Learning from London

摘要

Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison recently hailed London's Elephant and Castle regeneration as a success in delivering affordable housing that Australia could emulate. Elephant and Castle is a large urban renewal project in central south London that had been earmarked for redevelopment by the UK Government, drawing parallels with Sydney's Redfern and Waterloo in terms of scale and public ownership. In 2007 Southwark Council invited developers to submit planned bids to form a partnership for the regeneration of the Heygate Estate - a part of the Elephant and Castle redevelopment area that once housed 3,000 council residents in long heroic slab blocks set in dense greenery. Despite design flaws of access and ground level permeability, the units themselves were very generous, dual aspect with good orientation. However, the estate had suffered decades of neglect once Southwark Council decided the estate was beyond salvation in the 1990s.