Old Kent Road - Urban Redevelopment

Urban Redevelopment

Apart from piecemeal residential schemes very little change along this route was made until the late 1960s with the London County Council plan of 'Lungs for Londoners' led to the creation of new open spaces and public parks by demolition of heavily urbanised areas; the eastern entrance to one of these, Burgess Park, is also located here at the junction with Albany Road.

General population decline has led to almost all of the pubs being converted to other uses since the mid 80s: from west to east, 'The World Turned Upside Down' (flats), 'The Frog and Nightgown' (planning agreed for apartments and retail), 'The Dun Cow' (GP Surgery), 'The Green Man' (Restaurant), the 'Duke of Kent' (Mosque); the 'Henry Cooper' (derelict), the 'Drovers Arms' (flats) and the 'Canterbury Arms' (derelict). This leaves just the 'Lord Nelson' and 'Thomas a Becket' still trading along the entire length of route.

Since 1985 the planning regime has encouraged large retailers and retail parks to be developed over older properties which were classic examples of ribbon development whereby residential properties front gardens and/or ground floor areas took advantage of footfall and were converted to shop units. As of 2011 there are now many high street multiples and hyper markets joining these smaller units along its route including Asda, Argos, Halfords, Tesco, Comet, Currys/ PCWorld, B&Q, Toys R Us, Aldi, Lidl and others.