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

Good to see chowce5382 is raising money to cover the costs & hope this takes priority of the Supreme Court costs.


All still very opaque though especially as there was a legal aid award but noone's said how much that was and how much is being funded for the lawyers.
 
Some selfish fucking twat in a big car was completely blocking the pavement outside my block last night, so I had to walk into the road to get past. When I pointed this out to him he was all "what's your fucking problem?"

I remonstrated with equal gusto to the point where his ruddy face indicated fisticuffs were looming so I walked on. Fuck these arrogant car drivers.

That is all for today.
 
Good to see chowce5382 is raising money to cover the costs & hope this takes priority of the Supreme Court costs.


All still very opaque though especially as there was a legal aid award but noone's said how much that was and how much is being funded for the lawyers.
Indeed. The costs they detail - 10k for Lambeth, 1200 for stat review and 1500 for appeal conveniently add up to exactly what they’ve raised to date (give or take a few 100)
 
thinking about this more, 'free at the point of use' is what we have now for car owners. With the sunk cost of the car and fuel in the tank it's 'free' to make the next trip and leads to congestion and delays for people who really need to make trips.

Cheaper or free public transport isn't going to take people out of their cars if that's still the case. And creating more demand isn't going to help - London's public transport is at capacity at peak hours (try getting a tube from Clapham North at rush hour) so making it cheaper or free isn't going to help. In fact, congestion on northern line (as I think I've pointed out before) is why cycle superhighway 7, following the line of the northern line, was one of the first to be built. The cheapest way to create capacity on the tube is to get some of the people who use it now to cycle (and then some that drive might take the tube).
This is the result of overpopulation caused by the needs of the building industry.
You could kill this at a stroke by putting interest rates up to 8% as they should be, judging by inflation.
 
This is the result of overpopulation caused by the needs of the building industry.
You could kill this at a stroke by putting interest rates up to 8% as they should be, judging by inflation.
Now you’ve completely lost me. You’re saying we don’t have a shortage of homes but actually over population? How do high interest rates lower the population?

Ain't you heard of the starving millions
Ain't you heard of contraception
You really want a program of sterilization?
Take control of the population boom!
It's in your living room
Keep a generation gap
Try wearing a cap
 
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Now you’ve completely lost me. You’re saying we don’t have a shortage of homes but actually over population? How do high interest rates lower the population?
It would stop speculative building/buy to let all that sort of thing.
You will no doubt be aware (and possibly approve if you are of a right-wing disposition) that the shortage of homes is in the social housing sector for the lumpen proletariate and lower paid workers.

We have currently a record home building programme from a Con/Labour concensus for "affordable homes" which are actually unaffordable by definition. The housing industry has been plagued with this attitude for years - and the Tory Party at least is in their pockets nationally, as are the Labour Party locally at council level - particularly Lambeth and Southwark.

Of course now lies are the currency of government. It all feels rather debauched to me.
The temptation of tories.jpg
(Art work courtesy of Coldwar Steve)
 
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Indeed. The costs they detail - 10k for Lambeth, 1200 for stat review and 1500 for appeal conveniently add up to exactly what they’ve raised to date (give or take a few 100)
My reading is that the £1500 is for the appeal request i.e. the work to persuade the court to allow the case to go up to the Supreme Court and be heard. If that’s right then there would be (a lot) more to come in costs of actually running the appeal itself.
 
It would stop speculative building/buy to let all that sort of thing.
You will no doubt be aware (and possibly approve if you are of a right-wing disposition) that the shortage of homes is in the social housing sector for the lumpen proletariate and lower paid workers.

We have currently a record home building programme from a Con/Labour concensus for "affordable homes" which are actually unaffordable by definition. The housing industry has been plagued with this attitude for years - and the Tory Party at least is in their pockets nationally, as are the Labour Party locally at council level - particularly Lambeth and Southwark.

Of course now lies are the currency of government. It all feels rather debauched to me.
View attachment 317545
(Art work courtesy of Coldwar Steve)
I’m no clearer as to how this is relevant to transport In Lambeth.
 
The odds of success, the amount of cash and the length of time makes this a puzzling choice. I mean if I had cancer and that was my survival chances for treatment I might go for it but a traffic scheme, no chance. I still don’t understand (and this applies to the cabbies too) whilst they don’t attempt to work with the council/mayor to improve or get concessions rather than spending someone’s else’s money on failing legal cases. It’s only lobbying like what the cycling groups have achieved
 
The odds of success, the amount of cash and the length of time makes this a puzzling choice. I mean if I had cancer and that was my survival chances for treatment I might go for it but a traffic scheme, no chance. I still don’t understand (and this applies to the cabbies too) whilst they don’t attempt to work with the council/mayor to improve or get concessions rather than spending someone’s else’s money on failing legal cases. It’s only lobbying like what the cycling groups have achieved
If I wanted to cure my chest condition I would move somewhere like Barbados with no pollution and no pollen etc. Unfortunately I have no money - or not the sort of money needed to do this.
 
I’m no clearer as to how this is relevant to transport In Lambeth.
I'm simply saying if you increase the population you increase the cars - especially if you tilt the population increase in favour of the more well to do.

I get where you are coming from though. Gramophone record. You didn't train to be a doctor's receptionist did you?
 
If I wanted to cure my chest condition I would move somewhere like Barbados with no pollution and no pollen etc. Unfortunately I have no money - or not the sort of money needed to do this.
Seems like you need a go fund appeal…
 
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What is it'll they'll have raised - neary £70k? They could have done proper campaigning which would have surely been more successful & funded candidates. Really clueless.
 
They’ve bad mouthed most of the bigger user / experience led disability campaign organisations too. Stuck with Reform Uk and that independent Farah London
 
I'm simply saying if you increase the population you increase the cars - especially if you tilt the population increase in favour of the more well to do.
Not really - on the whole, the more densely populated an area is, the lesser the justification and the opportunity to use the private car as transport.

That's not to say densification is necessarily a good thing.

I did a lengthy post some time ago going on about Shakespeare Rd, one of the features of which is that a large portion of it was developed in the 80s or 90s(?) on a relatively suburban model with plentiful offstreet parking and no thought of things like shops or pedestrian through routes. So, what exists there now is a road with a large number of car-owning residents, with rather a long way to walk to any services or public transport, who presumably make up some portion of the traffic that passes your front door.

That's not a model considered appropriate for this kind of area any more. Much of current development is at least supposed to discourage car ownership, and take things like public transport and services within walking distance into account.
 
I did a lengthy post some time ago going on about Shakespeare Rd, one of the features of which is that a large portion of it was developed in the 80s or 90s(?) on a relatively suburban model with plentiful offstreet parking and no thought of things like shops or pedestrian through routes. So, what exists there now is a road with a large number of car-owning residents, with rather a long way to walk to any services or public transport, who presumably make up some portion of the traffic that passes your front door.

That's not a model considered appropriate for this kind of area any more. Much of current development is at least supposed to discourage car ownership, and take things like public transport and services within walking distance into account.
You mean Pablo Neruda Close, Derek Walcott Close etc?
Of course when these were built we were in the Bellos era and the primary issue was to promote "positive image" as regards third world poets - especially if they has been hounded by the Pinochett regime of Chile.
The Moorlands Estate had been built less than 10 years earlier with ample car ownership provision - which still exists now.
In fact I would venture to suggest that many social housing developments in the 1980s and earlier saw the car as a human right of the tenants.
Look at this extraordinary Metropolitan Housing development from the late 1980s - replacing a building burnt down in the Cherry Groce riot of 1985
Instead of the ground floor furniture shop we now have a dead zone of a crack-secure parking space, whose cars tend to languish gathering dust and rust.
What a waste of space!
Raphael house.jpg
 
You mean Pablo Neruda Close, Derek Walcott Close etc?
Of course when these were built we were in the Bellos era and the primary issue was to promote "positive image" as regards third world poets - especially if they has been hounded by the Pinochett regime of Chile.
The Moorlands Estate had been built less than 10 years earlier with ample car ownership provision - which still exists now.
In fact I would venture to suggest that many social housing developments in the 1980s and earlier saw the car as a human right of the tenants.
Look at this extraordinary Metropolitan Housing development from the late 1980s - replacing a building burnt down in the Cherry Groce riot of 1985
Instead of the ground floor furniture shop we now have a dead zone of a crack-secure parking space, whose cars tend to languish gathering dust and rust.
What a waste of space!
View attachment 317578

yes, post war town planning did regard off-street car parking as desirable and maybe even a human right.

On the face of it, as well as being convenient for residents, it might seem like something that's good for the public realm - get the clutter of parked cars off the street. But parking needs a lot of space, and very often what happened is that the parking became a kind of dead zone between buildings and streets, something that is completely unfriendly to pedestrians. Either, as the windswept open car parking areas that have to be walked across to get to the entrance of buildings (there's a little bit of that on the Loughborough Estate, although not as bad as many) or solutions that involve using up the lower floors of the building (Moorlands) or the later example you give of the ex furniture shop. That also creates dead frontages. There's another example of that along acre Lane, presumably from the same era:

Screenshot 2022-04-07 at 17.36.00.jpg

All these are just demonstrations of how accommodating large numbers of private vehicles is fundamentally at odds with creating environments that are good for humans to live in.

Postwar, modernist architecture has a bad reputation with many people, because of associations with these kinds of unpleasant environments. I often like to argue that the main problem with that era of architecture/town planning is mostly to do with the fact that it attempted to embrace the private car. Most of the bad things result from that (which determined how buildings were set out in relation to streets) rather than from the architectural style of the buildings themselves. At that time, people were naive to what would actually happen. The images are all of sweeping highways and parkland with no congestion or pollution in sight.

And still in the 80s or 90s, we were building these stupid buildings like the ones above, with car parking built into the ground floor to pretend it didn't exist.

Plus the kind of suburban-style closes that exist along Shakespeare Rd.

None of these approaches result in a good solution because the fundamental problem is: too many cars. These approaches encourage car use and they let it dominate the urban environment.

And it only seems to have been in the last 20 years or so that this has finally been accepted, and it's now quite uncontroversial in somewhere like Lambeth to specify that new devlopments are car free.

Although much of the rest of the UK ploughs on with car-is-king approaches to planning.
 
yes, post war town planning did regard off-street car parking as desirable and maybe even a human right.

On the face of it, as well as being convenient for residents, it might seem like something that's good for the public realm - get the clutter of parked cars off the street. But parking needs a lot of space, and very often what happened is that the parking became a kind of dead zone between buildings and streets, something that is completely unfriendly to pedestrians. Either, as the windswept open car parking areas that have to be walked across to get to the entrance of buildings (there's a little bit of that on the Loughborough Estate, although not as bad as many) or solutions that involve using up the lower floors of the building (Moorlands) or the later example you give of the ex furniture shop. That also creates dead frontages. There's another example of that along acre Lane, presumably from the same era:

View attachment 317587

All these are just demonstrations of how accommodating large numbers of private vehicles is fundamentally at odds with creating environments that are good for humans to live in.

Postwar, modernist architecture has a bad reputation with many people, because of associations with these kinds of unpleasant environments. I often like to argue that the main problem with that era of architecture/town planning is mostly to do with the fact that it attempted to embrace the private car. Most of the bad things result from that (which determined how buildings were set out in relation to streets) rather than from the architectural style of the buildings themselves. At that time, people were naive to what would actually happen. The images are all of sweeping highways and parkland with no congestion or pollution in sight.

And still in the 80s or 90s, we were building these stupid buildings like the ones above, with car parking built into the ground floor to pretend it didn't exist.

Plus the kind of suburban-style closes that exist along Shakespeare Rd.

None of these approaches result in a good solution because the fundamental problem is: too many cars. These approaches encourage car use and they let it dominate the urban environment.

And it only seems to have been in the last 20 years or so that this has finally been accepted, and it's now quite uncontroversial in somewhere like Lambeth to specify that new devlopments are car free.

Although much of the rest of the UK ploughs on with car-is-king approaches to planning.
Your picture is of a former council office block converted to residential. Environmental Services I believe.
Not sure if it had parking on the ground floor when it was offices. I guess parking does solve the problem of pavement pedestrians looking into peoples' living rooms!
 
Postwar, modernist architecture has a bad reputation with many people, because of associations with these kinds of unpleasant environments. I often like to argue that the main problem with that era of architecture/town planning is mostly to do with the fact that it attempted to embrace the private car.
Although of course it is possible to do well. Blenheim Gardens kept the parking around the edge (as did cressingham gardens) and without roads running through the estate or past peoples front doors. - strangely enough both estates very popular with residents.
 
Is that correct? Pretty sure it was built as flats - pretty drastic conversion of not.
thats what I remember too - that's a completely new building (by Barratt iirc). a mate rented a flat in there for a while. Poky, very 80's decor despite being built in the 90's. Ex council building is a bit closer to Brixton, and has really weird ground floor flats
 
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So was it an office block built built in the 90s in a kind of imitation faux historic residential block style, and then later converted into an actual faux historical residential block?
 
I know this is very off topic now but was it not the one further down that was council offices & has been turned into flats?

1649430224784.png 1649430274048.png
 
I know this is very off topic now but was it not the one further down that was council offices & has been turned into flats?

View attachment 317719 View attachment 317720
We weren't discussing that one - rather the one Barratts re-styled as St Paul's Court.

I have just dialled up the Lambeth Planning archive on my Chromebook -and there is a decision notice dated 1996 in favour of Barratt Homes Limited to convetrt:

Ellen Kuzwayo House, 138-146 Claphjam Park Road from offices to residential. This adds permission for two extra storeys to the existing 1993 permission.

Here is a council photo of the unveiling of the plaque dedicating the building to Ellen Kuzwayo.
Doesnt say what the building was used for - as I said probably Environmental Services, or maybe Construction Services.
You have to appreciate this dates from Lambeth's long gone socialist/Marxist era

The unveiling of a plaque naming Ellen Kuzwayo House to honour her work 'against racism and aparthied and for the freedon and health of the people of South Africa'. Ellen Kuzwayo (1914-2006) was a South African politician who was President of the ANC Youth League in the 1960s as well as a prominent women's rights activist. The struggle to end apartheid was commemorated by Lambeth Council on several occasions from this naming ceremony on 1st October 1985 to the unveiling of the Soweto memorial in 1998.From Public Relations Photographs

1649437479805.png
 
NB re the above the Guardian on 12 June 1987 published a job advert from
  • ... Directorate of Environmental Health & Consumer Services, London Borough of Lambeth, Ellen Kuzwayo House, 138-146 Clapham Park Road, London SW4 7DD.
 
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