A whole riverside site, free for years. And nobody asked us what it could be. So we filled it in ourselves, before it's decided for us.
Weatherproof sand courts under cover: beach volleyball, beach tennis, footvolley. Drop-in family sessions, evening leagues, beginner classes, and a café. A bit of summer indoors while it buckets down outside.
The Peninsula already has roller skaters. They just don't have a roof. A smooth, weatherproof rink for skate culture: open sessions, lessons, roller discos, beginner mornings. Bring your own laces.
One big flexible hall for moving your body: bouldering walls, yoga and dance floors, table tennis, climbing-play for kids, fitness classes, quiet bookable hours for community groups. No chrome-and-mirrors gym vibes.
The Peninsula had a market in the square, then lost it. Bring it back: bread, veg, a proper grocer, makers, local art, coffee. Somewhere to do the Saturday shop, buy from people who live here, and bump into a neighbour. The parkrunners already finish on this stretch, the cable car could bring more across. No big build, a weekend in the yard does it.
Borrow the drill you'd use twice instead of buying it. A library of things, a repair shop for your zip, your bike, your kettle, a secondhand floor for furniture and outgrown kids' stuff, and the pack of screws nowhere else on the Peninsula sells. Classes to mend your own, a café in the middle, and a weekend reuse market worth crossing the river for. Everyday for us, a reason to visit for everyone else.
A town this size, and not one library. So build a better one: new books, a secondhand shelf, local art where NOW Gallery used to be, kids' story time, talks and classes. Plus the proper breakfast the Peninsula somehow doesn't have, coffee all day, a glass of wine at night. A place to read, meet and hang out by the river, open to everyone, not just people with a ticket.
We filled six in an afternoon. There are thousands of us. What would you put on a free riverside site you got to keep for years? Don't overthink it. That was never the hard part. Being asked was.
Two ticketed, mass-entertainment venues, next to the riverside and 25 metres from homes.
Destination-level events, marketed nationally and internationally, with repeated shows, over eight times a week.
When a show ends, up to 2,250 people leave at once, onto the Thames Path. The footpath is about 1.5m in places, next to a two-way cycle lane. It's a riverside route, not a venue exit.
Even the applicants don't call it community use. Their own planning form says "not relevant."
Built for people with a ticket, not the people who live here.
None of our ideas is the answer. The difference is the point: a market or a court is something you'd use on a wet Tuesday. A ticketed show is a night out for visitors, then gone. And nobody asked us. The developer's consultation got 35 replies. We'd just like to be asked before it's locked in.
This is a specific place: a narrow riverside path, homes right up against it, and a transport network already stretched thin. So there's a simple test for what belongs here. Does it give something to the people who live here, in the daytime, not just ticket-holders at night? Does it bring a steady trickle rather than a surge that floods the path and the tube? Does it wind down before midnight, not empty into quiet streets? Every idea on this board passes that test.
You can do a lot on a free riverside site next to homes. Just not everything.
Not a fantasy. In Peckham, a council car park earmarked for redevelopment became Peckham Levels: studios, a café, a gallery, workshops, a kids' play floor. It got so loved the council took it off the demolition list. Different site, same idea: a place waiting to be built on became something people actually wanted. Peckham Levels →
A sentence is plenty. A scribble is plenty. The hard part was never the ideas. It was being asked.
Five ways to push this along, from a ten-second tap to actually helping make one happen.
Tap I'd use this on the ideas you'd actually show up for. No sign-up, no email.
↑ Back to the ideasSketch it or just describe it. A scribble counts. Being asked was always the hard part.
↑ Add an ideaSend it to Design District, Ravensbourne, a club, a café, a class group chat.
↓ Grab the linksMention it to a local business, school, club or your councillor. Borrow any idea here. Posters and cards are yours to use.
No permission neededCan you run sessions, design, organise, or offer a corner of a space? That's how daydreams get real.
✉ Get in touchThis only works if it travels. If you're at Design District, Ravensbourne, a local club, a café or a studio. This question is yours too. You lot imagine spaces for a living. Add an idea, then send it down the corridor. Takes two minutes, costs nothing, and proves the point: asking was always the easy part.
The council decides around 21 July (application 26/1247/F). Comments count most now, not the week of the vote. You don't need planning words: say you live nearby, what worries you, and that nobody asked the neighbourhood. Two minutes.