The abominable Sky Pool.

A while back, a glass-bottomed skywalk, jutting into the Grand Canyon, was opened. It extends 70 feet beyond the edge, is 4,000 feet in the air - that's more than 3/4's of a mile!!!! - and I can guarantee you that it will never, ever, ever in a million-billion-trillion years have me on it. I can't even get to the side of the Grand Canyon and peer down, let alone skywalk out over it.  (There's also a zipline, but it only goes over a smaller side canyon, and is "only" 500 feet in the air. All I can say is include me out of that tourist attraction, too.)

I much prefer having my feet on solid ground. As, I suspect, the tourist in China feels - you remember, the guy who was on a glass-paneled bridge (a mere 100m above terra firma, but still...) when parts of it collapsed a month or so ago. He was left clinging to the sides, with gaps in the bridge surrounding him, but managed to, quite literally, hang on for dear life, until he was rescued. I can only imagine the nightmares. 

And now there's the London Sky Pool, a glass bottomed swimming pool that connects the 10 story towers at a Nine Elms housing complex on the banks of the Thames. 

The bottom isn't actually glass, it's acrylic. Clear acrylic, so you can see down. Way down. When you're doing your laps. 

That's another 'hard no' for me. Punting on the Thames, maybe. Swimming in a Sky Pool on its banks, errrr, no.

Although it's what first caught my eye, it's not just the terrifying-ness of the pool that's grabbing all the attention. It's the location, location, location. And the gentrification, gentrification, gentrification. 

Vauxhall, Nine Elms and Battersea are still largely deprived parts of the city defined by huge swaths of public housing and surprising poverty amid the many

now-gentrified terraces. It is precisely because of this contrast in wealth that the Sky Pool seems so obscene.

To do something like this at a resort is one thing — to create a spectacle for the purposes of tourism as was done, say, at Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands. But to do it in London is to rub the faces of those looking up from their grim train commutes to difficult jobs in others’ wallowing about in transparent luxury. 

Much has also been made of the iniquity of the residents in the shared-ownership housing elements of Embassy Gardens having the shimmering shadow of the pool cast over their lives while not being allowed to use it — it is reserved for residents of the upmarket apartments. It is right to be outraged, though it is also worth noting that the associations which now run affordable housing often deliberately opt out of shared facilities to keep costs down and require separate access (otherwise known as “poor doors”) to be able to fully control their portions of the development.

Ironically this is the cost of a modern mixed-tenure neighbourhood where the responsibility for affordable housing has been outsourced. Nevertheless the juxtaposition of bleak, strip-lit foyers for the social housing tenants and luxurious hotel-style concierge lobbies for the rest evokes uneasy images of spatial apartheid.

...The Sky Pool is a glass bauble, a precariously hanging decoration and it should be ignored. Unfortunately it cannot be because it has become such a perfect symbol of a disdain for the urban fabric and an attitude of internalised, privatised luxury, which does nothing for the city except look down on it. (Source: FT.com)

I'm pretty sure that the majority of residents - whether living in the luxe flats or behind the "poor door" - are like me in not wanting to avail themselves of the swimming pool in the sky. I'd be thinking of the poor fellow in China clinging to the sides of an intact piece of a glass-paneled bridge when it went into epic fail. Only if the pool collapsed, and all that water went sluicing down, you'd have a lot smaller chance for survival than the guy in China did. Wheeeee...

Still, to not allow non-wealthy folks access to recreational and other amenities - even if they're willing and able to pay a fee - seems downright elitist and snobby. 

And then there's the "poor door", which I take it is on a grubby alley. Spatial apartheid, alright. (I also read that the residents of these flats tried to spruce up their entry foyer, only to have the table and other things they put in it removed. Just miserable.)

I've heard of things like this in other places. There was a mixed-use building somewhere in NYC that added barbed wire coils to the balconies of those paying lower rents so that the residents couldn't sit on them. 

Oh, brother.

As it happens, I know a tiny bit about affordable/mixed use housing.  Most of what I'm aware of don't have uber-wealthy people sharing (sorta) digs with the poor folk, but have some paying market rates while others are, based on their income, subsidized. But the shared spaces and amenities are open to all. And nothing's all that luxurious. 

Here's what I think:

No one should expect affordable and/or subsidized housing to have the same fittings as luxury living provides. No one really needs a SubZero fridge or Thermador range. But if the well-to-do are willing to pay for stuff like this - and granite counter tops, and fancy light fixtures, and marble-tiled bathrooms - then have at it. (Full disclosure: I have a SubZero, which is a great-for-resale recommendation for places in my neighborhood.)

And maybe it's okay if the higher floors and better views are reserved for those paying full price. This would happen anyway, if a building was all rich folks. A lower floor, a back-alley view goes for less than full gloriousness. 

But a separate entrance? Especially when the other entrance is not very inviting. Why? Just why? It seems so 1958-Mississippi-water-fountain-reserved-for-coloreds. 

And why prohibit folks who may be able to afford to pay some amount for, say, pool and gym access, from being able to do so? Maybe they don't get 24/7 access because they pay less. Maybe their days and times are limited. Such is life. But nothing? NOTHING? Do the rich folks think their offspring will catch cooties if they have to share a pool with kids from families with less money?

In terms of haves vs. have nots, our country is going in the wrong direction. Looks like the same thing's going on in England. (No surprise there. They've traditionally had a more class-bound society than we have.) 

As for the abominable Sky Pool: I certainly don't want to see anyone die in it. But if the damned thing collapsed when no one was in it, and didn't hurt anyone down below, it would serve them all right.