Europe – Like it or Lumpen it……

These people are not a threat to democracy. As the events of this season of sophistry and stupidity evidence they are the threat OF democracy. Reason has given way to rhetoric and discourse has been drowned by the voice of the mob. We have witnessed what Madison. (1987) described as:

“.....moments in public affairs when people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage or misled by artful misrepresentations of interested men” call for measures they will later regret.  In these moments, the “cool and deliberate sense of the community” is at risk (1) 

The demarcation and division in society is plain to see. The intelligent and the young voted to remain in the EU. A slender majority were persuaded that the promoters of Brexit had their best interests at heart. With universal suffrage in a representative democracy the gullible get a vote. As do the lumpenproletariat, the;

“chronic unemployed or unemployables, persons who have been cast out by industry, and all sorts of declassed, degraded or degenerated elements."

These are what Marx described as a "class fraction" that constituted the political power base for Louis Bonaparte of France in 1848. Marx argued that Bonaparte was able to place himself above the two main classes, the proletariat and bourgeoisie, by resorting to the lumpenproletariat as an apparently independent base of power, while in fact advancing the material interests of the "finance aristocracy".Marx’s rhetoric equated the lumpenproletariat, the rentier class, and the apex of class society as equivalent members of the class of those with no role in useful production. The unconfined joy of racist scum on Friday morning was shared by City money traders. The significant difference is that the latter were substantially better off on Friday afternoon. They may be inconvenienced if they have to move from London to Frankfurt in a year or so but they can retain the second home in the Cotswolds and the ski lodge in Switzerland. 

As for the people who don’t like immigrants coming to Port Talbot they will have to stay where they are. The only visible benefit they will enjoy is a sea view uninterrupted by a steelworks. They will of course have the vocal support of their Labour MP who today (26 June 2016) called for the resignation of the socialist leader of his party.Those in the Rhondda and Blaenau Gwent will find it increasingly difficult to get to the beach as the transport infrastructure crumbles through the absence of EU subsistence and withdrawal of international investment. As to whether their MP’s and AM’s will be able to protect them from the self-interest of the prosperous South East of England- and Wales- remains to be seen. 

The plain fact is that in parts of Wales many who voted for Brexit through blind prejudice against immigrants will suffer if the latter are the only ones ‘pulling their weight’ there. The social, economic and educational elites who voted to Remain could privately harbour their own prejudices. That is in favouring the enterprising immigrant over people with no teeth and tattoos who vote for demagogues. If socialism is now merely an affectation of the Bohemian Bourgeoisie let it be tested if Cardiff is hit by a cappuccino and croissant crisis post-Brexit. Far better that history repeat itself as farce not tragedy. For the Labour Party in Wales to distance itself further from socialism to appeal to the lowest of denominators and make any concession to xenophobia or class prejudice would be a betrayal of its basic principles.

(1) (Madison. 1987. The Federalist Papers. Harmondsworth: Penguin.)

RULING FROM A RENTED HOUSE

The tenth anniversary of the opening of The Senedd building of the National Assembly for Wales will be marked on St David’s Day, 1 March 2016. The building may be presented as the product of architectural patronage and representative of the collective aspiration of the people at that time. Any such claim is contested in a draft paper available on the Academia.com website. 

https://www.academia.edu/21105408/Ruling_From_a_Rented_House

That is a case study  of the process of housing the newly devolved regional government of Wales from 1997 to 2006. It examines the proposition that the location of the National Assembly and subsequent commissioning of a new debating chamber designed by the Richard Rogers Partnership was the consequential outcome of a series of events rather than the intentional creation of a building which might symbolise a new form of regional democracy. 

The events under examination may be summarised as follows;

·        At the outset there was an attempt to minimise the anticipated costs of housing the Assembly and a dispute arose on the value of the assumed location, Cardiff City Hall.

·        A wider bidding process then ensued between rival locations within and outside the capital which may be seen to have been divisive.

·        The final decision was made between a location at The Pierhead, Cardiff or Bute Square, Cardiff, the final choice favouring the former. In either case the seat of regional government would be part of a commercial property development.

·        A competition was then mounted to select an architect for the debating chamber, The Senedd, which would be built at the The Pierhead.

·        During its procurement and construction concern over mounting costs resulted in the dismissal and alienation of the architect.

·        In the course of events there were several changes of leadership and little continuity or personal commitment to the new building.

·        In the ensuing political and public debate concerning the building some politicians adopted the language of architectural patronage to defend and rationalise decisions.

A conspicuous failure was in the implementation of the project and the failure of provincial civil servants and their advisers to properly understand and appreciate the aspirational elements that were being articulated by the architects. Independent adjudication concluded that advisers to the Welsh Office were substantially at fault in the dispute that arose with the Rogers Partnership.


The paper offers some observations on the true cost of housing the Assembly. 

A report published in March 2008 by the Wales Audit Office stated that the cost of the Senedd increased from £12M in 1997 to £69.6M in 2006. That was an increase of 580% compared with the original budget forecast in April 1997 (phase 1) and was four years and 10 months late. 

The conclusions of the Audit Office may be considered generous in some respects.

It will be noted that in the course of events the figure originally stated in the 1997 White Paper as the indicative cost of ‘setting up’ the Assembly was £12m-£17m

The lower figure of £12m formed the basis for bids to house the Assembly.                                                        

The following figures may more accurately reflect the actual cost

Capitalised rental of Crickhowell House                    

£1.5m pa                                                                               £25m

(Note ‘market value’ of capitalised rent circa £40m to investor – see below)

Concession of 200 car parking spaces                                       £0.688m

Initial costs of alteration to accommodate Assembly              £14.8m (to2000)

Expenditure on Pierhead Building                                 £3m??

Construction of TheSenedd                                                            £69.6m

                                                                                Total Circa           £112m+                                 £112m+

This can then be expressed as;

·         936% over the original budget of £12m or

·         658% over the upper limit set for Cardiff City Hall at £17m

The foregoing may then be seen to more accurately reflect the costs of ‘setting up’ the regional government.

Since that‘setting up’ the Welsh Government has also established new sub-regional offices in Merthyr Tydfil, Llandudno Junction, Carmarthen and Abersystwyth. The total cost was in the region of £91.5m which included Llandudno Junction (6,500 m2) at £22m and Aberystwyth at £21m[i].

Coupled with the capital cost of the ‘decentralisation’ of the Welsh Government administration were financial incentives for staff required to move if their posts were relocated. Relocation packages for staff moving to the Merthyr Tydfil office cost £2.9m alone - £2.1m of which was for excess travel fares. It was reported that "there was so much resistance from staff due to move from their Cardiff offices to Merthyr Tydfil", excess fares were subsidised for five years instead of the standard three[ii].

The overall value for money from the programme was "uncertain", according to a report by the Auditor General for Wales on the Assembly relocation strategy of 25 March 2014[iii]

A conclusion of that report was that:

“The Location Strategy had clear objectives, but the Welsh Government did not establish effective governance arrangements until 2008 and underestimated the cost of the Programme”[iv]

Finally some overall comment is made on ownership. In March 2014 it was announced that Ty Hywel (formerly Crickhowell House)had been acquired by a family of private investors based in Kuwait for £40.5m from the owners, Aprirose[i]

We have then a situation where the Senedd building, which it was claimed would, in its symbolic form, represent the open, modern democracy of Wales, is inextricably joined to a rented building. This then presents an interesting variation on David Harvey’s observations on collective symbolic capital and monopoly rents(Harvey 2012 pps 103-109).

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[i]http://www.walesonline.co.uk/business/business-news/national-assembly-wales-office-acquired-6770330

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[i]http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/empty-rooms-new-welsh-government-1798510

[ii]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-26721637

[iii]http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/llandudno-junction-915m-welsh-government-6875070

[iv]https://www.audit.wales/system/files/publications/WAO_Welsh_Government_Location_Strategy_Report_English_2014.pdf

Harvey, D. 2012. Rebel Cities. London: Verso.

 

NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INTERVENTION

The recent criticism of commercial property acquisition by the National Assembly for Wales appears to have revived a very old issue or, more correctly, issues. The first is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to defend such action as strategic intervention in the absence of any apparent strategy. Were this an official and widely applied strategy then it would signal a significant reversal of Assembly policy to that which has prevailed. That was, of course, informed by a view that questioned the efficacy of public sector intervention in property markets. It favoured ‘investment in people not places’ and abandoned what Reinhold Niebuhr dismissed as ‘salvation by bricks’. In short, the prevailing wisdom which saw the abolition of the Welsh Development Agency, the Land Authority for Wales, the winding-up of the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation and other agencies of intervention in regional property markets.

There is, in my view, a case to be made for some clear policy on public sector intervention and that issue is considered further below. I will first briefly address any defence of opportunistic or reactive property acquisition as may be offered. Under certain circumstances public sector intervention may be essential to prevent the wider economic impact of catastrophic failure in the commercial property sector. Such measures were deployed following the Secondary Banking Crisis of 1973 and were central to Government and Bank of England intervention which ensured the controlled disposal of property to arrest the rapid deflation of property values. In subsequent recessions fiscal and other measures have been deployed to mitigate market failure. Such action may be inevitable periodically as, in the view of some, too great a proportion of the UK economy is vested in landed property which is, by its nature, a notoriously imperfect market. An aspect of that imperfection may be illustrated in the simplest of terms by reference to the fundamental economic principles of supply and demand. Overall demand for property can change very quickly, supply cannot. Coupled with this are further factors such as transactional speed and cost and other considerations. Stated simply, property is a long-term business and those that participate in it with a short term view are inevitably at greater risk.

I have no knowledge of any recent cataclysmic failure in the local property market which might have precipitated public sector investment with the attendant risk concomitant upon the Welsh Assembly acquisitions at issue. Given the historic and persistent antipathy to financial support for projects in the capital from elsewhere in Wales it is perhaps unsurprising that the opponents of the current administration would take the opportunity to denounce such initiatives. Perceptions that central Cardiff enjoys relative prosperity compared to less advantaged parts of the region have been, and evidently remain, a persistent factor in the standing debate on the allocation of financial resources. This would inevitably call to question a speculative property investment by the Assembly in Cardiff Bay, where £2.4 billion was invested and, even more specifically, at Callaghan Square which was created as part of a PFI project which will cost the public sector circa £190m. In the latter case the State sponsored project was undermined by competing speculative development which syphoned off occupational demand for commercial development. In that instance it may be claimed that the private sector were very much smarter and lighter on their feet than those in the public sector. The converse argument is that those entrepreneurs produced low quality buildings and, consequently, low value jobs and, if Cardiff is to be the locomotive of regional economic growth, intervention remains necessary to achieve better quality commercial accommodation and higher value employment opportunities.

If the market will not then provide buildings of suitable quality on a speculative basis, as the costs of doing so exceed a guaranteed return, there is a form of market failure. We could address, in passing, the cherished myth that the private sector is significantly less risk averse than the public sector here. The underlying rationale of intervention is that there must necessarily be some sort of support, usually in the form of direct or indirect financial subsidy, provided by the public sector to underwrite such risk. Alternatively there are the variants of public/private partnerships, wherein the risk is shared and/ or borne largely by the former, or the public sector must make ensure the provision directly through its agencies with the concomitant risks.

This then leads back to the issue of who makes such provision in Wales where, in the past, so-called ‘regeneration’ was predicated on financial intervention in such markets and implemented by bodies like the Welsh Development Agency. Many in regional government remain adamant that the dissolution of that agency was necessary but, in this context, that question may be revisited. One can argue, with the benefit of hindsight, that the participation of the WDA in property markets evolved over time and had moved to that question of quality. Originally it had been largely reactive and a response to the rapid decline in extractive and heavy industry. That was referred to colloquially as the ‘Red Shed Program’ and, in crude terms, meant the bulldozing flat of redundant collieries or other plant and the creation of ubiquitous cul-de-sacs of light industrial units. One problem with these was that such provision proved a deterrent to private sector investment as commercial developers saw the public sector as providing such accommodation at subsidised rental levels. The disposal of those estates to the private sector was in many respects then beneficial in establishing a ‘true’ market, although that was probably not an intentional objective of the then Secretary of State who ordered that sale.

The subsequent campaign of attracting inward investment was also be seen as having been facilitated in part by low unit costs of land and buildings provided by such agencies. That proved to be a relatively short term advantage as lower labour and other costs elsewhere in the world significantly undercut any benefit afforded by cheap accommodation provided in Wales. As major investment declined critics of the WDA questioned the wisdom of ‘renting jobs from the Japanese’ and advocated support for indigenous SME’s and investment in The Knowledge Economy. The response to the latter was the building of ‘Technium’ buildings in proximity to Universities or areas where growth might be encouraged in specialised fields. Initially hailed as a visionary initiative this proved to be unsuccessful commercially and, for some observers, the final nail in coffin that had been constructed for the WDA by its critics in the Assembly. For those, all of the foregoing programs had been predicated on the philosophy of ‘build it and they’ll come’. Those who held the view that the job of government is to increase demand and not tinker with supply were in the ascendant.

A more enlightened view may be that it is not one or the other and that you have to do both to increase the chances of success. Moreover you have to take a much longer term view than may be taken by either commercial developers or elected politicians. In the case of the first, the property development industry in Britain has been dominated by the ‘hit and run’ style of operation since the 1960’s. The prevailing modus operandi in the commercial sector is to build, let and sell as quickly as possible. In the residential house building sector it is simply to build and sell quickly. Both sectors are conscious of the need for speed to avoid the recessionary cycles which have marked property markets, particularly since 1973. In the public sector the short-term view may be attributed to the electoral cycle, which seldom matches the aforementioned recessionary cycle in property markets,and the demand for politicians to produce ‘outputs’ which can be whipped out and waggled in the face of the electorate come polling day. That might be dismissed as a crude and cynical assessment but a cursory analysis of the rhetoric, which is further simplified and amplified by regional media, will evidence the pre-eminence of quantitative claims – numbers of jobs particularly – which are the currency of political claims.

There therefore needs to be a counterpoint to this where the argument for a long term strategy is formulated and properly explained to the electorate as has been the case in Scotland and elsewhere. If intervention is necessary in land and property markets then this should be supported by detailed research and a consensus secured across all parties to ensure that such policy as is necessary can be implemented across much longer property development cycles, let alone the political election cycle. If such policy were to be implemented by the civil service of the Assembly then that section of it responsible needs to be clearly identifiable and fully accountable. At risk of again returning to old issues, the abolition of Quango’s on the grounds that they represented a ‘democratic deficit’ can be questioned in the light of recent property market intervention where no-one can be clear who did what and why.

Some greater maturity would also be desirable in the debate that might inform such policy. All too often in Wales we subside into the sophistry of what may be termed ‘emotional economics’ for want of a better expression. That is the expression by the opponents of investment in contentious development in terms of schools, hospitals, or other essential public services which require accommodation of improved quality. All are necessary and finite economic resources need to be allocated rationally. The priorities need to be clearly established through intellectual analysis and reasoned argument and not the weary and tiresome rhetoric that passes for such in political exchanges.

As mentioned above Scotland has a clearly expressed the economic rationale for government intervention and we need to raise the level of debate and clearly address the issues which are not dissimilar here. Such policy then addresses the disparities that arise from market failure and what may be an essential role for government intervention to deal with related problems. This informs and underpins regeneration strategies which in turn have a strong equity rationale.

“Therefore, both efficiency and equity considerations can justify regeneration projects involving components such as land renewal, commercial, industrial, retail and housing development, improvements in transport and accessibility, environmental improvement,support for business, training and community development. If regeneration policy is effective in identifying relevant market failures, and is well-targeted at addressing equity issues, then it will maximise the possibility of convergence between wealthier and poorer regions, resulting in significant improvements in social cohesion, and potentially boosting long-run economic growth as well.”

(COMMUNITIES ANALYTICAL SERVICES, SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT)

A key phrase in that quotation is, again, ‘long-run’ and the longer term view that is critical in dealing with the property market. In that respect the Welsh Assembly might also revisit the principles of stewardship and better understand how those might have better informed their policy objectives on sustainability. Were they so minded they would also note that housing is included in the Scottish strategy and consider what is, perhaps,an even stronger case for intervention in residential land markets. This would address both the provision of affordable housing and the development of better quality planned settlements across Wales. They need, of course, look no further than the principles upon which the Land Authority for Wales was founded, which was to harvest the uplift in value which inevitably follows planning consent for more valuable use and re-invest that in public projects for wider social benefit. Ultimately that objective was perverted and LAW was denigrated as ‘the Quango that made money’. There is an opportunity to learn from and not repeat the mistakes of the past. In some instances land acquired by that public body was sold at enhanced values and funded major public infrastructure but the related private sector development was of questionable quality. There are numerous exemplars of radical intervention in Europe and elsewhere which would inform and extend such analysis of the benefits that can flow from such policy.

This might be a more enlightened and forward thinking approach than the seemingly spontaneous acquisition of second-hand airports in the wrong location. Such actions merely confirm the view of critics that market intervention is, at best, a very blunt instrument. My conclusion would be that such intervention is but one of the tools in the box and, given the innate imperfections in the property market, may not be refined and deployed as a precision instrument. It can, however, be used with greater skill and, handled with care, intelligence and skill, support and advance wider policy objectives.

SOCIALLY COMMITTED (not Socialist) - David Mackay and Cardiff Bay

“Architects have given up too easily their role in the architecture of cities, of the public space. It has been left to planning ... Most public space is addressed by engineers, trying to get a car somewhere as quickly as possible.” David Mackay 1913-2014

A tip of the hat and a fond farewell to David Mackay, who died last week. Mackay was a partner in the Barcelona architecture practice MBM (Martorell, Bohigas & Mackay) and had what proved to be as short and frustrating a connection with Cardiff as Zaha Hadid. Through his design of the athletes’ village and harbour for Barcelona’s 1992 Olympic Games, and elsewhere, he gained an enviable international reputation for repairing and shaping cities. He was commissioned by the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation to design the square and avenue that would physically and symbolically re-unite the city centre with its waterfront. His vision was never realised but the misappropriation, dilution and perversion of his master-plan took place over a period of time and did not attract the same degree of attention as the spectacular collapse of Zaha Hadid’s Cardiff Bay Opera House.

It is worth then considering David Mackay’s involvement with Barcelona which started in the 1960s and, as recorded in the Guardian obituary of 23 November “….he took a stand against the neglect and speculation that ravaged the city under the Franco dictatorship. It blossomed in the 1980s, when the Socialist party that ran the city council responded to pressure from below to create more public space and convert post-industrial wastelands to housing and social use.” [i] 

It may then be remarked that Mackay’s principles can be compared and contrasted with those who failed to implement the aspirational vision for what became Callaghan Square and Lloyd George Avenue in Cardiff.

Mackay moved to Barcelona in the 1950’s with his Catalan wife and in 1959 he started working with Josep Martorell and Oriol Bohigas, becoming a partner of MBM in 1962. The two older architects were committed to the re-introduction of rationalist, social architecture to Catalonia and opposed, on social and ethical grounds, the uncontrolled speculative building boom of the 1960s that destroyed much of Barcelona. Their emphasis was on the social role of architecture, its integration and relevance to the urban environment and public space. Theirs was not a mission to leave individualistic monuments to their architectural talents but a careful and considerate response to the social requirements of each commission. They operated in that space between town planning and architecture which we may call urban design. Their belief was that modern architecture could contribute creatively to the identity of a city, enhance its cultural landscape.

Mackay and his partners also sought to achieve mixed-use of activity that ensured that people could work, live and play in districts and bring life to its streets and squares through the whole day. In the event this was not achieved in the Olympic Village at Barcelona, where it was originally intended that affordable housing would be offered after the Games. It was perhaps a victim of its own success, market forces and lack of resolve on the part of the Socialist city government resulting in it becoming an up-market residential ghetto. With the exception of the marina area, few businesses occupy space at street level and away from the coastal frontage it can appear dead and dreary. This will of course sound very familiar in the context of Cardiff Bay. It must be stressed, however, that in Barcelona the original design concept was realised and it was the end use that was betrayed in the failure to properly implement stated social objectives. In Cardiff the kudos – or Cultural Capital- represented by MBM and the Barcelona development was acquired and is perceived by some to have been cynically used in the marketing and promotion of an urban redevelopment that did not have the resources for it to be fully implemented. A visionary project was promised which was originally intended to replace the railway embankment with a broad tree lined boulevard and an integrated tram system.

The importation of internationally recognised design talent to master plan this and other projects was central to a strategy intended to establish Cardiff's place among regional capitals and assure its recognition as a centre of excellence in the reclamation and revival of post-industrial waterfront cities. The stated objective at the time was for a 'ceremonial avenue' and references made to 'Cardiff's Champs Elysees'. In short, not a mere piece of road infrastructure but a PLACE, a civic space with a distinct character and identity. 

By association the rhetoric and marketing alluded to Barcelona and the virtues of a thoroughfare and public space which would be, in itself, an object of universal admiration. 

As to how realistic this was, in principle and practice, needs to be considered. Looking, for example, at the promise of ‘our very own Ramblas’ it is questionable whether this was a tenable proposition from the outset. The Ramblas has 1.6m people at one end and the Mediterranean at the other. That population is concentrated in an area 100km2, an urban population density of 16,000 km2. That may be compared to the density of Cardiff which, even now, is only 5,900km2, the city having fewer than 350,000 souls in an urban area 75.72 km2. Given the advantages of climate and the relative lack of private gardens it is perhaps unsurprising that the inhabitants of Barcelona are more inclined than those of Cardiff to take their recreation in public space. That said the frontage to Cardiff Bay will now, on a sunny day, evidence many strollers but, it may be said, simply not enough of them inclined to populate a 1km avenue.

It may also be added that it is the claims made upon it that might have been contested rather than the aspiration. Ambitious it certainly was but the promoters of the project should perhaps be commended for that. Precious little vision and ambition has been displayed in urban matters by those who constrained the budget then terminated the life of the Development Corporation before such works were completed. The political context in which Mackay was working in both Barcelona and Cardiff may be loosely described as ‘socialist’ and their civic leaders publicly committed to urban renewal. There, however, the resemblance may abruptly end. The internal priorities and external pressures on CBDC may be attributed to politics which were more Byzantine than Barcelonan. The Development Corporation itself may be considered the bastard offspring of an unholy coupling of One Nation Conservatives and oligarchic Labour Party leaders. In any consideration of the redevelopment of South Cardiff at the end of the 20^th century the Cardiff Bay Barrage will always be the White Elephant in the room. That project focussed opposition to the Development Corporation from politicians within and without Cardiff. It created divisions of those who claimed to be of a ‘socialist’ persuasion, some of whom formed curious alliances with those of other faiths. That said, the barrage perhaps merely served to focus the antipathy of Valleys Labour towards the perceived disproportionate investment in Cardiff, Old Labour towards Quango’s and New Labour towards Old Labour. Most of the foregoing were challenged by an emergent cadre of aspirant career Labour politicians who didn’t leave school before the age of 25 and who formed a loose alliance with The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Such alliances then shifted further at the end of the Millennium and those lucky enough to have drawn a winning ticket in the Assembly Election Lottery had to translate their vocal opposition to CBDC and all its works into responsible governance. And failed.

In practical terms the barrage drained the administrative and financial resources of CBDC and diverted them away from the strategic (physically and symbolically) objectives of re-uniting the city centre with the waterfront. In the final assessment what was eventually produced bore little or no resemblance to the designs produced by David Mackay. The concise appraisal is offered by Geraint Talfan Davies;

“…the sad, misplaced suburbanism of Cardiff’s Lloyd George Avenue; the linked Callaghan Square that could have been a treasured public space but is, in fact, a rectangular, furnished roundabout. All of these have occasioned deep and obvious disappointment among citizens.” (Talfan Davies 2008 p289).

Coupled with that is the continued physical separation of the community to the west by the railway embankment and the failure to deliver the levels of social integration advocated by MBM in their work elsewhere. Talfan Davies goes on to comment that these places are the antithesis of urban design, a process which assumes the purpose and intent implicit in the original appointment of David Mackay. The objectives of reshaping the city for the better were compromised by many factors and culminated in the implementation of infrastructure works through a private finance initiative. Inevitably the procurement of public works by such means places priority on the lowest bid not the achievement of the superlative design standards that were central to the mission originally stated for CBDC by the Secretary of State. In the course of that process social responsibility is to some degree abrogated and, following the dissolution of the Development Corporation, the City Council permitted the construction of a series of ghettoes in South Cardiff. I was going to refer to that as a ‘free for all’ but it was, of course, not. It was an opportunity for those with the financial means to develop or acquire apartments in gated blocks.

I am not aware of David Mackay making any public condemnation of Cardiff and, if he did, it certainly did not attract to the city the unwelcome attention of the international design community as the Zaha Hadid affair continues to do. Privately he expressed some frustration with the procurement of public works in Britain and, in particular, practices such as private finance initiatives which would invariably mean that the designer would be alienated and lose control over the final quality of projects. That such disappointment was expressed quietly is another measure of the man. Others in his position might have complained more loudly about the responsibility without power of the designer and the betrayal of trust by those who commissioned them. Far better that his association with Cardiff be quietly forgotten and little connection made between his designs for Bute Avenue and Square  and the travesty that now sits in their place in the form of Lloyd George Avenue and Callaghan Square.  

If there is to be a verdict in this piece it is that the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation definitely appointed the right man, but possibly for the wrong reasons. By my reckoning the blame cannot be attributed solely to the Corporation but, as was the case with the Opera House fiasco,  the (dis)credit must be shared more widely. Put bluntly, it takes a lot of people a lot of time and effort to fuck things up as frequently and as badly as we do in Wales. To some extent it is institutionalised, many of the participants outlined above having subsequently been at the epicentre of the concentric circles of self-interest that we call ‘government’ in Wales. It is those, who were critical of CBDC, who may suggest that the Corporation only ever intended to rent from David Mackay his reputation. To simply draw upon and then disburse for their commercial ends the cultural capital represented by that man.  

Mackay’s personal commitment to social justice was attested by his actions in opposition to the Franco dictatorship, assisting activists to contact the foreign press and he was a founder of Amnesty International in Spain. Given the earlier comments about the political context of his abortive work in Cardiff it is perhaps a shame that he didn’t stick around here longer.

Talfan Davies, G. (2008). At Arm's Length. Bridgend, Wales, Seren.

              

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[i] http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/nov/23/david-mackay