At least London has the loos

7 January 2005

LONDON - This is not The Byrd's "rain gray town." Thanks to pollution controls, the last pea-soup fog was 40 years ago. The air is clear, the sky blue and the temperature hovers in the 40s - a far cry from home, where snow is falling and grown men, women and city councilors are placing trash cans on streets to save their hard- shoveled parking spaces.

London is the undeniably world-class city that Boston wishes it were but fears it is not. Yet after a week here, I think Boston sells itself short. In many respects - 19th-century architecture, human-level scale, a blend of history and modernity, and varied and distinct neighborhoods - the two are similar. Indeed, spend time in London and you begin to appreciate Boston even more - beginning with smoking. Smoke-free air is so much part of our everyday lives that one is almost staggered to find people in England puffing away in airports, restaurants and bars. It's unpleasant, often offensive, and - since no-smoking areas are rare - easily ruins an otherwise decent meal.

One is also struck by the degree to which cars in London matter more than people. Yes, the pedestrian-walk signal lights up when one presses the curbside button, a clever idea that tells you - unlike in Boston - that the button is actually working. Yet most major streets are divided down the middle by wrought iron fencing. It's not decorative. The intent is to force pedestrians to cross only at designated intersections, of which there are far too few. Moreover, and bizarrely, crossing is a two-step process. Pedestrians first have to cross to the median, then walk parallel to traffic for 10 feet or so to the next opening in the fence, and then wait again to finish crossing.

And while many in Boston lament the city's early closing hours, London is far worse. Retail stores shutter at 5 p.m., with the almost jokingly named "late hours" (that is, until 7 p.m.) just twice a week. Pubs, meanwhile, usually close around 9:30, making for a dull night watching the vastly overrated BBC.

That's not to say Boston can't learn from London. Mayor Thomas Menino's efforts notwithstanding, public bathrooms in Boston are rare ("Restroom? Sure. Take the Red Line to Park Station, change to the Green Line outbound, get off at Copley Square, walk to Exeter and you'll find it on the corner, next to the library"). In London, public toilets are clean, free and seemingly always less than a block away. That cleanliness, in fact, is apparent everywhere, including the streets, the Underground and the parks.

Curiously, though, trash cans are hard to find, although London does have separate waste receptacles for dogs. It's part a more relaxed and tolerant attitude toward pets, one Boston would do well to emulate.

Still, if there is one thing I could import from London to Boston, it would be that city's greater sense of adventurousness, especially when it comes to architecture.

Perhaps because of its sour experience with Brutalism, the style that left us with monstrosities such as City Hall, Boston has a near phobia about building anything different or daring, trying whenever possible to replicate the redbrick designs of the past. Yet London, which has at least as much history worth preserving, has at the same time erected some strikingly original buildings.

One, the just-opened Swiss Re building, by Sir Norman Foster, looks like a cross between a cigar and a lipstick tube. And the city's skyline is dominated by, of all things, not by a building but by an avant-garde Ferris wheel: the London Eye. Glass gondolas holding up to 25 people slowly circle up to 440 feet high - more than half the height of the Prudential Tower. It's now London's top tourist attraction, and an idea Boston might consider for itself.

Perched, say, somewhere between downtown and the South Boston waterfront, a Boston Eye could give spectacular views of both the city and the harbor - views, I think, that might put to rest worries over who really is world class while perhaps also helping you spot the closest public restroom.