Boulevard on Kings Cross Road, great, but...

Enough Room for Parisian type Cafes, but local booze
and drug delinquent cultures, and unchallenged car
volume flow, some of it council or London sponsored
keeps the South East of Kings Cross still under the water
in spite of improvements.

The Streetmanagement by Transport for London is currently finishing the enlargement of some pedestrian areas at King Cross Road. That is really great, especially since we also are getting some new set traffic lights, including one that manages Swinton Street. However there is much lacking still. That section of Kings Cross Road has three news agents and one emergency accommodation hostel attached, mostly filled with the local drug and alcohol victims and cheap hookers. And this is just one of the three within 1/2 square mile. One wonders why South East Kings Cross remains condemned with having to bear the load of Camden's socially delinquents (begging and street roaming by their occupants is a constant). Does Kings Cross South not have a right to a nice and friendly boulevard with street cafes and flower shops, now that there are also three renovated hotels plus one youth accommodation hostel alongside it(1)? The enlargement of the pedestrian's path invites to this, but three newsagents (rather than just one) and no cafe are hardly encouraging planning. What would be the avenue for citizens to have a say on what type of shops or social service units fill its ward?

Surely if it was for the collective voice of local residents and the many tourists now in the area, one newsagent, one fry up and one hostel for Camden's delinquents are more than enough.

What we have not got enough of is streets free of beggars, druggies and alcoholics, housed on our tax payer's money, (and fed by at least one 24h licensed pub), and neither enough of relaxing cafe's and traffic reduced, and diverted through ways.

Before Argent's development (the Kings Cross Rail Way Estate on Kings Cross's North Side) is expanded, the South East of Kings Cross, full of original Kings Cross residents, deserves continued intense attention on a macro and micro management scale and possibly closure of some of the council's hostels in that ward, so that they can be distributed more equally along the borough's geography.

One hoes that the suggestion of Boulevard Kins Cross Road is one that will arrive to those shop keepers who still battle it out to win as the dominant newsagents and corner shop or internet cafe. Go on, give us cafeterias, with Ice Cream Shop, Smoothies, and a pub with fine beers, rather than cheap brew.

Plant some trees and continue the path to regeneration and restitution, for we already had the stick for many years and deserve to be uplifted.



(1) The change or sale of the Old Magistrate Court by Islington Council from a public owned and public serving building into one that now no longer serves locals is also a decision that one ought to question and put in the box of incompetent council planners who believe when it comes to Kings Cross a non care attitude is appropriate. This follows a long history. The still ugly (after renovations) Royal Scott Travelodge Hotel for example is build on the grounds of a former local post office and local shops.

Kings Cross
Camden

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.