• WHAT is the one key building missing from Murphy’s Yard giant development? An incinerator with a tall chimney stack.

It will be needed for all the likely deaths this scheme will cause, I would suggest, as the Covid-19 pandemic is here to stay.

Though we are losing scores of lives in the pandemic, and though government and experts confirm we will be visited by greater plagues, the developers of Murphy’s are bent on building densely.

Like it’s 2019. Putting big profit above lives. It seems that this can become the new Grenfell.

Plenty of spin about excellence, sustainability, elegant design; but a trap for any deadly virus to spread.

In the vicinity of Murphy’s one only has to look which area has seen a regular rise in Covid-19 cases. It is in the densely-built, statistical, area of Kentish Town West (lower tier local authority) which includes Gospel Oak.

Some developers’ voices simply need to be challenged. In his Forum piece, (Consequences of Brexit are starting to hit home, March 18), in an otherwise sound article, architect David Green was trying to persuade Camden that we need to fill every nook and cranny, every “undeveloped small site” with more and more buildings.

In splendid, pre-pandemic language, he presented his proposal as “good news”, as a need “in renewed urban spaces”. Presumably nice work for architectural offices if they can get it. But today we need wide open, ventilated, spaces to breathe safely.

But there is no need to remove all profit-hungry developers. Like most people, they can jolly well suffer loss of income and they can retrain to offer imaginative landscaping.

Please. Think pandemic, think of our lives.

CONSTANTINE BUHAYER
Gospel Oak