Once, the River Thames provided a huge defensive barrier and a channel for commercial activity, allowing the City of London to develop into a key trading centre. In recent years, however, the river has become a strong focus for social and cultural activity. With London's population increasing, there is growing recognition of the huge social and economic importance of new river crossings, and the positive impact they can have on opening up previously inaccessible parts of the capital and regenerating parts which have fallen into decline. As early as the 1890s, Horace Jones'Tower Bridge provided a pedestrian walkway from the rapidly growing area of Bermondsey to Tower Hill. A century later, Foster + Partners' Millennium Bridge has been one of the most spectacular contributions in recent years to demonstrating the very real benefits that new pedestrian links can bring to the evolving cultural and residential quarter around Tate Modern. Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners' 1979-83 proposals for Coin Street, a little further along the Thames, offered a new pedestrian bridge, springing from the main axis of the scheme beside the Oxo Tower on the south side to Temple and Embankment on the north side.
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