, 13,000 council homes have been lost since 1999 (1), and while groups are campaigning (with reasonable success) for developments in Southwark to dedicate 35% of their houses as affordable, their demands are still simply to get developers to meet the minimum requirements set by Southwark council- something that should never take thousands of activists and innumerable protests to achieve.
What I really want to tell you about is not the London housing crisis, but something that also fills me with intolerable dread. Below the skyscraper, soon to be turned into restaurants made for ghost towns and penthouses for nobody - stands a short wooden screen. Not much taller than you and I, let’s say that it is around two metres tall. It is a very distinct shade of green. I am certain that you know what shade of green I am referring to, on this wooden board. It is one that the ultra-rich deem the most beautiful colour in the universe! But it is not the green that you see on the dollar bill - it is much darker. An emerald green perhaps. You will have seen it before, many times before. It is corporate green of course, and it goes very well with corporate blue and corporate pink.
Corporate green terrifies me.
When I walk, head down, mind fixed on the pavement, I can sometimes see out of the corner of my eyes, this very shade of green. And it makes me wish for my neck to become stiff such that I never have to look up at another high-rise skeleton- oh! The very colour of these menacing little barricades makes me hope for an incredibly accurate earthquake. I’m sorry, Elephant and Castle.
And this isn’t even the worst part about the wooden board that lies so near to my window on the 172. As I slowly lift my trembling hand, placing it on the cold surface of the glass to wipe away the condensation, I can begin to make out a singular word on the board. It is in corporate yellow. It is the only word that I can see, repeated periodically, wrapping itself around the structure that now rumbles with the noise of drills, this word is echoing like weaponry, never before has it constructed a dread that makes my heart thump, it is ringing in my ears in time with the intermittent flashing of red lights high above and it is erupting in serif - one simple word:
“CONNECT.”
I have never felt so disconnected in any of my humble years. We all see buildings like these, rising day by day, and it is terrifying. Change is terrifying. New haircuts terrify me enough, let alone the prospect that the brutal structure before me will soon become encased in glass, unaffordable and empty, its only purpose then is to act as a mirror for people like me to inspect our dead trims. And again, what irony that the developers of these buildings, blinded by greed, are commanding us to “CONNECT”.
I find it fascinating that a word with such positive connotations has the power to make my spine recoil. However, there is not much space to move on this bus so I shall have to do with turning around, backpack brushing against fellow members of our moving tin, to see if anyone else has noticed the developers’ order. But not a single passenger is looking up from their phone. I cannot tell whether this makes them the ultimate rebels, silent and disobedient, or completely unbothered about the entire situation that I am so utterly worked up about.
This makes me consider the false promise that we’ve been sold. We have been presented, in many different shades of corporate guilt, a world of instant connection, gratification, and communication- look where we are now! We are all together, in the most incredible city on earth - but none of us are here. We are somewhere else, ‘connecting’…
………………………………
It is 18.13 and I have finished my day of work. I am walking along Waterloo Bridge. To my left is the City of London and beyond that, Canary Wharf. Where the skyscrapers have already been built and change has been accepted. I love to look out onto the Thames, reflecting the immensity of London and briefly, I feel as though I am part of the beating heart of the unreal city, the rhythm of brogues along the cold hard surface of the bridge, couples leaning to point at the speckled lights of the shard as though they are fires burning within homes upon a mountainside, and the OXO Tower waving to me with its red brick arm. I put my headphones on and they tell me that I have connected successfully. And it is onto the 172, where weary bodies sit completely, hands on laps at the top deck, eyes half shut, with smiles of contentment.
Elephant and Castle is no wasteland. Real people live here, and it is sad that such lifeless buildings will shatter out of the earth in the most unnatural way, but many will hold these developers to account. While they may still live in bitter ignorance of the needs of people whose areas they are demolishing, we must hope that as a collective we can force their hands to develop a higher percentage of social housing and to erase as little culture in doing so.
I am past the green barricades that shook me this morning. On Old Kent Road, I began to think of the redevelopment of Aylesham shopping centre. Over the next ten years, 877 flats (600 of which will be luxury) are to be built above the very centre of Peckham, in the borough of Southwark where 17,000 wait for social housing. The buildings will range in height from 14 to 78 metres. I wonder how, for the next ten years, it will feel to walk along Rye Lane as the evening draws in. Above the market stalls and their wide-smiling vendors, the harmonious opening and closing of charity shop doors, the scent of flowers and dumplings and jerk and perfume - there will be a set of flashing red lights. Below them, lining one side of the street shall be a wooden screen. Perhaps it will be in corporate blue. And what word will the developers choose, such that it rings down into the railway station, and onto its platforms, shaking the chests of people returning from work? I don’t even want to imagine.
But we must all try to remember the choice that we have - when it is not shoved down our throats in corporate yellow - to connect with each other instead of the unforgiving landscape that threatens us. We must hold developers to account to build more social housing and to preserve the queues outside late-night hairdressers, the pubs and the arcades, the colours of dresses in windows and the stars that we can see, often through the trees at the bottom of the road, grown through silent grass where we understand change only as the four seasons in each year. I’m sorry, skyscraper at the roundabout of Elephant and Castle, but you have ordered your own downfall. We must connect.
Edited by Roxy-Moon Dahal Hodson
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