10,000+ objections, thousands of conversations on the streets, and 2 cancelled hearings later -
Hondo Tower
has fallen!!
Taylor McWilliams withdrew his application from the GLA’s Planning Unit for the second and final time, closing the chapter on a vanity project that was never should have been greenlit in the first place. A 20 storey mega-tower consisting only of offices with no benefit to local communities in the area, this development was an affront to put up in a borough where average wait for social housing is +10 years.
#FightTheTower was born 3 years ago out of determination to fight back against one man’s monopolisation of our neighbourhood. We decided to take on this project not because we hated change, or because we really loved low rise neighbourhoods. We took a stand against our council’s elected representatives putting one man’s profit over the wellbeing, health, and livelihoods of residents in the name of ‘development’. We wanted to protect the livelihoods of local businesses, and fight for the thousands of residents whose objections had been ignored in favour of one developer and his well-paid advisors and supporters. And we won.
We are very happy and proud of our collective effort to push back, and happy that this infernal tower has been buried for good.
But the real fight is now truly beginning. We need to have real conversations about what development means in this city. We cannot keep seeing councils tick boxes and call that consultations, we cannot keep seeing ‘development’ come at the expense of the small businesses and the people paying most of the taxes in our communities and providing most of the affordable alternatives. Something's got to give.
Today we celebrate, but tomorrow we organise to take our neighbourhoods and cities back.
In solidarity,
Save Nour Save Brixton
We would like to share with you an amazing new community resource that two members of our campaign have been working on for the past year. Jordi and Marion have made an interactive timeline of anti-gentrification struggles in Brixton.
"If Brixton has maintained some of its convivial vibe despite massive capital-led gentrification, social cleansing and general ‘cleaning up’, it's because various communities have resisted it, stayed put, found new ways in a tightening urban landscape. Communities of resistance come together, link with others, fade and reconverge.
We offer this timeline as a journey into collective memory and an invitation to take inspiration from places, campaigns and actions of Brixton’s radical past and the corporate and council policies we are up against. The timeline charts sixty events in the Brixton gentrification struggles in chronological order. It starts with the 1993 Brixton City Challenge, to the merciless implementation of Lambeth's Future Brixton Masterplan in the 2010s, along with the enforcement of austerity measures following the 2008 financial crisis. It ends in 2021, with the beginnings of redevelopment of the Pope's Road area, and the birth of #FightTheTower.
This is a timeline based on our collective experience, backed up by Brixtonbuzz, Past Tense, Urban75 and other resources. Our experience can only cover a fraction of Brixton's gentrification struggles – the things we saw from our vantage point of grassroots and autonomous practice, estates, and EU-migration, since we washed up in Brixton in the 1990s."
Jordi Blanchar works in the arts sector, Marion Hamm is an anthropologist. They engage in grassroots organising, art/activism and sometimes in radical media.
"If Brixton has maintained some of its convivial vibe despite massive capital-led gentrification, social cleansing and general ‘cleaning up’, it's because various communities have resisted it, stayed put, found new ways in a tightening urban landscape. Communities of resistance come together, link with others, fade and reconverge.
We offer this timeline as a journey into collective memory and an invitation to take inspiration from places, campaigns and actions of Brixton’s radical past and the corporate and council policies we are up against. The timeline charts sixty events in the Brixton gentrification struggles in chronological order. It starts with the 1993 Brixton City Challenge, to the merciless implementation of Lambeth's Future Brixton Masterplan in the 2010s, along with the enforcement of austerity measures following the 2008 financial crisis. It ends in 2021, with the beginnings of redevelopment of the Pope's Road area, and the birth of #FightTheTower.
This is a timeline based on our collective experience, backed up by Brixtonbuzz, Past Tense, Urban75 and other resources. Our experience can only cover a fraction of Brixton's gentrification struggles – the things we saw from our vantage point of grassroots and autonomous practice, estates, and EU-migration, since we washed up in Brixton in the 1990s."
Jordi Blanchar works in the arts sector, Marion Hamm is an anthropologist. They engage in grassroots organising, art/activism and sometimes in radical media.