HBG1 Inspiration Case: Coin Street Community Builders

Inspiration Case: Urban community development initiative

Urban community development initiatives, like our inspiration case Coin Street in London, seek to make a difference in future development of places, not only through involving its communities in urban planning and design processes, but also in living and day to day business once the builders are gone.
Remarkably, these operations are often run by social enterprises, trusts and co-operatives that increase life quality of and services provided for inhabitants as well as commuting workers or visitors of the area.

Inspiration & Parametres for change

a) binded communities & higher life quality
By implementing an ideal mix of
• affordable housing,
• leisure and recreational facilities,
• education, childcare and health care services, and
• shopping facilities
urban community development initiatives can bring a huge benefit to neighbourhoods that increases community binding hence life quality. Inhabitant’s involvement in planning and implementing specific initiatives, sensitive to community’s needs and aspirations, creates a healthy and balanced economy with a wide range of employment opportunities that supports its residential communities effectively whilst keeping and maintaining a multi-cultural character of the local area.

b) beauty instead of function
As the example of Coin Street shows, communities’ involvement in urban planning and design processes brings beauty rather than function to the place. Instead of functioning buildings like hotels, office buildings or car parks, communities fighted and planned for demolishing old buildings, completing riverside walks, laying out new parks and opening all of it to the public..

Our inspiring example: COIN STREET, London, U.K.
In 1977, after plans to build Europe’s tallest hotel and over 1mn square feet of office space on London’s South Bank were announced, the Coin Street Action Group was set up. Community’s activities have maintained since then; today the
Coin Street Community Builders (CSCB) as a social enterprise seeks to make the area a better place in which to live and to work.

How does Coin Street work in detail?
After Coin Street Action Group was founded in 1977, seven years of extraordinary campaigning, including two year-long public inquiries, followed. Half of the area was still owned by office developers and half by the Greater London Council, which from 1981 on supported the Coin Street community scheme. After the inquiry phase, planning permission was granted for both the office and the community schemes; but in 1984 it turned out that the office developers sold their land to the GLC which, in turn, sold the whole site to Coin Street Community Builders CSCB.

CSCB has since then transformed a largely derelict 13 acre site into a thriving mixed use neighbourhood by creating new co-operative homes, shops, galleries, restaurants, cafes and bars, a park and riverside walkway, sports facilities, by
organising festivals and events, providing childcare, family support, learning, and enterprise support programmes.

What does this mean for London’s South Bank community?
Community’s actvities that began quite small in the 1980’s in Coin Street, now bring a huge benefit for London’s whole South Bank run by several social enterprises and trusts. For example, communities benefit from affordable housing through community-owned secondary housing, family care and sports opportunities in the Coin Street family & children’s centre and Colombo Street community and sport centre, leisure opportunities through the completion of the South Bank riverside walkway and the laying out of a new riverside park.