Coin Street (London) Redevelopment

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Coin Street (London) Redevelopment

Introduction

The aim of this essay is to answer two questions. Firstly what redevelopment has taken place in Coin Street, and secondly can the Coin Street Community succeed. Below is a map to show the location of Coin Street. The Coin Street area of London lies between Waterloo Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge on the south bank of the River Thames.

As you can see from the map it has already been heavily commercialised with IBM, offices and ITV’s London Television Centre Studios.

1977 sparked up the forming of the Coin Street Action Group, after developers announced to build Europe’s tallest hotel and over 1 million square feet of office space on the site.

Coin Street, though, is different to other re-urbanised areas in London. After 7 years of campaigning by the Coin Street Action Group and two public inquires planning permission was granted for both the offices and the community schemes, so both the commercial and residential sectors could benefit form the remaining derelict land. This is very much in contrast to the redevelopment of the docklands where there were no public enquires into the usage of the land

The Action Group drew up plans for housing, a new riverside park and walkway, managed workshops, shops and leisure facilities, to benefit the local community. The Greater London Council (GLC) owned 50% of the land, while the developers owned the other 50%, but after the second enquiry the developers sold their land to the GLC in 1984, who intern sold the entire site to Coin Street Community Builders

Development that has taken place

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By 1984 many of the offices, hotels and private housing developments along the River Thames had created gaps between the existing communities and the river, the idea of the Coin Street Community Builders (CSCB) was to open up the river for everyone to enjoy

During the 1984 to 1988 period the organisation demolished the remaining derelict buildings and also create the South Bank river walkway (can be seen in above photo), and the competed the layout of a new riverside park, called Bernie Spain Gardens, (can be seen in the above photo) both of which have spectacular views ...

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