The battle for Bankside: electricity, politics and the plans for post-war London
ABSTRACT:In the mid-1940s a conflict arose – the battle for Bankside – between two plans for a contested space on London's South Bank. The electricity industry planned to rebuild Bankside power station to alleviate a critical shortage of electricity, whereas the County of London Plan envisaged redevelopment of the area as public gardens, flats and offices. This article examines these plans and their entanglement in the planning system as then constituted; it argues that the significance of the planning principles escalated the arguments from a local issue to the highest level of government. The roles of key actors who manoeuvred to influence the decision-making process are explored. The article demonstrates that the power station approval was crisis driven and imposed ill-considered conditions with long-term implications. Elements of the County of London Plan were realized through deindustrialization and the transformation of the long-derelict power station into Tate Modern in 2000.