Tag Archives: Planning

Why the new London Bridge station doesn’t deserve to win the Stirling Prize

Posted on July 28, 2019 by Alex Grant

News that the redeveloped London Bridge station has been shortlisted for the 2019 Stirling Prize will be treated with bemusement by many of its commuters. The reconstruction began in 2013 and was all but finished in 2017. It was officially … Continue reading →

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Victoria’s secret: how a carbuncle got away with it

Posted on September 8, 2017 by Alex Grant

Building Design magazine’s awarding of its Carbuncle Cup for this year’s worst new building to Nova, a new office and retail development around the corner from London’s Victoria Station, sets off predictable reactions. How could it have been built? Who … Continue reading →

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Peterborough: how an ancient city became a New Town

Posted on September 7, 2017 by Alex Grant

There are few pleasures like exploring an unfamiliar town on foot for the first time. A new series of posts on this website, In Praise of Ordinary Places, looks at Middle England towns that are overlooked by tourists (Oxford, Bath and Stratford-upon-Avon … Continue reading →

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Northampton, a town that needs to grow up and become a city

Posted on July 6, 2017 by Alex Grant

There are few pleasures like exploring an unfamiliar town on foot for the first time. A new series of posts on this website, In Praise of Ordinary Places, looks at Middle England towns that are overlooked by tourists (Oxford, Bath and Stratford-upon-Avon … Continue reading →

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Think out-of-town shopping centres are a thing of the past? Take a look at Rushden Lakes and despair

Posted on December 4, 2016 by Alex Grant

The river Nene – the slowest-flowing river in England, and its tenth-longest – meanders through Northamptonshire past water meadows and dozens of former gravel pits, long ago flooded and now a nationally important habitat for wetland birds. Northamptonshire’s an underrated … Continue reading →

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Of all the places: in praise of Northamptonshire, the middle of everywhere

Posted on May 20, 2016 by Alex Grant

German has a good word – unheimlich – for this eerie feeling: when something mysterious or unfamiliar somehow makes uncanny sense. Over the last year I’ve felt it in the most unlikely of places: Northamptonshire. Let me explain why. Nearly … Continue reading →

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Inside the planning committee: it’s not enough to say it’s all fair and impartial. You have to show it is, too

Posted on October 6, 2015 by Alex Grant

What goes on at Town hall planning committees these days? In theory it works like this. A committee of about a dozen councillors, politically balanced to match the composition of the council as a whole, assesses planning applications based on … Continue reading →

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My old snapshot from 1991 shows how the London skyline has changed utterly – and how it has stayed the same

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Alex Grant

Sorting through some old photos in my cellar a few months ago I came across a snapshot of the London skyline I took, as a callow 17-year-old, in the autumn of 1991. Out of curiosity, in late 2014 I went back … Continue reading →

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The supporters of new roads across the Thames are stuck in the past. Without rail links they’d be a disaster for east London

Posted on December 4, 2014 by Alex Grant

The new road link would, the experts say, create a “corridor of opportunity”. It would “relieve congestion”, “improve accessibility” and “be of inestimable benefit to the capital”. It will, one supporter argues, “take longer-distance traffic off the existing main roads… … Continue reading →

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A Garden Bridge? No thank you, Joanna Lumley: London is ‘Bosky’ enough already

Posted on November 18, 2014 by Alex Grant

What’s not to like about the proposed Garden Bridge across the Thames? It’s designed by Thomas Heatherwick, a walk-on-water design superstar who came up with the Olympic Cauldron as well as the new Routemaster bus. It would, we are told, … Continue reading →

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