Brixton Liveable Neighbourhood and LTN schemes - improvements for pedestrians and cyclists

[happyshopper]

I miss the acre lane tank, complete with large pink pig in police hat Iirc

(As I might have mentioned before) It wasn’t a tank, it was a self-propelled gun.

 

[newbie]

And incidentally I have asked two of the major critics on these threads for their positive suggestions and they have gone strangely quiet.

I struggle to slowly find words that work I also fit U75 around the rest of life, not the other way round.

 

[newbie]

I think you're exaggerating. I just checked the post counts on this thread - which is one I started, so obviously I'm going to be active on it. The largest number of posts (96) is from me. Then it's 76 posts from newbie who has been one of the most extensive critics who I've obviously been responding to, along with others. It doesn't seem disproportionate to me.

and you wonder why i quote words like honest and disingenous back at you?

 

[Winot]

I struggle to slowly find words that work I also fit U75 around the rest of life, not the other way round.

Very sensible. And you did reply, so I take it back.

 

[newbie]

There’s been a few posts saying the traffic will just go elsewhere, but that’s not always what happens:

Induced demand - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

That's part of the available evidence, sure. You can frustrate people out of their cars, and frustrate loads of other people using cars, delivery vehicles, buses etc into the bargain. Absolutely. If the intention is to increase frustration, even if it's only that of young men, then you're onto a winner Needs to be more explicit though.

 

[newbie]

if only there were a country with a similar climate and geography (fewer hill, much more wind - very similar effect on cycling), and a large metropolitan area of a similar density to London that had spent the last 50 years experimenting and improving this approach. We could look at what they’d done, and see whether it had positive outcomes.

sure

 

[newbie]

Bar the occasional twat, St Matthews Road is already a pretty safe ride - and there are absolutely no obstacles to walking. There are pavements on both sides and it is simply not a busy street for pedestrians. Anyone wanting an even more quiet alternative already has the leafy paths of Rush Common which run the full length of St Matthews Road (I often choose it both walking and cycling just because it is green). It is simply not an emergency which justifies ignoring local knowledge.

QFT. I've been using it for years, bike, foot, car and seldom have any problem at all. Upthread there was a load of hyperbole about how bad it is which I just didn't recognise. It's used by locals for local stuff. It adds to the options for getting about. The agenda for blocking it isn't clear, though tbh I didn't know about the council staff.

 

[newbie]

Lots of good stuff there. Not going to nit-pick over the details - basically I’d happily sign up to most of that.

However, that’s the theory. I suspect where you and I differ is that you are politically on the purist end of the spectrum whereas I am on the pragmatist end. So (roughly speaking) I think society progresses through multiple grubby compromises whereas I‘m guessing you’re a revolution kind of chap - no? Hence I will take a stumble forward rather than waiting for the great leap that never happens.

Well it depends what you mean by 'progress' I suppose. I'm a revolutionary here while being restant to change somewhere upthread. Class hasn't really entered the culture wars, because it's economic not identity. At some point perhaps institutionalised class discrimination will gain the attention it deserves. That's not purist, it's just looking around and still finding what I see shocking.

 

[thebackrow]

previous post - ....I was posting about two specific streets- can u explain how they fit into thiis?...
Im pretty confident in traffic but its tiring. Ive noticed with no traffic its so much easier. And less stressful.
I dont think lockdown is going to end that soon. Major companies have people on home working. People arent going to go to shops in West End if they can get goods delivered to home.
London is going to change. Home working in particular is not going to end soon. Central London depended on these workers to fill shops and bars.
I see the "suburbs" areas like Brixton becoming more important for shopping and busier. Tescos in LJ is now aways busy.

You're answering your own questions. Every bit of research shows that the major barrier to cycling for people who don't is fear of traffic. People are not comfortable riding a bike when they have frequent interactions with people driving cars, vans or buses. A 'clearway' on Coldharbour Lane might make a it better for people who already ride on there but it's not going to enable lots of new people.

The Lambeth Healthy Routes plan explains what they're trying to do. You might not agree with all the routes and there are some noticeable big gaps. And even that network is going to take some time to build. From Lambeth Transport Strategy - Healthy Routes (Appendix A) | Lambeth Council (I googled Lambeth Healthy Routes)
"A healthy route has the right conditions to enable more people to walk and cycle. A healthy route links people with places they need to get to, such as schools, workplaces, amenities and shops. A healthy route is convenient, attractive, feels safe and is accessible to all. A healthy route could be a residential street or a main road or a combination of both. And critically motor traffic levels are low, or on busier roads there is dedicated space that is not shared with general traffic."

So the Low Traffic Neighbourhoods they're prioritising are the ones that create routes on the 'Healthy Routes' network (theres a map in document linked on that page).

How do those specific streets help? The ones they filter don't neceesarily because you cant just do a single road without pushing the traffic onto the next parallel residential road - you have to deal with whole area so that traffic is kept to the main road network.
Brixton Water Lane is on that map - and traffic turning into St Matthews Road is to rat run from Hootananny to Brixton avoiding the lights on Effra Road is the problem. Stick the route into google before the filter and thats the way it would direct you at nearly all times of day.

Shakespeare Road - again, it's part of a neighbourhood plan, but Shakespeare itself should now be a Healthy Route linking people in the areas to the south a direct route to Loughborough Junction and, since Loughborough Road is also the map, a route onwards to the north - presumably either linking to the A23 north of Brixton (so that people don't have to cycle through central Brixton) or carrying on up through Myatts Fields to Oval.

 

[teuchter]

By absolutist I mean that you have adopted a seemingly "whatever is put forward by the council should be not be questioned and should be adopted as proposed and without exception" approach, .

No, that is not my approach.

 

[thebackrow]

Other than massive rebuilding of the embankments to create greater permeability we're stuck with it. Reducing permeability elsewhere exacerbates the problems for far, far more people than it benefits.

There's a whole load of assumptions built into those two sentences and the evidence doesn't back them up.

Expanding the motor network simply doesn't work in any densely populated area - induced demand means you just create more driven trips. Thats way lies the Westway, the London motorway box, elevated freeways in American cities. That failed and they're being taken out - they didn't solve congestion.
The other option is you restrict the room you give to most space inefficient form of transport and give more to the most efficient. 40% of driven trips in London are under 2 miles, few of them are carrying passengers or luggage. Most tradesmen don't need a transit sized van to drive to site (or at least only rarely). Freight can be consolidated with 'last mile' deliveries by cargo bike not diesel van.

'exacerbates the problems for far more people than it benefits'. H/H car ownership is well below 50% borough wide, closer to 30% in some parts. Commute to work by car is less than 10%.

 

[newbie]

Looking at that entrance to Brockwell park and its so heavily used I think more action should be taken. Stopping car parking on that section of the street for example and widening pavement more would be justified.

It's a horrible bit of road, that, narrow, straight, lights to aim at and slow cyclists puffing up the slope. I'd like proper cycle space, wider pavements and speed reduction chicanes or humps.

 

[newbie]

It does though, public transport will not be able to cope with the same numbers and social distancing, that’s why we need alternatives.

That's also why we need arteries that aren't clogged as well. Impervious locals routes will put some (agree, not 100%) displaced traffic onto arteries, just at the time there are more buses and delivery vehicles. I'm pushed to see how it helps.

 

[teuchter]

It's really not my proposals we're discussing here, it's what Lambeth are currently planning that matter.

I'm not going to duck the question, I can but try to answer, but I'm not part of a group with a rehearsed position, and temperamentally I'm far more comfortable with deconstructing than I am with blue sky thinking. So I suspect I'm about to dig myself a hole, but here goes. I hope no-one can be bothered to read it.

Start from a place that prioritises public acceptance and accountability, which I think means class based equity as well as emphasising acceptance and accommodation of minority viewpoints and of course Equalities and Disabilities legislation, policy and so on. For all to gain some have to lose, but that has to be seen as fair. IOW best practice- I'm not attempting to write a comprehensive, watertight policy paper, I hope you get the drift.

Identify root problems- I've mentioned some above, ' pollution, noise, congestion, danger ', everyone can add to or reorder that list easily enough, we all recognise the problems
And root causes, which could start with through commuting, massive vehicles with huge engines as well as human behaviour.
Clear objectives, aiming to improve climate change, pollution related illness and premature death, road casualties, and other measurables.
Encourage improved quality of life, access to mobility but with better journey times, healthy lifestyles, better streetscapes.
Underpin with resilience and redundancy, which are sorely lacking from the impermeable neighbourhood proposals, and a systematic approach.
And there's real urgency.
There's huge amounts of work and evidence about all that, most of which I haven't read, though I'm unconvinced it all starts from what I see as the priorities.


Zonal extension of the CC and LEZ based on London road rationing- annual allowance calculated on some combination of home location, vehicle footprint, engine size, road usage. Initially administered via ANPR, vehicles are already databased on every journey, this simply extends that. Tradeable, because we live under capitalism, so those without a car can sell their credits to someone else, including those who want to commute into London (personally I'd vote to ban them completely but suspect I'd lose). Ideally moving towards a per adult basis, but that isn't quickly realisable and probably wouldn't be popular, so probably household based using Council Tax and DVLA databases.

I'll see what others think, but an approach of that sort at least makes an attempt to substantially hammer the main issues.

Beyond that, I'd like to see local logistics hubs, where packages are sorted for onward delivery by foot, cargo bike, drone, robot etc. If you like you could paint everything red and label it Post Office.

I doubt there'll ever be taxi ranks, but there's no real reason why most people couldn't walk to their nearest main road if they don't want cars in their street. They walk to their zip car.

I certainly want more dedicated cycle space and properly labelled quiet routes, but the infrastructure - and I give those on this thread credit where it's due- has improved massively and covid will certainly spur that on.

I'd like to see equitable resident vehicle parking arrangements- I can see no good reason why residents of some streets pay more or less than others for equivalent static road space. That should be London wide, although that's a massively hard sell.

I'll vote to ban SUVs immediately.

There's more but that'll do. None of it involves gentrified impermeable areas and sacrificial arteries where all the displaced probelms end up in the lungs and lives of people who have no other choice but to live there.

None of this can be implemented in the next few weeks, without public consultation. That's both a bad and a good thing.

It's unrealistic pie in the sky, of course it is, but that's taken me hours to write, and I can pick huge holes in it, but it's a sunny day and I've been seeing notifications come in for the thread and I haven't read any of it. l8r

Same as Winot, I'd happily sign up to pretty much all of this, as soon as it's on the table, which it's currently not, unlike the liveable neighbourhood schemes.

As you acknowledge, it would be a hard sell. I am pretty pessimistic about persuading people, especially in outer London, to accept things like road rationing or schemes that would result in some people losing parking space or starting to pay for it. On the other hand, the liveable neighbourhoods do not require people to change very much at all in the short term. We disagree about the displaced traffic problem, which seems to be your main objection. If they are implemented, and there is evidence that it does become a problem (after the schemes have been allowed sufficient time to settle in) then I would change my opinion.

 

[newbie]

A lot of people new to cycling would not be comfortable cycling along coldharbour lane for example - whether or not it were made a freeway.

They'd be right. Some of the new (and hirebike) cyclists I've seen recently aren't safe in an empty carpark, let alone on a road like that. Cycling education is atrocious in this country, ( <offthread>and that includes teaching the lycra brigade about not trying to intimidate the rest of us out of their way </offthread>) While i absolutely welcome the huge increase in cyclists I'd really like to see proficiency courses being much more widely available.

 

[newbie]

London is going to change. Home working in particular is not going to end soon. Central London depended on these workers to fill shops and bars.

I see the "suburbs" areas like Brixton becoming more important for shopping and busier. Tescos in LJ is now aways busy.

What does surprise me is why Atlantic road was not "filtered". Its a main shopping area. Socially distancing is difficult. Early on in Liveable neighbourhood idea was to make it for buses and cycles only. This would imo have been good idea to do now.
.

That's a very good point. We've disagreed about the workability of restricting AR in the past, but the changes will bring about different patterns of use which will need to catered for. We'll see what happens.

 

[newbie]

There's a whole load of assumptions built into those two sentences and the evidence doesn't back them up.

Expanding the motor network simply doesn't work in any densely populated area - induced demand means you just create more driven trips. Thats way lies the Westway, the London motorway box, elevated freeways in American cities. That failed and they're being taken out - they didn't solve congestion.
The other option is you restrict the room you give to most space inefficient form of transport and give more to the most efficient. 40% of driven trips in London are under 2 miles, few of them are carrying passengers or luggage. Most tradesmen don't need a transit sized van to drive to site (or at least only rarely). Freight can be consolidated with 'last mile' deliveries by cargo bike not diesel van.

'exacerbates the problems for far more people than it benefits'. H/H car ownership is well below 50% borough wide, closer to 30% in some parts. Commute to work by car is less than 10%.

more hyperbole. FTR I wasn't suggesting tearing south London to bits to build more roads for cars. I'm trying to encourage you and others to discuss permeabilty, resilience, redundancy, bus journey times, local peoples access and so on in terms that aren't entirely from the inside looking out, to at least give passing consideration to those who will not benefit from gentrification, those who live and breathe on the main arteries, those who think very differently from single issue campaigners, and those who actually think that authoritarian imposition is not a good look and will possibly end in tears.

 

[teuchter]

For those worried about the traffic/pollution displacement effects - one of the best recent examples of the principle of reducing car permeability is Ghent. They have an inner ring road, and they split the area within it into 6 zones. You can move freely by car within each of these zones but if you want to get from one to the other, you have to go via the ring road.



Of course, Ghent is not London, and also, they introduced this in one go, rather than neighbourhood by neighbourhood. There are lots of things that aren't directly comparable.

However - I think many people would look at their plan and worry what this meant for those who live along the ring road. Intuitively - you'd expect traffic to increase. I've tried to find information on what actually happened. I haven't found a lot of detail in English - but it seems that they did take measurements along the ring road as well as in the newly designated zones and as far as I can see these are the results:



Blue is before, green is after, purple is the difference.

The first five measurements are along the ring road, and the rest are from the area within.

You can see that their experience is not one of an increase in NO2 pollution along the ring road.

Anyone who can read Dutch may be able to find info within this document which shows that the picture is not as straightforward - I don't know.


Edit - and in the reports linked on this page

Assessment of Gent’s traffic circulation plan - Transport & Mobility Leuven

traffic circulation plan, Gent

www.tmleuven.be

 

[newbie]

Same as Winot, I'd happily sign up to pretty much all of this, as soon as it's on the table, which it's currently not, unlike the liveable neighbourhood schemes.

As you acknowledge, it would be a hard sell. I am pretty pessimistic about persuading people, especially in outer London, to accept things like road rationing or schemes that would result in some people losing parking space or starting to pay for it. On the other hand, the liveable neighbourhoods do not require people to change very much at all in the short term.

I'm not a campaigner, I burnt out and don't have it in me. So I haven't spend years pushing against campaigns going in the wrong direction. So yeah, we are where we are, we have a gentrifier led policy being imposed without consultation, and are being guilt tripped into supporting it because apparently the only other alternative is to do nothing. Have I missed the modelling of various transport, equalities, economic and social metrics for what is being currently discussed, or hasn't there been any?

We disagree about the displaced traffic problem, which seems to be your main objection.

Well unless you can demonstrate that 100% of previous traffic doesn't end up being displaced onto the main arteries, then I'm afraid you'll have to accept that that is precisely where these schemes will send some of it. At the same time as they reduce resilience by removing redundancy. It really doesn't make sense unless you're on the inside looking out or (I'm not smearing you personally) stand to benefit from local area gentrification.

If they are implemented, and there is evidence that it does become a problem (after the schemes have been allowed sufficient time to settle in) then I would change my opinion.

Ok, good. But obviously, since the start of lockdown no previous transport metrics will have much meaning, so there'll be endless scope for arguing about statistics. Great. IIn the meantime the burdens of pollution, noise safety and so on will be relieved in some places and increased in others. How that will reflect in the stats will depend on the input assumptions of the model, and traffic free areas are very likely to be assumed to be a good idea..

exploding head, enough for now

 

[co-op]

So yeah, we are where we are, we have a gentrifier led policy being imposed without consultation, and are being guilt tripped into supporting it because apparently the only other alternative is to do nothing.

Apologies if I've missed something but how is this a gentrifier led policy? In a borough like Lambeth where a minority of households have access to a car, it's wealthy outsiders who have dominated road traffic policy by using Lambeth's roads as access to London and it's much poorer locals who suffered the consequences to health and to the safety of their children.

 

[thebackrow]

Apologies if I've missed something but how is this a gentrifier led policy? In a borough like Lambeth where a minority of households have access to a car, it's wealthy outsiders who have dominated road traffic policy by using Lambeth's roads as access to London and it's much poorer locals who suffered the consequences to health and to the safety of their children.

It isn't, but it's one of the generic smears that certain people drop in as an accusation when they've can't argue on evidence. Just call it oppression of the working class or gentrification and you'll probably get away with it. If somethings going to make the area better and you want to argue against it - gentrification. Bloody gentrifiers, choosing to live their lives in an area and wanting to make it better, pulling up the drawbridge. Pah - keep it shit.

i'm trying to encourage you and others to discuss permeabilty, resilience, redundancy, bus journey times, local peoples access

In turn -

• Permeability is improved for people walking and cycling whilst intentionally restricted for those driving to discourage car use. Evidence from overseas (Netherlands), and London (Waltham Forest) is that this is effective and the benefits outweigh the disbenefits. Traffic drops and air quality improves overall.
• Resilience. Assuming you don't want to maximise capacity and make every minor road busy I assume your idea is that that the minor roads create a pressure relief valve and give traffic somewhere to go if a main road is blocked. this just doesn't work as the capacity of the back streets is far less than the main roads so they whole area just rapidly gridlocks anyway. This happened when Brixton Hill was blocked because a speeding driver had crashed into a bus at 5am on a Sunday morning a few years back. All the roads to either side of Brixton Hill blocked up with drivers trying to find their way around and with drivers behaving like arseholes there was a serious hit and run on a child on New Park Road.
• Bus Journey Times. Usually they improve. Cutting the volumes turning off main roads into side roads actually makes the main roads run more smoothly - there are fewer collisions and less instances of buses being held up by turning traffic. The bus on Railton/Atlantic Road will run a lot better when the other traffic is cut
• Local peoples access. Every house is still accessible by car. Some trips, in some directions, will take a bit longer but maybe they'll be made in another way. (cross ref with household car ownership/income etc).

 

[happyshopper]

Waze knows about St Matthews Road and, now that the Railton Road ratrun doesn't work any more, it will send a lot more cars, trucks and lorries that way. Or at least it would, if it's not closed off as well.

 

[thebackrow]

sure
View attachment 217728

I looked at this earlier. I've looked at it again and I know what a Gini co-efficinet is, but I have no idea what point you think this makes.

 

[T & P]

Apologies if I've missed something but how is this a gentrifier led policy? In a borough like Lambeth where a minority of households have access to a car, it's wealthy outsiders who have dominated road traffic policy by using Lambeth's roads as access to London and it's much poorer locals who suffered the consequences to health and to the safety of their children.

I believe that is indeed true, but surely the problem is that if you are correct, then this measure will not deliver any measurable benefits to the local community? Certainly as far as pollution is concerned, which likely is the biggest killer and seems to be the biggest concern among those commenting on this issue.

If the great majority of passing motor traffic isn’t local residents, then this measure is going result in a bugger all overall reduction of motor traffic in the wider area. Nobody who currently sees fit to drive a car through London is going to abandon driving suddenly because they can no longer use Railton Road as part of their route.

So the Railton Road area residents will undoubtedly benefit, but only at the expense of residents of the nearby streets where the motor traffic will have been displaced to, and where pollution will now be worse than it used to be.

Bottom line is IMO that isolated initiatives like this will result in an almost non-existent number of drivers switching to cycling or public transport as a direct result of it. And while I’m sure the intention is not to pass on the hot potato to another neighbourhood, that’s almost certainly what will happen here.

 

[thebackrow]

Bottom line is IMO that isolated initiatives like this

It's not an isolated initiative.

£4m transport plan to make Lambeth roads safer for pedestrians and cyclists

By Grainne Cuffe, Local Democracy Reporter A string of main roads through Lambeth will be made safer for cyclists and pedestrians as part of an emergency £4m town hall transport plan. Pavements wil…

londonnewsonline.co.uk

Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) will include Oval Triangle, Railton, Ferndale, Streatham Hill, Streatham Wells, Brixton Hill and Tulse Hill, as well as five more, which have yet to be identified.

The council is planning eight ‘healthy routes’ for safer walking and cycling, including Cycleway 5, Loughborough Road, Kennington Road, Barrington Road, Atlantic Road, Streatham to Peckham cycleway, Coldharbour Lane, and Brixton Water Lane.

Lambeth will also be increasing the number of access only roads, including Cornwall Road, St Matthew’s Road, and Windmill Drive.

 

[Gramsci]

Apologies if I've missed something but how is this a gentrifier led policy? In a borough like Lambeth where a minority of households have access to a car, it's wealthy outsiders who have dominated road traffic policy by using Lambeth's roads as access to London and it's much poorer locals who suffered the consequences to health and to the safety of their children.

This is how it was seen in LJ. That the Council were imposing on a working class community there green ideas.

Whilst an adventure playground was closed due to lack of funds and the Youth centre was struggling to stay open. Priorities for the working class around here arent roads. Its policing , provision for young peope, jobs and dealing with gangs issue. Messing about with roads comes acrosss as middle class in that context. "Prettifying" the area up whilst hidden and underlying deprivation is not dealt with. Ive been volunteering with food bank and I can say its been busy during the pandemic around LJ and Brixton.

The trouble is the Council don't just say this is about stopping people use cars. They mix it in with "improving" areas. To improve the area the issues in previous paragraph need dealing with. If not then altering roads comes across as cosmetic exercise.

The Council are mixing in the "improvements" to central Brixton from the Good Growth Fund and this funding for the "Liveable" Neighbourhood.

There is some consultation going on about the Good Growth Fund. The consultants hae been told that an area of concern is that these projects can end up helping gentrification.

There have been a lot of technical posts here about reducing traffic etc etc. If that is what these schemes are really about then the Council/ Mayor should just say so.

The Orwellian language that is used at recent meeting I attended is a wind up. Its now not road closures ( that is toxic phrase) its traffic "filtering"

People arent stupid they see through this use of language.

The other tack is to make out these are fluffy schemes and why dont you just accept it.

What the Council dont do is listen or engage with people.

For example the residents of the north end of Loughborough road had there own ideas to improve the roads. Where they listened to ? No.

 

[Gramsci]

friendofdorothy was asking on Brixton thread about the scheme for Railton road.

I looked up Lambeth Consutation page and this comes up.

Tell us where it is difficult to socially distance to help us prioritise where more space is needed | Lambeth Council

Neighbourhood information

www.lambeth.gov.uk

Fair enough.

Then I went and looked up the old Brixton Liveable Neighbourhood commonplace website.

Its still up.

Check out Lambeth Council’s ideas for healthier and safer streets

Have your say on healther and safer streets in Brixton

brixtonstreets.commonplace.is

Click on the Railton bit and it now goes straight into the Covaid site.

So the Council is mixing the Brixton Liveable Neighbourhood scheme with the Covaid response scheme.

About Creating safe distances for pedestrians & cyclists in Lambeth

Please tell us where it is difficult to socially distance to help us prioritise where more space is needed.

lambethtransportcovidresponsemap.commonplace.is

This scheme does not make clear its link with the Liveable Neighborhood scheme.

The response commonplace gives impression that the Council are only

asking the public to help us identify potential areas where pavement widening will help to maintain social distancing

This is a misuse of consultation.

Its clear to me that Lambeth are using pandemic to push the Railton part of the liveabe neighborhood through with minimal consultation.

People were promised at beignning of the Liveable Neighborhood consultation that lessons had been learnt from the LJ fiasco. That this time proper consultation would happen. That a requirement of the funding was to get community onside. Or it would not happen.

 

[teuchter]

It's true, the whole website is a muddled mess, and it's never clear exactly what you are commenting on. And it's structured in such a way that it's not easy to go back through the stages of consultation and see what was presented at each date and how and so on. You never know if something that was there before has been changed, or moved, or deleted.

Actually my very first post on this thread was saying that the website for the Liveable Neighbourhoods scheme was confusing because it wasn't even clear who was running it - whether it was a Lambeth thing or not.

 

[newbie]

Apologies if I've missed something but how is this a gentrifier led policy? In a borough like Lambeth where a minority of households have access to a car, it's wealthy outsiders who have dominated road traffic policy by using Lambeth's roads as access to London and it's much poorer locals who suffered the consequences to health and to the safety of their children.

Well yes, I think you've missed something. That's far too glib an answer to the most basic social question of all, "in whose interests...?"

Here's my take on insiders and outsiders, who wins what in this genteel version of the teenagers postcode divisions.

Demographically there's a longterm pattern of churn that shows people arriving in this area in their twenties, and then progressively leaving through their 30s and 40s, as their locally born kids approach either primary or particularly secondary school age. That's when they sell up (those that have bought homes) and take their property windfall elsewhere, to be replaced by younger reproductions of themselves, rinse and repeat. Over time those incomers have become perhaps a bit older and certainly a lot wealthier than in previous decades. Looking around this is reflected in the age groupings you can see on most streets, large numbers of younger in the rented flats, tapering with age but increasingly likely to be owner occupiers, not so many older faces. Plenty of little kids, few teens. Now that's not everybody, of course, and the social housing population is somewhat different, with plenty of teens and their parents and grandparents, no disproportionate 20's group- possibly the opposite because unless they can price/wealth match the incomers there's little in Foxtons for them, so they leave unless they go through the trauma of temporary accomodation and into the rinse/repeat of multigeneration social housing (or longterm poverty, as you might say). It's perhaps worth noting that there's interspersed social housing on the desirable Victorian streets and that, IMO, is one of the great strengths of the area. There are other groups of course but I think that outlines the majority, at least in the areas we're talking about, rippling out from Brixton and apparently clamouring for change.

Why do the first group come to the area? There are plenty of places in London with good transport, entertainment, parks, architecture, sense of community but for this area the characteristic word 'vibrant' has been emblematic for 20 years or more. 'Edgy' crops up too, Anyone local who can't deconstruct that, this week of all weeks, is living in the wrong place. I guess we've all looked at the property pages, know how this area has been marketed for the last while. Why are the second group here... because they live here and have somewhat more limited opportunity to go somewhere else should they wish to.

Who is it demanding secluded postcodes, accessible by motor only to Uber, Amazon, ambulances and Bishops Move, with drivers allowed in briefly and then expected to quickly sod off back out the way they came in. That's got to be pretty clear, hasn't it?

Of course, everybody on foot or cycle will be allowed through (at least for the time being) but it's not hard to see who that's tended to be (at least pre covid, now everything's changing and it doesn't have to be like that). Even so, it's an interesting position the demanders are putting themselves in. I don't think many people have huge sympathy for those who buy close to a church or pub and then campaign to silence the bells or restrict opening hours. Yet here we have a popular campaign which is pretty analogous while also busily signalling moral high ground. I digress.

Who wins from this push towards turning a'vibrant', 'edgy' area into some sort of green vision that sounds awfully like suburbia? Up to a point let's take the gist of the claims at face value and presume they'll be delivered. Everybody will benefit, we've been told, so if it doesn't deliver improved air quality everywhere (except perhaps close to the sacrificial arteries) it will have failed completely, same with levels of the other metrics we're promised from wellbeing to obesity, from cycling safety to mental health.

So everybody wins, but here in the real world some win more than others.

It's pretty obvious that buying into a not-quite-gated us and them postcode community, where vibrant and edgy is kept at arms length but which otherwise has all the advantages the area offers, is going to be a popular proposition, not with everybody for sure, but we can all watch the forthcoming property page writeups. Popular enough to interest those who wouldn't otherwise consider the area? Enough to mirror the school catchment price bands? Well we won't properly understand the changes for a decade or so, but it's a reasonable guess and I suspect we'll get earlier indications. I hope academics are studying the differential changes in property price, health outcomes, wellbeing & alienation between permeable and impervious neighbourhoods, estates and arteries. I doubt it, fwiw, but you never know.

So in whose interests is it to pressure the council, using whatever arguments are to hand, to create these idylls? I'm not particularly questioning motivation here, social housing occupants on the street may have exactly the same concerns and views as their neighbours about all the pollution, danger etc and put their pin on the map with the same tags. I'm certainly not accusing anyone of explicitly seeking to foster division or being entirely motivated by greed. But I would suggest that intent is not always the same as anticipation, and that's without considering unintended consequences and all the known and unknown unknowns.

So outcome, if the prize is realised? An even greater property windfall when kids approach secondary cannot be ignored. The entire economy revolves around property prices, it's nonsensical to pretend that there can be no effect, or that there couldn't possibly be any motivating effect. The chosen few owner occupiers stand to make real material gains. As do, incidentally, the landlord class who own such large amounts of Victorian street housing and can leech off increased rents and eventual capital gains. Others, much less so.

I don't personally see so much in it for people who live on the estates, or live in the neighbourhoods that don't get the proclaimed benefits of an impervious postcode, or whose home or work means they spend a lot of their life breathing on the arteries. Or indeed those in the chosen areas who work for the upkeep and prosperity of their landlord, secure in the knowledge they'll never get a deposit together themselves. Maybe others can indicate the personal benefits for those people that I'm just not seeing?

So everybody wins, but some will see themselves, and those like them, excluded from gains that others, not so much like them, are making. Day by day I think they'll see effects that haven't been promised on the glossy, some might say misleading, BLN outreach, increased motor journey times, whether bus, Uber, Zip or private, restrictions on people who want to carry on doing what other, better positioned, people disapprove of, increased congestion at pinch points, loss of resilience, and intentionally increased harm for some identifiable people who will do most of the pollution breathing.

How will those who don't specifically, personally, materially gain view this process and the outcomes? We'll see, but there's plenty of experience of institutional discrimination and the various mechanisms of social cleansing. Is it far fetched to see this as creating an entirely unnecessary, counter productive and longterm quite scary us and them, delineated on what are pretty clear class terms.



Now I don't know how others want to define gentrification, but as structural processes go, that's all pretty clear, isn't it?




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[teuchter]

Who is it demanding secluded postcodes, accessible by motor only to Uber, Amazon, ambulances and Bishops Move, with drivers allowed in briefly and then expected to quickly sod off back out the way they came in. That's got to be pretty clear, hasn't it?

That's not what's being demanded, nor what's being offered.