a meanwhile space
Norwood High Street, London
Type | Digital month-long consultation
Client | London Festival of Architecture (2020)
Status | Completed June 2020
Collaboration | Station to Station, the West Norwood & Tulse Hill Business Improvement District
Publication | High Street Task Force
What types of programmes and new functions can we encourage on Norwood High Street that would promote different, relevant, adaptable and flexible new spaces along its length? What can we do about the existing empty high street shops? Is there a use other than commerce? Or do we focus on the street? If we explore landscape tactics to change the street will the buildings and shops naturally follow?
Open Discussion on Temporary Strategies
What did we do?
Alex Talbot is a lifelong Lambeth resident whose been a long time campaigner for better housing conditions in the borough. After time spent working in homeless, he made the transition to Local government and now works in the regeneration division at the London Borough of Croydon. Outside of work Alex volunteers for Christchurch CLT, a Community Land Trust attempting to deliver around 30 permanently affordable homes in Brixton Hill, as well as with Norwood Neighbourhood Planning Assembly.
In this open discussion, Alex explained why vacant premises are a problem for local communities and local authorities; how meanwhile spaces bring benefits to local authorities and what the challenges are. He identified the amazing opportunity or ‘Ovarian Window’ that we have in West Norwood. In this discussion, Alex set the tone for how grassroots groups can help local authorities fund and deliver meanwhile strategies that will revitalise empty and vacant high street spaces.
Key Recommendations
Understand the value of high streets and how important they are to urban life.
Find out what drives commercial vacancy leading to abandoned and empty shops on the high street.
There is a strong case for improving Norwood High Street! West Norwood has the highest deprivation in the borough and has remained consistently deprived with little improvement as opposed to other Lambeth areas. The West Norwood and Tulse Hill Manual for Delivery (2017) highlights how this area has much higher levels of vacancy than anywhere else in London.
A ‘meanwhile space’ provides activity within a defined space, often left empty or vacant, that is inherently temporary, occurring in a time between two more permanent uses. Meanwhile spaces are not necessarily short-term and can become ‘permanent’ very easily. They are beneficial to the Local Authority because they are: Efficient, Affordable, Multiplier effect, Flexible.
The BID and/or local stakeholders should try to compile a database to have a clear picture of what is driving vacancies in west Norwood (and all of Lambeth). This can be fed into evidence base for planning, both for informing the Local Plan Review but also future SPDs.
The BID and/or local stakeholders should develop a regeneration framework for the area, helping to strategically classify sites suitable for meanwhile and aid tenants in preparing a ‘tenant business plan’ to the local authority.
The BID and/or local stakeholders should actively match prospective tenants with potential properties, thinking about specific requirements and ability to generate revenue for the Creative Sector and provide Co-Workspace etc.
Local Authorities should try to manage poor quality commercial to residential conversions by using Article 4 as a way to block the use of Permitted Development rights within certain spaces within the borough.
Local Authorities should not neglect legal powers to force remedy, force sale or Compulsory Purchase empty (abandoned) sites.