Nincompoopolis

Boris is never boring

Boris Johnson brings a lot of images to mind, but architecture is not usually one of them, unless you’re Douglas Murphy , a London architect. In that case, Johnson is a horror of bad taste, pointless edifices and unneeded construction. It seems eight years of Johnson as Mayor was a fine form of torture for an architect or designer.

The chapters of Nincompoopolis divide Johnson’s unfortunate record in architecture and design into categories like housing and transport. There’s a redundant new cable car system joining two points that don’t need it, an insane tower turned into an expensive slide that loses as much money as it is hideous, and a new line of bus that is so badly designed it is called the Roastmaster. All at the behest of Boris Johnson, influenced by him, and of course promoted by him.

More than that, Nincompoopolis is a tour of what’s wrong with London today, and how it got that way. It is a terrific insight by a local who has lived through it. Murphy is great on context.

He says Johnson was easy to understand. He needed action and he needed achievements. Didn’t matter if they were appropriate or not, needed or not, or well designed. As long as there was activity, he was in the spotlight and that’s all that mattered. It’s all about Boris and his appointment with destiny – the prime ministership.

Possibly the most searing criticism is Johnson’s total abandonment of the lower classes. He personally attended to 130 building projects that favored developers and the wealthy at the expense of the lower classes. He totally ignored decades of policy on council houses – subsidized housing that kept some sort of balance in London. Under Johnson, it was all about the rich. Absentee billionaire owners mattered far more than workers for Johnson’s London. In his last speech he took credit for none of the bottom 20 poorest areas being part of London. He broke them up and disbursed them all. Another job well done.

David wineberg

I love books on architecture and i love a polemic so this is up my alley .

Murphy dissects Johnson's time in charge of London. Each chapter is a different aspect of life in London and it skewers Johnson as a buffoon and a man who will do whatever is necessary to succeed regardless of his abilities and the rights of his actions.

If you think this seems pointless never forget that Johnson has managed to use the lovable buffoon mask to hide the truth of who he is. The sense of anger is beautifully hidden behind a dissection of the action, any attempt to say this is a hatchet job is invalidated by the level of detail and the facts presented in the book .

'Nincompoopolis' was a brilliant read, chock full of examples of Boris Johnson's mishandlings as Mayor of London. As a Londoner, I marvelled at his ineptness of tackling the housing crisis and heavy handed nature of The Met, but until reading this book had no idea of the scale of corruption involved at the top levels.

Spanning from the aforementioned pressing social issues to the ridiculous vanity projects of the Olympic Park, unnecessary Garden Bridge, and potential rebuild of the Crystal Palace, the book exposed the financial gains and illegal business dealings Boris entangled himself with during his tenure as Mayor. The amount of money from the public purse wasted on planning alone is eye watering; how far it could have gone to make this city a better place for its citizens absolutely engages me.

Murphy did a fantastic job of researching the subject from many angles and was able to back up his damming verdict that Boris just did not take his job seriously. The author is also an architect, so his eye for detail and design also helped to further explain Boris's professional gimmicks and personal gaffes at the top level.

A fantastic read for anyone interested in modern London, architecture, or political cronyism.

Thanks to Net Galley for providing me with an advanced copy.