The King's Cross Story
    •
    Welcome to King’s Cross. To understand this area, let’s travel back to the very beginning, to the Romans. This was once a simple crossing over the River Fleet called Broad Ford. Legend has it that the warrior queen Boudicca fought her final battle against the Romans here in AD 61. Some even say her body lies buried beneath what is now Platform 9. The story was passed through the centuries, and for the next 1700 years this rural settlement was known as Battle Bridge. Fast forward to the Industrial Revolution and Battle Bridge had transformed into an urban outpost of London. In the early 1800s, the River Fleet had diverted underground to become a part of London’s sewer network. In its place came Regent’s Canal in 1820, an industrial thoroughfare which transported goods into London by boat. The canal brought industry to Battle Bridge, including the Imperial Battle Bridge Gas Works, which consumed vast quantities of coal. The area became infamous for its polluting industries and for its giant dust heap. Charles Dickens described it in Our Mutual Friend as: “a tract of surburban Sahara, where tiles and bricks were burnt, bones were boiled, carpets were beat, rubbish was shot, dogs were fought, and dust was heaped by contractors”. That being said, it wasn’t all bleak, one writer noted that the dust heap “became a great resort for young acrobats and clowns who could here tumble and throw ‘flip-flaps’ to their hearts’ content without fear of fracture or sprain.” In 1831 a 60-foot statue of King George IV was built in Battle Bridge as part of a grand idea to introduce pleasure gardens to the area. Unfortunately the project was abandoned, leaving the statue behind. George IV was an unpopular king so the statue was ridiculed and eventually demolished. However, fifteen years later, when the London terminus of the Great Northern Railway was built here, it took its name from the statue. And so ‘King’s Cross’ was born. Designed by Lewis Cubitt, King’s Cross station opened in 1852, marking the beginning of a new era. The arrival of the railway brought an explosion of industry. The land north of the station became a network of goods yards. Cubitt designed the Granary building to store the vast quantities of grain coming from East Anglia and the surrounding train sheds for loading and unloading their wares. The Western and Eastern Coal Drops were designed to unload the 8 million tonnes of coal arriving every year and the Gas Works expanded with the gasholders becoming a part of the King’s Cross skyline. The yards were filled with people, carts and a considerable fleet of horses, used for pulling the wagons and drawing the canal boats. For over a century, the goods yards were a bustling, noisy, industrious place that supplied London with everything it could need from the industrial regions in the north of England. Here’s Harold Bowron, now in his eighties, remembering his time working in the Yards, “King’s Cross was the area that all the raw materials for London came in through. Coming into the goods yard, around the clock we had a train of bricks 5 nights a week. We had sand and aggregate which was brought in to make concrete. Oh, and the steel of course: we had 5 mobile cranes unloading steel 16 hours a day. And then you had a train of fish every night from Aberdeen, which would put about 50% of the fish into Billingsgate market and on a Thursday night it brought a wagon of winkles from Wick. Then you had potatoes, freight liner trains, parcels trains in and out and, at Christmas time, Royal Mail trains. You had newspaper print came in. You had wagons of whisky and by gum, the police used to look after those. The wagons were all sealed — tobacco was the same. Those were the principal commodities that came into London.” For over a century, King’s Cross was a powerhouse of industrial London, and this heritage is written into the buildings and place that you experience today.

    1: The History

    00:0000:00
    By the 1980s, King’s Cross was no longer the vibrant industrial and distribution centre of its heyday. As businesses moved away from rail and canal transport and towards the road, the fortunes of King’s Cross declined. Much of the southern Goods Yard fell silent, the rail lines lifted and the buildings left unused. Jobs tied to the yards disappeared, and the area developed a darker reputation. It was the gritty backdrop for films like Mona Lisa and The Ladykillers, where it was portrayed as a place of crime, which cemented its image as a neglected and troubled part of London. Yet, amidst this decline, a new kind of life emerged. With its large abandoned warehouses, King’s Cross became a playground for artists, ravers and an alternative nightlife scene. Here’s Dave Swindells, photographer and Nightlife Editor of TimeOut at the time, remembering the area: “King’s Cross back then was a wild place. It was almost deserted those little streets and yards around there, especially at night. It looked beaten up and dusty and dodgy. Obviously there was a lot of prostitutes, and there was a lot of drug use, especially around the back streets, because essentially it wasn’t really policed. “There was a lot of empty buildings that were squatted by people to live or to have parties or creative events there. People would move in and make things happen in spite of the law, in spite of the police and sometimes in spite of the neighbours. But it was interesting because of what people made of it and made happen in those spaces. Also the environment in this kind of semi-urban wasteland added excitement, you know, you are wandering up York Way and you find your way to this venue. I mean, it was an adventure, where you never know where you are going to end up at the end of the night. “And so King’s Cross had this very underground reputation and gradually in the late 80s events happened far more regularly there and by the 90s it was a proper hive of nightlife activity with 3 or 4 clubs which were running really regularly – 10,000 people a weekend were going to King’s Cross. “It definitely felt radical. You know, the idea of dancing as a political act is definitely radical when you are breaking the law, when you are finding new buildings to do it in and when you are not necessarily wanted and when its 5am and you are in the middle of the city. I mean this is living, this is living properly in the city.” For two decades, King’s Cross was a blank canvas for London’s counter-culture scene. Prince, Massive Attack, Depeche Mode and Grace Jones all left their mark here and Alexander McQueen’s iconic 1995 show even debuted between these walls. But while the nightlife brought people into the area, the railway lands were critically under-used and the area closed off from the local community. Unless you were heading to one of the clubs, King’s Cross was an area you wouldn’t want to linger at night. It was a place of contrasts: crime and creativity; counter-culture and decay. Change was on the horizon. Discussions about redeveloping the land north of the station had been ongoing since the 1980s, when the importance of its industrial heritage was recognised and the site was designated a conservation area. But it wasn’t until the late 1990s, with the decision to move the Eurostar terminal to St Pancras, that a new future began to take shape. This decision brought together the council, landowners, and local community groups to reimagine what King’s Cross could become.

    2: The Railway Lands

    00:0000:00
    As the millennium dawned and London prepared for the arrival of the Eurostar and the Olympics, regenerating the area north of King’s Cross station became a priority for the local council and community. Covering 67 acres, the site had huge logistical challenges. The gas works were newly decommissioned and still sitting south of the canal on centuries of pollution. There were old railways above ground and present-day railways below. There were over 20 heritage buildings to preserve and a local community who felt disempowered and disenfranchised by change. In 2001, Argent LLP was appointed to lead the redevelopment. Here’s David Partridge, Chairman of Related Argent, who has worked on the project since the bid, reflecting on how they went about tackling a project of this scale: “For Argent to win the bid was a really great moment. Prior to 2000, we had done a lot of development in regional cities and we had been very successful in doing urban regeneration. We had done a couple of individual buildings in London, but for us this was really the first opportunity to do anything at significant scale. And so it was a big step up for us. So before we put pen on paper, we got together a series of different specialists in urban design and came up with a kind of manifesto for what King’s Cross could become, which we called Principles for a Human City. “The Principles for a Human City were essentially 10 ideas which we had set out, some of them relate to the actual urban form. So we were committing ourselves to delivering what we called a robust urban framework, which is essentially the seats, streets and squares which were going to be around, which in that way would become a lasting new place, which was our second principle. We also wanted to ensure that that place was accessible to everybody and we wanted to ensure that it had a vibrant mix of uses so that it really felt like it was a piece of London, that wasn’t a kind of ghetto of individual uses in different areas. And then also the key thing was that we wanted to harness the value of heritage. So those were the 5 things that essentially set out the form of the place. “And then there were 5 that were about process. We wanted to ensure that what we delivered worked for King’s Cross but also worked for London. It was about committing to long term success and not just taking short term decisions. And then engaging, inspiring, securing delivery and communicating clearly and openly and always being transparent. And then we took those principles out to talk to the community and to explain to them what we hoped to achieve through the course of the development itself and then to listen to their feedback.” The Principles for a Human City was the bedrock of the whole redevelopment and out of this bold vision, a masterplan emerged. Here are Bob Allies and Graham Morrison, from masterplanners Allies & Morrison, reflecting on the process of creating a masterplan that would change the trajectory of King’s Cross: “The thing about King’s Cross is that it’s in an extraordinary part of London to begin with. So it’s between St. Pancras and King’s Cross station. And yet the land between the two of them was virtually derelict really when we began the project. So you had this void in the city which you were able to fill in. But also the void had within it some extraordinary historical artefacts. It had the canal, it had the granary, it had the coal drops, it had the gasholders. I think in a way that’s one of the fundamental aspects of the project that we were able to draw on that and allow that to characterise the place that was created. “Although we’re modernists, we actually rely on the way things have been done in the past. And so we reached into history, to find how cities worked, how spaces connected, how there’s a hierarchy of lanes and squares and streets and smaller spaces, that then led to the production of a masterplan that could then develop. We were as interested in the space between the buildings as the buildings themselves. And the way we liken it is that we were designing the mortar in the wall rather than the bricks or the stones themselves. So, we weren’t designing buildings, but we were anticipating the nature of the space that we would make. “One of the unusual aspects of King’s Cross is the mixture of uses that take place there. That realisation, that the greater the mix of uses you have on a site like that, the more likely it is to become an attractive piece of city. So, you know, yes, we have offices there and we have housing there, but we have universities, we have schools, we have galleries, all of these things. Now that is not the way that people thought about the form that new pieces of the city might take until recently. That’s a kind of new phenomenon and the physical masterplan makes that possible. But it is also the imagination of the developer recognising that and seeing the potential in that way of thinking that was so important at King’s Cross.” The King’s Cross masterplan, with its intense focus on the public realm, was a new kind of urban planning. Instead of fixating on the buildings, it set out the streets and spaces that would knit the site into the surrounding neighbourhoods, creating an armature to hold the site together. With this in place, it then defined distinct parcels for development, assigning guidelines to each parcel which included limits on uses, building heights, and floorspace. Crucially though, it made no attempt to design each building at the outset. This proved remarkably prescient, as many buildings would not be started until decades after the masterplan was created. It was a clear and compelling vision for people to believe in, but its flexibility allowed each building to respond to the needs of the people it would serve. Although it seems intuitive now, the King’s Cross masterplan was visionary, inspiring other cities worldwide to consider how their own post-industrial voids could become thriving parts of the city once more.

    3: The Masterplan

    00:0000:00
    In 2007, the Eurostar terminal in St Pancras was completed and construction was able to begin on King’s Cross. Faced with acres of brownfield site, the initial phase was simply to make the site safe, before the first cornerstone of the new development could be laid: a pioneering Energy Centre. Using renewable energy sources and heat pumps, the Energy Centre provides sustainable heating and electricity to the whole of King’s Cross and has powered the area ever since. With this groundwork in place, it was time to deliver on the big promise of the masterplan: to create a human city. First up was King’s Boulevard, a new tree-lined street that created a key artery north of the station, and Granary Square, an open space where people could gather. At the same time, social housing was built to the north of the site and work began on the first office buildings around King’s Cross station. In these early years, the public space was used to host events like food trucks, immersive theatre, and pop-ups to draw people back into the area and to start changing perceptions. With the future of the project threatened by the 2008 financial crash, a pivotal moment in the estate’s history came when they signed their first tenant: Central Saint Martins, one of London’s most prestigious art and design colleges. Here’s Rathna Ramanathan, the current dean, talking about why they felt drawn to the neighbourhood: “Central Saint Martins first moved to Granary Square in August 2011, and it was a sort of phased approach, I would say, we were the first here. I just remember I was a member of staff at that time, and we would walk up different ways, depending on where there was access to building works. So it’s transformed around us in a beautiful way. “What was exciting was that we were the centre of a development that was quite interdisciplinary. There was lots planned in terms of technology that’s now taking fruit, and we were a part of Camden, a very important local community. That mixture of placemaking was really important to us. I don’t think there was anything else happening around London at that time that was this path breaking. This was part of a larger development that envisioned London as a destination so I think there’s a real specialness of us being first tenants and seeing that grow around us. “There was a real sense of hope, a real sense of, we’re home, this is our place, but also a real sense of neighbourliness. I think for Central Saint Martins to be a part of the King’s Cross development is really significant to what we do in education. We’re a public square, and that’s unusual. You can enter our college on all four sides. So that sense of that membrane being in and out is an integral part. Creative education is such an important part of how we see the world and our mission wouldn’t be the same if we weren’t open to the public. So we hold a lot of events that champion teaching and research and knowledge exchange and being on the site allows us to take that mission to the public, whether that’s our, kids in primary schools in Camden or whether it’s our partners or whether it’s just someone who just happens to come by, is always welcome and is able to get the spirit of the college and what we do.” The arrival of Central Saint Martins was a turning point for King’s Cross. Bringing a new crowd into the area, it injected energy and vitality into the community and re-established King’s Cross as a place for creativity and innovation. From here others followed and in 2012, Google confirmed that their new headquarters would be in King’s Cross. With momentum gathering, in 2014, work began on the next major piece of the puzzle: Coal Drops Yard. A bold vision to transform the old coal drops, it integrated the old warehouses, platforms and railway arches into an extraordinary retail destination. Opened to the public in 2018, Coal Drops Yard welcomed a whole new generation of visitors to King’s Cross. From these early beginnings—clearing the site, building key infrastructure, and inviting in a creative community— King’s Cross laid solid foundations for its future.

    4: Breaking Ground

    00:0000:00
    There are over 50 buildings in King’s Cross, 20 of which are restored industrial heritage structures. It seems fitting for a place that supported such a variety of trade within its lifetime, that the architecture was not the vision of one person but many. Building on the work of past architects like Lewis Cubitt, over 28 different contemporary architects came together to realise the King’s Cross masterplan. Here is Demetri Porphyrios, one of the master planners, talking about the process: “Now at King’s Cross we built around the 19th century industrial heritage. But we built by embedding those heritage buildings within the fabric. We tried always never to fetishise the heritage, not to create museum pieces out of them. And that’s because we believe that buildings and spaces we inherit from the past give always character to a new development and in a sense one might say they empower the new with a human sense of place, providing continuity. So the aim has always been urban durability, urban versatility and sustainability. Now the individual architects; they were given the plots and they were given aims to achieve. They were not given any stylistic copybook. They were not told do this or do that or try to do this or whatever. There were aims to achieve, and those aims were first, respond and enhance the adjoining public open space that you are actually working in and where the building is. Secondly, try and establish continuities, in density, continuities in uses, continuities in the looks, etcetera, and scale. And finally, aim at civility. Civility means politeness, it means avoid the panacea of stardom. It’s not that I am a great architect and I can do anything – no. Everybody is aiming at civility and that is really what has given King’s Cross that you can see now, that sort of continuity of understanding. You see buildings which are different. You have different styles, different this, different that. But there is a scale that is coherent in itself.” Alongside the masterplan guidelines, King’s Cross contained a multitude of structural challenges for its architects to contend with, including tunnels, tracks, service pipes, the canal, listed buildings and contaminated ground. You might also have noticed that very few of the buildings are tall. This is because the site lies within two viewing corridors, London’s planning rules which prevent new buildings from interfering with the views of St Paul’s Cathedral, here from Parliament Hill and Kenwood House. In spite of these restrictions, and sometimes even because of them, architectural creativity and innovation has flourished within King’s Cross. ArtHouse, a residential building in the east of the site, was built with springs in its foundations to absorb the sound and vibration of the Piccadilly Line. And the new Google building – nicknamed a groundscraper, has been built as long as the Shard is tall. The design process has resulted in distinctive structures which are unique to King’s Cross and many of the buildings have won awards for their design, particularly for their sustainability. The old Coal Drops has been transformed into one unified space by the sweep of its new roof, the romantically named ‘kissing roof’. Four of the old gasholders, an enduring symbol of the King’s Cross skyline, were relocated from the south of the site, transported to Sheffield to be restored by specialist engineers and then reconstructed, column by column in their current location, reimagined as residential apartments and a park. The Granary building appears largely unchanged from Cubitt’s original vision from the front, but the inside is transformed into a modern art college, with workshops, dance studios, two theatres, exhibition areas, a library, offices and even a 200m long internal street, which is open to the public and functions as the spine of the campus. The result is a remarkable blend of old and new, which feels like it has grown organically out of London. Care has been taken to ensure that every building creates lasting value, in the knowledge that what we build now, if done well, will become the heritage environments of the future. It’s for this reason that English Heritage named King’s Cross as one of England’s 20 Best Heritage-Led Developments. To use their words, it is a “model of constructive conservation that captures the special quality of London as it has grown over the centuries”.

    5: Architecture

    00:0000:00
    From the beginning, the spaces between the buildings at King’s Cross have been considered as important, if not more so, than the buildings themselves. Over 40% of the site is dedicated to public space, with 20 new streets and 10 new parks designed to knit the area to itself and its surroundings. Here’s Robert Townshend from Townshend Landscape Architects, speaking about how open spaces became the grain of the masterplan: “The key thing about King’s Cross is that it is linked by public space. So from the south, the public spaces lead you north across the canal and then onwards through up towards Camden. And that was always a key driver. And the spaces were always defined by routes and places themselves. So it’s always about trying to make a space with edges that you can see through, you can pass through, but you can enjoy, and obviously things like aspects, sun, wind, etc. are key to all of that process. “King’s Cross was initially built to keep people out because it was about a goods marshalling yard and theft was a huge problem. So, walls, walls, walls, walls, and gates. We wanted to pull everything apart, connect from the upper level to the canal, make the canal part of it, punch through into the Coal Drops etcetera. So, completely turn the initial sort of rationale of the whole thing on its head. We tried to create places which were flexible at all times, could adapt through time, would join up with their edges, but also be enjoyable for people to use throughout the whole of the 12 month cycle.If you look at a series of images of King’s Cross across any 12 months, look how many people use them in different ways. That’s from families, intergenerational use, in summer the fountains are like a large swimming pool, you can have Wimbledon events there. It’s just people. People from everywhere are welcome in King’s Cross. That to me is the most important thing.” Each of the 10 parks and squares in King’s Cross has been designed to be used by people in a different way. So whilst Pancras Square in the south is a bustling continental plaza lined with alfresco dining, Jellicoe Gardens in the north is set out in a Persian style to be a tranquil, contemplative space. At the geographic centre of the neighbourhood sits Granary Square which was designed to be a vast village green for King’s Cross. Its 1,000 choreographed fountains hark back to its history as a canal basin and have become a unique kind of village playground. Leading down from the square, the Canalside Steps function as an outdoor living room, transforming the area into an open-air cinema every summer and opening up access to the canal towpath all year round. Three new footbridges over the canal link the north and south of the site, and provide a new entrance to Camley Street Natural Park, a tranquil wildlife reserve right on our doorstep. At every point, the planting and landscaping has been carefully considered to create beautiful spaces and to re-establish and encourage biodiversity. Over 400 mature trees were planted across the site and a wide-ranging and unusual plant palette was chosen. Licorice, strawberries and figs grow along Bagley Walk, a park that runs along the old railway viaduct. In Gasholder Park an urban meadow of ornamental grasses and flowers was planted and in Handyside Gardens you can see a number of pioneer plants that traditionally thrive in post industrial sites. Open space has never been an afterthought at King’s Cross. It is the space that all visitors to the neighbourhood are able to enjoy and it is often what people remember long after they have left. It has transformed King’s Cross from a thoroughfare to a destination, a place that you can enjoy in every season.

    6: Open Spaces

    00:0000:00
    King’s Cross was always designed to be a city within a city. It would have been easy to transform the whole area into a neighbourhood that was just used for one thing – just office blocks, just streets of houses, just one big shopping mall. But from the start, the vision was to create a place where people could both come to work and come home to, and they could come to meet friends, go to school, play, see an art exhibition, sun-bathe, shop, and just enjoy the open air. And, just like in an established city, this vibrant mix of uses would bring people together to create something bigger than its parts, sparking collaborations that take on a life of their own. Here’s Stephen Mitchell from King’s Cross Academy, one of the two local primary schools within King’s Cross: “At King’s Cross Academy (KCA) we believe that in order for learning to stick that the children need to have meaningful experiences to hang their learning onto so that’s why we value partnerships so heavily at KCA. So we are so lucky to be located with Frank Barnes School for Deaf Children. They are an outstanding local authority special school and we learn greatly from them. One of the biggest things about the partnership is that the children at KCA – we have the aspiration that they will learn Level 1 British Sign Language. It creates a really unique community because the children inhabit the same play spaces, the same lunch hall and many of the staff are the same. So they both get to experience something quite different.” “The estate and the school offers a unique perspective and experience to the children in that they can learn something in the classroom and then go directly onto the estate to apply the learning in another context. I think all of the stakeholders on the estate are inherently creative and that aspect certainly has trickled down to the way the school has been designed and structured and operates day to day. I would say that King’s Cross Academy brings a sense of community to the development. It brings the estate to life. There’s lots of laughter. There’s lots of energy. And everyone wants to help the children. All of the shops, all of the partners that work locally are all very keen to pitch in and help when asked. It brings to life the concept of it takes a village to raise a child. Everyone is really involved.” Alongside building a desirable, new community within King’s Cross, it also needed to become a place that people wanted to come into. This was a challenge given its past reputation. So starting from the early days of pop-up trucks, food, drink and markets have been integral in drawing people back into the area, filling its streets with a lively atmosphere of stalls, traders and alfresco dining. Plus with a market, there’s always something new to see, a new maker to discover, the possibility of a new vintage find to return for. Here’s Fabio Diu, the Director of Canopy Market, speaking about how the markets have revived life within King’s Cross: “The story of Canopy Market in many ways is a story of revival and reimagining. Back in the 1850s when it was a distribution hub, it was a place where produce, fish, fruit and vegetables would be brought into London before being distributed throughout the city. To be able to revive some of that heritage and keep that connection to its past but in a more contemporary way which meets the needs of people today is something that is really exciting to us.” “First and foremost the market is made up of its traders and they are a very very close community. We are very careful about who we work with. We select our traders based on their sustainability and their values so it’s a great place to find and discover great quality products and also support the local economy. I think every market reflects its locality – that’s because it serves the local community. Certainly for us, running a market which is a shared public space for the community, it has been shaped by the local residential, the students, the local community in and around King’s Cross, and the visitors, and the tourists in fact who come. So, it caters for that very diverse set of visitors. And in a way that represents London itself actually, as well as the specific locality of King’s Cross.” Alongside the ebb and flow of weekly events, King’s Cross has built its own cultural rhythm across the seasons. Its open spaces host dog shows, Halloween trails, pop-up saunas, Christmas lights, public art and outdoor cinemas. Created for and by the local community, the vast majority are free. Here is Martin Collins, the Director of King’s Cross Summer Sounds, the neighbourhood’s summer music festival and one of the longest running annual events: “I think the beautiful thing about King’s Cross Summer Sounds is that the audience is so diverse. It’s a complete leveller. Anyone can come and join it and anyone can come and experience a new genre of music. And if they don’t like it they can just walk off. But honestly we tend to find that they don’t.” “What we put on the stage we really truly try to reflect the diversity of our local communities. It’s not about us top down imposing some sort of world class artist onto the people from Somers Town. It’s about the people from Somers Town saying to us actually we would like to see this. This is what we are interested in. The festival ranges from classical music, to jazz and jazz-inspired music. We have Spanish flamenco, we have New Orleans music. I mean it changes every year.” “We also pepper in lots of moments of participation, so we have dance companies come down and teach dance classes on site. We have puppetry making workshops with giant puppets walking around. We’ve had Morris men dancing across Granary Square, engaging with the young people who are playing in the water fountains. Everyone involved really wants to support each other and they want to ensure that the community voice is really embedded in what happens. And you do see the ideas being bedded back into the projects. That’s the beautiful thing about King’s Cross. It will keep evolving and reshaping itself around the people.”

    7: A Human City

    00:0000:00
    When the masterplanners looked out across the estate in the early 2000s, they could hardly have imagined how the area would transform. With the completion of the final building in 2027, their vision is realised. Related Argent have seen the project through from idea to completion, and they remain the stewards of King’s Cross as it enters a new era. An era marked less by building physical structures and much more by building on the community and sustainability that has been established. In 2021, King’s Cross was certified as carbon neutral and by 2035, it aims to reach net zero carbon. Here are Morwenna Hall (MH) and David Partridge (DP) from Related Argent, reflecting on King’s Cross and its future. DP: “You know this really is the epitome of what a great city should be, it’s creative it’s open, it’s enjoyable, it’s generous, it just feels like a lovely place for people to visit or to work or to live in and I think for us that’s the kind of human bit. That’s the bit that makes it feel like it’s been designed for people. And so we want King’s Cross in fifty years time to feel like it’s just another piece of London. We didn’t want it to feel like it was a special or distinct or precious design that had been dropped from outer space into the city. We want it to feel like people can walk through it, people can visit it, people can live in it as if they were living in anywhere else in London. And so on the one hand we wanted to kind of melt into the background and feel like it’s normal. At the same time, I think we’ve also made something so special and so distinctive that actually people do feel something different.” MH: “I think what makes King’s Cross feel successful is that there has been a lot of change over time but that change has been exciting and has felt inclusive to people and that it’s almost enticed them to keep coming back. I love when I’m walking around hearing people say, ‘Oh, have you seen this. This has just happened’ or ‘I’ve heard this is coming next.’, And the genuine interest that people have about what’s going on. Because King’s Cross isn’t about just the physical buildings. It’s actually about people coming and using the places, the buildings, the spaces in between and enjoying themselves.” “Every time you come there are new things to participate in as well as to see and I think people like feeling part of a journey and they have been able to do that alongside us. I think the future’s really great for King’s Cross. We’re at the stage of the development now where, it’s quite emotional actually but we’ve nearly finished all of the buildings that were envisaged and now it’s really about building on the work that’s been done, to continue to create this really vibrant place for everyone and to keep pushing and role-modelling sustainability, social value, and community engagement.” DP: “The future of King’s Cross is incredibly bright. We’ve got thousands of people working here, thousands of people living here, hundreds of thousands of people visiting and the exemplar that we have become for creating a great place, well hopefully we’ll continue to be a great place for many years. And I hope that the streets and the squares and the patterns of city life that we have set up will still be here in 50-100 years time and the people who are living, working and visiting then, enjoy it as much as we are today.”

    8: The Future

    00:0000:00

    AND THAT’S WHERE THIS CHAPTER OF THE STORY ENDS...

    Use the links below to learn more about King’s Cross neighbourhood

  • Discover events at King's Cross
  • Explore what's in the neighbourhood
  • Go back to the King's Cross website
    •