This is the Guardian. Guardian Archive Longweed. Longweed.

Hi, I'm Ollie Wainwright.

I'm Ollie Wainwright. I'm the architecture and design critic of the Guardian.

And in February 2021, I wrote a long read article called Penthouses and Pordors, how Europe's biggest regeneration project fell flat.

The article was focused on a swathe of Thameside land in London between Vauxhall and Batsy Power Station, roughly the size of Monaco, about 200 hectares,

where what was a kind of former land of warehouses and logistics depots, was being radically transformed into this vision actually not too

dissimilar to Monaco itself a kind of Dubai on Thames of incredibly luxurious high-rise towers marching all the way along the riverfront.

And I was just very interested in the kind of dystopian place that was being created

seemingly without any real plan or kind of council involvement in what was going on.

It seemed to me to be a kind of experiment in what happens when you leave a whole swathe of London to the whims of the free markets and let it do what it wants unchecked.

What was being created I found was this almost apartheid situation where you had very high-end luxury towers

so you had the five-star hotel style lobby on one side with a nice public space and

pot plants and trees.

And if you were an affordable housing resident,

you were shuffled round to where the bins were kept

and ushered into what looked like a fire escape, essentially.

So these things became known as poor doors for obvious reasons. And I spoke to a number of residents and it turned out not only was the kind of welcome home completely different, but the access to the facilities were

completely different so these towers featured things like private

swimming pools and cigar smoking lounges and private karaoke rooms and even if the affordable housing residents offered to pay to use these facilities,

they were actually forbidden.

And it came down to the fact that the private flats had been sold under a lease agreement

where the facilities would be for the exclusive use of the

...