Morpeth School, Tower Hamlets
Many fences are interrupted, or have large openings; they are clearly not designed to prevent access. Here access is barred; 5 yards on, one may cross freely; what is the point?
I imagine that a major purpose for such fences is the demarcation of property. In continental European cities, the closed facades of urban housing serve themselves as demarcation; in London's "garden style" urban developments, the boundaries between public areas such as streets and residential and other property are marked by walls and fences. In most American suburbs--equally following the ideal of a "garden city"--such fences are, however, largely absent. Lawns and flower beds sufficiently mark a lot as private property. In London, too, one would easily recognise the garden surrounding a house or the ground of a council estate as "private", and distinct from the street. Nevertheless, a wall or fence may be a sort of exclamation mark behind "mine" (And don't you forget it! Here, inside this fence, this is mine! Not yours! And not anyone else's! Mine! See that little fence? You cannot help but notice. Mine!).
Apart from demarcating property, such boundary structures also distinguish between inside and outside. Such distinctions can seem pretty sharp, as between "inside" Canary Wharf, a private commercial property development, lavishly and expensively furbished, and the "outside" of Tower Hamlets' grim council dwellings on the other side of the wall. The idea of an outside seems to be deeply rooted in British perception; as an island nation, anything foreign is automatically on the outside of a natural geographical border. But also groups of people are regularly identified under the implied heading of "not one of us"--the junkies, single mothers, bankers, homos, immigrants, pedos, nutters, welfare thieves… They are on the outside, do not belong with "hard working British families"; they are even a threat to them.
Threat seems implied in the distinction between inside and outside. One must ensure that "mine" stays "mine", that property is protected. Consequently, the area is brimming with penalty warning notices and surveillance cameras. Orwell Court was actually on my council estate, an ironic monument to the visionary author.
Smile. You're on 24 hour CCTV.
What is on the outside cannot be trusted. And it is arguably true; what is the property I keep for myself to someone else? I dangle it in front of his nose: Have a look, but don't touch; remember it is mine, not yours; do not come too close; only look. Is property provocation to someone without? If the people on the inside want nothing to do with those on the outside, what allegiance, what respect do those on the outside owe the insiders?
None, apparently. The fly tipping, graffitis, vandalism, theft, and nightly disturbance on the estates make that clear. What respect has the outsider for something that excludes him? In a paradoxical way, could the fences and walls actually erode respect for property and its owners? If the fences turn out to be too low, is the answer "build higher fences"? Is the fundamental problem that people need more protection from each other?
Only six months after moving away from it, the neighbourhood and the estate feel foreign and strange to me. As I looked around the estate and at my old flat--the new owners had erected a large wooden wall around its front garden--surveillance cameras were twisting their spindly mechanical necks to follow my moves in the drizzling March rain. I was definitely on the outside now.
