• IN the last few weeks no less than two national magazines featured Somers Town as “a forlorn part of London” (Economist, February 6) needing “HS2 to transform” it and now, Wired, an organ for once cutting-edge techies, asking whether Facebook and Google could “fix one of London’s most deprived areas”.

It’s rehashing the year-old pronouncement of our glorious future as Silicon Valley’s new Palo Alto, albeit warning of that area’s deprived underbelly which did not benefit from any trickle-down.

The photograph used is of a deteriorating Somers Town block, side-by-side with Thomas Heatherwick’s Coal Drops Yard at King’s Cross, presumably to contrast the old to this shiny new future. One would almost think developers have a PR department!

Clearly we are being prepped for a glorious future, where all before is to be swept away… for, er, a soulless retail cathedral to consumerism, mostly empty bar the hyperactive Sony showroom. It’s worth noting that picture is of the Grade II-listed Ossulston Estate.

Yes, it has not been well-maintained by Camden Council, but this is a beacon of social housing, much lauded by architects worldwide, the subject of fascinated architecture tour parties most weekends, and the quality of its construction means it is still robust after almost 100 years.

Contrast this to Euston station, now due to be reduced to rubble after only 50 years, the “concrete carbuncle” replaced a solid and beautiful station, with an arch that locals still lament.

So forgive us for being somewhat sceptical, having witnessed needless devastation (sustainability anyone?) of much-loved listed buildings, which held social history and memory, demolished on Phoenix Road, and the loss of public parkland for a 28-floor luxury tower, which in plans was made to appear “invisible”.

Much as the Francis Crick plans appeared several floors lower than the current spaceship reality.

Much as change is inevitable, it does rather rankle when we hear that consultants are paid thousands to “create a sense of place”.

Having now thoroughly demolished Phoenix Road, £3.5million is to be spent “landscaping” it (it will connect the stations).

It seems developers and planners are determined not only to ignore but eradicate any existing sense of place, as yet again another locally-listed building goes down like nine pins here.

Eversholt Street’s listed buildings are about to be replaced by towers; locally-listed characterful 42 Phoenix Road building, site of significant social history, is approved by Camden for demolition for a block of bland student flats; decorative historic Gilbert Bayes sculptures “disappear”; Edith Neville cottages are to go; St Aloysius school gone; and yet another nursery closes.

So, as well as enduring the concomitant noise, disruption and pollution – older people cannot remember a year without construction for about 50 years – we are now to be subject to more “development”.

Having got the green light to HS2 and Euston’s redevelopment, the wet dreams of developers and urban landscape designers can be realised, disregarding the inconvenience of an existing community, its wishes, and its heritage, for a blank canvas to create, we presume, a youthful, vibrant, “hub for industry and innovation” district as The Euston Area Plan breathlessly promises.

In the rush to the new, and before we are rebranded as a quasi- “East Euston Quarter”, can the planners and developers look at what we have and preserve what was truly innovative.

DIANA FOSTER
Somers Town History Space