With a very broad brief I decided to do a premotion of potential for the future from the perspective of the past. Only in the last ten years has Stonehouse really developed having been in a constant state of decay with little investment. I decided to play on this with my postcard which is designed to look like dated promotional material for the area meant to encourage development that never happened or took far too long.

And now in Sarcas-O-Vision:

The real idea behind it is that it shows us that these visions rarely come true. The font was used in the 1982 film Blade Runner in which the dystopic appearance of the city(complete with flying cars) is supposedly set in the year 2019 which is unrealistic yet may have seemed plausible 27 years ago that in 37 years it could be a reality. So widespread and total change in older cities, particularly in Plymouth, is slow with buildings, architecture and street layouts only changing when social, technological and economic needs and capabilities change or historical events and decay force change.

An interesting aspect of the development of cities is the growth of its infrastructure be it visible such as roads or invisible such as sewage systems or mobile phone tower coverage. A one hundred and thirty years ago the people building houses couldn’t have known the effect on wifi and mobile phone signals the stone that they were using to build walls would have nor could have electricians sixty years ago anticipated the amount of electricity we now consume. So as society advances our buildings can be left behind with the need for constant modernisation, some things can be upgraded whereas others need to be replaced. This can seem to fracture a city with mixed architecture, the best example of this probably being London which has massive variance between building designs.

Sir Patrick Abercrombie’s Plan for Plymouth is an example of when a fresh start to an area can accommodate the growth of infrastructure and create consistancy(even if people dislike it). Within Stonehouse the Millbay area is now under development albeit slowly after the demolition of many industrial buildings in the area. On Stonehouse Peninsular there has been regeneration of The Royal William Yard and the surrounding area which is helping Plymouth catch up.

And just as Plymouth starts getting the funding it so desperatly needs, we hit a recession. Oh well.

In a semi-related note I also found this blogpost with a good collection of Retro-Futurism which is worth a look for those who are interested and this talk on faux nostalgia and how yesterday looked at tomorrow.

A symptom too much free time.