Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song

New

Along the Thames a vast linear city was built in the 2000s, without ever being officially planned, announced or publicised. Briefly interrupted by central London's historic riverside buildings, to the east it starts at the Millennium bridge, to the west at Vauxhall bridge, with the apparition of the huge, hideous and expanding St George's Wharf complex. This linear city is a buy-to-let paradise, an almost endless enfilade of green glass, terracotta and wavy roofs, the boom's most visible legacy in London, blocking and defining the river. Only a handful of structures really stand in its way and interrupt it – the largest of them by far the rotting and magnificent hulk of Battersea power station, its stock-brick solidity a remarkable contrast to the Trespa all around. Except now, it's being pulled back in, as surely as the warehouses-cum-penthouses of Shad Thames, as part of perhaps the final big riverside development. A tube extension, bizarrely considered a priority by central government, has dragged this last post-industrial waste back into service. The flats went on sale two days ago, instantly snapped up by investors undeterred by the massive price tag.

Owen Hatherley

Old

Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.


What became clear to the London Assembly’s Planning and Spatial Development Committee is that the Thames' understandable attraction as a location for exclusive residential development not only compromises the adequate provision of a riverside path but also results in the Thames being barricaded from its immediate hinterland and the rest of London.