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A new series of audio walking tours, exploring how cities got to be the way they are - starting with London and Tokyo.
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Aug 18, 2023
WAVE: Currents in Japanese Graphic Arts at Japan House London (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x historicity Tokyo)
In this bonus episode of EMPIRE LINES, brought to you with historicity Tokyo, Japan House London curator Hiro Sugiyama, and contemporary artists Tsuzuki Mayumi and Suga Mica, ride the great waves of Japanese graphic design, commercial illustration, and counterculture, from the 1980s to now.
Heta-uma - meaning bad but good - was an accidental art movement. A kind of ‘anti-illustration’, heta-uma rocked the established conventions of Japanese art, coinciding with the economic boom of the 1980s. Emerging in the underground manga magazine GARO, and manifesting in posters and adverts, pop art and animation, heta-uma challenges what is ‘ugly’, ‘beautiful’ or skilled art - as well as what ‘subcultures’ mean in the context of a global mainstreaming in Japanese art, embodied by Hokusai’s The Great Wave.
Hiro Sugiyama, artist and co-curator of WAVE, has brought the annual exhibition in Tokyo to Japan Houses in San Francisco, Sao Paolo, and London. From his training at Yumura Teruhiko’s Flamingo Studios in Shinjuku, we return to the city’s Inari shrines with the surrealistic paintings of Suga Mica, and Showa period traditions with Tsuzuki Mayumi. Both artists also detail the long role of women artists in commercial illustration, the two-way exchanges between Japanese and Western European art traditions like ‘superrealism’ and ‘hyperrealism’, and how contemporary Japanese artists take as much from the concept of haziness (morotai), as David Hockney and the films of David Lynch.
WAVE: Currents in Japanese Graphic Arts runs at Japan House London until 22 October 2023.
For more, you can read my article in gowithYamo: https://www.gowithyamo.com/blog/wave-currents-in-japanese-graphic-arts-at-japan-house-london
This episode was produced in collaboration between historicity Tokyo and EMPIRE LINES, a podcast which uncovers the unexpected, often two-way flows of empires through art.
WITH: Hiro Sugiyama, artist and a curator of WAVE. Tsuzuki Mayumi and Suga Mica, contemporary artists based in Japan. Eyre Kurasawa and Bethan Jones are interpreters based in London.
ART: ‘WAVE: Currents in Japanese Graphic Arts (2023)’.
IMAGE: Installation View.
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.
Follow EMPIRE LINES on Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 And Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast
Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Aug 3, 2023
Tokyo - BONUS: Tokyo in the Bay
In this bonus “walk,” we’re putting Tokyo in its maritime context. From an automated, elevated train, we see how the city has expanded into the bay, providing space for business and attractions; a new home for the fish market; but also for recreation and everyday life.
We start at Shimbashi Station, where the first rails were laid in Japan, which is now the starting point for the “black-headed gull” line. It first takes us south, past a surviving shogunal garden, surrounded by the new building, as the mainland inches remorselessly into the bay; then out over the Rainbow Bridge. We pass some 19th-century forts, designed to protect the city from foreigners, and some early 20th-century districts built close to the shore, but all now dwarfed by the huge artificial islands reclaimed from the sea. We get off the train at Odaiba, and make our way down to the beach, then along the boardwalk to the Statue of Liberty. Back on the train, we make a loop, past hotels and a cruise terminal, newish museums, and more offices. We glimpse the container port and bigger bridges further out, before heading back towards the city, past the convention centre, a tennis park, and the new central markets, where the world’s tuna come to be priced. We end the walk at Toyosu Park, looking back to the city, surrounded by non-descript offices, hotels, apartment buildings, and shops. It’s easy enough, given the anonymity of the architecture, to believe that the action is elsewhere. But the park is full of kids, who are bringing it to life. Maybe the future of Tokyo is here.
You can follow the walk on this map: bit.ly/3pHSxf4
And you can find the full transcript here: bit.ly/3JTcgzi
See a sneak peek on TikTok: tiktok.com/@walkhistoricity and Instagram: instagram.com/WALKHISTORICITY
WRITER AND PRESENTER: Angus Lockyer
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic
This series was supported by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. Find out more at: gbsf.org.uk
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Jul 20, 2023
Tokyo - NEO-TOKYO 3: In the Club?
In this walk, we’re exploring how Tokyo has allowed authorities, developers, and people around the world to reimagine what a city might be, in the last fifty years. In this episode, we see how Roppongi’s military past has more or less vanished, replaced first by nightclubs, more recently by luxury towers and integrated developments.
We start on the southeast corner of Roppongi Hills, make our way into the “Artelligent City.” We pass through the Mōri garden, which nods to the site’s early modern incarnation as a lordly suburban villa, and then through the walls, up into the plaza, where we shelter under a spider, in the shadow of the towering but squat Mori Tower. Descending to the street and heading towards Roppongi Crossing, we can still find some remnants of the district’s previous incarnation as a playground for foreigners, celebrities, and mobsters. More prominent are the other two corners of Roppongi’s “art triangle,” the National Art Center and the various art spaces of Tokyo Midtown, together with the offices and condos that are sprouting in between. Invisible are any signs of Roppongi’s military past, though the American military maintains a heliport and a newspaper not too far away. The second half of the episode sees more of the same, as we walk up and down the slopes into Azabu, past embassy housing and more soaring towers. We end the episode contemplating the Mori Building Company’s latest project, Azabudai Hills, currently under construction, which promises to create a “modern urban village,” but threatens to put the 1958 Tokyo Tower and the 1975 headquarters of a new religion in the shade.
You can follow the walk on this map: bit.ly/3D1IwMP
And you can find the full transcript here: bit.ly/43odN7q
See a sneak peek on TikTok: tiktok.com/@walkhistoricity
and Instagram: instagram.com/WALKHISTORICITY
WRITER AND PRESENTER: Angus Lockyer
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic
This series was supported by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. Find out more at: gbsf.org.uk
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Jul 13, 2023
Tokyo - NEO-TOKYO 2: Tearing Down and Dressing Up
In this walk, we’re exploring how Tokyo has allowed authorities, developers, and people around the world to reimagine what a city might be, in the last fifty years. In this episode, we discover how Shibuya has provided space for Tokyo’s various tribes to live out their dreams, around stations, shrines, and parks.
We start at the main entrance to the 100-year-old Meiji Shrine. Next door is Yoyogi Park, tea and mulberry fields turned into an army training ground, then housing for the US military after the war and the athletes’ village for the 1964 Olympics. Over the road, two of the original, iconic stadia still stand, next to the headquarters of NHK, the national broadcaster. Heading back over the tracks, we wend our way down through Harajuku to Takeshita Dōri, still a magnet for young Japanese in search of fast fashion, then back up to Omotesando, where slightly older tribes have long congregated. We wend our way down what was once a river through fields and learn how earlier versions of urban culture, too, have been erased. We cross over the main road into Shibuya proper, sprawling over the hills leading down to the station where the smaller boutiques give way to the huge projects of the two main corporate players. Seibu and Tokyu, both began as private rail companies a century ago, started to develop the neighbourhood as fashion central in the 1970s, and continue to build ever higher today, as the station itself is slowly transformed.
You can follow the walk on this map: bit.ly/3NPBXTI
And you can find the full transcript here: bit.ly/3Pu3F9M
See a sneak peek on TikTok: tiktok.com/@walkhistoricity and Instagram: instagram.com/WALKHISTORICITY
WRITER AND PRESENTER: Angus Lockyer
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic
This series was supported by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. Find out more at: gbsf.org.uk
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Jul 6, 2023
Tokyo - NEO-TOKYO 1: Seamy Dives and Corporate Towers
In this walk, we’re exploring how Tokyo has allowed authorities, developers, and people around the world to reimagine what a city might be, in the last fifty years. In this episode, we discover how Shinjuku has distilled the swirling currents of postwar political economy from transport and towers to nightlife and riots.
We start at the entrance to Shinjuku Gyōen, a rural estate converted into a national garden, and near the post station, where sex workers gathered in the early modern period. On the other side of the street is Nichō, where the LGBT community has flourished once the sex workers left. It’s a fitting introduction to the nightlife that flourishes in East Shinjuku, which continues across the road, behind the shops and restaurants on the main drag, which started coming here after the earthquake in 1923. By the late 1960s, Shinjuku was a mecca for young Japanese, drawn here by cutting-edge art and political protest. They soon migrated south, but it wasn’t until the next century that the government started to clean things up, even Kabukichō, where the yakuza controlled the sin. At the heart of Shinjuku, though, is the station – the world’s busiest, currently undergoing a redevelopment, which will take 25 years. On its other side, in West Shinjuku, things are very different. A vast water purification plant has been replaced by corporate towers, capped and culminating in the new Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, which dominates a deserted people’s plaza. The walk ends in the garden on its far side, from where, once upon a time, you could see Fuji.
You can follow the walk on this map: bit.ly/3qR5cwl
And you can find the full transcript here: bit.ly/43O60AI
See a sneak peek on TikTok: tiktok.com/@walkhistoricity and Instagram: instagram.com/WALKHISTORICITY
WRITER AND PRESENTER: Angus Lockyer
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic
This series was supported by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. Find out more at: gbsf.org.uk
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Jun 22, 2023
Tokyo - COMMONERS’ CAPITAL 3: Disaster, Prayer, and Play
In this walk, we’re exploring the flatlands northeast of the Palace, where much of the real work of the city has always been done. In this episode, we see how working-class Tokyo has been destroyed, time and time again, but also how it’s bounced back, thanks in part to its temples, which have long allowed for both prayer and play.
We start at Ekōin, built in the 17th century to commemorate the 100,000 killed in the Great Meireki Fire. Soon, it’s complemented by a great bridge, and 100 years later there’s an entertainment district, where you can while away the time with prostitutes, acrobats, and sumo. These days, Ryōgoku is more respectable, with a national stadium and the main city museum. Just to their north, there’s another memorial, to those who died in the 1923 earthquake and the 1945 firebombing. We cross to the other side of the river, pass what were once the shogun’s rice warehouses, and walk along it for a couple of bridges. Over to the east, there’s the tallest structure in the world, a recent attempt to revitalize that side of the river. But we end the walk exploring the past and present of Asakusa. The temple at its heart is over 1,000 years old, but this area also took off in the 18th century, by combining prayer and play. By the early 20th, things were hopping, only to decline in the postwar, as the city moved west. Today, it’s a mandatory tourist stop, but also a poor relation, compared to the districts we’ll explore in our next walk.
You can follow the walk on this map: bit.ly/3WZ0dWi
And you can find the full transcript here: bit.ly/42w4npL
See a sneak peek on TikTok: tiktok.com/@walkhistoricity and Instagram: instagram.com/WALKHISTORICITY
WRITER AND PRESENTER: Angus Lockyer
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic
This series was supported by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. Find out more at: gbsf.org.uk
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Jun 15, 2023
Tokyo - COMMONERS' CAPITAL 2: Landscape of the Gods
In this walk, we’re exploring the flatlands northeast of the Palace, where much of the real work of the city has always been done. In this episode, we discover how the past lives on in the present, with the old gods still palpable, even when they’re no longer in residence, having been displaced by newer forms of faith.
We start on Hijiribashi, Saint’s Bridge, high over a canal carved through a mountain, between two churches, one Christian, one Confucian. We walk north to two shrines, which bear witness to the inability of the state to suppress the need for worship. Kanda Myōjin still thrives, with the recent reinstallation of a rebel deity, earlier banished by a nervous government, and a booming business catering to anime fans. Yushima Tenjin also does good business, with students beseeching its poet deity for help with their entrance exams. As we move into Ueno, the hand of the state becomes heavier. First with the crafting of the landscape to resemble that of Kyoto, four centuries ago, pond, shrine, and temple protecting the shogun’s castle from the demons who come from the northeast. Then with the destruction of the original temple by 19th-century rebels, and their subsequent transformation of the hill into a cultural mecca, to serve the modern nation. Still, though, the landscape is littered with older survivals, monuments and tombs, shrines and temples still witness to the violence that has marked the place, and the faith through which it is remembered.
You can follow the walk on this map: bit.ly/43jXwRq
And you can find the full transcript here: bit.ly/3qopux7
See a sneak peek on TikTok: tiktok.com/@walkhistoricity and Instagram: instagram.com/WALKHISTORICITY
WRITER AND PRESENTER: Angus Lockyer
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic
This series was supported by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. Find out more at: gbsf.org.uk
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Jun 8, 2023
Tokyo - COMMONERS’ CAPITAL 1: City of Townspeople
In this walk, we’re exploring the flatlands northeast of the Palace, where much of the real work of the city has always been done. In this episode, we span the gamut, from banking citadels and corporate towers to popular culture and fertility deities.
We start at Nihonbashi, “Japan’s bridge,” originally the heart of downtown and of Tokyo’s canal network. The notice boards and the fish market have disappeared, but the construction continues. Staying south of the river, soon enough we’re in Japan’s Wall Street, though the traders no longer work the floors. But crossing over, we pass into a different world, of small wards, each originally dedicated to a particular trade or craft. It doesn’t take us too long to make our way back to the main drag, where Mitsukoshi and Mitsui still ply their respective trades. But as we move north into Kanda (the “deity’s fields”), so the buildings get shorter and the story changes again. The next river has been replaced, as a way to get around, by rail lines. But it’s still possible to duck into a small, quiet shrine, before making our way across it into the neon chaos of Akihabara, with its anime, idols, and maid cafes. The walk ends back near the station, where the local authority is making space for yet more office towers.
You can follow the walk on this map: bit.ly/3Iybabn
And you can find the full transcript here: bit.ly/3pSzUEG
See a sneak peek on TikTok: tiktok.com/@walkhistoricity and Instagram: instagram.com/WALKHISTORICITY
WRITER AND PRESENTER: Angus Lockyer
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic
This series was supported by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. Find out more at: gbsf.org.uk
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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May 25, 2023
Tokyo - IMPERIAL CAPITAL 3: Corporate Capital
In this walk, we explore how the circuits of power and money in Tokyo flow around the Imperial Palace. In this episode, we witness the transformative power of corporate capital in Marunouchi, one of its strongholds, and the consumption to which it gives rise, in Ginza.
We start in Hibiya Park, originally a district of lordly mansions, turned into a military parade field; then intended to anchor an imposing government district, but too unstable to support the heavy ministries; and so converted to a public park, but soon providing a flashpoint for popular riots. It’s a fitting place to start exploring the tensions between control and license, accumulation and dissipation, which are visible near the palace. We walk down under the train tracks and the expressway into Ginza, once a commoner district, now a synonym for luxury consumption, with global brands and statement buildings on the main roads, restaurants, bars, and clubs stacked on top of each other on the quieter streets, next to the occasional inconspicuous shrine. Heading back towards the palace takes us into a less ostentatious world. First, next to the tracks, Yurakuchō, with cheaper places to unwind after work; and then Marunouchi, with its striking convention centre, the corporate bastion of Mitsubishi, and the new tall towers sprouting next to the station, where we end the walk. We can see the palace again from here, but it’s clear that power in contemporary Japan has shifted to those with their hands on capital.
You can follow the walk on this map: bit.ly/3LC0Ilh
And you can find the full transcript here: bit.ly/3HfgkIL
See a sneak peek on TikTok: tiktok.com/@walkhistoricity and Instagram: instagram.com/WALKHISTORICITY
WRITER AND PRESENTER: Angus Lockyer
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic
This series was supported by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. Find out more at: gbsf.org.uk
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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May 18, 2023
Tokyo - IMPERIAL CAPITAL 2: State Apparatus
In this walk, we explore how the circuits of power and money in Tokyo flow around the imperial palace. In this episode, we visit the politicians in Nagata-chō and the bureaucrats in Kasumigaseki, together with one of their playgrounds.
We start on one of the old bridges, which used to lead from the old castle across a reservoir and into a valley, but which now connects a high-end neighbourhood of condos and hotels to an entertainment district, where politicians, bureaucrats, and businessmen party after hours. Across the street, though, we climb under bright red torii gates to a cluster of old, venerable shrines: we find secular and sacred cheek by jowl in Tokyo time and time again. It’s on the far side of that shrine’s hill that the Japanese state begins to make itself seen.
We climb up another hill, between the Prime Minister’s residence and the politicians’ offices, into Nagata-chō, which is crowned by the modernist Renaissance Diet building, completed the year before the war, for the Japanese parliament. We walk down its other side, through a Japanese garden, to confront the non-descript sprawl of the office buildings in Kasumigaseki, which house the massed ranks of the Japanese bureaucracy. It’s a pacific scene, but the echoes of political violence are never far away, audible on yet another bridge back into the palace.
You can follow the walk on this map: bit.ly/41ZSLLW
And you can find the full transcript here: bit.ly/3Ve4KmR
See a sneak peek on TikTok: tiktok.com/@walkhistoricity and Instagram: instagram.com/WALKHISTORICITY
WRITER AND PRESENTER: Angus Lockyer
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic
This series was supported by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. Find out more at: gbsf.org.uk
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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May 11, 2023
Tokyo - IMPERIAL CAPITAL 1: Empty Space?
In this walk, we explore the circuits of power and money flowing around the Imperial Palace. In this episode, we see the transformation of an early modern castle into the centre of the modern nation-state.
We start in the vast plaza in front of the Imperial Palace, before heading down the street to the Great Gate, which takes us into the East Gardens. Passing through what’s left of the castle’s defences, we make our way up to what was once its innermost citadel, though the keep burned down nearly four centuries ago, and its foundations now accent a vast lawn. Heading north, we find ourselves in another garden, adorned with cultural institutions, early modern nostalgia giving way to post-war science, art, and sport. Here, though, Japan’s modern imperial history is slightly more visible, with a statue to a martyr general, the headquarters of the imperial guard, and a monument to their service in the name of the emperor. The ambivalence culminates once we finally leave the castle g…
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Jan 19, 2023
London - LEISURED CITY 3: Elite Consumption
In the last episode of this walk, we explore how the rich have spent their money and tried to maintain their status in Mayfair and Marylebone.
We start just off Piccadilly, in the courtyard of the Royal Academy, and end at Speaker’s Corner, in the northeast corner of Hyde Park. Mayfair and Marylebone were both a bit late to the aristocratic, capitalist ball, starting up half a century or so after the earlier initiatives in Bloomsbury, Soho, and St James’s. In the beginning, they were rivals, an architectural expression, on either side of Oxford Street, of the political rivalries of the 18th century, played out within and between different aristocratic estates. And they have remained distinct since: petro-wealth, hedge funds, and art dealers to the south; healthcare, among other things, to the north. But the pattern remains the same: vertical living in leased properties on garden squares. And neither have been able to keep the world entirely at bay. Marylebone is the birthplace o…
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Jan 12, 2023
London - LEISURED CITY 2: Social Divide
In this episode, we see how some parts of the West End (like Soho) came down in the world, while others (like St James’s) stayed up.
We start outside the new, shiny Tottenham Court Road Station and end up just off St James’s Street, where an older world still holds sway. To get there, we’ll have to cross the barrier that is Regent Street, put in place in the early 19th century, to enforce a “complete separation” between the artisans and traders and immigrants of Soho, to the east, and the “nobility and gentry” of St James’s, to the west. But the two neighbourhoods had started up at more or less the same time, in the late 17th century, following the template established in Bloomsbury. Their contrasting fortunes in the centuries since reveal the way in which the streets and squares serve both to reproduce elite privilege, and to keep it at a distance from more diverse, interesting, and innovative – albeit less salubrious – ways of life.
You can follow the walk on…
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Jan 5, 2023
London - LEISURED CITY 1: Aristocratic Capitalism
In this episode, we explore the basic economics of the West End, seeing how a single estate was built up through speculative development.
We walk from St Martin-in-the-Fields to Bedford Square, almost all of it, at one time, part of the Bedford Estate. Before the aristocrats came to town, we’d have been in the countryside, much of it owned by Westminster Abbey. But, in the mid-16th century, the Earl of Bedford gets his hands on Covent Garden. Then, in the early 17th century, his descendants begin to build up the estate. Fifty years later, they marry well and acquire Bloomsbury, where another aristocrat has come up with a template, which determines the subsequent history of the West End: long leases, tall terraces, and garden squares. The fortunes of the estate have waxed and waned over the years. Covent Garden and Bloomsbury have diverged. Still, though, the basic pattern is clear.
You can follow the walk on this map: bit.ly/3WxJ98o
And you can find the full transcript here: bit…
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Nov 11, 2022
London - LABOURING CITY 3: Building Homes
In this episode, we trace how people have been able to find a home in the East End, finding some space for faith and family, however small.
We start in front of Christ Church Spitalfields and end in Hoxton Square. Already in the early 18th century, the establishment was worried that immigrants were believing the wrong thing. By the late 19th, Protestant chapels and terraced houses were being turned into synagogues. But the authorities also had a housing crisis on their hands. The East End is pockmarked by attempts to put it right, from early cottages, through model dwellings and tenements, to London’s first council estate, on the western edge of Bethnal Green. Its 20th-century successors were less generous, more cramped, even as new waves of immigrants arrived, bringing their own culture and faith. Recent years, though, have seen a tide of wealth flow east, public housing moving into private hands, curry houses turned into coffee shops, factories becoming studios, and street art mov…
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Nov 5, 2022
London - LABOURING CITY 2: Global Labour
In this episode, we catch a glimpse of how London’s economy relied on labour from around the world – and how the East End’s workers were subject to the markets of the City.
We start in front of Whitechapel Station and end up in Spital Square. Throughout, we see a contrast between the skyscraping wealth of the City and the lower-slung buildings of the East End. We also discover the way the latter has built up over time. Its slow spread out from the city in the 17th and 18th centuries, as demand grew for skilled manufactures (bells, silk). Its explosive growth in the 19th, as people flocked to the city from the country and abroad, as the price of labour was driven down, and as poverty, overcrowding, and disease began to spread. Finally, its slow “recovery” in the late 20th century, as creatives, city workers, and corporate headquarters began to move east. The streets are also marked by the communities who have passed through them. French Protestants, Ashkenazi Jews, South Asia…
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Oct 29, 2022
London - LABOURING CITY 1: Working River
In this episode, we see how the river defined the city – and how the riverside has been transformed, first by trade, then by finance.
We’re walking east from Tower Hill into Wapping, ending up next to St George’s Town Hall. The marshes and the mudflats next to the river were already filling up four hundred years ago. Two hundred years later, there was money to be made by building docks, forcing thousands to go elsewhere. By the 1960s, though, trade had moved on and the docks were closed, leaving the space empty again, to be exploited in the last half century in new profit-seeking ways. Through it all, the river attracted immigrants, eager to work, but vulnerable to the relentless demands of the market, the irregular rhythms of charity, and the simmering resentment of those who believed they were here first. We pick up their story in the next two episodes.
Click here for the map and full transcript.
Follow historicity on Instagram: instagram.com/WALKHISTORICITY
WRITER AND PRES…
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Aug 16, 2022
London - A TALE OF TWO CITIES 3: The Pull of Power
In this walk, we explore how the cities of London and Westminster birthed the first global city. In this episode, how Westminster grew from a monastery to the centre of a post-imperial state.
We wind our way through Westminster, starting in Victoria Embankment Gardens, by the river, and ending up in Parliament Square. We learn how a small monastery became the kernel of a royal court, which eventually moved a bit north, to Whitehall, and became a fount of fashion and favours. We also see how it was constrained by Parliament, which occupied its former palace, and gradually pushed aside. And how the state scrambled to direct and finance wars, from the middle of the second millennium, to administer empire in the 19th century, and eventually, slowly, to provide some welfare to the population of the now United Kingdom. Westminster tells the story of how power was first accumulated and reluctantly shared; how governments remain in thrall to the imperial past and reluctant to face the post-…
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Aug 16, 2022
London - A TALE OF TWO CITIES 2: Connecting Wealth and Power
In this walk, we explore how the cities of London and Westminster birthed the first global city. In this episode, how the space between the two filled up, with lawyers, journalists, and more.
We walk from the City of London to the edge of Westminster, starting at St Paul’s Cathedral, and ending at Somerset House. We explore how wealth and power created a magnet for other communities, industries, professions. Initially, the north bank of the river was occupied by the church. By 1500, however, there were lawyers in the Temple and aristocrats further west, soon to be joined by writers and academics. By the second half of the 19th, there were newspapers in the east, universities in the west, and plans to improve the city by clearing out the slums. The monks, the aristocrats, and the journalists are no longer around. But their stories, together with those of the lawyers and the academics, reveal how the City and Westminster were connected, serviced, and sometimes constrained.
This serie…
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Aug 16, 2022
London - A TALE OF TWO CITIES 1: The Power of Finance
In this walk, we explore how the cities of London and Westminster birthed the first global city. In this episode, how the square mile grew to control the world’s trade and finance.
We wind our way through the City of London, starting at the Monument to the Great Fire of London and ending at St Paul’s Cathedral. From 1500 or so, English merchants, cut off from Europe, were scrambling to exploit the rest of the world. A century later, the city started to develop the institutions it needed to facilitate trade, to finance the state, and to govern its own affairs. Come the 19th century, rail and telegraph, industry and empire transformed the city into the square mile we know today. But even as the temples of finance continue to reach for the sky – and as the City tries to maintain its place in the world – it’s still the product of older, smaller stories.
This series was produced in collaboration with the Institute of Historical Research. Find out more at: layersoflondon.org
Cli…
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Aug 2, 2022
Introducing: historicity
historicity is a new series of audio walking tours, which explores how cities got to be the way they are – starting with London.
WRITER AND PRESENTER: Angus Lockyer
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic
Follow historicity on Instagram: instagram.com/WALKHISTORICITY
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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