Nine Elms

Have you been to Nine Elms recently? It’s changed a lot!

Last time I was there, it was purely industrial. Today, it is a sea of housing developers’ flags and echoes to the sound of foundations being dug.

I was there visiting a friend in a flat in Battersea. There are about to be a lot more new flats in the huge triangle of land that sits between Vauxhall, Battersea Power Station and the Thames.

Unfortunately, while it is new, it is also plug ugly. Unlike the Olympic Park, now being carefully designed and directed by the planners from the Mayor’s office, this prime residential land almost opposite Westminster is too valuable to be properly planned. It is being developed in direct response to prospective buyers who want shiny, smart, international style flats that could be anywhere. London is simply where they land thanks to a coincidence of tax and time zone.

While I find it ugly, perhaps I should accept that London has always bent and bowed to suit various wave of immigration. If you visit the East End, you’ll find mosques that were synagogues that were churches. However, there is a part of me that warms to the fact that previous generations of immigrants have painted their own veneer onto the canvass of traditional London terraces. While many of the new, international elite are repeating this approach (think of all the Belgravia terraces and their subterranean swimming pools), those buying off plan in Nine Elms are buying a bland vision of the anonymous international city. It’s what they want, but I find it a shame.

Thankfully, Battersea power station sits in the centre of the new development, anchoring the area to its past. In the meantime, my plea to the developers is to remember the relationship between what you’re building and the city in which your residents will be living. The principles of integration should apply to oligarchs’ architecture as well as asylum seekers.