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Future looks bleak for new £2bn city
SADLY, but quite predictably, that august body, Camden’s planning committee, in real terms, gave approval on the nod to the outline scheme for the King’s Cross redevelopment scheme on Thursday (See page 6).
This description, used by the planners, of course, is part of their planning-speak.
Put like that, it sounds as if the scheme is, in a sense, a run-of-the-mill project, that planners come up with all the time.
But it is nothing of the sort.
In fact, it is one of the most important designs for London in decades, and will transform the face of central London.
There have been all kinds of big schemes in recent years – the Canary Wharf development, the on-going Paddington scheme.
But all those fade into insignificance compared to the King’s Cross scheme.
It will recreate a new and large part of central London, bordered by all the main railway stations, Euston, St Pancras and King’s Cross, as well as the British Library – it will offer the first sight of the capital to all those thousands who are expected to disembark from the Euro trains pulling into the new transcontinental station.
If all that doesn’t make this scheme the most important to be devised for London, it is difficult to know what will.
It is obviously such a premier-league scheme that it should be under the tight control of both a government department as well as a body governing London.
And it should have been from the start when it was just a twinkling in the eye of planners, developers and architects.
It will be argued that both the government and Ken Livingstone’s office have got it under control.
But we would say that they are only, in effect, casting an eye over it, leaving it all to the local authority. What provincialism!
Can one imagine the municipal authorities governing Paris, Berlin or Rome, allowing a relatively small local authority to act as the mid-wife for such a scheme?
From the start, the £2 billion project has been treated as just another scheme.
What other explanation is there for the fact that Camden councillors were only given less than seven days to form judgements on the scheme?
The future looks bleak for the new King’s Cross city destined for central London!
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