Dominic Nunn
Euston Town: retaking the city in the wake of HS2
A delay in the HS2 redevelopment of Euston and the premature demolitions has left local resident communities awaiting a new urban centre which has an indeterminable delivery date. This essay is an exploration of how to enact a democratic right to the city by assessing activist strategies to reclaim derelict, redevelopment-bound land.
In London, marginal spaces are frequently pushed further into the periphery or demolished in favour of capital-oriented land uses. I argue the Euston regeneration is an example of capital-oriented urbanization seizing land from marginalized communities. This essay's focus is the demolition site left behind by the High-Speed Rail 2(HS2), ahigh-speed railway line that was planned to connect the major cities of the north and south of the UK.
In order to complete HS2, much of Euston Town, the area west of Euston Station, was compulsorily purchased and demolished to make way for an area-wide regeneration. Residents were promised new connections to the cities of the Midlands and North, and access to a circulatory network of people: a creative destruction. Earlier examples of this phenomena include the Olympics regeneration or the Docklands-Canary Wharf transformation. Both projects destroyed local space to create new nodes within capital circulation networks. While these processes inflicted a series of erasures and social isolation, Euston Town is suffering a different trauma. The communities around Euston have not, and will not, be embedded into a circulatory network for an indefinite period of time, delaying any benefits and extending and exacerbating the harm.
1: essay cover page / poster
2: aerial image of the Euston demolition area
3: community feedback forum responses
4: a projection installation which speculates on the re-taking of the halted construction site