The masterplan is before the planning board this Thursday April 25 at 6:30.
Attend if you can and let the planning board see you object.
Short notice as usual from the council.
We did not get letters advising us despite requesting the right to speak when making the objection. Planning officer response is “terribly sorry”
What a coincidence
Berkeley Homes have announced a new consultation. February 15, 16 and 18th.
This is to present the revisions to the plan presented in December.
The main changes I can see is that one of the 21 story towers is now 19 making the river front blocks:
There are blocks of 14 – 19 stories on the rest of the proposed development area.
There is a change to the density calculation which is designed to confuse.
They acknowledge the new development is over the limit at 698 dwellings per hectare but are using the existing development to dilute to 358.
The park between the buildings has been widened somewhat as have the gaps between the buildings. They are still relatively narrow. The buildings will still cast significant shadows.
The buildings at either end of the waterfront area have been shortened. They are still large scale and tall.
I will post the links to the relevant planning docs shortly.
Last week a group Create Streets createstreets.com published a report outlining the case against towers as a solution for residential housing.
It primarily focusses on the council built tower blocks but the lessons learned apply regardless of whether or not the towers are built by the council or by a private developer.
Until relatively recently tower blocks were overwhelmingly built by councils for their tenants. There were not many built for private owners. Dismissing the evidence as applicable to council blocks only is not relevant because the reason we don’t have a load of failed private tower blocks is that we don’t have many private residential towers of any great age. The key is to act before we have the issue not afterwards.
The report actually highlights the new Kidbrooke estate being built by Berkeley Homes as an example of shared public/private building which fails.
Many of the plans being put forward at present are again for multi-storey living.
They are so different from the town around them that many can be legitimately
described as self-contained, physically distinct developments. Just as in the 1960s
and 1970s there is little chance of many of them relating to or ‘plugging into’
the rest of the city. We are in very severe danger of repeating the failures of those
decades and forcing on some of our citizens an urban framework that the rest of
us consistently reject – the multi-storey estate. Just because the architects’ pictures
look nice and because we are using less exterior concrete does not mean we are
giving people what they really want or need.
One example (among many) is the re-development of the Ferrier estate in
Greenwich. Built in the late 1960s and 1970s of concrete panels the Ferrier estate
was enormous, with eleven 12-storey towers and many other large medium-rise
buildings. By 2003, after no more than thirty years of unpopularity and crime,
the decision was made to demolish and start again.The first parts of the new Kidbrooke Village development which is replacing
the Ferrier estate are now occupied. More are being built. Kidbrooke Village has
no concrete panels, a better name and is being well advertised. But little else has
changed. In the last analysis, we have replaced one enormous development of
tower and slab-blocks with few real streets with another enormous development
of tower and slab blocks with few real streets. It still does not look like or function
as the rest of London that most people want to live in.
St George’s tower also gets a mention:
…surveys run in the media to find the ‘worst building
in Britain’ or similar consistently feature modernist tower-blocks and slab-blocks.
None feature standard terraced or semi-detached houses. One 2001 BBC list
of ‘Britain’s worst buildings’ was entirely composed of modern tower blocks,
office blocks and large developments (such as the grade II listed but locally hated
Sheffield Park Hill Estate).
However ‘Britain’s worst buildings’ were not just composed of the stained and
fading concrete of the 1960s. The BBC’s own 1980s White City building and the
recent development of the St George’s Wharf in Vauxhall, London, also featured
on the list. A 2005 Channel 4 survey came up with similar results.64 Research
done by the mortgage provider, Cheltenham & Gloucester, in 2004 leads to the
same conclusions. Modern monumental architecture (domestic or non-domestic)
is no more popular than the buildings of forty years ago.
In case your recognised the name – yes this is the same development where the helicopter hit the tower.
The report also highlights Thamesmeade:
In 1971 Stanley
Kubrick used tower blocks and the recently completed Thamesmead development
to symbolise the vicious dystopia of The Clockwork Orange.
The report goes on to discuss communities where rioting occurs:
The degree to which the correlation between post-war estates and crime has not
been removed by better crime prevention measures is clearly shown by the 2011 UK
riots which were exacerbated by our multi-storey estates. According to research by
Space Syntax Limited, a spin-off company of the University College of London, postwar
estates and the 2011 UK riots were meaningfully correlated. They found that:
‘84 per cent of verified incidents in north London and 96 per cent in south London
took place within a five minute walk [400m] of both an established town centre
and, secondly, a large post-war housing estate. Local centres without large postwar
estates nearby were unaffected… Local centres that were unaffected, such
as Stoke Newington, are as well connected as many of the areas where incidents
were recorded… However in these areas there are no large post-war housing
estates in close proximity. This is the case in 75 per cent of the unaffected local
centres within the north and south London study areas…
Most post-war housing estates have been designed in such a way that they
create over-complex, and as a result, under-used spaces. These spaces are
populated by large groups of unsupervised children and teenagers, were peer
socialisation can occur between them without the influence of adults. This pattern
of activity, and the segregation of user groups, is not found in non-estate street
networks. Our analysis of court records shows that the almost three quarters of
convicted rioters in the study areas live on large post-war housing estates.’
These examples from the report were selected because they are close to where we live. I encourage you to read the report – it makes for sobering reading.
The example of Canary Wharf is often used to support the success of residential private towers. Canary Wharf is though a very unique environment. The majority of residents are from the very well off segments of society and often their flats are week day pied à terres with the main residence being somewhere else. Canary Wharf has a very well funded and active security force which most communities cannot afford. Trouble if it starts is nipped in the bud very fast.
The Royal Arsenal is a community oriented development today that most of us love to live in. This social harmony should not be taken for granted. We run a very grave risk of having our development spoiled and the community we have built severely degraded by mega dense development we don’t want.
Berkeley Homes has published consultation documents for review.
These maybe different from the formal application itself – see the formal proposal for details of the application before the council. The formal application is the one which counts.
If you wish to object this must be done by February 15 2013.
Note: the consultation site refers to a further consultation meeting with residents. This is later than the deadline for objections to the planning application. We are trying to get clarification from both the consultants and council on this. Please assume that the deadline is as originally communicated: February 15 2013.
Providing feedback at community consultations is useful however the only way to lodge an objection is as defined in how to raise an objection. Please do not confuse providing feedback with making a formal objection. Only formal objections get counted by the council.
To make a formal objection to the council please do one of the following by February 19 2013:
1. Fill in the online form – ensure you select the objection option. If you just comment it does not count.
If you access the form using the link above the reference number will be filled in for you.
2. Send an email to: alex.smith1@royalgreenwich.gov.uk. Make sure you use the reference 13/0117/O and use the words I object to the application for the following reasons. The word object is important.
3. Send a written letter to:
Alex Smith
Directorate of Regeneration, Enterprise and Skills
Woolwich Centre
5th Floor
35 Wellington Street
London SE18 6HQ
Make sure you use the reference 13/0117/O and use the words I object to the application for the following reasons. The word object is important.
Fact based objections are more effective than emotion based objections.
Note the reference number for the application is 13/0117/O where 0117 are numbers and the final character is the letter O.
Here is the link to the Greenwich Council Planning Site with the detailed application:
Royal Arsenal Master Plan Application
Please take the time to review if you can.
If you have specific documents or quotes from documents you think will be helpful for people objecting then leave a comment.
If you would like to raise an objection please see: How to Object
Royal Arsenal Master Plan 2013 