The most contentious street in Hackney: Who is Morning Lane for?
By: Alvin O.
Tags: Imagination, Property Development, Hackney, Community Architecture

The Build Up team — Two local young people

Hackney, our home borough, has become a flashpoint for debates about gentrification and regeneration. Of all Hackney’s neighbourhoods and areas, streets and roads, perhaps the most contentious is Morning Lane.

A half-mile road connecting Hackney Wick and Homerton with central Hackney, Morning Lane meets Mare Street right by Hackney Town Hall. Within 200 metres of Morning Lane there are two major churches, three large secondary schools, and three primary schools. Very few roads are busier or more prominent in our borough, and there can’t be many, if any, that have seen as much controversy in recent years.

We want to explore this contentiousness by looking at three initiatives sited at different points along the road, which can tell us a lot about both Morning Lane and Hackney’s past, present, and future.

Map of Morning Lane

The notorious “Fashion Walk” flop — An attempt to create a hub of high-end fashion businesses along a short stretch of Morning Lane. Funded by post-riot regeneration funds, the Fashion Walk is a uniquely misguided regeneration scheme, an instructive omnishambles which shows just how bad things can get when central government, the Mayor of London, private businesses and Hackney Council all combine in the worst possible way.

An attempt to create a hub of high-end fashion businesses along a short stretch of Morning Lane. Funded by post-riot regeneration funds, the Fashion Walk is a uniquely misguided regeneration scheme, an instructive omnishambles which shows just how bad things can get when central government, the Mayor of London, private businesses and Hackney Council all combine in the worst possible way. Build Up Hackney — A community project which gave power to local young people to design and build a new public space on the corner of Wick Road and Morning Lane.

— A community project which gave power to local young people to design and build a new public space on the corner of Wick Road and Morning Lane. The current plans for “55 Morning Lane” — Hugely controversial plans to completely redevelop the site of Morning Lane Tesco. The details are somewhat opaque, but it seems that some of those behind the Fashion Walk are also involved in this planned development.

Ultimately, we want to make a plea for the power of community imagination. Property speculators and excitable developers hold far too much sway over our borough’s future. We know that this power is entrenched, and runs deep, grounded as it is in everything from global property markets to the intense pressure for housing in Hackney. But if our local authority have a genuine commitment to New Municipalism — using the power and resources of the council to advance equality and democracy in the local area — they must ensure that nothing resembling the Fashion Walk ever stains Hackney again, and it must give more power to the imagination of local people.

The “Fashion Walk” flop: A tragi-comedy in seven acts

Hackney Fashion Walk is a parody of business-led “place-making” which was doomed to fail on every conceivable measure the moment its misguided plans were made. As we’ll explore below, the story of how it came about is as disgraceful as it is laughable.

But the Fashion Walk wasn’t some bizarre and maverick scheme, some anomaly. It is indicative of a certain idea about how to “regenerate” an area: you give power to the imagination of large private businesses, and put your faith in the doctrine of “trickle-down”. As the Architects Journal has pointed out, planning documents for the Fashion Walk featured the “pipedream” that that Walk would boost the whole of the local economy: creating a collection of luxury shops for wealthy people would benefit everyone!

And more importantly, the Fashion Walk is a crassly eloquent insult to the needs of the local community. Half of Hackney’s children are growing up in poverty. There is an urgent need for affordable food, affordable housing, affordable clothing, mental health support, training, community spaces, youth support, family support, and so on. Instead, we got a handful of high-end retail businesses, most of which closed within a few years.

The story of how it happened is dark and depressing.

Act 1: Riots

In 2011, in response to the killing of Mark Duggan by the police, riots began in Tottenham, and then spread to many other parts of London and many other cities across the country . Debate continues to rage about the causes, but one thing is very clear: the riots were an indication of how profoundly alienated and marginalised many young people felt from mainstream society, and of how much rage simmered in Britain’s inner-city neighbourhoods, particularly those characterised by stark inequality and poverty.

Act 2: Mayor’s Regeneration Fund

In response, then-Mayor of London Boris Johnson launched the Mayor’s Regeneration Fund, a funding pot totalling almost £100 million, including £20 million from central government. The vast bulk of the money went on infrastructure schemes which had already been planned long before the riots. Not a penny went to projects dedicated to youth support or community development.

Act 3: A profiteer spots his chance

Since around 2010, Jack Basrawy had been looking for sites for an “outlet concept” — a site for luxury brands’ outlet stores. He would be the developer, and he would make a lot of money. As he put it in a 2016 interview with Drapers Online, “the key point” came with the riots, because it gave him an opportunity to go to Hackney Council “with our vision of creating a retail cluster”. It’s worth quoting some of his other remarks about the Fashion Walk concept, which give a sense of what drove his imagination for the scheme:

He said the Fashion Walk could rival Bicester Shopping Village. Bicester Village is a kind of dystopian consumerist Disneyland — an entirely synthetic shopping settlement, mostly frequented by wealthy tourists who pop up on the train from central London. Basrawy said the Fashion Walk in Hackney would grow to be “at least” the same size, presumably envisaging some kind of corporate colonisation of the local area.

He said the Fashion Walk was “appealing to people who might be coming into the area anyway, for Columbia Road flower market or London Fields Lido.” Quite clear who it was for, then.

He said that the “strategy” for Hackney Fashion Walk was “based on our belief that the changing demographics of east London mean there is a big market for luxury in this part of the city”, and described Hackney as “a little bit gritty and cool”. It’s rare to find such a sickeningly blatant celebration of poorer people being forced out of an area to make way for wealthier people, or such a transparently cynical view of how to exploit a neighbourhood’s ‘edgy’ reputation. Presumably he felt that Hackney had just enough social problems to make it seem thrillingly risky, but enough social cleansing to make it ready for some luxury shops.

More than any other individual, Jack Basrawy’s imagination shaped plans for Hackney Fashion Walk.

Act 4: Hackney Council back Basrawy

Clearly, Hackney Council were impressed by Basrawy’s ideas. They duly obtained £1.5million from the Mayor’s Regeneration Fund, giving £500,000 to restore damaged shopfronts and £1million to what GLA documents call a “Fashion Outlet Hub”.

Then-Mayor of Hackney Jules Pipe spoke at the launch of Hackney Walk in 2016, whilst a flatcapped artist did some drawing in the background — capturing Basrawy’s edgy-safe aesthetic rather well.

Act 5: Local criticism and foresight

Many local people saw what was happening, and what was coming. As the Architects Journal put it:

Many argued that the regeneration cash should be spent on projects that would more directly benefit the local community, on youth clubs for example or for the businesses damaged in the rioting. A petition against the scheme claimed it aimed ‘only to cosmetically restore Hackney’s post-rioting image rather than invest and serve the community.’

The Hackney Citizen reported in 2013 that James Watson, of the Churchwell Residents’ Group, told councillors: “If this scheme goes ahead these guys [the developers] stand to make a lot of money on the back of Hackney being the coolest borough. Please on our behalf ensure that the impoverished and those who live locally see their slice of the design and fashion cake.”

It seems these views fell on deaf ears.

Act 6: Revolving door sub-plot

A small, fascinating detail in the Fashion Walk saga is the trajectory of Andrew Sissons. Head of Regeneration Delivery at Hackney Council between May 2010 and March 2015, he left the council to become… the Strategy Director of Hackney Fashion Walk. He was in his new role by the end of March. Apparently the Council’s Head of Regeneration can hop over to join a private business overseeing a development within the Council’s jurisdiction and no-one bats an eyelid.

Sissons is now Managing Director of AND, which works “with a portfolio of major developers, property funds and local authorities”. He authored a report in May 2020 called “Embracing Change”, aimed at “supporting commercial property and entrepreneurship” in the wake of the global pandemic. Among his suggestions are to “remove phrases such as ‘landlord’ and ‘tenant’ from our lexicon and reshape the narrative, to clearly express that we are on the same team”.

It’s quite clear the kind of imagination Sissons brought to the Fashion Walk flop, both when at the Council and when he moved over to Hackney Fashion Walk itself.

Act 7: Ghost Town

As the Hackney Gazette has put it, Hackney Walk is now a ghost town. Most of the shops have closed down. The large building at the far end of this photo was never occupied. Private security still marshal the walkway, though — the moment you step off the pavement and onto the Walk, you’re on private land. Try to film the empty shops and they’ll descend on you.

Ownership of the site has repeatedly changed over the last few years. In 2020 it seemed that LabTech owned it, but then it moved to Intermediate Capital Group. Jack Basrawy told the Architects Journal that the Fashion Walk “was a success” until he sold it — apparently the moment it slipped out of his control was when it all went wrong.

Councillor Guy Nicholson, who has been the Hackney Council cabinet member overseeing economic regeneration and business for over ten years, and who was an enthusiastic enabler of Hackney Fashion Walk, issued a statement in October 2019 conceding that it had “not been the success we all hoped for”. His statement ends by mentioning an extensive council consultation scheme, the Hackney Central Conversation, designed as a thorough-going exercise to gather local people’s thoughts and ideas on how the area should develop.

Perhaps the council could have tapped into the local community’s imagination a few years earlier, before they ploughed a million pounds of public money into the Fashion Walk flop.

Build Up Hackney: Power to local young people’s imaginations

The Build Up team with Philip Glanville, Mayor of Hackney

In 2019, just down the road from the Fashion Walk, on the corner of Morning Lane and Wick Road, local youth charity Hackney Quest (where Luke works) teamed up with youth construction charity Build Up to deliver the Build Up Hackney project.

The project gave twenty young people aged between 10 and 21 the power to design and build a new public space. It was motivated in part by the Hackney Wick Through Young Eyes report, which showed just how many young people felt that they were not informed about, involved in, or benefitting from the way that their area was changing.

Co-led by two paid young leaders from the local neighbourhood, the project gave young people from a local primary school, a local secondary school, local estates and youth clubs the chance to imagine what could be done with a disused but prominent patch of public land, on the corner of Wick Road and Morning Lane.

They worked together to create a design, pitched it to council officials, and then — during the summer of 2019 — built it themselves (working with adult staff, of course!)

The Build Up team pitching their design

The Build Up team building the space

Hackney Council played a vital role in the project. The Mayor of Hackney, Philip Glanville (who replaced Jules Pipe in late 2016), was a passionate supporter, and the local authority had to take a risk: to hand over a piece of their land to a team of young people to design and build whatever they thought was needed, and then promise to maintain it.

The public space that the young people created is now used by everyone in the local community. On any given day, you’ll see children and parents stopping there after school to use the swings, people having their lunchbreaks on the benches, people of all ages using the space as a place to spend time. The first thing the young people decided was that this wouldn’t just be a space for young people: it’d be a space for everyone.

The completed space

Projects like Build Up put trust in the imagination of local people. At best, they can build people’s sense that they can be world-makers: they can craft physical spaces (or organisations, or ideas) which other people can benefit from and use. When you genuinely hand over power to local people, you embolden them to re-imagine their community, and to believe that their imaginations have real value. In our hideously unequal and unjust society, it’s easy for people in places like Hackney to feel belittled, insignificant, small. This is made worse when people feel that their area is changing fast, led by developers, and the most they can do to have any kind of voice is fill in a survey. Projects like Build Up Hackney can help to develop local citizens’ sense that they can do much more than this: they can have a shaping influence on the community and the world around them — they can imagine and create something new in their neighbourhood, rather than that power being monopolised by developers and decision-makers.

Let’s talk power & why we don’t give any to local people

Local residents who opposed the development of Hackney’s Fashion Walk have to walk past the deserted space daily, knowing that their lived experiences meant that they foresaw this disaster, but that these same experiences disqualified them from the decision-making tables where the power to make change was held. There are several issues with Hackney Walk and to note them would require an even longer article. However, a crucial mistake was the flawed and inequitable community consultation process. Communities weren’t meaningfully consulted because developers failed to see the value in properly engaging with local residents. So we must ask, what do these developers believe about local residents’ capacity to reimagine public spaces?

In this day and age, it isn’t innovative to consult with communities on the design and development of a space. It’s a prerequisite. However, until we can be honest about the power imbalances that act as a barrier between local voices and actual change, we will continue to build aesthetically pleasing but unhelpful spaces — if that.

Too often the extent of consultation begins and ends at a 30 minute (unpaid) Q & A with already-engaged local residents. The questions asked are either closed or misleading, and thus are used to affirm the agendas of those with power. Again, many local people saw what was happening with Hackney Walk, and subsequently what was coming. Yet, the lack of power afforded to communities meant that any conflicting opinions that challenge power, profit and elite perspectives were quickly discarded and discredited. In this case, community consultations are a disempowering and all too familiar exercise for marginalised and minoritised groups with histories of being told that their ideas and insights aren’t valuable.

Hackney Fashion Walk had the resource and infrastructure to transform local lives. To create a legacy of social change through space that would exist long after the private developers had moved on to their next awkwardly-located set of unaffordable apartments and luxury shops. However, in the pursuit of profit, retention of power and mistrust of working class communities, we’ve been left with an obscene reminder that Hackney’s regeneration isn’t for everyone.

One more chance: 55 morning lane

Hackney Council have another chance to lean in to the power of community imagination. The 55 Morning Lane site was bought by Hackney Council from Tesco in 2017 for £60 million. The current development plans are 27% office space, 14% retail (including a new smaller Tesco) and the remainder will be housing, with over 500 flats (20% “affordable” — up to 80% of market value). 55 Morning Lane is in the centre of Hackney and plays a central role in the livelihoods of thousands of people. The details are somewhat opaque, but it appears that the Council have entered into an option agreement with developer Hackney Walk Ltd, awarding them a 999 year lease on the site. As there are only two directors of Hackney Walk Ltd (Jack Basrawy and his wife Ruth), it seems that Jack is back, but this time bigger.

The developer-led consultations for the 55 Morning Lane site have not been any more considered than their previous fashion flop. Letters were sent to Hackney residents, drop in sessions were organised (138 attendants) and there is a website open for suggestions. The drop-in sessions were hosted in a small boutique-esque shop, the workshops were delivered by PR professionals in fitted white shirts, and the 138 attendants were instructed to share their reflections on small colourful tabs. Apparently, the imagination of each local person is worth about 20 square-centimetres of coloured cardboard. London Communications Agency, the “intelligence-led PR company” hired to run the consultation, were clearly briefed to collect small fragments of local feedback on the developer’s grand scheme. This is not genuine engagement with local people’s thoughts, needs and ideas. It is plainly and painfully evident that not enough thinking has been done to make sure that all voices were heard and valued in this process.

Morning Lane People’s Space, a collective of local housing campaigners, launched their own community consultation process for 55 Morning Lane, and their report is fascinating. Firstly, they were able to reach a larger and much more diverse group of people by being planted in the online and offline spaces that they knew different groups in Hackney occupy. The benefits of this outreach strategy are clear when you see the community reflections that call for spaces that work equally as well for professional new fathers as they would for school-age girls. On top of that, respondents were encouraged to explicitly share what they do not want to see. Unsurprisingly, many respondents’ imaginations are in direct opposition to what is being built.

“we don’t need more housing for the middle class yuppies, co-working spaces, coffee shops, high street chains or supermarkets — We need more LOCAL, INDEPENDENT, COMMUNITY based business and hubs. Places to gather where the income goes directly back into the people that live here.”

The council do have the capacity to effectively engage with local people’s imaginations. In June 2020, they launched a naming review to listen to the views of residents about how to tackle public spaces named after slave and plantation owners. The Review, Rename, Reclaim (RRR) project gives local people the opportunity to learn a truer portrait of British colonial histories and then make a decision on who we should celebrate and memorialise in the borough. In so many ways, RRR has created space for meaningful collaboration with communities, through community steering groups working directly with the council, listening events for young people, and an online naming hub which allows for community stories and events to be documented across the map of hackney for all to see. The RRR project shows a fraction of what is possible if the council uses its resources to lean into community power and imaginations. Could the council not run a similar process to gain its own insight into local people’s ideas on 55 Morning Lane, rather than relying on the pseudo-consultation being done by the developers?

Or, even better, could the council not recognise the role of local citizens as co-designers and co-developers of new spaces, rather than mere respondents to developers’ imaginations? Just down Morning Lane, Build Up Hackney has given a glimpse of what can be done to invest in community imaginations. And a growing body of research and practice — from the inclusive planning ideas gathered by TCPA, to the citizens’ assemblies organised by Involve, to the Young Advisors model in Southwark and Waltham Forest — shows how possible it is to support and engage with the ideas and expertise of local people.

If we ever hope to move away from consultations and listening activities to empowering residents to become placemakers, world-shapers and designers, then we must begin to see architecture and urban design through the net of lived experience, and hand over power to the abundant spatial imaginations of local people. Only then will we start to build spaces that work for everyone. Local communities have the unique ability to reimagine things as if they could be otherwise, because they need it to be what they lack. If our council is genuinely committed to mobilising its power to support equality and democracy in the local area, it must do more to engage with and empower local people’s imaginations. According to the Centre for Local Economic Strategies, the first principle of New Municipalism is “citizen power”. We need more citizen power in Hackney.

By Luke Billingham & Alvin Owusu- Fordwuo