Move over developers and let the people inspire the planning

For some, making Victoria beautiful might be a stretch of the imagination. But with a public-led approach to planning, this undervalued entry point to London could be the perfect place to start, writes Mary Dejevsky

Victoria Station is the second busiest railway terminus in London and the UK (Getty)

Build, build, build,” said Boris Johnson, selling a boost to the construction sector and the prospect of new homes, schools and hospitals as a way of getting the economy moving after the pandemic. To make this happen, the government is also proposing the relaxation of many planning rules, allowing extra storeys on existing buildings, permit-free conversions from shops to housing and generally denser development. Such a planning free-for-all, however, could incur serious public opposition and the loss of one of the more hopeful planning policy shifts for years – a shift that I came across almost by chance just a few weeks before coronavirus swept in.

Just after new year, I was browsing the pages of a local free sheet and chanced upon an advert for a public planning consultation. It wbas not, you might think, the most enticing invitation – a chance for interested local residents to spend a couple of evening hours in what sounded like a dusty church hall to listen and pore over maps and diagrams along with planners and architects. But there was something about the proposition that seemed worth pursuing.

First, it was billed as a “workshop” – in other words, a measure of participation was expected. Second, the plans hardly existed as such; everything was at an embryonic stage. And third, the evening was not about a particular building or development, but about a whole area: an area that many people familiar with central London, and many visitors who are not, will know as the almighty mess that surrounds the sprawling labyrinth of Victoria Station. The project is called Future Victoria.

It is hard not to feel sorry for Victoria. While some stations in London and other cities have benefited from spectacular makeovers – St Pancras, Sir George Gilbert Scott’s masterpiece, was resurrected to include the original hotel, stylish flats and the Eurostar terminal; London Bridge has just emerged from its agonisingly long renovation as a sleek modern transport hub; and Birmingham New Street and Liverpool Lime Street can take their place beside the best that Europe has to offer – improvement on any scale has largely passed Victoria Station by. A welcome clean-up of its main facade, which included getting the clock telling the right time, is pretty much the sum of it.

So I was intrigued. Could Victoria’s turn finally have come? I should also admit that, since moving to this part of Westminster more than 20 years ago, I have become something of a planning nerd. I have sat in the public seating at plenty of council meetings and submitted many an objection to what seemed like the latest horrendous intrusion on the neighbourhood. More rarely, I have written in support of a venture that seemed to have at least a chance of adding something to the neighbourhood in the way of amenity or aesthetic.

As yet more massive blocks of luxury flats loomed, I had also learned to scour the smart ring-bound volumes where consultants hide their clients’ plans for light and space deprivation behind elaborate calculations designed to show that everything is legal and above board. Your light will, of course, not be blocked – at least not beyond what is strictly permitted.

Thus it was that, armed with a great deal of scepticism, I decided to take up the challenge and found myself trekking to the hall at the side of St Peter’s Church, Eaton Square, in the pitch black of a rainy January evening. And the first surprise was that this workshop – of whose existence I, and most others it appeared, had learned almost by chance – was packed. Folding chairs were jammed around the tables and into corners. Nor was it only, or even mainly, the concerned middle class. It was one of the more socially and ethnically mixed gatherings I have been to about planning.

A quiet London Bridge, a day after the UK entered lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus (PA)

The second surprise was how different the approach and the tone were from the average council planning meeting, where until a recent rule change that allowed members of the public to speak anyone not on the committee was steadfastly ignored. For a start, every table had that set-piece of workshops, the “facilitator” to encourage people to talk, as well as an actual architect. And those giving presentations included people who did things – civil engineers, for instance.

We also had more detailed maps of the area than I had ever seen, which illustrated yet again quite what a pickle the Victoria Station area is in. Access in every sense is appalling. Huge spaces are wasted; interminable blind walls blight swathes of adjacent Pimlico. There is little logic to where anything is. Most of the station faces inwards, not out. The contrast with the new London Bridge could hardly be greater.

If the hope was to attract some of the nearly quarter of a million people who passed through the station every day – pre-pandemic – there was clearly little understanding of how commuters think

The tragedy was that, for the best part of the past decade, a large swathe of Victoria had been undergoing its own makeover, which is finally nearing completion. And I could remember when it was in the planning. “Consultations” took the form of glitzy exhibitions boasting of the delights to come: the shops, the restaurants, the extravagant new flats. The mood among local visitors seemed a mixture of wrath and resignation at the jumble of high-rises to come – in what was then an area still relatively free of towers – and the lack of any obvious effort to make it all hang together in a pleasing way.

One of the council planners who was hovering said that a reason why it might seem so poorly coordinated was that several developers were involved and the council had to tread carefully to keep them onside. So much sway did the developers command, so it seemed, that the council’s power to influence even anything as crucial as aesthetics was limited.

This is not how the process or the power relationship would work in most other countries, whether in Europe or even in the free-market United States. Any authority considering a landmark development in a prominent area, as surely Victoria is, would start with a masterplan for the whole to include minimum design standards and ensure that what emerged was at least harmonious within itself and with its immediate surroundings. Why could Westminster, one of the UK’s richest councils, not have laid down the law to this basic extent?

Anyone trying to reach the station has to negotiate a busy taxi lane, five lanes of bus terminus and a major four-lane road (Getty)

Here was a huge tract of land and a once-in-a-generation opportunity for imaginative planning that could have enhanced the whole area. Instead, the result – as it was even then emerging from the scaffolding – looked even clumsier and less harmonious than it had done as an assemblage of gleaming models. The site seemed to have been treated as the base for an odd assortment of structures crammed together for maximum return.

The east of the station’s main entrance is now dominated by garish, angular edifices that do nothing whatever for the station complex. There is a pedestrian walkway overshadowed by high blocks on either side; aside from a line of trees, there is no new green space. It is rumoured, though hard to confirm, that the businesses that set up there have been disappointed by the first year’s footfall, and that was well before the pandemic. Amid the upmarket burger and shake places, the one useful shop – the only large-ish Waitrose for miles around – is about as far from any public transport stop as it is possible to be in the neighbourhood and so hidden away that, early on, even suppliers could not find it.

If the hope was to attract some of the nearly quarter of a million people who passed through the station every day – pre-pandemic, of course – there was clearly little understanding of how commuters think. Although the complex is just a five-minute walk from the station as the crow flies, anyone trying to reach it has first to negotiate a busy taxi lane, then five lanes of the bus terminus and then a major four-lane road with pedestrian crossings in the wrong place. The main customers were only ever likely to be people working in the offices nearby, or going to see the smash-hit Hamilton at the Victoria Palace Theatre, which had somehow survived.

One of the biggest problems with Victoria is misuse of space: garish, angular edifices do nothing for the station complex (PA)

In sum, you did not have to be an enthusiast for Prince Charles’ ultra-conservative ideas on architecture to conclude that the new Victoria complex is a wasted opportunity that does not work well on any level, financial, aesthetic or human. Whether the unsatisfactory nature of this redevelopment had anything to do with Westminister City Council’s complete overhaul of its planning operation in 2019 is moot. That probably had more to do with revelations about the junkets enjoyed by the former planning committee chairman, Robert Davis. It could nonetheless help to explain why such a very different approach was now being taken to the possible regeneration of the station and its immediate environs.

Westminster is studded with listed buildings that no one would ever dream of demolishing; they must be treated with respect and worked around

Those of us being introduced to Future Victoria at St Peter’s Church Hall that January evening certainly hoped so. The idea was that a lot more people and groups should be involved from the start, especially those who live or trade locally. There was still plenty of gobbledegook around what is called a “place plan” for Victoria, but suddenly the bureaucratic fog dispersed to leave this model of clarity: “We have brought in an architect-led team to compile a concept masterplan called Future Victoria. This masterplan will be underpinned by engagement with people who live, work, and travel here.” Well, if they meant it, praise be, and that evening produced some hopeful signs.

One was that the process really was, at least for us members of the public, “architect-led”, in a way that no planning process I had ever seen in Westminster ever had been. Then there was the readiness of those who had convened the meeting to listen, and another was the level of genuine interest and engagement from the more than 80 local people who were there. Almost everyone had a view and wanted to express it, mostly in a positive, rather than negative, way.

What shone through above all, though, was the consensus that emerged among the public participants. They detested the redevelopment of Victoria so far, which was seen not as adventurous or innovative, but tasteless and brash. They wanted buildings that were much more people-friendly and accessible. They wanted no more “luxury flats” (there is something of a glut of such new-builds in and around SW1). They wanted the tracts of no man's land around the station to be used. They wanted uninterrupted walkways, and they wanted everything to appear looked-after and feel safe.

King’s Cross station reopened in 2012 after a five-year £500m redevelopment (PA)

Why could car parks not be put underground rather than taking up valuable ground-floor space? Could the station itself not be turned outward, with more entry points, so that its proximity became an advantage to the surrounding area, not a blight? Could the railway lines not be enclosed in tunnels and built over, to create extra space, even a garden area. They wanted development to be in proportion to the rest of the – mostly low-rise – area, not dominant. The central idea was to turn the station into an asset rather than the liability it was seen as by many local residents.

Nothing was sacrosanct, and that included an old terraced block of commercial premises standing, like an island, between the bus terminus and a major road. What good does it do there, people asked. If you got rid of it and diverted existing traffic, you could have a landscaped open space and a straight pedestrian walkway to the complex of shops and restaurants that has so disappointed. Hang on, said one of the planners, you’ve all just condemned a listed building. But the questions went on. Why was something that looked so banal under a conservation order? What were its merits? To almost everyone, the advantages of removing it outweighed any downside.

You have only to look towards the City of London from almost any vantage point to see the damage that unchecked development has inflicted

That, of course, would – and should – not always be true. Westminster is studded with listed buildings that no one would ever dream of demolishing; they must be treated with respect and worked around. The actual facade of Victoria station would be worth keeping. But why keep it, if the space that is developed around fails to respect its historical and aesthetic value? If the new sets out to dominate and drown the old?

I had begun that evening as an ingrained sceptic about planning consultations, based on my experience of a process that seemed loaded in favour of big developers. So often it was as though the council felt the developer was doing them a favour by even taking an interest. I had left, back into the rain, as I think many participants had done, with the hope that just maybe change was afoot.

Whether for housing or commerce, government after government has been trying to reconcile local people and planners. Maybe, with a new emphasis on aesthetics and genuine consultation, they have finally found a key. Two years ago, Theresa May’s government launched a commission called “Building Better, Building Beautiful” with precisely this in mind.

The history of public disillusionment and outright cynicism about local planning is well set out in its final report. Published in January with the somewhat clunky title “Living with beauty; promoting health, wellbeing and sustainable growth”, this pointed out that Nimbyism – the knee-jerk not-in-my-backyard hostility of existing residents to almost any sort of plans for anything – did not come out of nowhere. Nor does it stem only, as is often presented, from the desire of existing property owners to protect their assets.

A large swathe of Victoria has been undergoing its own makeover, which is finally nearing completion (PA)

It could rather reflect, the report argued, the plain ugliness, density, size and user-unfriendliness of so much urban construction in recent years, as well as its lack of consideration for the good that might already be there. As the report pointed out, a stated objective of planning committees had been to minimise the harm done by new development. Any idea that a guiding objective should be actual enhancement was lost long ago.

One of my pet hates has been the frequent mismatch between the flattering scaled-down projections that are submitted to credulous planners, and the reality when the actual concrete and glass monstrosity stands completed before you. As the “Living with beauty” report pointed out, digital technology makes it possible for developers to produce accurate images of how any complex will really look from various points when it is completed. There is no reason why such images should not be a required element of any planning application. But I have not seen much sign of this yet.

You have only to look towards the City of London from almost any vantage point to see the damage that unchecked development has inflicted. For all the supposed protection afforded to certain “sightlines”, you can hardly glimpse St Paul’s now. The Gherkin, hailed in its time (2003) as an elegant addition to the skyline, is now itself subsumed in a cityscape of incompatible giants that compete with each other for aesthetic space.

Twelve years later, the nearby Walkie Talkie was a just winner of the annual Carbuncle Cup for the country’s worst new building. Not only did its hideousness dominate the skyline, but its surface also intensified sunlight to the point of melting cars parked beneath. So bad was it that Peter Finch, who had chaired the government’s Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment at the time, said he regretted testifying to the planning inquiry in its support. Alas, the Walkie Talkie, too, has been overtaken by newer and even bigger monstrosities.

As the worst of the pandemic seems to be over, it looks as though the social and political weather could be set fair for one of the biggest rethinks of planning the UK has seen for many years. The widespread lockdown has prompted much soul-searching about priorities in city life. Questions are being asked about the future of office space if many more people worked from home. Who would want to develop high-rises, which can hardly function without shared lifts? And what would happen to the years of persuading everyone to use public transport? Early consequence has been more cycle lanes, wider pavements for walking, less space for cars and buses and more attention to green space. It remains to be seen how lasting these changes will be.

In the early stages of lockdown in London, when streets were eerily free of people and traffic, those of us who ventured out were treated to a whole new city of glorious architectural ensembles and human-scale planning. It was possible to appreciate the sweep of Regent Street into Piccadilly; the harmony of the buildings around Parliament Square – although, alas, half of the Houses of Parliament are in scaffolding – and the vista from Whitehall to Trafalgar Square could be seen in all its glory. London has long prized its parks; but now it could rediscover its architectural heritage, and learn to appreciate it all over again.

The question is whether the turn back to considering aesthetics and appreciating a sense of place can survive Johnon’s “Build, build, build”. The two phases of Victoria’s recent redevelopment – the first a forbidding chaos of angular towers; the second, we dared hope, envisaged a more human and elegant scale – could still exemplify a change for the better in the way development is negotiated and done. With councils liable to be short of both new energy and cash, and the pressure to build, however, that opportunity could be lost. And while the idea that Victoria, of all places, might somehow be made beautiful could stretch of the imagination, it deserves its chance. As a testbed for a new, consensual and design-led approach to planning, this undervalued entry point to London could be the perfect place to start.