Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
"Progress is a comfortable disease", 21 April 2006
You'll probably only want to read this book if you've ever had the chance to use the A40. Having said that, you might be so sick of the road that you won't want to spend time reading anything about it. It has to be said that this is a great read, about how London's sprawl reaches out to the suburbs. It's full of wonderful little stories from people that have lived next to this choking arterial road into the city.
All the recollections of the residents are tinged with a strange sadness and pathos for times before the former Tory government planned to wipe out parts of a small community in a bid to widen the road - before the Labour government came in at the end of the 90's and decided that they would not follow through on the Tory idea.
In between the interviews with the residents, Platt's book is punctuated with vignettes of planning history and references to Le Corbusier's visions of society's ideal of constant growth, ever outward from the city. That as the demands for housing and business space perpetuate, the city grows ever wider, eventually swallowing up small pockets of community that were built many years ago. It is written very well and lightened by the fact that there are so many interesting stories from people that remember moving to the Western Avenue in it's glory days.
|
|
|
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
A dispatch from the battleground of the A40, 12 May 2001
By A Customer
Edward Platt's unique and highly unusual book combines first person reportage with history, sociology, urban planning and humour. It reveals the story of Western Avenue - one of London's busiest and most traffic-choked stretches of tarmac - through the eyes of the residents that live along it as they confront the news that their homes are due to be demolished to make way for a new flyover. Within this battleground Platt cleverly interweaves the individual stories of numerous residents, including itinerants and those that have lived there long-term, with historical anecdotes about the road's construction in the 1920s and society's growing love affair with the motor car. It's an informative, intelligent and highly entertaining read told through an engaging first-person narrative. "Leadville" is a compelling piece of journalistic endeavour which elevates the "biography" to a new, more interesting, level. Highly recommended.
|
|
|
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
dreams and nightmares of the A40, 13 Sep 2005
Edward Platt in his unique biography of the A40 charts the evolution of the road from it's birth amidst the dreams of a new machine age ruled by the car to it's fall from grace and descent into the nightmare of congestion, pollution and dereliction. Along the way we recieve glimpses into the lives of the few diverse residents who remain steadfastly living on the road and whose homes they have invested their own dreams and lives into face the spectre of compulsary purchace and demolition in order just to keep the traffic moving.Leadville is written in a kind of note form which serves to mesh the stories together underlining the tangled relationships shared between the city, people, road and car. Platt's background as a journalist makes for entertaining reading and he also presents the academic snippets without the dryness that can sometimes accompany that sort of material. In short definately a good read for anyone with an interest in the city, planning, the car or the suburbs. I would however, have liked a few pictures or even maps/illustrations of the road to illustrate how the plans and reality of the road had changed over the course of it's life.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
(1)
£25.99
(6)
£3.98
(6)
£10.49
(
