North Kensington, not quite Barbican

This drawing illustrates very clearly how the new Lancaster Road ‘Village’ was intended to absorb, and hopefully minimise, traffic associated with the scheme. Existing cellars – historically very prone to flooding – were intended to incorporate car-parking which, at the the time was insisted upon by planning authorities, to provide one car-space for each unit of accommodation – even though poor-people have always been far less likely to be car-owners than better-off local people who have always been most likely to park their cars on-street

North Kensington – Not a Village not Quite Barbican             The Estate of which Grenfell Tower formed a part was never a Village nor did it ever form a part of a Village. Originally the land was marshland and waste-ground, used by scavengers and others living off, essentially, what may now be referred to as re-cycling. Planning proposals in the early 1960’s had the possibility of forming something of a “new Town’ in the middle of a dense urban area, much in the same way as the ‘Barbican’ Estate does in the City of London. Just like a new town an opportunity existed to create something fairly self-sufficient within much looser urban surroundings, more akin to a conventional suburb. Because of the problems created by motor-cars in urban areas, design solutions providing better systems of protection for pedestrians had a very high importance.