Week 8: What's In A Name?
Week 8: What's In A Name?
Cities lose their character when they try too hard to name landmarks
I’ve been a tad busy this week and weekend, so this will just be a short-ish newsletter this week.
Recent events in London have provided me with the opportunity to write about one of my local bugbears. Over the past couple of weeks there’s been a bit of huffing in the United Kingdom over the renaming of London’s overground train lines. The new names of the lines have been considered to be displays of progressive performance, rather than the more natural manner of train-lines following geographic features (or things considered less political – albeit with the caveat that everything is political now).
I tend to think the naming of the lines is a little ham-fisted. Reaching for sentiment, rather than allowing the city’s features of evolve and develop character naturally. We’ve had a similar issue here in Melbourne, albeit it one of trying to name landmarks to placate nationalist passions. And this is something that I have found rather annoying. As I think it fundamentally misunderstands how a city’s character is established.
Character comes from localised naming. A city builds what is unique about itself by having the confidence to name its landmarks with restraint. Streets, for example, develop character for the activity that occurs on them, without having to resort to grandiose names. Think Downing St or Fleet St in London, which have become metonyms for the prime minister’s office and the press respectively.
Here in Melbourne the main railway station that services regional and interstate trains was renamed a while ago from Spencer St to Southern Cross Station – after the constellation that appears on the Australian flag. Demonstrating my displeasure, I tend to now refer to it as Southern Cross Tattoo Station – after a trend for certain types of young Australian men.
Spencer St was a station name that had confidence in the city, a city comfortable within itself, and to be itself. It didn’t need to wave its arms around to be noticed. It was part of the vocabulary of the city, where a simple preposition indicated one’s meaning – to meet at Spencer St meant the station, to meet on Spencer St required a street number or shop name (we still have Flinders St, but some politician is probably itching to rename it something cringe).
Cities lose character when they try too hard to gain attention. The absurd renaming of the arenas that hosts the Australian Open tennis from Flinders Park to Melbourne Park being another example. Now commentators sound ridiculous saying “Coming to you from Melbourne Park, Melbourne.” As if the city gets paid per mention.
There is a new metro line almost completed in Melbourne, with a new station located in an area known colloquially as the Domain. This would have been the name of confident localism, but instead the state government has chosen to call it ANZAC Station (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps). Not only is the name unnecessarily seeking to placate nationalist sentiment, but it has ruined the Crowded House song Four Season In One Day, with the line “The sun shines on the black clouds hanging over ANZAC Station” not really having the same lyricism to it.
Australians are, of course, terribly uncreative people who not only fall back on crass nationalism when naming things, but do so in the most unimaginative ways. Melbourne’s tallest building is called Australia 108. Named after the country it is in and the number of floors it has - during what must have been a riveting marketing meeting. Although as a name that reflects a national disposition it may be apt.
Regardless of the sentiment, grand statements tend to be driven by insecurity. Cities that are comfortable with themselves have little need to seek attention – and certainly don’t need to signal to particular groups. The attention they receive comes naturally. And people are attracted to these places because of their unique features and cultures. The irony being that by trying to placate larger sentiments cities undermines this attraction. Which compounds their insecurity.
No reading this week, unfortunately. Only enough time for the above rant
Readers may be aware of Rob Henderson, who has become known for the phrase luxury beliefs. The idea of luxury beliefs is that these are political positions or opinions that confer status on the educated classes, but confer costs on the working class. Rather than physical goods, these positions are now the primary demonstration of class.
While Henderson may have developed a catchy new name, the concept itself isn’t new. In fact, a song off the Manic Street Preachers’s 1994 album The Holy Bible called PCP is about this very same idea. The song’s lyricist, Richey Edwards, was concerned with what he called the New Moral Certainty, and how it drove what was then called “political correctness”. How this was not only making writing insipid and often used to hide true intent, but would cast suspicion towards those who – due to spending their days, say, working manual jobs – could not keep up with the new “correct” terminology (the band themselves are from a – now former – mining town in South Wales and don’t take kindly to their community being looked down upon - see A Design For Life).
So here is a live version of the song from Glastonbury 1994.