Confessions of a Nimby

I’d been waiting for it to arrive for about a year but when it finally popped through the letter box and onto my mat, I still wasn’t prepared for it. Planning application 1173, ‘redevelopment of site with erection of new part 2, 3, 4 and 5 storey building comprising new school and nursery (4,715sqm) (Use class D1), 29 residential units (69% affordable), associated landscaping and parking.’

I live in a block of 48 flats that overlook this site – Avigdor school in Stoke Newington, north London, now closed and looking like a cross between the film set for Mad Max II and a junk yard overburdened by contributions from the local community. That community is a colourful enough mix: Turkish/ Cypriots, Hasidic Jews, Afro-Caribbeans and a fairly prosperous white middle class, most of whom seem to be pregnant or attached, umbilically, to a buggie. Take a walk in nearby Clissold Park and you realise the community is even more diverse than that. Hackney council, to its credit, organises multicultural festivals in the park and these are convivial, relaxed affairs. But by and large we get on by ignoring each other.

When Avigdor school – a Jewish school – closed down, we at Arbor Court rather feared the worst. The appeal of building flats on this large strip of land was obvious. Then one afternoon I happened to get talking to a Rabbi – he attends the same Turkish baths as I do and he often sits me down for a tea and a chat – he has the tea and gives me the chat. He told me that they (the Jewish community, the client, whoever it is who owns the site) intended to build another school on the site, a special school. This news, when I reported it back, was greeted with universal approval by the residents of Arbor Court. Not because it was a special school but because it wasn’t a block of flats. Then a rumour went round that ‘an element of residential’ was being introduced into the plans. I asked my Rabbi. He confirmed the rumour.

Six months later, the notification of the application arrived. As above.

On the face of it, what could be more reasonable? It’s an extensive site and there’s plenty of room for the school and the 29 residential units. We all know more homes are needed, we know there’s pressure to build on brownfield, and who can argue against 69% affordable housing? You will be not at all surprised to learn therefore that the first thing the Arbor Court residents did was send out frantic emails to each other asking how we could defeat the application.

If you could see out of my (floor to ceiling) window, you’d understand why none of us are too hot on the idea of 29 residential units being built opposite us. The present site may look like Apocalypse Now but at least we have a view of trees and the park beyond and the wonderfully inspiring spire of St Mary’s. The proposed flat and houses would block our view. Instead of looking out on to the great blue sky and trees, we shall look out onto rooms of people looking out onto us. ‘Human kind cannot bear very much reality,’ wrote TS Eliot. He meant other people’s reality.

As well as the loss of our wonderful view, we shall have to put up with loss of light, more noise, greater traffic congestion, loss of privacy. Where we live will be transformed from a blissfully quiet, green urban oasis into the hullabaloo of too much humanity pressed together into too small a space.

Except, of course, if you come to my flat and look across to the green and pleasant land of Clissold Park, you will say, yes, it is wonderful, quiet and peaceful as too few places are in London; but why should I think that my right to this view is greater than my neighbour’s right to a home?

And this is the dilemma I am struggling with. I am being asked by my fellow residents to petition our neighbours in surrounding streets, to study the huge planning application with a view to picking holes in it, to pay for a consultant to advise us on the best way to object, to take to the streets if need be and protest, to hold up a banner saying that my view, my privacy, my need for peace and quiet trumps all talk of crisis of housing supply. On this overcrowded island, London is the most overcrowded place of all. I searched two years to find this view, this sense of space, this overwhelming sky. If I lose it, I will no longer be able to look up and out and beyond. And if I lose that, I will have lost a rare and precious way of looking at the city, and at life, itself. Where is that petition?