Is London being turned into a theme park?

The London Eye is an integral part of the cityscape...but has its success encouraged other less wise investments in the city's tourist infrastructure? (image credit below)

County Hall was once a symbol of modern London and its aspirations.

Built from 1911 to the 1930s, it was faced with Portland stone, the same stone Sir Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor had used for some of the city’s most celebrated buildings; its classical architecture and size clearly set out the dream of an orderly, imperial city.

Alas, it got caught in the middle of the political storm between Mrs Thatcher and the left wing Greater London Council. Now it’s half empty; and the half that isn’t empty is woefully unimaginatively used.

I have nothing against the London Eye. It’s a great piece of engineering for a start and a deserving London icon.

But it seems to have given Shirayama, the owners of the ex-County Hall building, the idea that the South Bank should be a kind of glorified theme park.  So now we have an amusement arcade and an aquarium – salmon are coming back to the Thames apparently but the powers that be have decided that tourists would rather see fish in a tank!

Iain Sinclair, in a recent interview with the Independent, criticised the way London is becoming a parody of itself. “Everything now aspires to the condition of Blackpool funfair,” he said. “Look at the Thames riverbank – shark tanks, Ferris wheel, fake sand.”

British writer Iain Sinclair is not keen on the idea of fake sand on the South Bank...in his view helping to turn London into a tacky theme park instead of celebrating the history which makes the city unique (photo credit below)

There’s no respite from this trend when you head into the West End.

Ripley’s Believe It Or Not occupies a prime site by Piccadilly Circus – another unappealing London “attraction”.  It’s billed as a “museum”; but while you might learn something about humanity or see visions of real beauty at the V&A or the British Museum, Ripley’s bears the same relation to a real museum as The Sun does to the work of Shakespeare.  It’s just there to gawp at – a glorified freak show.

And it has nothing at all to do with London – Ripley’s comic strip premiered in the New York Globe and the company that owns and operates the franchise is based in Orlando, Florida – not that far away from another giant entertainment franchise.  Speaking of which, I wonder when we’ll be getting our own London Disneyland?

The area around Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square could be more imaginatively developed (image credit below)

Let me propose a slightly different take on London attractions – based on the rather amusing, slightly ironic display of beach huts that has taken over the South Bank Centre for the summer. If we’re going to have a theme park, let’s have a proper London one that celebrates the glorious and at times seedy history of the capital.

Characters like Claude Duval the gentleman highwayman, William Blake the eighteenth-century psychedelia artist, or the ‘Mole Man’ of Hackney who created a maze of tunnels underneath his house (and incurred the wrath of the council) – or the fictional Moll Flanders or Martin Amis’s disgusting John Self. How about running films that show London at its best and worst, like Passport to Pimlico or My Beautiful Laundrette?

And as for aquariums, let’s have our fish the way every true Londoner likes them – covered in batter and crisply fried!

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Photo credits: jimmyharris’ photostream, garryknight photostream, The Wolf photostream, Charles Haynes’ photostream.