Islington Kings Cross: Urban Design Framework

King’s Cross
“King’s Cross was once the epicentre of the second Summer of
Love, but there’s nothing about it to hint at that these days: take a
walk across the newly regenerated Granary Square and you’ll find a
clean, upmarket development with kids playing in fountains and
young professionals hanging out on fake grass. It’s strange to think
that, during one fabled summer in 1988, rave culture was coming up
in that same spot, with giant warehouses full of happy, sweaty
people dancing to acid house until the morning.” (Furseth 2019)
Regeneration policies of this type of mixed-use
employment land go hand in hand with a narrative of
‘cleaning up the city’ (Udvarhelyi 2002). The King’s Cross
development, which is the next door neighbour of the area
between Yorkway and Cally Road and includes the
Triangle Site itself, is clearly representative of this process.
The King’s Cross Partnership’s strategy to first characterise
the locality as ‘run-down, dirty, crime-ridden, deprived and
so on; and then (perhaps after some actual changes have
occurred) it is given a new characterisation as vibrant,
creative, safe(r) and desirable’ (Edwards 2009: 9) is a
method of state-led gentrification employed similarly as a
justification for the demolition of council estates (Lees and
White 2019). This narrative of creating vibrant mixed use
developments while imposing control is alike the classical
modernist agenda that objected to the ‘slums’ of 18 th
century cities as aesthetically failed standards of order and
potentially revolutionary menace to authorities (Le
Corbusier cited in Scott 1998).
On the positive side we see a strong affirmation of stylish
urban settings, lots of careful design and very strong
market demand for premises. On the negative side we see
few defences against gentrification, few youth clubs or
non-commodity meeting places and a very private sort of
environment. When we see who can afford to live or do
business here in a decade from now we shall surely find a
much less socially mixed set of people
Analysis
While the development is generally regarded as a good one for its
efforts in community engagement, meanwhile uses and investment
in infrastructure, I identified two interlocking issues related to
commodification:
1 BUSINESS
2
Its limited provision of affordable housing (33%), strong provision of
corporate office space and expensive retail and leisure facilities are
exemplary for the type regeneration representative of the whole of
London: while there are only concessions made to low- and middleincome
people in whose name regeneration was developed, the
process business activity aimed at growth and competitiveness. ‘It is an
acute conflict of use values and exchange values, social need versus
commodification.’ (Edwards 2009: 23)
ORDER
The estate (apart from some streets) is privately owned by the
developer Argent and a pension fund called AustralianSuper. While
the public has access, the private ownership means that what look
like public space are actually securitised (and consumption-oriented)
spaces where what is allowed is at the disgrace of the owners. The
large site was designed as part of one masterplan which while
retaining good design qualities in some sense, created ‘a whole new
piece of London’ (Kings Cross website) that is so new and polished it
feels like a non-place (Augé) and does not value/eradicate the
unregularised Kings Cross area that it used to be – with its rave
culture and history of social movements. Although Jacobs (1961) and
many others have shown how top down modernist planning does not
actually succeed in eradicating unorderliness, relying on Adorno and
Horkheimer’s (1973) analysis of the commercialisation of culture I
would argue that this sort of prescriptive and business oriented urban
design encourages loss of autonomy, renders people docile and
restricts creativity.
(Edwards 2009: 23)
Up past the King’s Cross
development, beyond York Way, the
railway lands are still unpolished and
wild – a bit grotty and useless, but ripe
with possibilities for the future. London
will never stop evolving, but in
between all the rush we need these
spaces that lack ambition – because
they give the city space to dream.
(Furseth 2019)
??????????
“There was rhetoric about the Cally being a
?
forgotten land, like a wild west where things
never quite happened,” said Mr Hammoudan. At
a ward partnership meeting in November, some
residents were anxious that the multi-million
pound King’s Cross development set to open in
three years – which includes a 67-acre office,
accommodation and entertainment complex –
would detract Caledonian business.
(http://islingtonnow.co.uk/)
12