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Former cab driver missing for week

POLICE questioned motorists and pedestrians yesterday as part of the search for a former taxi driver who has been missing for the past week.

Rachel Cooke visits the rejuvenated blocks of Sheffield's Park Hill estate

Some children are brought up to love cats and hate dogs, others to adore Manchester United and despise Liverpool. I was brought up to revere Victorian architecture and to abhor modern buildings. Modern buildings, whatever their vintage, whatever their supposed virtues, were rubbish and that was that. In the 1980s, an 'executive' estate was built on the field opposite our Sheffield home. For my parents, midway through restoring their black-leaded fireplaces, the arrival of these buildings involved a certain amount of trauma, an anxiety that transmitted itself to me. Our terrace was built of local sandstone and, darkened by age and industry, its exterior always reminded me of burnt toast. These houses, though, were built of brick so bright it made my eyes ache and they had gleaming tarmac drives which looked, even in dry weather, like licks of liquorice. At night, I lay in bed and indulged in violent fantasies in which I went Awol with a wrecking ball.In Sheffield, haters of modern architecture had a perfect focus for their loathing in the form of Park Hill, the council estate that is now the biggest listed building in Britain. As a teenager, I hated Park Hill even more than I loathed Mrs Thatcher, for the simple reason that it made people think badly of my city. It wasn't just that no one liked so-called Brutalism. By the mid-1980s, the flats, then nearly 30 years old, were in a sorry state: dilapidated, and reputedly crammed with the council's most difficult tenants. Yet no visitor could escape them. The estate sits high on a cliff, overlooking the railway station, dominating the landscape like some great prison (a friend of a friend was once told by a taxi driver that Park Hill had been built, not in the late 1950s, but in the 1930s and that had Hitler invaded Britain, it would have been the site of his HQ). When I went to university and told people where I was from, they would wrinkle their noses and say: 'Oh, I went through there once on the train...' and you just knew that they were picturing Park Hill. It was embarrassing. Why couldn't the council knock the thing down and start again? Strange, then, that all these years later Park Hill is not only one of the buildings that I like most in the world, but the cause of an unexpected passion on my part for 20th-century buildings in general and 1960s buildings in particular (though I still hate executive estates and always will). This is not to say that I love every bit of concrete I see. The more I learn, the more I realise that postwar architecture is like any other kind of architecture: some is good, some bad. Recently, I visited Robin Hood Gardens in Poplar, east London, a scheme with which Park Hill is often compared, and a recent Brutalist cause celebre (in July, to much gnashing of teeth from architecture nerds, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, advised by English Heritage, ruled that the estate, designed by Alison and Peter Smithson and completed in 1972, would not be listed, though the Twentieth Century Society has since been successful in its request for a legal review of this decision). Thanks to my new fondness for grey slabs, I expected, if not to love it, then to want to save it; this is the only housing scheme that the radical Smithsons ever managed to get built. But the DCMS was right. Robin Hood Gardens is neither generous, nor well-built, and its site has changed beyond all recognition in the last 30 years, its old dockyard views gone, its 'gardens' polluted by the relentless grind of traffic into the Blackwall Tunnel. It is beyond saving, as its fans would find out if they ran a competition among developers for its renovation (there isn't a company in the land that would want that gig).But Park Hill is not Robin Hood Gardens. Once a great and innovative building, it one day will be again. In the last year, Sheffield City Council's ambitious plan to give the estate a second life as a hip home for urban professionals has at last got under way: tenants have moved out and Urban Splash, the development company, has moved in. When I first heard about this project, I assumed that these residents, worn down by living in a building so down at heel, would be glad to escape, that they'd say to the incoming yuppies: 'You're welcome to it' and score themselves a nice new house. I was wrong. More than 200 have put down their names for the share of Park Hill that will eventually be owned by Manchester Methodist Housing Association (determined that the site be socially mixed, the council has decreed that a third of the 900 new flats will be 'affordable' and two-thirds of those will be for social rent). Some are living elsewhere and hope to return. A hard core, however, remains on site even as the dust rises around them. This lot love Park Hill and don't like the idea of living anywhere else.Cut to last April, when all this started. Until now, I've never been inside Park Hill. Once I'm standing in the middle of it, though, two things strike me. The first is the sense of drama that builds as you walk through its courtyards, which get grander the higher the flats grow (built on a hill, the lowest tower sits on the site's highest point and vice versa); their embrace makes me think not of A Clockwork Orange but of the Colosseum in Rome. The second is the fact that Park Hill, unlike Robin Hood Gardens and its listed neighbour, Ernö Goldfinger's Balfron Tower, is not built of concrete. Its frame is concrete but its curtain walls are made of red, orange and yellow brick. Thanks to the damage wrought by heavy pollution, this is not something you can tell from the street. Beside me, in the whipping cold, Grenville Squires, a caretaker who has worked here for 26 years - until recently, he lived here, too - is hopping with excitement. He loves tourists. 'The way it all fits together,' he says. 'It's like a jigsaw puzzle. I look at it as a feat of engineering. It was so clever. It had a district heating system - the only place with one like it was in Norway, where they'd capped a geyser - and a communal waste disposal system [this survived until the advent of disposable nappies]. When the new developers did a concrete survey, they found that it is not yet a third of the way through its life.' We get in Grenville's electric cart, and he drives me along Park Hill's interconnected decks to prove that the now much derided 'streets in the sky' really were wide enough to take a milk float. When we get to a suitable vantage point, he attempts to describe the estate as it was. 'There were four pubs, a supermarket, a hardware shop, a butcher's, a ladies' shoe shop, a chip shop. It was like a medieval village; you didn't have to leave.'So he doesn't believe that it was Park Hill's architects, Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith, who are to blame for what eventually became of the estate? That their design was too brutal, too idealistic, too rigidly controlling? 'No, it was the council's fault. They gave anyone who wanted one a flat and they didn't work hard enough at maintenance. She's lovely [the building]. She's my mistress, the only lady who's fetched me from the marital bed at two in the morning and made demands. She has come on hard times, but all she's got to do is wash her face and put on a new dress and she will be fine.'At the Park Hill social club, I meet the hard core who remain in residence; they are of the same opinion. Brenda Hague was 22 when she moved into Park Hill on 7 December 1959. Was she full of foreboding as she took possession of her neat new flat with its covetable kitchen, a reconstruction of which I have just seen in Sheffield's Weston Park Museum? Not at all. 'It was luxury,' she says. 'Me, my husband and our baby were living in a back-to-back. My parents were there, too, and my brother. We had no bathroom, just a tin bath on the back of the door. So when we got here it was marvellous. Three bedrooms, hot water, always warm. And the view. It's lovely, especially at night, when it's all lit up.'In those days, Park Hill was a quiet place, most of its tenants young families. But even when it began to be run down, in the 1980s, her fondness endured. 'It always felt safe to me. They say it looks horrible. Maybe it does from the outside. It's what's inside that counts. My son lives in Harrogate now and he has nothing but fond memories.'How does she feel about the refurbishment? Pleased, so long as she can remain where she's always been. I ask her friend Edith Bradbury, another resident of almost half a century, if it's hard to imagine a new Park Hill, rising like a phoenix from the ashes of its previous incarnation. 'It is. But it was hard to imagine it when it first went up. All the little streets this replaced. Who'd have thought it?''Will it work? Will it be a success?' 'Yes. I think it is going to be lovely.'Park Hill tells the story of a century. The streets it replaced were home to some of the worst slums in Europe, people living 400 to the acre in houses so tightly packed they barely saw the sun, their only access to water a standpipe in the yard. But they had work. The valley that Park Hill lords it over was home to steel mills, mines and the workshops of the Little Mesters, the craftsmen who made the finest cutlery in the world. Park Hill's fortunes faded as this industry evaporated into thin air; between 1979 and 1989, 53,000 jobs were lost in a city of 200,000. What interests me, though, is what the estate tells us about our relationship with modern buildings. These days, a single structure can come to represent a world view, standing proxy for our aesthetics and our politics. I used to hate it and now I like it. Perhaps you think this tells you a lot about me, but it doesn't really. Or it shouldn't. Park Hill is only one building. This is why we should treat with caution the arguments of commentators like Simon Jenkins, the new chairman of the National Trust, who deride all Brutalist buildings, the 'ideologues' who created them and the intellectuals and theorists who praise them while choosing to live in Georgian terraces. Brenda Hague is no theorist, nor is Ivor Smith an ideologue. 'When Reyner Banham [the architecture critic] called us Brutalists, we didn't know what it meant,' says Smith (his partner Jack Lynn is dead). 'We didn't think we were Brutalists. We thought we were quite nice guys.'When work began on Park Hill in 1957, he and Lynn were young, newly qualified, full of youthful enthusiasm and inspired by the optimism abroad in postwar Britain, however austere. 'The Unité [by le Corbusier, in Marseille] had just been built and it was exciting. But it wasn't an infatuation. We'd also made drawings of John Wood's crescents in Bath.'Returning to Park Hill after 35 years, he thought it looked 'marvellous' from the town. Was there anything he would have done differently? 'The decks. A street has windows at street level. But at Park Hill, conditioned by best value for money, we couldn't have windows on to the pavements.' Does he like Urban Splash's ideas? 'Yes, though if anything I think they could be more daring.'What of those ideas? The company has produced a flash brochure to showcase its £130m refurbishment of Park Hill and it makes for cheering, if occasionally comic, reading. To the naysayers, it points out that the density of the site - 192 people per acre - is well in excess of what the government considers to be a sustainable community and that the flats' original plans are more generous than the boxes favoured by modern developers. So, Park Hill is a 'bruiser'. The company will give it 'romance': oak trees, allotments, a wildflower meadow, crown green bowls, a dance studio, a high street ('a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker'). The marketeers write of wanting to build a 'yellow brick road' leading to a city sweet shop, Granelli's Spice ('spice' is a Sheffield word for sweets and Bertie Bassett one of its most famous sons). Cutest of all, the company will retain the graffiti that adorns Park Hill 13 storeys up and which once had a starring role in an Arctic Monkeys video: 'I LOVE YOU WILL U MARRY ME'. But none of this would be happening at all were it not for the building itself. English Heritage's controversial decision to confer Grade II* listed status on Park Hill in 1998, for its contribution to British Modernism, now seems prescient and wise. It surely would have been demolished otherwise and lots of identical, red-brick boxes stuck in its place. Of course, refurbishments of modernist buildings are extremely challenging and not all successful. In Islington, residents of Lubetkin's Spa Green Estate are taking legal action over the recent refurbishment of their homes, claiming the work was 'poor at best, and damaging at worst'. But for the time being, the sense of hope and expectation at Park Hill is palpable. After my visit, I catch the bus home to our toasty old terrace and, over supper, I ask my mother, ever so politely, if she has thought about where she will live in her retirement.Good, bad, ugly? Modernist landmarksRoyal College of Physicians, Regent's Park, London, by Denys Lasdun (1964)Most people know Lasdun for the Royal National Theatre, but this is miles better; its elegant sensibility seems to owe more to Frank Lloyd Wright thanle Corbusier.Hunstanton Secondary School, Norfolk, by Alison and Peter Smithson (1949-1954)The building that made them famous: a steel frame with brick and glass panels, and a water tank high on a tower, it's a small-scale homage to Mies van der Rohe.2 Willow Road, Hampstead, London, by Ernö Goldfinger (1938)Goldfinger is best known for his immense Brutalist tower blocks, Trellick Tower in North Kensington, and Balfron Tower in Poplar. Willow Road, his home, is more gentle and notable for its clever use of space and a spiral staircase designed by Ove Arup.Trinity Square car park, Gateshead, by Owen Luder and Rodney Gordon (1969)Also known as the Get Carter car park, after the 1971 film in which it appears. See it now: its demolition is imminent. Gordon also designed the unpopular Tricorn Centre in Portsmouth - demolished in 2004 - and the Michael Faraday Memorial at Elephant and Castle in south London.Apollo Pavilion, Peterlee, by Victor Pasmore (1963-1970)Controversial piece of abstract public art in the Sunny Blunts housing estate. A grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund has recently been awarded for its restoration.Architectureguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Gang wars turn Caracas into a murder capital

The building is painted peach and there are palm trees in front, but there is nothing cheerful about Plaza Auyantepuy. It is a place of death. In the basement, a dungeon-like warren, men in rubber boots and surgical masks swing through the double door every few hours and wheel in another corpse. The earlier arrivals lie on trolleys, turning yellow.One floor above, relatives of the dead huddle in small, silent groups. Some hold handkerchiefs to their faces to guard against the smell. There is nothing to guard against the grief. This is the national forensic science laboratory in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, and it is the epicentre of a murder epidemic.'My son left home this morning at 7am. They rang me at 9.15am to say he was shot,' said Genny Cedeno, 38, clutching a photograph of 18-year-old Carlos. Tears welled in her eyes and she shook her head. 'He had a right to live.'Yards away sat another family which had just identified the body of Ernesto Salcedo, 29, a security guard who vanished last Saturday. He had a wife and two children.In the past few years Caracas has become one of the most violent cities on the planet. Armed gangs competing over turf and drug deals wage ruthless, low-level warfare in the slums. Nationally, homicides have soared to more than 13,000 a year, with 2,710 in Caracas alone, according to leaked government figures. That gives a national rate of 48 per 100,000 people. In some Caracas slums the rate rises to 130. The rate in England and Wales is 1.4.In opinion polls Venezuelans consistently rank safety as their main concern, with 64 per cent expressing fear of being attacked in the street. Kidnappings have also surged, especially 'express kidnappings' in which victims or relatives pay an immediate relatively modest ransom.President Hugo Chávez may pay a political price today in local and regional elections. Voters are expected to vent frustration at crime - and shoddy public services - by rejecting some of his mayoral and state governor candidates.'It's mayhem here. And the government does nothing,' said María Elena Delgado, 54, a housewife in Petare, a vast slum in eastern Caracas. 'I have to think about my children.' The four surviving ones, that is. Three of her sons have been gunned down, including one before Chávez came to power a decade ago.Opinion polls suggest el comandante remains popular, with approval ratings well over 50 per cent, but that anger over crime could lose him control of once loyal bastions such as Petare.Chávez speaks in public daily, often for hours, but seldom mentions insecurity. He has blamed crime on capitalism and poverty, and said if his family was starving he would steal. 'The perception that crime has soared is a weak point for him,' said Steve Ellner, a political scientist at Venezuela's University of the East. 'He can't talk about crackdowns because that would contradict his whole discourse.' Some critics claim the President's denunciations of inequality and 'squealing oligarchs' have encouraged youths to ease their poverty the fast way, with a gun. Partly thanks to Chávez's social programmes, poverty levels have dropped from 53 to 37 per cent. Yet crime has spiked. Corrupt and inept policing has been compounded by a flood of cocaine from neighbouring Colombia. Changing the justice minister every year - there have been 10 under Chávez- has wrought institutional havoc.The authorities have expressed interest in fresh strategies. Ken Livingstone, London's former Mayor and Chávez ally, is advising Caracas on community policing. The Justice Ministry, which no longer publishes murder statistics, did not return calls seeking comment for this article.In the hillside slums ringing the capital the bloodiest days are Friday and Saturday. The salsa and reggae beats blaring from bars can swiftly be drowned by gunfire, said Miguel Torres, 52, a taxi driver. 'One second you're sipping a Polar [beer], the next you're under the table.'Some weekends more than 50 corpses make their way to Plaza Auyantepuy. Monday is funeral day, with hearses sometimes getting stuck behind other cortèges. A gang recently ambushed and killed rivals at a funeral home. 'Often they are just 16- and 17-year-olds but already they are psychopaths,' said Jimin Pérez, director of Project Alcatraz, a scheme which tries to rehabilitate gangsters. 'These guys kill for nothing.'Project Alcatraz, which is funded by the Santa Teresa rum company, has had mixed results. Some gang members have renounced violence. Others have been assassinated within days of completing the programme. Some have lapsed back into killing. 'We have to offer them a chance of another life,' said Pérez. 'When they feel abandoned and alone, that is when they have no limits, no controls.'Venezuelaguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds