ABSTRACT
The current redevelopment of the former Spitalfi eld market area is about the City expanding into the East End and, in the process, demolishing parts of a former fruit and vegetable market founded in 1683 whose current buildings are from around 1928. (The landlord of the property is the Corporation of London — the City — and the Planning Authority is Tower Hamlets.) When originally proposed, the market buildings were neglected and unwanted. But un-suited entrepreneurial interests alien to fi nancial trading started to provide food-stalls and the like in the old buildings; then there was a temporary opera facility ... (the market recently claimed to enjoy more visitors than the Tate Modern). What developers seemed incapable of providing was happening all on its own. But instead of embracing this, they bluntly promoted their instrumental mind-set and there began a controversy with the community which still continues in a zone mediating between Broadgate and the utterly different (but changing) nature of the area around Brick Lane (some of which includes gentrifi ed late C17th. terraces such as Fournier Street, together with Nicholas Hawksmoor’s recently renovated Christ Church).
