Warren Draper begins a six-part series on his vision of what a utopian city in Britain might look like. In Part One, he defends the Idler’s Crap Towns project against accusations of snobbery

“We like Hull. We really do. We like the people. We like their spirit. We don’t understand why so many of our writers hate it so much. Perhaps it’s because it smells of death,” – Sam Jordison & Dan Kieran, The Idler Book of Crap Towns.

I KNOW A THING or two about Crap Towns. I was born in Chipping Norton (number 3 in the 2013 Crap Towns Top Ten), was raised in Peterborough (number 18 back in 2003) and have lived – and continue to chose to live – in Doncaster (number 26 on the 2013 long-list). So it is safe to assume that I am the voice of experience, if not the voice of reason. Crap Towns, of course, should never be confused with Chav Towns. Chav Towns are the product of the kind of mind which is so insecure it seeks to attack anything it perceives to be lower down the pecking order in a vain attempt to feel better about itself. It is a form of bullying born of ineptitude and low self-esteem. Crap Towns, on the other hand, points a knowing finger towards the blanket of crappiness which hangs over modern Britain like a Beijing smog and dares us to strive for something better, braver and more beautiful.

The founders of Crap Towns, Sam Jordison and Dan Kieran, have often come under fire for providing a platform for people to voice their opinions about Britain’s crappiest towns. Local papers (although they’re much less ‘local’ than they used to be – the Doncaster Free Press is now owned by the huge multimedia company, Johnston Press, whose brutal cut-backs have crushed what little was left of independent journalism in the town) like to score points by portraying themselves as staunch defenders against Crap Town smears. Guardian journalist, Sanfraz Manzoor, said of Crap Towns:

“There is, of course, an unmistakeable air of snobbery around the people behind such a book; the stench of rich kids having fun at the expense of those less able to afford to be professionally idle.”

While there are certainly some narrow, Chav-Townesque comments on the Crap Towns website now and then, I feel Sanfraz does the underlying philosophy of Crap Towns a disservice. Take for example this view of Hackney presented by Kathryn Bromwich, founder of the stuffwhitebritslike.co.uk blog:

“On the one hand, in Hackney you are confronted with some of the worst poverty in the UK … Schizophrenia and delusional disorders are five times the national average, the rate of people citing mental health conditions for being unable to work is amongst the highest in the country, and a large proportion of children is going to school hungry. Hackney also recently came top in the national ‘cuts per person’ league: a £266.17 cut per person from 2010-11 to 2012-13, four times as much as the rest of the UK.

“On the other hand, everywhere you turn there are graphic designers with too much facial hair and girls dressed up like pin-ups from the 1950s, sipping soya lattes while loudly extolling the benefits of a plant-based diet, and talking about the latest independent film they’ve been working on … Everyone is either working, or trying to work, in ‘the media’, would define themselves as ‘creative’, and is trying really hard not to be the girl in Common People. Even if you are lucky enough to be one of these people, chances are you will be so enveloped in clouds of self-hatred and middle-class guilt that you won’t be enjoying your privilege half as much as you should be.”

Harsh yes, but hardly the musings of idle privilege. The job of Crap Towns is not to judge or condemn, it is to offer a much needed critique and ask why is this town so crap? Unlike Chav Towns it is not about the people who inhabit those towns (except in the case of Chipping Norton, where it is all about a certain breed of people who now inhabit that town), rather the project forces us to acknowledge crapness and examine the underlying factors of its existence (something which will be look at more closely in part 2 of this series).

Crap Towns should also be commended for showing us that crap is not a permanent state of affairs. Rather it is a fluid, ever-changing condition subject to a number of influences. Early contenders for the crappy crown, such as Liverpool, barely get a mention in later league tables and the first ever Crap Town champion, Kingstown upon Hull (aka Hull to those many residents who find Royal decree a yolk rather than a privilege) not only fails to appear on the latest list, but is actually about to become UK City of Culture 2017.

Herein lies the joyous message of Crap Towns. It is possible to change. And if it is possible to change then it is also possible to study, plan and instigate that change. So let us do exactly that. Citizens of Crap Towns unite, you have nothing to lose but your town’s negative notoriety.

Warren Draper is a writer, artist and photographer based in Doncaster. He is co-founder of the Doncopolitan magazine (doncopolitan.com) and is a keen Anglarchist. He can be reached via Twitter at @TheLuddicLife