Observations on crap towns

The newly published second volume of The Idler Book of Crap Towns contains, like its predecessor, some quasi-scientific data about unemployment, crime and GCSE results, but makes no claim to be an empirical study of crapness. Instead, it is a collection of ad hominem arguments, received wisdom and general misanthropy about litter-strewn streets, marauding teenagers and abandoned shopping trolleys.

So what makes a really crap town? Out-of-the-way places such as Barrow and Hull score well in these books, as do gone-to-seed seaside resorts, particularly if they have an elderly population, such as Bexhill-on-Sea, which is charmingly described as being "populated by people who have nothing left to do but die". Chi-chi shops and gastropubs (as in Islington and Clapham), heritage tat (Chester, Windsor) or bloody students (Oxford, St Andrews) also help.

But the crappiest towns of all are the ones that fell victim to the "failed urban planning and concrete ugliness" of the pre-Thatcher era: new or expanded towns such as Skelmersdale, Hemel Hempstead and Basingstoke, or places such as Croydon, Slough and Luton, which are deemed to have more than their fair share of high-rise office blocks, concrete car parks, Arndale centres and roundabouts. The iconically naff feature of this type of town is the 1960s pedestrianised shopping precinct, with its windswept open spaces, fountain features, clock towers and ill-advised mosaics with crumbling tiles.

By pouring scorn on this period of provincial regeneration, the authors of Crap Towns suggest that the biggest crime a town can commit is hubris. Many small towns followed the lead of cities that "rebranded" themselves during the Thatcher era as happening, vibrant places to lure investors. Marketing people renamed Basingstoke "Amazingstoke" and "Dallas, Hampshire", and proclaimed that it had "the tallest building between London and New York" - presumably hoping we would all forget that the space between London and New York is mostly occupied by the Atlantic. As Crap Towns demonstrates, such overselling can produce mockery and ridicule.

On the same principle, it is often a bad idea for towns to invest heavily in public art as a form of local boosterism. Milton Keynes's "concrete cows" are the most infamous example. These cows have assumed a symbolic status that is quite disproportionate to their modest origins. They have been beheaded, stolen, kidnapped by students, painted with zebra or pyjama stripes, daubed with obscene graffiti and mounted by home-made papier mache bulls. Widely seen as an attempt to imbue MK with a spuriously bucolic feel, they were not in fact officially commissioned. They were donated to a local college in 1978 by a departing American artist-in-residence, and are made of waste materials and fibreglass, not concrete.

The tourist officers, local MPs and council spokespersons who line up to defend their municipalities only make things worse by singing the praises of their "outstanding leisure centres", "terrific transport links" and "famous cemeteries". If your town is accused of being crap, the best tactic is to keep a dignified silence.

Joe Moran lectures at Liverpool John Moores University

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