Four towns for the Lee & Stort navigation

A NEW London 'Urban Community' is to be developed along the Lee & Stort Navigations.

This will include four towns providing 100,000 new homes and everything to go with them along 13 miles of the waterfront of the Lee Valley and is estimated it will meet a fifth of the city’s housing needs, Roger Fox reports.

Transform the navigation

This will completely transform the navigation with massive development along its length that will include the four town centres, it is stated to 'lead the city out of the coronavirus crisis'.

The development will run from Ponders End in Enfield down to the Thames at Bow Creek, and along the edge of the Lee Valley Regional Park and is set to meet part of the capital’s housing needs over the next 20 years.

Around 23,000 houses will be completed over the next five years with the intention of 105,300 along the Lee Valley by 2040, transforming the former industrial basin, at present one of the most sparsely populated areas of London, with Nick Whitten, Head of Residential Research at JLL stating:

Make full use of the waterways

“The regeneration of the Lee Valley presents a huge opportunity to make full use of its waterways and green space and provide significant housing.”

Now neglected, the area was a hive of trade as early as the 11th century when its rivers were used to power flour mills and to transport timber and the like.

It was in 1878, the Gas, Light and Coke Company laid out a small factory town at Bow Common with terrace streets, factories and a school.  Only the warehouses remain, but they too will either be demolished or converted.