Diary is often told that regeneration is about more than bricks and mortar. A recent visit to Aberfeldy Village in east London suggests that, occasionally, this may even be true.
The scheme, a long-running project by between Poplar HARCA and Be Living, is delivering more than 1,000 homes alongside the usual supporting cast: health centre, faith space, retail, and a community hub that comfortably exceeds its planning requirements.
All the right ingredients for a place designed to “feel like a village”. But it is the smaller details that seem to be doing the heavier lifting. On Aberfeldy Street, a boxing club carries the rather direct slogan: “Stop the stabbing, stick to jabbing.” A reflection of the area’s past challenges, perhaps, but also of a conscious effort to move beyond them.
The club now has more than 300 members suggesting that, in this instance at least, the messaging may be landing. Elsewhere, subtle metal inlays set into the pavement mark the site’s historic links to the East India docks and the textile trade – easy to miss if you are not looking, but quietly anchoring the new development in the story of what came before.
Diary notes that neither feature appears in the usual planning brochures. There are no headline metrics for “sense of belonging” or “redirected teenage energy”. And yet, these are precisely the elements that seem to give the place its texture. A reminder, perhaps, that while masterplans may set the framework, it is often the details on the shopfronts, in the pavement and in the community spaces, that take a place beyond just another scheme and make it into a neighbourhood.
