Lots of fashionable words ring alarm bells, but the one that’s giving me the pip right now is “reimagine”. Sure, it’s fine to assert that in her novel Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys reimagines elements of Jane Eyre. But can the same ever really be said of an apartment block or a hamburger? Its deployment often reeks of desperation, an attempt to make the controversial or the unpalatable sound dreamy and magical. No, you may not be able to see the beauty in what lies ahead, but that’s only because you’re a philistine with no vision.
Near our house, a major “reimagining” is under way in the form of the construction of the borough’s first “livable neighbourhood”, the initial stages of which (faffing with pavements) have closed a major arterial road, pushing yet more traffic and several bus routes on to another, already-clogged thoroughfare – and the result is chaotic. Journey times have doubled; the air is thick with fumes born of traffic jams. Putting aside the fact that the neighbourhood in question is perfectly “livable” already, isn’t it always the case that these schemes inevitably make life very much less so for those who live or work just adjacent to them?
