From this……

To this…..

The new regeneration project by the developer Renewal is only just gone through the first stage of planning, but it seems terribly exciting. For a south London this is on par with the Olympic games in London.

Working with Sport England, TFL, Lewisham Council and other local community organisations like New Cross Gate Trust and Winslade Estate residents, the people behind the project believe that this could be ‘as big as the Doclands’, but there are major challenges which are thrown up besides the usual issues of recession and low level of local skills. There is a large housing estate right next to the development called Winslade or known locally as Lovelinch. At present it is managed by the council who have no intention of giving it a much injected renewal programme of new windows and doors to make it look as smart as Tustin Estate across the road in South. How will the residents feel as the potential ‘poor relation’ of the family housing proposed which although will be ‘designed to fit in’ as Renewal say, will still be streets ahead in terms of sustainability and aesthetics.

In addition, we may see a new Dale farm saga emerge as pressure to remove a small but established travellers site in Bermondsey in the light that ‘the gentrifiers wont want to live near them’ drama. Although the site is within south it does sit feet away from the Millwall Den, which will be at the heart of the development and is an ease drop from South Bermondsey station the nearest over ground station with direct links from London Bridge.

I will provide updates on planning and the designs as they emerge.

An interesting article, which looks at the shape of planning and urbanism today and some of the challenges which we will face tomorrow. In sum, the following challenges were identified:

• The public will reclaim the private.

In some ways this is already happening with private shopping centres incorporating leisure activities so that people feel like they could be on the high street in public spaces.

• Our perception of ‘good or suitable’ places to live will change

Again in some ways this is already happening , Manchester and Birmingham are great examples of where city centre living has become more desirable. In addition there is still the tendency to want to live in an inner-city up and coming with all the grit and sense of chick, remember what we used to think of Brixton, Shoreditch, New Cross, Forest Hill, Peckham??? Its funny how more people are wanting to live there these days.

However in future, this maybe challenged more, with ‘private’ spaces becoming prime locations (no not squatting!) but interesting building like Pinewood Studios where proposals for re-dovelopment have been submitted. We have already seen schools, churches and hospitals as well as prisons converted in this way so why not?

• High Rise living

High rises are controversial but in the future, there maybe little choice. Besides they are already making a come back with support for a 53 storey residential building in croydon getting approval from academics, architects and sustainable designers.In the future, we could see challenging designs which enable direct street access (without the need for a lift) to the 10th or 30th floor…

• Third world regeneration projects by urban regeneration companies like Urban Splash

With growing populations at a time when they are becoming world class economic leaders and thus attracting a new work forces, slums in Brazil and India may welcome western urban regeneration companies input and we in the west could be moving to a rejuvinated mumbai slum for work.

• Greening of space

To some degree this is already happening, take the southbank centre, growing food in parks projects and roof top gardening (as planned by Renewal in their design for the new London Sports Village in South London). But could this become more militant, with work place garden or allotment terraces? car park conversions or more high rise roof gardens as intended by the developers Renewal?

• More interesting Architecture

Obvious? Well take a look at recent winners and runners up in the RIBA awards, I think the look of a building and its relationship to its surroundings will become a greater concern. Although this article does not mention it, I think the design of urban transport and layouts will also change in future. I did an article on some of the bicycle design competition in the USA and they certainly aim to challenge how we will use bicycles in the future.

• Fear of Suburbia

With inner London experiencing riots, why did it all kick of in Croydon- its a suburb! Well perhaps its loosing its suburban village identity with all the big chains? or perhaps opportunities are as limited as the inner-city areas? how about transport- any issues there? have housing officers finally got it right with mixing communities? Gentrification of the inner-cities pushed those on lower incomes out? Perhaps the answer is all of the above?

But whatever the correct the answer we are seeing some of our suburbs become increasingly ‘challenged’ places.

TRICKLE DOWN EFFECT THE GREATEST FANTACY

This is an interesting article on Labour’s regeneration strategy. Here Heatherley is arguing that Labours approach was adopted to bring about social and democratic goals, but the problem was that in the most part bringing affluent people into city centres never worked. He doesn’t really explain why, except that he does point that where mixed houses were built, they were expensive and in large part exclusive.

He explains the current governments approach as ‘obvious’ because regeneration was never their territory and there approach to reviving inner cities, suburbs and villages is to relax the planning law and to hope for the best that construction companies will build mixed housing for all….lets see how that pans out!