What's Your Vision for the Market?

[Gramsci]

Heh, the really hardcore middle class white defenders of Working Class Black Brixton on here are gone now aren't they. A thread like this (and especially the Starbucks one) would have been 100 pages of aggro by now a few years ago.

And they would have made mincemeat of this post.

These posters would be? Anna Key , Hatboy , Intostella, Ernestolynch ?

I think a few lurk about so watch it.

 

[quimcunx]

Do I get a little badge when I get to 20 years?

 

[Gramsci]

FBM - I'm away at the weekend so here's my comments / suggestions:


[*] There are still something like 15 outstanding planning breaches on Electric Avenue and surrounding roads. The Council are seemingly unable to pursure these with any effect. What can FBM do to help with this after the success of the campaign to get the covered markets listed?

Everyone's concern is that we end up with a mono-culture of a market that only serves one aspect of the community or another, as has happened in bits of East London. I think that FBM should become the watchdog that makes sure we don't ever get to that point
[/LIST]

Planning breaches is an interesting point. There is one Im thinking of following up. I have been involved in planning before. There is a problem here. The shopkeepers/businesses often regard those who complain to planning as interfering with there businesses and damaging them when they are trying to make a living. Taking out shopfronts and putting in new windows that dont fit in a conservations area for example.

Of course most small businessses/Shopkeepers are quite happy for the the market to be listed. This affects LAP a big business.

A lot of the "damage" to the market is incremental . A shopfront removed here and replaced by something nasty and cheap. This has been a gradual process.

Also some people like the frankly anarchic chaos in central Brixton. Rather than some ultra tidy soul less shopping mall. A hard line on planning might not be something that people want.


From attending the meeting on Saturday I would say that that those there dont want Brixton market to end up as mono cultural.

 

[Gramsci]

Do I get a little badge when I get to 20 years?

No a Gold watch instead

 

[Gramsci]

Do I get a little badge when I get to 20 years?

A real Brixtonian

 

[netbob]

Also some people like the frankly anarchic chaos in central Brixton. Rather than some ultra tidy soul less shopping mall. A hard line on planning might not be something that people want.

I hear you, but the shear number of breaches, in combination with shed-loads of building safety issues, are a real danger to the fabric of the buildings themselves.

 

[timothysutton1]

Comments requested

I'm probably repeating things already said, but as requested here are my suggestions for future improvements for the market:

1) Sunday opening for parts of the market.

2) More obvious entrance to the markets created on the High Street.

3) User friendly route created between tube station and markets.

3) Zoning of the market into various shopping experiences.

4) Early evening opening for certain market zones.

5) A Brixton Station for the East London Line Extension due to open in 2012 (currently trains will not be stopping in Brixton as there is no station on the upper railway line and Boris Johnson has halted any plans to build one).

 

[Rushy]

Planning breaches is an interesting point. There is one Im thinking of following up. I have been involved in planning before. There is a problem here. The shopkeepers/businesses often regard those who complain to planning as interfering with there businesses and damaging them when they are trying to make a living. Taking out shopfronts and putting in new windows that dont fit in a conservations area for example.

Of course most small businessses/Shopkeepers are quite happy for the the market to be listed. This affects LAP a big business.

A lot of the "damage" to the market is incremental . A shopfront removed here and replaced by something nasty and cheap. This has been a gradual process.

Also some people like the frankly anarchic chaos in central Brixton. Rather than some ultra tidy soul less shopping mall. A hard line on planning might not be something that people want.


From attending the meeting on Saturday I would say that that those there dont want Brixton market to end up as mono cultural.

I hoped to go to that meeting but had an urgent family matter up north. I really hope it was generally positive.

Most people hate a hard line in planning when it prevents them from doing something they want to but insist on it when a neighbour does something they don't approve of.

Anarchy is all very well but over time it can drag everybody down to the standards of the lowest common denominator. I used to live on a central Brixton street where there wasn't room for enough bins and rubbish kept piling up. In summer the street stank and rats ran about in piles of rubbish. Some people used to regularly dump animal carcasses in the street - not kidding. When I complained the council canvassed neighbours about changing the collection method. Without going into the ins and outs of it, the council presented its findings at a public meeting which included several letters from people who said that didn't mind the rubbish and smell and would rather keep things the way they were. The Lambeth Streetcare chap unbelieveably presented this as a reason not to do anything but was luckily overuled by the chair (who may even have been Toren Smith IIRC).

Hopefully, the positive outcome of having a group like FBM is that it can establish what the general sentiment of the shopkeepers and customers is and work with Lambeth planning to produce coherant policy which - even if not everyone is happy about everything - generally works out for the 'greater good'.

 

[netbob]

I've heard twice now that the pre-spacemakers tenants are having their rent increased (levelled up to the newer shops). FBM is this just idol rumour that needs quashing or is there something in it? It seems like the kind of thing that could be either.

 

[tarannau]

I really hope that isn't true. It'd be a cause of resentment for the older traders and a recipe to ensure unrest between the bulk of the market and artier initiatives

 

[netbob]

As I said, could well be unfounded. If it was the council you could FOI the rates, but since it's a under LAP it's harder to find out.

 

[Ms T]

I've heard twice now that the pre-spacemakers tenants are having their rent increased (levelled up to the newer shops). FBM is this just idol rumour that needs quashing or is there something in it? It seems like the kind of thing that could be either.

I also heard that some of the new tenants can't afford the rents and are going to have to move out. I suspect LAP are the enemy here, not the Spacemakers people.

 

[netbob]

From a few things I've heard today I'm not sure that LEP and SM are all that divisible in this situation.