Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Plans approved for final Woodberry Down phase reach up to Harringay's border - Farewell Rowley Gardens
The Hackney Citizen has reported that on 3 September the final phases of the Woodberry Down regeneration masterplan have been approved by Hackney Council. Hackney council granted Berkeley Homes conditional outline planning permission, subject to conditions, for the final phases of the project.
This approval related to phases 5 to 8, the last of which is the development of what is currently the Rowley Gardens estate built on the site of Northumberland House.
The Phase 5-8 Masterplan sees Phase 8 running between 2031 and 2041.
The full planning application can be viewed on Hackney's planning portal here.
Attached is a pdf with extracts relevant to Phase 8 from the Woodberry Down Community Organisation's overview of the Phase 5 - 8 plan.
- Attachments:
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WD Phase 8 Extracts.pdf, 1.4 MB
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Hugh
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Not as far as I'm aware, but if you look at how the land was used in the 60s development and compare that with more modern developments, you'll see that a much higher density is now typically achieved. By modern standards, in the existing development, there's too much low-rise house housing and too generous an allocation of 'unused' space.
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Permalink Reply by Simon Bradley
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This is really horrible news. The approved plans show a near-unbroken wall of slabs and towers along Green Lanes, leaving only a narrow green strip between the housing and the pavement. Almost all of the green slopes around and between the present tower blocks will be built over, and many mature trees lost. Freedom of movement for pedestrians and cyclists through the estate will be reduced to a single east-west path. Goodbye openness, goodbye greenery, goodbye sky, goodbye daylight.
The existing Rowley Gardens estate is a really good piece of landscape design, full of light and air, and composed in an orderly way. The buildings themselves are well above the average for their 1960s, and deserve to be renovated and retained. The replacement architecture - and there's lots of this stuff now, closer to the reservoirs, with more to come - is in visual terms a giant dump of jumbled blocks and towers, confused and messy from almost every angle.
Last, and in many ways worst, the existing residents of this long-established estate will all be evicted so that their homes can be destroyed.
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Permalink Reply by Ruth
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It really is horrible news in so many ways as you rightly summarise here Simon. So much for protecting the environment. So much for greenery. And the residents will lose their homes. It's happening right across the country.
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