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The inevitable threat of an appeal over the 'Tulip':
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Here's an interesting case--a plucky gay fetish club against a (smallish) tower block proposal:
I expect that to Tower Hamlets planning watchers, this may not come as a surprise, as it may well be laid down in planning guidance, but it does seem to have gone to a Public Inquiry, so perhaps not.
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I have seen many traditional pubs been saved by being classed as a community asset. It doesn't last mostly.
Developers often up the rent to make it unfeasible..no one takes it on for years and as a derelict building the council relent and finally allow for 'luxury' flats.
Repeated many times. -
Yes, as ever, there are ways of getting around the provisions. To be fair, in quite a few cases the spirit of the law has been obeyed, but you're right. Reading the London Drinker, you do hear about those that got away.
Unfortunately, 'fixing' the housing market would mean bringing the cost of residential accommodation back in line with that of other types of premises, which would lead to a lot of people seeing their overvalued investments readjusted in value. Well, I don't know if it's ever going to happen, 'house prices' being such a fetish, but it's the only way of increasing home ownership rates and consistently building social housing again.
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The current mode of operation is temporary until the scheme is completed. Until Spring 2020, it works like this:
- All traffic can use Tottenham Court Road northbound
- Only buses and cyclists can use Tottenham Court Road southbound 24 hours a day
Map here:
After this, there will be the envisaged restrictions 8am-7pm for motor vehicles other than buses and emergency vehicles. They're complicated--partly because most streets in the area will continue to be one-way.
Map here:
(This isn't really a town planning issue, though.)
- All traffic can use Tottenham Court Road northbound
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This is probably my favourite planning application for some time:
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Some news on London planning:
The effects of the changes proposed by the inspectors are likely to be minor in practice. For instance, there are no current plans to frack in London, and none are likely to be brought forward. Fracking has effectively stalled across the UK.
Well, yes, it's pretty hard to imagine fracking in London. Just think of the house prices ...
Allowing for building on the green belt in “very special circumstances” would be open to challenge and require explanations of what made circumstances so special that the presumption against building should be breached.
This I doubt. If you make things like this unclear, they can be exploited.
On Heathrow, the London Plan will effectively be subordinate to the decisions of the courts, where attempts to stop the airport expansion by legal means are already well under way. Last week, a new legal front opened up in the ongoing battle, when WWF was granted permission to make arguments against expansion based on the rights of children.
Khan’s objections to Heathrow expansion are nuanced, moreover, by his backing for increased capacity at Gatwick.
Yes, and building the Silvertown Tunnel and not the Rotherhithe-Isle of Dogs bridge.
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Simon Jenkins has written a book on London's 20th century planning history, which I think I'll get. Here's a useful summary article that I think also functions very well as an advert for the book:
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Jeremy corbyn got into politics through a campaign that sole objective was to fight the creation of a north London dual carriage way.
Even the strand was far marked for 6 lane monstrosity.
I always remind my self when I go down park lane that the land was stolen from Hyde park and was a model for future development.
It's awful to cycle down for a start.
Glad it mostly failed. London could have ended up like hell that is LA -
Interesting, I didn't know he was in an anti-road-building campaign. Do you have a reference? I can't seem to find anything about it by searching. I thought (as per the Wikipedia article, which is the only 'biography' I've read) that he got into politics through being a trade union organiser (and clearly always having the intention of entering politics).
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Thanks--did you mean to link to the video?
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Here it's is. Little bit cringe.
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Ah, thanks. He starts to talk about the anti-motorway campaign about 8 minutes in. Unfortunately it's in very general terms, so I expect it'll have been the one about the east-west motorway that was also meant to go through Dalston. I've been meaning to get the book published about it recently, so that's a useful reminder!
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It's obviously a friendly interview, with him having known the interviewer's mum for a long time. I don't find it too cringeworthy, but I do like the bit when she asks: 'When you walk into 10 Downing Street ...'
If you skip to about 15:30, you can hear the untrue story of how Jeremy Corbyn murdered a pet rabbit with a pogo stick.
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A very interesting application here:
No mention of retaining any car parking in the location, which is obviously easy to reach by public transport.
Equally obviously, concentrating more retail in Central London is yet more over-centralisation.
I assume 'healthcare' will be exclusively private.
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Yes, it's anyone's guess how it would work out in practice. It seems from the illustrations that they're planning deep-reaching light shafts around the perimeter of the square, but with a few exceptions the history of underground malls isn't that great. It would need the right mix of uses to be busy at all times, but if you were to put a few nightclubs in, for instance, you'd end up with a lot of closed shops and only a few places open in the evening, which wouldn't look too attractive.
Still, they would probably get their money back in if it was used as a setting for a James Bond film and millions of tourists wanted to visit it after that.
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Another interesting one:
Fortunately, the interesting group of buildings at the front of the site is to be retained, but the increased height and massing of the rear of the site may impact on its setting. The way it looks right now, that may not be so bad, but I always find it a shame when a building loses a use like this and is (partly) turned into a museum.
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News on the long-running Earl's Court (well, next door to it) affair:
That land is worth a bomb. Tory council flogs it well under value, complete with (by today's standards, very low-density) estates on it, change of power at the Council, Labour negotiates to buy it back. I imagine they may have had leverage because there may have been problems with the original deal, but I have no knowledge of the case.
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Do you mean in terms of its state of maintenance or its overall shape? What you often find, despite external appearances, is that people who live there can be very attached to these older builds. I mean, I criticise things like that architecturally quite often; for instance, I don't like open walkway estates, but then you meet people who say they like precisely that aspect (sometimes because for them it still represents progress, e.g. 'streets in the sky'. Plus, of course, people often know each other there well, and the most important thing for them can be the community and not how the place is built.
wildwest
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Town planning in London, planning proposals and applications, and planning decisions
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@Oliver Schick
Yes, that's the typical thing that seems to happen these days while the future of the central space is obviously undecided--partly because of the regrettable division between transport and land use planning that means there's little co-ordination, and also little planning despite the names of these disciplines, and partly because there's really no money around at the moment for a big replacement project. Many people obviously love the IMAX as a cinema, but it would be fairly easy to rebuild on a corner of the junction and would probably end up being a better building. In the meantime, failing a proper top-down approach to the hierarchy of intervention, people, with the best will in the world, are trying to do something while the key question isn't addressed.