As outer-London town centres are asked to absorb more homes and greater density, the challenge is not simply how much we build, but how we make growth feel rooted in the places people already know and value. They need an architecture of their own, not a scaled-down version of the inner city.
When I first moved to Beckenham in South London, I noticed people referring to themselves as being from Kent. It turns out this is a hangover from 1965, when, along with other local towns, Penge, Bromley and Orpington, grouped together to become the shiny and new London Borough of Bromley. The largest London borough, by area.
I catch myself doing the same, typing Kent into web forms that insist I put down a county, despite the red double-decker buses rattling up and down the high street and the routine tap of my Oyster card. This ambivalence is in no way local to my town. Ask residents in Orpington, the second-largest town in the borough, whether they consider themselves Londoners, and you won’t get a consistent answer.
This division of identity became apparent when we recently began a series of public consultations for a residential-led development in the town centre. Against this backdrop, the conversation around the impact of the development inevitably turned to parking. It always does. Parking or bins.
Much of the discussion centred on whether the GLA’s policy on car-free development really suited somewhere like Orpington. Some felt that this was a policy being foisted onto the area, an approach that works well in central London but is out of step at the fringes of the city where social infrastructure is far more dispersed and public transport far less frequent. While the town is administratively part of London, many residents seemed to identify more strongly with its Kentish, suburban character.
This duality isn’t an oddity to be corrected but is part of what makes places like Orpington distinct, a condition we need to understand when thinking about their future. They occupy a kind of liminal territory, somewhere between city and suburb. They are too large and complex to be dismissed as suburban but equally too green, dispersed and locally rooted to fit conventional ideas of the city.
I find myself reaching for the term Metro-land, the name given to the semi-suburban communities that grew along London’s expanding railway network, occupying a space somewhere between city and countryside. While it may not quite apply geographically, its spirit feels relevant: places undoubtedly shaped by London, certainly in policy terms, without quite seeing themselves as London.
And there’s the rub. Centralised policy and our wider approach to development don’t necessarily pick up on these nuances. In places like Orpington, you’ll find a mixed population of commuters rubbing shoulders with people who have lived and worked locally for generations.
At our consultations, it was clear that many residents, those that live and work locally in particular, had a strong attachment to the high street and town centre, not simply as an amenity but as part of what makes the area feel like home.
Despite this, these high streets are struggling. Changes in the way we live, work and shop have fundamentally altered what town centres need to provide. The growth of online shopping and the retreat of big high-street retailers have brought about a pivot towards the things you can’t buy online. The nail salon, a haircut, a decent flat white or lunch with a friend. The high street has become less about buying stuff, more about what you go to do and about the people you go to see.
Then there’s housing. London faces a severe shortage, and outer-London towns are increasingly being asked to accommodate more homes and greater density, shouldering decades of missed housing targets. In places that have seen relatively limited intensification, that change will feel particularly pronounced.
I’m supportive of that direction but believe that if growth isn’t handled carefully, there is a risk that residents experience density as something imposed on them from the centre, rather than as part of a locally grounded renewal of their town. This matters because the debate can quickly become polarised, which I’ve witnessed at local consultation events. The older, longer-term residents with deep attachments to the town centre on one side, and incoming commuters or younger households cast as the face of unwanted change on the other.
If we are serious about repairing town high streets, additional residents and footfall must be part of the answer. The shift from buying products to consuming services needs a critical mass of people. The footfall to keep the cafés, salons and social spaces feeling lively and active.
Which brings me back to our role as architects. How do we accommodate growth while creating places that feel authentic? How do we encourage residents, both new and old, to linger and meet? And how do we bring life back into town centres without washing away the qualities people valued in the first place?
In Orpington, our starting point was not to import a model from elsewhere but to get under the skin of the town to understand the ordinary things that make it work and those that currently stop it from working better. Before putting pen to paper or hand to mouse, we formed working groups with local residents and listened to what they valued about the town and what they felt was missing. What emerged was a picture of how they wanted their town centre to feel. Greener, better connected, with more independent businesses and more places to meet and spend time.
The site, like many towns, is home to a dated shopping centre abandoned by large retail over the last decade. It was built in the 1960s, a time of car-centric urban planning, and subsequently incorporates a multi-storey car park above. It dominates and sprawls. One of our key moves is simply to stitch back together the disparate parts of town that were cleaved apart when it was first built.
The next move is to think carefully about the sort of retail we want anchoring the new development. We light-heartedly refer to making space for the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker, shorthand for the small, independent businesses that give a town centre its texture. Rents and business rates are huge pressures, and smaller, flexible and genuinely affordable units give local businesses a chance to take root. The sorts of businesses that can keep a town centre feeling useful to existing locals while giving new residents reasons to spend time there.
Outer-London town regeneration isn’t about one spectacular move or a single architectural gesture. Instead, it is about a series of smaller decisions: movement, scale, use, streets and spaces that collectively allow growth to feel connected to the life of a place.
If we are going to successfully build at scale here, it’s important that we get this right now and set a better precedent, helping to settle local distrust of larger-scale development that has, in the past, been pushed through with little public benefit.
Density should not mean making every town centre feel the same. Done well, it can help places like Orpington become more resilient and active without losing their sense of identity. That, to me, is the opportunity for architects, planners and developers. Growth without losing what makes a place feel somewhere special, as opposed to simply somewhere near London.
Postscript
Ben Clark is a director at 2C
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