Further material from the updated booklet.
40 years on from the stories of community action shown in our exhibition, has anything changed in SE1? Did the campaigns of that period have a lasting impact? Have the pressures from speculative development been pushed back? Has a more community-based model of renewal taken root?
The dramatic changes on the skyline of SE1 suggest not – changes which 50 years ago no-one would have predicted. In the 1970s and 80s the speculative development was largely for office development. The 2000s saw an explosion of up-market housing and commercial development in SE1 from Waterloo to Tower Bridge and Bermondsey.
The London Bridge area is dominated by the Shard and high end uses – offices, hotels and retail. Borough Market itself is no longer a fruit and vegetable wholesale market but a specialist retail food market. Blackfriars Road and Southwark Street are now full of large blocks of luxury flats and hotels, replacing warehouses and workshops. Tate Modern, the Globe theatre, the Millennium Bridge and Borough Market have transformed the south bank of the river Thames into an international visitor attraction.
Yet this is just the latest stage. A new wave of even larger developments is pushing southwards to meet the extraordinary high-rise regeneration of the Elephant and Castle. The two exhibition panels, “SE1 Today”, show some of these new schemes.
Elephant and Castle
The 1960s Elephant and Castle shopping centre was the first covered shopping mall in Europe. In the early 1990s the centre became a hub for Latin-American and other migrant-led enterprises. Despite the popularity of these small businesses and of the nearby Heygate Estate, Southwark Council decided to redevelop both the centre and the estate. Both became victims of gentrification by profit-led developers.
A community campaign, “Up the Elephant”, composed of local traders, business owners, housing activists, tenant groups, trade unionists, charities, and students, mobilised in response. Together they organised and campaigned for an inclusive development and the retention of local businesses, preserving the area’s diverse character and rich social fabric.
“Affordable” ? This widely used housing term is misleading. The vast majority of people in housing need cannot afford to buy or rent a property that is branded as “affordable” (80% of market rents). What is needed to meet the housing crisis is homes at social rent levels on a vast scale.
Did those campaigns of the 70s and 80s that we illustrate in our exhibition make a long-term impact? The new skyline says ‘no’. And yet, behind all this high-end investment – further back from the river and main roads – the picture is different. Peabody housing, council flats, almshouses and small parks and playgrounds are much as they were.
Blackfriars Settlement still exists but has moved to a new site. And the legacy of those community struggles is firmly established. Prominent examples are Coin Street housing, the Courage’s site housing, Colombo Street Sports and Community Centre, developments undertaken by the tenant co-operative at Leathermarket, housing co-ops in Waterloo that are still flourishing, Mint Street Playground, the demolition of tenement blocks and much more.
The new Elephant Centre development has nearly 1000 apartments of which just 116 are “affordable”. Meanwhile, the 1,200 Heygate council flats were replaced by nearly 3000 apartments which included only 100 social-rented homes. A 2-bed flat on the new development now goes for £3,500 per month. Very few of the displaced households got the new homes they were promised and many moved out of the Elephant area.
Many of the social and economic problems of the community remain the same. As in the 70s and 80s there are local campaigns against the towers and relentless gentrification across SE1. On multiple occasions, they have presented alternatives that could give something back to the community. But they have had little impact on stemming the tide or extracting meaningful concessions from councils or developers. The councils of Southwark and Lambeth and the Mayor of London have given in all too easily to pressure from developers and government. The battle to be heard – and for local alternatives to be acted on goes on.
New Developments in SE1
18 Blackfriars Road – two towers, 22 and 40 storeys, with a total of 433 apartments, 104 of which are social rented, plus an office tower with 45 storeys.
Bankside Yards – Nine buildings, the tallest is 50 storeys. 650 apartments of which 40 are “affordable”, a luxury hotel and 45,000 sq metres of offices.
72 Upper Ground – nearly 1 million square feet of offices in a building more than twice the size of the current building (formerly ITV/London Weekend studios). No housing in the development.
Newington Causeway – two towers over 40 storeys, 838 homes of which 30% are “affordable”.
What local residents and traders say
• Consultation is a con: Developers’ views are prioritized by councils
• Alternative plans respecting local communities are ignored
• Tower blocks drive out existing businesses
• New towers are wasteful in energy and carbon-refurbish and upgrade instead
• The towers block out light and reduce privacy to existing housing
• The towers offer too little social housing and too few family-size homes