King’s Cross: Renaissance for whom?

This chapter examines the planning and development history of the area around King’s Cross station on the northern edge of central London, picking up the story in the late 1980s and concentrating on the last decade. In the late 1980s London was in the grip of a major property boom, an outcome of the deregulation of the Thatcher period, in which a speculative surge in office property development was replacing and expanding the building stock of central London, pushing upwards but also outwards and lapping at areas such as King’s Cross.