Descriptions of London as a city of villages can be off-putting. When estate agents start selling an area as a “village”, be it Crouch End in the mid-nineties or, say, Blackhorse in Waltham Forest today, they are speaking to a specific middle-class aesthetic. This can be attractive - not least to Guardian types - but also rather superior and twee. Think “nice” coffee and “artisan” cheese: nothing wrong with either, but you know what I mean.
It is also contradicts the version of the city that draws to it people who have grown up in small communities and see London as a place of escape into perpetual change and welcome anonymity. They didn’t move to the big, bad smoke to pretend they live in the Cotswolds and be known to everybody in their street. The urban village as a planning concept can also trigger unease if and when it is a recipe for resented redevelopment.
Yet, as Kath Scanlon of LSE London writes: “Observers over the centuries have remarked that London is quintessentially a city of villages. Neighbourhoods like Dulwich, Hampstead and Richmond were historic settlements engulfed by the capital as it expanded.” She adds: “Now the name is applied to everything from Edwardian speculative estates (Furzedown Village) and 19th century railway suburbs (Hither Green Village) to the growing number of new developments that call themselves villages.”
There’s no denying that big city neighbourhoods with some of the qualities associated with villages - intimacy, character, a self-contained functionality and so on - are attractive to lots of people. In the film below, Scanlon talks about the brand new Kidbrooke Village, developed by Berkley Homes where part of the 1960s Ferrier Estate used to be. Is it measuring up to its name? The film is seven minutes long.
Scanlon says her research on Kidbrooke Village has lessons for the rest of London: “The scale of housing demand in the capital means that we need to build big to have any hope of meeting it, especially if using green belt land is ruled out. On past experience these new developments will be housing Londoners for at least 50 years, if not 150. They need to work as communities, not just as collections of homes.” Now read on.
