COMMENT These “20 King’s Cross-style developments” in the Levelling Up white paper, then? Are they to be decreed, top-down, from Whitehall? Or to be self-identifying, bottom-up, in true localist fashion?
No prizes for guessing which I would favour. All evidence points to the bottom-up approach having infinitely more chance of success. Actually, I would go further: top-down can be downright dangerous – you only have to look at the debacle of the eco-towns, some of which have never recovered from being thus fingered by Westminster. The eco-towns programme served only to whip up hostility in the host communities, and – even some 20 years later – many of those localities are still blighted as a result.
So, with a weather eye on learning from our mistakes, let’s hope communities and local stakeholders are putting their hands up to be “one of the 20”, rather than being dictated to.
One solid contender has to be York Central, with which I am doing a bit of pro bono work with the community alliance YoCo (because they asked and because they’re nice). Being the Old Woman of the Sea, I had to confess to YoCo that I had worked on the original King’s Cross in the mid-1980s, way before the advent of the sainted Argent, for Rosehaugh Stanhope, when that site was still in the ownership of the National Freight Company.
The similarities between the two sites are simply astonishing (you may recall the York site as the infamous “teardrop site”, and it has been hanging around nearly as long as King’s Cross) so I am hoping – on behalf of my new friends – that York Central will find favour for the turbocharging effect of being one of Michael Gove’s 20.
Of course, one of the reasons that King’s Cross is such a success is that it is almost entirely pedestrianised. As a chunk of London, it works superbly – both to anchor its stations and as a destination in its own right. Compare and contrast with another London railhead, Victoria, which is a series of (rather congested) road junctions, in between which some shiny new buildings have been inserted. Despite all best efforts – and there have been many – it just cannot cohere in anything like the same way.
Inflexion point
At 43ha, York Central is comparable in size to both of these, and has the benefit of a 2019 planning consent for a mixed-use scheme by Allies & Morrison. In the ownership of (mostly) Homes England and Network Rail, it is now at an inflexion point. It has some glittering champions, enjoying the personal attention of the darling Peters – Sir Peter Hendy for Network Rail and Peter Freeman for Homes England – as well as Greg Dyke, who chairs Make it York. And it stands to herald Homes England’s much-cheered shift from mere housing numbers to more rounded regeneration.
As we await Homes England appointing a new project director for the site, everyone (the darling Peters, together with YoCo and other stakeholders) is reassessing what sort of scheme should be brought forward. It is a great debate. And it could be the moment to be radical.
The consented masterplan is hugely competent – you would expect nothing less from Allies & Morrison – and clearly the original brief was to come up with a traditional new housing settlement treatment; that is, one that is predicated on homes needing cars. But that was then, and this is now. We’ve had a pandemic. And we have a climate change emergency. We have a main-line station on the East Coast Line. I would urge (and this is certainly where YoCo is) that this is the moment to be bold: take a leaf out of the original King’s Cross and bring forward a (mostly) pedestrianised scheme. Make a virtue of the land-locked nature of the site; York doesn’t need any more traffic. And King’s Cross has proven conclusively that successful real estate projects can be delivered without cars.
Splendid opportunity
Fortunately, the existing A&M masterplan is resilient enough to be able to deliver this without much amendment. But the team of stakeholders needs to have the courage of its convictions as it works up the detail. This is a splendid opportunity which needs our best urban thinking: you have 43ha in the centre of York, all in public ownership, which could be brought forward for a mixed-use, zero-carbon scheme, with the emphasis on the housing element being truly affordable (somebody has to make the cappuccinos for all those tourists). Everything to be walkable. If the government can throw in a government prelet (a slither of a department or an agency) next to the railhead – and apparently there have been hints – then so much the better.
Fortune favours the brave. King’s Cross proved that as our great exemplar. But soon we’ll need a new exemplar for our times. York Central could be just the ticket.
Jackie Sadek is director of Urban Strategy. She is co-author, with Peter Bill, of Broken Homes: Britain’s Housing Crisis – Faults, Factoids and Fixes
The community plan for York Central can be found here
