The South Shall Rise Again: Kidbrooke and Elephant & Castle
In this series, we're documenting some of the biggest and most exciting changes taking place across South East London. From huge new housing projects to investment in the area’s heritage sites, this part of London is subject to many of the capital’s most ambitious plans.
Two of South East London's most inhumane housing developments are being razed to the ground and swapped for something much nicer.
In Kidbrooke, the Ferrier Estate's grey concrete giants have been demolished and are being replaced with a mixture of Housing Design Award-winning, park-view blocks [above] and brilliant pitched roof houses built on more traditional street patterns. The scheme will eventually deliver around 4,000 new homes and a 100 acre park.
Meanwhile, in Elephant & Castle, the canyons of the brutalist Heygate Estate are finally being torn down as part of an ambitious £1.5 billion regeneration scheme that at one point was nearly scuppered by the failure to remodel one of the area's roundabouts. The roundabout is now being sorted and the cash is flowing. There's a lesson there for Lewisham's planners somewhere...
Both projects are likely to take at least another 15 years to be completed and despite the progress, there are fears that both later phases of both of these developments may stall as a result of government changes to housing policy. The Kidbrooke Kite quotes Building.co.uk:
"Housebuilders and the [Chartered Institute of Housing] have expressed concerns about the ability of large estate regeneration projects, such as Elephant & Castle in Southwark, Kidbrooke in Greenwich and Park Hill in Sheffield, to proceed. Previous tenants had been promised new homes at the same rent, but lower government subsidy may make this unviable."
Also in the series:
