Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Privately owned public spaces
I was just thinking the other day about how many more of these areas seem to be cropping up in London, spaces that appear to be public but are instead owned by private companies and subject to their arbitrary rules. I've spent quite a bit of time in New York and this kind of thing is quite prevalent there but here it seems far less clear where those areas are.
By coincidence, the Guardian has just done an article on the same topic https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jul/24/revealed-pseudo-publ...
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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The comments under that article scare me. The "if I own it, I can do what I like with it" attitude to land is wrong but prevalent, especially on Green Lanes.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on
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We're about to lose the square in front of Hornsey Town Hall - the Council have disposed of the entire £150m campus (including the Green) at £1/yr peppercorn rent for 130 years. They claim they can't afford the now £12m renovation bill and £250k/yr running costs. They left it empty for over a decade, summarily rejecting every community rescue plan, almost as if they always intended that there would be 'no alternative' to disposal.
A 100% public campus built in 1936 by Hornsey Council with our money for us 'in perpetuity'. 1938 image below:
It currently costs us around £2k/yr for the Council to maintain the Green, due to economies of scale - they have a whole borough to look after. The disposal means the Cayman Islands-registered developer can start making it into whatever they want, pricing out local events etc.
The expenditure the new Hong Kong-based owners can allocate on paper to this task is large (24/7 security etc) even if they actually spend nothing. Developers produce a secret assessment of how much it will cost them, so as to justify how many affordable homes they can afford to build.
Under right wing, developer-friendly governments, there's almost nothing that Councils can do.
Developers can even get away with a letter stating baldly 'we can't afford it', with no figures. They lie their heads off but as it's all held in 'commercial confidentiality' we discover the truth too late, if ever. According to Shelter ( at Battersea Power Station) developers massively understated the profits so as to eliminate 250 affordable homes (and ensure the remaining affordable weren't actually built inside it) - the London Mayor is reportedly 'furious'.
The 'projected' cost of the public space goes into the viability assessment, estimated over the length of the 130-year lease. In effect, a small maintenance expense will now cost us almost all the affordable housing (Haringey's aim is 40%) we could have had.
Paraphrasing the person quoted in the Guardian article, you may be allowed to lie down on the grass, but let your eyes close and security guards will pounce. facebook.com/groups/hornseytownhall
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