The Daily Telegraph: Overdevelopment along the Thames towpath

Old Father Thames tosses and turns in his watery grave: The mix and muddle of new building on the river may constitute much needed brownfield development, says David Rowan. But at what cost to the rest of us?

To watch a heron poised to dive for a roach, driftwood swirling timelessly past loose-tethered barges, you could forget that the tidal Thames is currently a war zone. To understand why, simply glance up at the vast new apartment complexes reclaiming London's riverbanks from Kew all the way east past Deptford. Amid frenetic protests from local civic groups, luxury riverside blocks are rising across the city on a scale not seen since the 1980s Docklands boom. With dozens more awaiting planning consent - for towers up to 50 storeys tall - a handful of developers is redrawing the face of London's ancient waterway.

Their buildings, many by renowned architects such as Lord Foster and Sir Terry Farrell, are regenerating long-neglected neighbourhoods and providing thousands of highly desirable new homes, some for Londoners on lower incomes. Yet to the belligerent neighbourhood conservation groups, this emerging canyon of high-rise gaudiness is a historic mistake destined to haunt London's skyline for generations.

Spend a day walking the Thames path and the extraordinary scale of pick'n'mix construction hits you at every curve: St George's Wharf at Vauxhall Bridge, a rising city of giant Aztec gods overshadowing Farrell's MI6 building; Barratt's Oyster Wharf, grinning from Battersea towards Chelsea Harbour like three mutant molluscs preparing to spawn.

Over pints of Young's in a Wandsworth pub, elderly locals tut-tut and roll their eyes at talk of the "rich incomers" to whom the river is simply "a million-pound view". Not for them Persimmon's £140 million Riverside Quarter, just around the corner, where prospective residents are promised a "secure haven" with 24-hour security and an "executive shuttle service" to free them from walking local streets.

The neighbourhood protesters are scoring occasional victories - the repeated knock-back of a 1.4 million square-foot development at Lots Road in Chelsea, for instance, or St George plc's inability to push through Britain's tallest residential tower at Vauxhall, subject of a recent public inquiry.

But for all the flashpoints, the planners' decisions have mostly been going the way of developers - who, after all, are turning neglected brownfield sites into the high-density blocks and residential towers demanded by Mayor Ken Livingstone's London Plan. Caught in the middle are the 13 London boroughs through which the river flows, whose planners have been processing applications according to no unified vision.

The London Assembly, which holds the Mayor to scrutiny, believes that today's uncoordinated sprawl is turning the historic riverbanks into a "sterile monoculture" reserved for the rich. Last year, its planning committee warned that the Thames was being "barricaded from the rest of London" by private and gated developments, leaving only "a windswept and often forbidding riverside path for public use, which has no link to life in the rest of the city".

As the mud-spattered hoardings from Rotherhithe to Richmond make clear, river views certainly command a premium. Estate agencies specialising in riverside developments are currently marketing a £4.25 million penthouse at St George's Wharf, Battersea, also available at £4,500 weekly rent. Flats at Montevetro, Richard Rogers's mammoth, glass doorstop towering over the graves in St Mary's Churchyard, Battersea, are being advertised at £2.75 million; at Parliament View, a Westminster block resembling a giant hi-fi system, apartments cost £1.7 million.

Not surprisingly, the new residents have their own particular requirements, pressing Southwark Council to move on an "unattractive", long-established houseboat community, and, as the environmental group Thames21 tells it, complaining to its volunteers that passing boats were "splashing dirt on to our windows".

What bothers Jim Nicolson, president of the Vauxhall Society, is the absence of community in all the marketers' "lifestyle" brochures. "Many of these developments are depriving local people of any real access to the river, while vast numbers of flats are being sold to investors in places like Hong Kong," explains Mr Nicolson, whose group has fought in vain to limit the scale of schemes such as St George's Wharf.

`We're losing schools, libraries, almost every sort of public utility, as these huge riverside developments are transforming this area. Go to Paris, and the riverside is a proper open space. Why shouldn't everyone benefit from having the river here?"

Mayor Livingstone has become far too hospitable to developers, according to Mr Nicolson. "He wants to give speculators a free hand, and there's very little that local people seem able to do." He cites the Mayor's support for St George's 50-storey tower by Vauxhall Bridge, against strong opposition from Lambeth Council.

"Ken Livingstone has virtually threatened the planning committee that they refuse it at their peril," he says. "And boroughs such as Lambeth don't have the finances to fight major concerns like St George."

The Mayor, who cannot grant planning permission, only direct refusal, insists that his support for high-density developments is intended to tackle London's housing crisis. He believes that the Vauxhall tower would provide "a significant uplift of affordable housing". Besides, he told Lambeth, it was "inconceivable that the council would reject such a world-class building".

St George, part of the property group that also includes Berkeley Homes and St James Homes, is the civic groups' main enemy. Its riverside developments - including Battersea Wharf, Putney Wharf, Imperial Wharf in Fulham, and Kew Riverside Park - aim to provide "quality working and living environments in which customers can fulfil their expectations of lifestyle and security".

The Kew Society, which has opposed its development of the former Public Record Office site near Kew Bridge, takes a less charitable view. The company, it claims, achieves its goals by "disregarding community views, avoiding community investment and exploiting deficiencies in the planning process".

A common complaint is "planning creep". Angela Dixon, vice-chairman of the West London River Group explains:"A developer will get permission for one thing, then come back and ask for more." She singles out St George for a late application to build an extra floor at Kew. "This is a very determined and successful developer," she says with a sigh. "We can oppose them, fight them, wail and object, but alas we seem to achieve very little."

At Imperial Wharf, a sweeping St George development on a 32-acre riverside site in Fulham, the company's managing director, Tony Carey, is politely dismissive of its critics.

"It's such a ridiculous idea that here's a developer taking our river, rampaging and pillaging," he says, as he strolls proudly along his new, 400-metre riverside walkway. "All we want is to develop brownfield sites in London so we don't have to develop greenfield. It's a great pity the process should be so adversarial."

His detractors lead one to imagine Mr Carey to be the archetypal cigar-chewing hard man in a sheepskin coat. Far fom it. In his impeccable, navy suit, he professes a passionate, personal mission to "improve" the riverside that, after 16 years with St George, he says is his life. He is, in fact, a misunderstood force for good, providing 1,000 jobs at Imperial Wharf, a hotel, even a new railway station.

"That makes me quite proud, actually," he says. "I certainly don't wake up feeling an utter bastard."

Before judging today's developments, he implores, consider what was there before. "We're bringing public access to a riverside last seen 100 years ago, if ever," he says. He spent more to decontaminate the former British Gas site that is Imperial Wharf than he did buying the land, and, in the process, is creating a 10-acre public park. And, he adds pointedly, half of the 1,665 new homes count as "affordable".

St George has learned from the mistakes of the 1980s, Mr Carey insists, when unenlightened developers in east London effectively privatised the riverbank.

"The tendency for locked gates, single tenure and single use led to exclusive developments that suited Thatcher's Britain. Exclusivity is not what we want now. We have an obligation to develop land in central London, at central London densities, to provide the homes that Londoners need."

Nor do the planning bodies accept that they give developers an easy ride. Residents' groups suggest that financially strapped councils such as Wandsworth, home to many of today's larger sites, are overly influenced by "planning gain" - a pledge by developers to provide amenities in exchange for consent.

"It seems to be Wandsworth's policy to encourage these very large developments, whatever their unitary development plan says," says Angela Dixon.

Nonsense, replies a Wandsworth Council spokesman. "We haven't gone easy on the developers - there are plenty of examples of us rejecting applications for riverside sites, such as the Montevetro building, and fighting them on appeal, only to have the Deputy Prime Minister give the go-ahead."

Besides, the council notes, a few riverside health clubs and 24-hour concierge services are a small price to pay to regenerate derelict contaminated land.

Back on the front line, the campaign groups are gearing up for the next round of battles. St George faces continued opposition over a 263-unit development by Kew Bridge, English Heritage has joined residents to oppose Berkeley Homes' planned cluster of towers near Tower Bridge. And then there are the fights to come over the next huge swathe of riverside development, along the Thames Gateway, east of Greenwich.

Still, Mr Carey is a patient man. "If we can make it work this time round, we can set an example to show the world how regeneration should be done," he says calmly, as he surveys the Fulham riverside.

"This is about how we're going to live in the future. And I, for one, find it pretty exciting."

(The Daily Telegraph, October 9, 2004)