Comments | julietk: Latest for Battersea Power Station

julietk

Latest for Battersea Power Station

Jul 11, 2005 16:36

Battersea Power Station to be turned into immensely posh hotel, theatre, more posh hotels, etc etc. (currently awaiting planning permission from the council ( Read more... )

london

Comments 32

puffinry July 11 2005, 15:53:56 UTC

Although I'm something of a socialist hippy myself, I do rather like the idea of a single dining table right at the top of one of the chimneys!

julietk July 11 2005, 16:23:33 UTC

I'd like it more if I ever had a hope in hell of getting up there ;-)

*something*, *anything* be done to stop it from just falling apart altogether barrysarll July 11 2005, 15:58:25 UTC

Pragmatically, perhaps...but sometimes I enjoy just wandering down to the beach on lunch hours and staring across at the dereliction. I'll miss that.

Re: *something*, *anything* be done to stop it from just falling apart altogether julietk July 11 2005, 16:22:52 UTC

[nods] I've cycled past it (well, on the other side of the river, or across whichever it is that's the nearest bridge) several times recently, & there is a certain mournful grandeur to it. But it's a *huge* site to be wasting; and I'd also get a lot out of seeing it brought back to the splendour I recall when I used to come past it into Victoria when I was tiny, before it really started collapsing.

I remember a Blue Peter annual where they went in to look at the interior just as it was being closed down, in the mid-1970s. It was *gorgeous*. I don't know how much of that has actually survived.

Re: *something*, *anything* be done to stop it from just falling apart altogether rgl July 11 2005, 17:41:57 UTC

Have a look here.

marnameow July 11 2005, 16:30:58 UTC

Affordable housing; there are recommendations rather than rules, I believe (although I could be wrong there), and quite often planning permission is dependent on there being a certain amount of affordable housing included.

hazyjayne July 11 2005, 16:36:01 UTC

I believe it's meant to be 10-30%, depending on the area...

... can't it all be affordable housing? :/

beingjdc July 11 2005, 17:14:47 UTC

No, because if you make it all affordable housing you're effectively left with a high-rise council estate. Remember them, they're Not A Good Idea.

marnameow July 11 2005, 18:27:42 UTC

This is also wrong: there's nothing necessarily bad about having lots of social housing, except for the lamentable quality of UK councils as landlords. I don't think they were ever incentivised properly, and of course any monopoly has its costs. The high-rise estates were put up by people who thought that anything was better than the slums they were clearing, and didn't feel they had time to listen to what people actually wanted or the money to do a good job---but the country is much richer now.

The Housing Association model of highly devolved provision, with some sort of co-investment between the resident and the owning body (if not necessarily co-ownership of individual properties, since that has horrendous inefficiencies), is probably the way to go.

HTFB

Thread 6

Affordable housing anonymous July 11 2005, 16:36:00 UTC

The whole affordable housing policy is insane. There is no point at all in encouraging people to put up cheap, and therefore poor-quality, houses; that just restricts the builders' investment in the supply of housing, so for a given level of demand prices are higher than they would be without this policy. And we're left with pokey, poorly built homes.

HTFB

Re: Affordable housing karen2205 July 11 2005, 16:57:27 UTC

I think there's a difference between 'affordable' and 'cheap and nasty'. You can build high quality two and three bedroomed houses/flats which will be affordable, rather than building a few luxury five bedroomed houses that will be completely outside the budgets of people living in the area.

Re: Affordable housing beingjdc July 11 2005, 17:16:58 UTC

Indeed. Size of units = big factor in cost of construction. Cost of land = big factor in cost of construction. Quality of building = pretty small factor in cost of construction.

Re: Affordable housing anonymous July 11 2005, 18:06:52 UTC

Building firms compete by minimizing the cost of the quality of building. We have building regs to protect the public, and indeed to promote the public interest in the quality of the overall housing stock which isn't properly priced by a private housing market. It's perverse to introduce rules going in the opposite direction ( ... )

Thread 20

hatter July 11 2005, 22:10:54 UTC

From the local council newsletter thingie (for it falls under my local council) and if my memory for things I wasn't entirely paying attention to is correct, it's going to have 135 flats, or which 35 are 'affordable'.

Personally, I still reckon they should make it itno one huge lasertag nad paintball arena - no need to even renovate it if they do that.

the hatter