North London vs South London knife crime. Not all young people in South London are bad Boris.

I was just leaving work yesterday when the Tweets started to come in thick and fast.  Boris was in Vauxhall with a tonne of policefolk.  Of course, I assumed that they were just publicly clamping down on fare-dodging on the the 436 (known as the "free bus"), or maybe doing their border control thing, stopping the South Londoners going North.  But actually, Boris was busy worrying about half-term and the wild youth of Lambeth.

Perhaps I'm wrong in my assertion that Boris has no love for South London.  After all, he wouldn't visit if he didn't consider us once in a while.  One might assume that he'd need to visit Vauxhall to think about, you know, town centre planning, or a regeneration consultation or to look at the tall buildings he opposes and talk about sensible architectural policy and social housing.  Wrong.  Boris just visits dirty, bad, scary South London to test out his new knife arches.   These are knife arches that  have not been proven to reduce deaths through knife crime, or indeed been shown to improve community/youth relations.  Indeed, if you were a part of the majority of young people (the ones that don't carry knives and work/study hard), would you feel like a welcome member of society, when you were forced by police to walk through a knife arch?  Something tells me that many youths are not going to be as happy about it as the pretty-boy model used for the illustration.  And why should they be?

In the same way that Mr Onionbag protested when his patch in Oval was used to film the Bill, on the basis  that we already have a high police presence, I wish to question why Vauxhall was chosen for the BoJo knife arch demonstration.  Does the Vauxhall area need further adverse publicity?  I decided to conduct a little analysis on the 2006 and 2007 figures for knife crime, to try to determine whether it's worse in South London than in North, to see whether we really needed swarms of police testing knife arches in Vauxhall today.  The results are quite surprising.

Knife crime incidents that resulted in death (2006)
North London - (18 boroughs with some incident) and 49 total deaths = 2.72 deaths per borough.
South London - (10 boroughs with some incident) and 27 total deaths = 2.7 deaths per borough

Knife crime incidents that resulted in death (2007)
North London - (16 boroughs with some incident) and 46 total deaths = 2.875 deaths per borough
South London - (09 boroughs with some incident) and 26 total deaths = 2.89 deaths per borough

These figures are so close and seem to demonstrate that the knife crime deaths are very evenly balanced across the capital year-on-year.  If you were to add into the mix the number of boroughs where no knife crime took place (which I've not done), I believe that South London would show a lower ratio of knife crime deaths than North London in both years, but only by a small amount.

Consequently, I went back to the number crunching and analysed the figures for the number of people suffering serious injury as a result of being stabbed, in the hope that I'd yield a significant difference between North and South London.   These are slightly better figures since all boroughs had at least one incident each year, so all boroughs are taken into account in these results.

Incidents that resulted in serious injury due to stabbing (2006)
North London - (19 total boroughs) and 233 injuries = 12.2 injuries per borough.
South London - (13 total boroughs) and 151 injuries = 11.61 injuries per borough.

Incidents that resulted in serious injury due to stabbing (2007)
North London - (19 total boroughs) and 215 injuries = 11.21 injuries per borough.
South London - (13 total boroughs) and 139 injuries = 10.69 injuries per borough

These figures clearly show that South London is somewhat safer to lurk about in, although the southern most boroughs in South London do take up some of the slack, with Richmond etc. being extra-safe.

It seems that all of the figures are still too high.  One death is one too many.  But I'm not convinced about the effectiveness of knife arches for resolving what are essentially deep-rooted social issues concerning schooling, parenting and policing.  Personally, I think the 100 London table-tennis tables idea, gimmicky though it is, will do more to encourage neighbours to talk to one another than knife arches.  Once upon a time, Londoners used to say that careless talk might cost lives.  Today, perhaps it is a failure to talk that costs lives.

In the meantime, next time you want to do a knife arch demonstration, would it be ok to do it north of the River, where there is proportionately more knife crime across the boroughs, please Boris?

Vauxhall Island Site consultation debrief (the short, ahem, version)

First off, I think it's fair to say that the representatives of Kylun Ltd did a good job on the consultation, held today, about the Vauxhall Island Site.  You'll often hear me moan about lack of consultation or poor consultation, but if other developers were to imitate their method (provide lots of spokespeople, hand out comment forms, ask for suggestions and initiate conversations), there'd be considerably less cause for complaint.  I still feel that more could be done by Lambeth Council in terms of master planning, but don't we all?  The consultation wasn't all perfect and plain sailing of course (it rarely is), but I'll come to that...  Holding the exhibition at Vauxhall City Farm seemed to work well, and when I attended during the afternoon, the room was absolutely packed, demonstrating plenty of local interest in the proposed development.  Also, the people who attended appeared to be from diverse sectors of the community, which indicates good dissemination of information (it might just have been a sunny day, of course). Additionally  (a huge plus point), Kylun ensured that the architect was on site to be questioned, and there were more than enough other staff to answer questions too.

I think that most residents are agreed that Vauxhall would benefit from investment.  Most residents would likely agree that there is space in Vauxhall for new residential/commercial/industrial development.  I want to make it really clear to my detractors that I'm not against development and investment, I just think that development does not always mean very tall towers.  I believe that many local residents offer most resistance on the matters of housing type, style and building height.  I spoke to one resident, present in the area for 40 years, who felt that existing Council tenants were being squeezed out of the area, since much of the new residential provision was "affordable" housing, and not Council housing.  Another attendee just disliked tall buildings, noting that existing residents in and around Vauxhall were being encroached upon (eg. loss of light), or having their space diminished (eg. heavier wear and tear on Vauxhall Park, and no supply of additional green space).

But if we're pragmatic (and I rather think we have little choice), we must acknowledge that there is no Lambeth Council masterplan and we must make the best of a bad job.  Lambeth Council simply assess each building on its merit, without weighing up any other developments in the pipeline.  There is no real town planning, just advisory documents.  Even our MP, Kate Hoey seems powerless to do anything, based on her recent comment, "Whilst I don't like tower blocks there is unfortunately a tendency for these to be supported".   Erm, isn't the MP meant to be able to resist their support, based on correspondence from residents?  If Vauxhall centre isn't to become entirely market-driven and haphazard, we either need pressure put on Boris or pressure put on Cllr Steve Reed to form a plan for Vauxhall.  Surely that's why our MP exists?  Anyhow, since she doesn't appear to have weighed in, it falls to us as residents to argue for as much sensible building (fair room sizes, shorter buildings) and investment (parks, transport, facilities) as possible.  It's in Lambeth Council's interests to keep granting permission, and about the only people that might feasibly be able to insist on a sensible volume of development are TFL.

I've taken photos of all of the display boards (for people who couldn't attend) and for the historical record.  (You'd be surprised how many hits I'm still getting for the 8 Albert Embankment Exhibition page). Kylun have now provided me with the original Vauxhall Island Site pdf, so feel free to download that instead of looking at my bad photos!

1.  Regenerating Vauxhall Cross
Kylun Ltd are backed by oil money which (according to a company spokeswoman) does not mean that they have infinite resources, but presumably does mean that they're free to proceed in the knowledge that the money isn't going to disappear!  It's just as well, since they're setting themselves a bold task of "creating a new heart for Vauxhall".  Kylun's architect argued that this building is in the centre of all of the proposed new development for Vauxhall.  You might think that, as such, it would be the tallest building of them all, but that's where some post-recession, post-Livingstone pragmatism comes in.  (If you're interested, the tallest Vauxhall building (so far) prize goes to the St George Wharf Tower, at 181 metres). The original Vauxhall Island Site proposals (never validated by the council) had the building at 180 metres.  Vauxhall Sky Gardens, which has been permitted by Lambeth, is 120 metres tall.   The GLA's planning policy states that a building of 150 metres on such a site would lead to minimal impact on world heritage (aka the Palace of Westminster).  The Bondway proposal was 150 metres tall, but was refused (likely on other grounds).  In developer terms, that means that there's between 120 metres and 150 metres with which to gamble.  As such, the Vauxhall Island Site proposal is playing it safe with a cool 140 metre proposal.  They have consulted with the Mayor's office.  So much for Boris disliking tall buildings.  I suppose he'd argue that he managed to shave 40 metres off the top, but that's not really something to boast about.  If you want a comparison to know how the finished product would look, the Strata Tower in Elephant and Castle (including wind turbines) weighs in at 147 metres tall.  I like the way that the second tower (which I haven't mentioned as it's a bit smaller) is hidden, in the picture, behind the first.

2.  A background to the site.
I think we'd all agree that the site has lain empty and derelict, and that the current advertising hoardings are unsightly.  Quite why anybody would choose to live in the middle of the interchange is beyond me, but perhaps by the time the building is finished, the Vauxhall gyratory will have been removed in line with TFL's new vision for the future (rather embarrassing when Vauxhall's gyratory is barely 5 years old).  Were that to happen, and considering the landscaping that Kylun have in mind (see below) it might potentially be a much more pleasant place to live.  Certainly, I can't see most people objecting to further retail development in the area, since the current shops (on Kennington Lane, Albert Embankment and South Lambeth Road) simply don't create a particularly effective centre.

3.  The proposal

My favourite line on the above board has to be the one in which they effectively say that their 41 storeys is "elegant" compared with the 50 storeys of St George Wharf :-).  It's developer speak for "they were allowed to build even higher, so let's be reasonable because our building is a whole 9 storeys shorter" :-)   I like the idea of a glass canopy, linking the two buildings, as I think that's quite a positive way to protect us from the elements when passing through Vauxhall towards public transport.  More importantly, they are to be "open, public space", something that many developers don't seem to value.  That's good news, at least.  I also highly applaud the "improved pedestrian routes" to other parts of Vauxhall and Nine Elms, but it's difficult to know how this might be achieved, bearing in mind the gyratory (subways or bridges, perhaps).

One criticism here is that at today's consultation, the public were asked to comment on paper about the "affordable" housing section of the scheme.  Unfortunately (you can see from Board 3), it wasn't clear how much of the scheme would actually be affordable housing, thus making it rather difficult to submit comments.  When I pointed to the missing data, I was told that they wanted to hear how important the public felt affordable housing to be.  I asked if they'd re-consult once they'd decided on percentages, but I got the impression that they will not.  It all depends what people have written on the comment forms (it seems).  Although, one fellow Twitterer was given a "30% affordable, but not in writing" response, which I didn't get.  I suppose that's a fair gamble, given economic hard times.  The same perceptive chap has also pointed out that the promised "sky bar" doesn't quite make the sky, on account of being at the 10th floor level.  Nevermind.  Note also the refusal of Lambeth Council parking permits to new residents and the complete absence of parking for any other than disabled drivers (this may or may not be a good thing, depending on your point of view).

4.  Improvements to the ground level environment

Let's face it, anything that is done on this stretch to amend ground level environment has to be an improvement on what's present at the moment.  It's not exactly a site upon which local people go and have picnics!  There's  another mention of the canopy, but no actual details (other than that) about what sort of ground level improvements would be made.  Kylun have tried to take into account residents concerns re. wind tunnel effects by streamlining the towers, but I've no idea whether that really will prevent wind tunnels.

5.  A vibrant mix of uses

Quite oddly, the poster says that "employment-generating space is a key aspect of Kylun's proposals", and yet retail/office space is certainly nowhere near a dominant part of the scheme.  I think that's a good thing, as office space hardly seems lacking at Vauxhall, but I don't understand why they've said it's "key".  I tend to think that additional shops will lead people to spend longer in Vauxhall area, so expanding retail space ought to benefit existing local restaurants and businesses.

In terms of recreation and local space, Kylun are looking to work with Spring Gardens, soon to be re-named Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens which suggests that they're not doing anything with Vauxhall Park, but then they mention the possibility of contributions to improve Vauxhall Park nearer to the bottom of the poster.  In my view, Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens would benefit from investment.  There are also some mystery community benefits on the way, but these are not stated, although there are a few ideas eg. extra funding for Vauxhall City Farm, funding for public art both inside/outside the building, and new links to cycle routes in the area.  Anything that could be done on the Vauxhall interchange to make life easier for cyclists would be close to miraculous!  Maybe a cycle route across the island site, allowing cyclists to bypass the gyratory would be worth focusing on.

6.  Delivering jobs and employment

I'm rather sceptical of the ability of new buildings to "deliver jobs".  New buildings tend to deliver empty office space, but actually, this proposal has only a small amount of commercial space, so that's not really a concern. The major job provider, I imagine, will be the hotel in one of the blocks.  Other than the budget Comfort Inn, there aren't any others, so it makes sense to be the first off the ground.

On this drawing, I want to look more carefully at the building make-up (click the photo to enlarge, and then zoom in).  One of the Kylun members of staff stated as follows:  In the building on the left (the shorter), the area marked in orange will be a children's ball park, and an unknown space (awaiting community input).  The blue marking near the bottom will be offices (over three floors).  The green marking is "some residential mixture" which I initially assumed would be the affordable housing, but the member of staff wouldn't commit.  At the top of the same building, the purple marking represents the top four floors, which will be private residential housing.  The penthouse has been replaced with a kind of open, shared garden space for residents.     

In the tower on the right, the entire upper section of the building (marked in pink) will be private residential housing.  Just under that on the 14th floor is the skybar (open to the public).  Below that (marked in purple) is the hotel.  The larger purple ground floor space represents the hotel bar/entrance, and on the first floor, there is the hotel restaurant.  The larger pink ground floor space represents retail space, and the larger pink first floor space will be an ordinary restaurant.

One particularly impressive point to note is that Kylun are setting up a Community Liaison Forum, once planning permission has been secured, a community news letter and a 24 hour phone number so that contractors can be contacted.  These are great ideas which positively predispose me to recommend this building over others eg. Bondway.  I think that some of the residents awaiting the completion of Strata (aka The Ladyshave, at Elephant and Castle) might have wished for a community news letter or even a website, letting them know how the building was progressing.

7.  Community amenities and a blank canvass
This one was quite fun.  The community were allowed to suggest lots of ideas for the empty space on the third floor.  I tried to suggest that the space (or some other space in the building) be used to house a public residential swimming pool, but my suggestion did not go down too well.  Apparently, there's not room in the development, and the very large underground purple space on the diagram is going to be used for servicing the hotel, and not a pool.  I don't know if you can read the suggestions on the post-its, but they were listed; cinema, public library, performance space, cafe, gym, discussion area for local groups, climbing wall, art exhibition, community centre, job centre, swimming pool (x 3), squash courts, artist studios, performance space.  My personal favourite (other than swimming pool) is job centre.  Can you imagine?  Lots of nice posh flats, and a huge job centre, visited by the great unwashed.  Yeah right!  One member of staff was very keen on a ball pool for children and this is listed as "soft play area" in the helpful suggestions.  Umm, you'll notice that the helpful suggestions don't include swimming pool either.

8.  Vauxhall Island site in context
I'm happy that they've done the modelling of the building(s) by taking South London views into consideration.  Considering that we've an ugly great 140 metre tower coming our way, I think I'd have to say that it's more attractive than some eg. Bondway /and/ St George Wharf Tower.  I know that's not saying much, but it doesn't look any worse than the Elephant's Strata, I don't think.  Their "independent study" modelling indicates that the scheme doesn't raise issues in terms of light on residents or parks, and the overshadowing effect on the parks is "minimal".  Vauxhall Park is unaffected and Spring Gardens is only affected on the south-west corner from September to March.  Fair enough, I suppose, and credit to them for ensuring that the parks aren't badly affected.

Due to some well placed trees, the building will hardly be noticeable from Fentiman Road.    Compared with St George Wharf, it rises up quite majestically over Spring Gardens.  I wish we knew what other buildings will appear as it's hard to put it into perspective.  Unfortunately, from Bonnington Square, it looks quite scary.   In fact, if I lived in Bonnington Square, I'd object,but not sure what good it would do.

9.  Vauxhall Island site in context continued...
This board is one that often gets trotted out in various guises.  It's all about how particular buildings will look (often accompanied by strange angles) from north of the river.  As if we should care about north of the river.... Anyway.  I digress.  I shan't be too mean on account of the fact that Kylun have dedicated lots of time to modelling the impact south of the river.  Compared with Millbank Tower, it's barely visible from Parliament Square, which is the view that concerns most people.  I'm not keen on the view from Millbank Road, but then we can't see Vauxhall Sky Gardens or St George Wharf or the proposed Bondway on the modelled photo either, and I suppose those would give the towers some more proportion.

10.  A sustainable, energy-efficient development
Sadly, it doesn't have the turbines (so the service charges should be less), but they are planning on solar photovoltaic electricity generation.

11.  Next steps
Plans will be submitted to Lambeth this summer.  If they like it, (and there aren't any other major oil spills) ;), the first residents could move in around 2015.  Feel free to phone Kylun with questions on: 0845 543 8968 or email vauxhallconsultation@camarguepr.com

I couldn't resist taking a photo of that cheeky chappy, David Boardman, taking photos of the model.  He's the Kennington Association's planning forum chair, and he speaks, quite naturally in terms of hectares per thousand people about green space, density, transport etc. in the way that you and I might discuss buying milk at the local supermarket!

On the model, the two Vauxhall Island towers are in brown.  The white monstrosity at the front is the St George Wharf Tower.  In the background, behind the brown towers, you can just see what I think is the proposed Bondway development.

I know that I'm forever banging on about transport, and I did raise this point at the consultation when I asked what Kylun would have to contribute to the pot to improve transport infrastructure eg. the new Northern line.  It seems, that that little point is up to TFL.  In the meantime, Kylun are in discussuion with TFL (see board 3) about "opening a new entrance to Vauxhall Underground Station".  Is it me, or is Vauxhall underground station going to be a huge warren of "extensions" and "entrances" that act as holding pens for a huge number of frustrated commuters, unable to move, due to the Victoria Line being at capacity?

Crossing the road at Vauxhall Cross

Are you an older person who walks slowly?
Are you a person with disabilities that cause you mobility problems?
Are you a parent with small children who has to cross the road slowly?
Do you suffer from asthma/breathing problems related to pollution?

Well... let's hope you don't live in Vauxhall!

According to the Evening Standard, TFL are about to "re-phase" the traffic lights in many locations, including at Vauxhall Cross. This is "clever-speak" for covering up the fact that pedestrians will be given less time to cross the road in certain locations in order to increase "traffic flow" (which will inevitably increase traffic itself).

In the article, Alan Bristow (TFL director of traffic operations) notes "Our timing review programme is aimed at making life a little bit easier for everyone who uses a particular junction, be they pedestrians, cyclists or motorists." But I fail to see how reducing the time given for people to cross the road makes life in any way easier for pedestrians.

And Vauxhall, as we all know, is very pedestrian/cyclist friendly. Not.

I don't even know if it's possible to object to the rephasing of the traffic lights. Looks like it's one of Bojo's not so good ideas.

Quite helpfully, Valerie Shawcross (Labour, Lambeth and Southwark, London Assembly member) asked Boris about some of the re-phasings in March this year, although she asked about Wandsworth Road and not Vauxhall Cross. In response to one of her questions, Boris said: "TfL is discussing proposals for timing changes to junctions at Wandsworth Road, with the London Borough of Lambeth. I will ask TfL to write to you with the details once their discussions with Lambeth are concluded." I wonder whether they'll provide her with info. about Vauxhall.

In addition, Caroline Pidgeon (Lib Dem, Londonwide, London Assembly member) asked about whether London boroughs would be consulted re. changing the phasing on traffic lights and what would happen if the boroughs object to the reduction of crossing time? Apparently, TfL have a statutory duty to consult with "borough officers".

That raises the question:
a. Who are the Lambeth Borough officers that would be consulted on the matter?
b. Do the Lambeth Borough officers have a duty to consult the public?

I'll inform you of any updates.

Thames Festival 2008

The three wheeled one only found out about the Thames Festival by accident this year after wondering about the vast hordes of people making their way through Waterloo yesterday. This might (or might not) be due to Boris Johnson (BoJo) scrapping The Londoner (the newspaper that supplies Londoners with information about what the mayor is up to). On the other hand, chances of us actually receiving the newspaper are slim!

So... Excited about the possibility of the giant meal with strangers (and happy to try and meet some more South Londoners), we plodged off today, beginning towards the east end of the festival near Southwark Bridge. Unfortunately, I had not realised that the giant meal only took place yesterday and would not be repeated today. Not to be deterred, we obviously had to go and nosey around at what else was on offer...

The rest of the festival consisted of food stalls (many over-priced), stalls selling pictures of London, music stages (I presume some of it /was/ music), the Co-Op selling Fairtrade goods (yay), the BBC doing something related to art for children, various European cultural promotion/food stalls, a giant stage put together by those people who manage to get around London without touching the floor (it's called "freerun" apparently), the BBC and Capital FM broadcasting, lots and lots of performance artists, some people kayaking on the Thames (not sure if these were part of the kayaking demonstrations), old and young men skulling along the Thames (separately), some rather strange performance drama, free Starbucks coffee, more stalls selling everything from books to clever widgets for hanging flower pots...

We were queuing to buy Hog Roast after arriving at lunchtime (around 2pm), but that failed because the Hog Roast wasn't on offer until 5pm. Driven by impending starvation and lack of money, we ended up sharing a Doggett's cheeseburger after concluding that despite Lebanese food being good value for £5 a plate, it just appeared too expensive. I figure that for people visiting London, the prices must just be swallowed, but for actual Londoners facing impending recession, the costs are all too high!

We walked from Southwark Bridge to the London Eye (I'm not sure what was beyond the Eye, if anything) and enjoyed browsing at the varied stalls. We discovered a world film/DVD shop (named mdc music and movies) that we didn't know existed (which wasn't part of the festival) and generally had a happy time soaking up the sun. I think the festival lacked some edge (there were parts of the South Bank that didn't seem to have much going on) and it didn't seem much different from festivals of previous years. However, that won't stop us going next year!

As we left, we saw some people that appeared to be preparing for a carnival procession (in some fabulous outfits), which (if it was a repeat of previous years) would have taken place this evening. We headed home after about 3 hours, and then happily watched an absolutely stupendous, amazing, fantastic, glorious, expensive, colourful fireworks display from our home in SE11. The fireworks were so good that we might have to invite lots of people around next year just to watch!