Thursday 29 September 2011

Will the VNEB Planning Framework postdate the decisions?

I'm starting to believe that the Vauxhall, Nine Elms, Battersea Opportunity Area Planning Framework will only be published once all the mega schemes have had planning approval.

I've no idea whether the feedback that I and other members of the public made to the draft have been incorporated and what the big vision is. It doesn't make commenting on plans any easier.

Anyway, the latest scheme to be seeking consent before the Planning Framework is finalised is Nine Elms Parkside. The site is the former Royal Mail site off Nine Elms Lane and the pretty illustrations reflect the delusional belief of 21st century developers that a bicycle is a contemporary walking accessory.  Just as members of a household tend to share one dog to take for walkies, the plans suggest that each of the 1,860 homes will each have just one bicycle parking space. I hope each parking space will be long enough to at least accomodate a tandem.

I've got no idea if we'll able to cycle along the Thames Path, or along the Linear Park (or whether it'll be wide enough in places to have a cyclist going each way), or whether there'll be family-friendly cycling infrastructure on the Nine Elms Lane expressway. Will this area be London's tower block version of Amsterdam?

Maybe the developers will know. You can ask them between 2 and 6pm on Fri 30/09 and between 10am and 4pm on Sat 01/10 at All Saints Church, 100 Prince of Wales Drive, London SW11 4BD.

Meanwhile check out the vistas of canyons between tower blocks at
http://www.nineelmsparkside.com/