ABSTRACT

Regeneration efforts on the South Bank are an example of some of the basic contradictions London’s development has gone through during the twentieth century. Plans for the South Bank have always sought an impossible balance between the local interests of inhabitants and the global interests of London’s international fl ows of capital, investment, tourism and culture. The South Bank is one of London’s prime battlegrounds where London’s crisis is fought and its future re-invented. Over the past decades, the clashes of interest have resulted in unique victories and major defeats, for both corporate headquarters seeking development profi ts, and citizens seeking affordable housing. The South Bank is the borderland where the two Londons north and south of the river meet, and engage in confl ict over who owns, controls and decides over local land use – and, by implication, the ‘right’ to inner London.