Camden Town set for radical improvements

One of London’s most infamous and legendary areas is set to benefit from a major £7 million regeneration initiative under plans which were unveiled this evening by landscape designers Gillespies and Camden Town Unlimited.

The practice behind the current proposals for modernizing London’s Oxford, Regent and Bond Street is now turning its attention to areas of Camden Town to help address some acute social and regeneration issues. Despite being one of the Capital’s key destinations, with an annual influx of 10 million visitors, a lack of regeneration in recent years has meant that Camden Town has become disjointed and inconvenient to pedestrians. The area is steeped in tradition and history, but with some of the area’s infrastructure as old as the stories that are told about it, the area is in desperate need of improvement.

The plans will see changes to Britannia Junction, Cobden Junction, Camden High Street and Parkway and this includes streets around Camden Town and Mornington Crescent Tube Stations. A key focus of Gillespies’ design is to rationalise the current vehicular usage of the area and to re-configure some under utilised and unnecessarily large carriageways in order to create more high quality public spaces. Changes include the creation of more meeting and gathering spaces, wider footways, more street trees and better lighting including a 30 ft lighting column which will double as a striking public art installation. The plans are being backed by some of the areas biggest businesses such as MTV Europe, Getty Images and EMAP.

The changes are expected to be delivered by 2011 in time to capitalize on Camden Town being a major venue at the 2012 Olympics and the initiative is currently the subject of a public consultation.