A few minutes walk from Peckham Rye station, behind the local cinema, lies one of the
strangest public art spaces in London: a giant, 9-storey brutalist car park. Impractical,
windy, and potentially unsafe—it has transformed Peckham into a contemporary hub for
social recreation and cultural showcases. The car park has been subject to criticism in
the current political debate surrounding gentrification in London. Who owns or belongs in
Peckham, and are they the ones using the car park’s cultural menu? While democratic
and accessible culture are two very different things, they are both deeply connected to the
class, race and infrastructure of a city.
As Matt Bolton from OpenDemocracy pointed out a few years ago in a Guardian
commentary, the car park becomes, through its noticeability, its height and scale, an all too
noticeable symbol of London’s out-of-control gentrification:
«…a sky-high contemporary gallery in one of London’s poorest districts, packed each
evening with painfully well-dressed young white people supping Campari bitters, who
gaze down upon the streets of pound shops, mobile phone stalls and cheap clothes
A few minutes walk from Peckham Rye station, behind the local cinema, lies one of the
strangest public art spaces in London: a giant, 9-storey brutalist car park. Impractical,
windy, and potentially unsafe—it has transformed Peckham into a contemporary hub for
social recreation and cultural showcases. The car park has been subject to criticism in
the current political debate surrounding gentrification in London. Who owns or belongs in
Peckham, and are they the ones using the car park’s cultural menu? While democratic
and accessible culture are two very different things, they are both deeply connected to the
class, race and infrastructure of a city.
As Matt Bolton from OpenDemocracy pointed out a few years ago in a Guardian
commentary, the car park becomes, through its noticeability, its height and scale, an all too
noticeable symbol of London’s out-of-control gentrification:
«…a sky-high contemporary gallery in one of London’s poorest districts, packed each
evening with painfully well-dressed young white people supping Campari bitters, who
gaze down upon the streets of pound shops, mobile phone stalls and cheap clothes
/
