Beyond the Elephant: Burgess Park

Message from Burgess Park Action Group

More local amenities are under threat as Southwark Council plans “to destroy large parts of Burgess Park and use the Aylesbury £4 million to bulldoze the park and replace it with “A purpose built space for some of the largest festivals in Europe with amphitheatre style viewing for over 100 thousand people, a floating stage, and a dedicated cultural hub“.

Burgess Park LDA Design

LDA architects and the current council proposals are classic 1960’s style bulldoze and start again disposable landscape school of architecture. The financial, ecological and community investment that is proposed to be destroyed will be painful to the thousands of local people who have watched our park gradually and organically grow from the collection of bombsites and scrap yards that plagued it 20 years ago. It need not be like this.

The existing park is a loved, living and breathing entity in its own right already, with some already beautiful corners already thriving. With careful nurturing and investment, this community led organic growth and investment can continue, so that it continues to provide a green haven and lung for the tens of thousands of people who live within walking distance of the park and the hundreds of thousands of people who play sport, walk or simply picnic in it every year.

An alternative vision to the LDA nightmare would be a national quality Eco-Park designed for the 21st century and based on eco-friendly principles of working and developing the best of what we have already and creating a dream of a zero waste, zero-carbon, green ecological oasis, where people can escape, relax and play, to recharge from the densely built surrounding city – a Hampstead Heath that South Londoners can be proud of. Burgess Park needs to demonstrate the best of environmental sustainability principles, so that it can act as a beacon of hope in the midst of the threatening environmental crises our children are facing as they grow up.

Telling them that the way to treat their own homes and gardens is to bulldoze them every ten to twenty years fails this crucial test of sustainability – the first test of which should always be – is it necessary? LDA’s ecologically disastrous proposals fail this test and are a major crime in wasted carbon terms to boot. Lets show our children instead that there is a different way – one based on community ecology and respect for their future and respect for the wildlife and investments that previous generations have nourished and created.

More information on the People’s Republic of Southwark website here.