Let’s transform St John Street into a park

As part of our Grey2Green work, we’re campaigning for a new St John Street park.

We’re encouraging local groups around London to campaign for new streetparks and we’re also running our own local campaign for a new St John Street Park near to our offices on Cowcross Street.

The whole of St John Street is very wide, but the south end of St John Street is a particularly wide grey space, under-used and unattractive, cluttered with poorly considered parking and street infrastructure.

With its attractive buildings and as a centre for London’s design economy, it has huge potential to be transformed into a space to be enjoyed by local workers and residents from Smithfield, St Bartholemew’s Hospital and the many offices nearby, as well as people passing through the area, including from the new Elizabeth Line station.

The south end of St John Street is a historic space featuring on the 1561 Agas map. Later Hicks Hall, a magistrates court, stood in the wide section.

We want this space to become a new park and pedestrianised area, perhaps with space for stalls, seating and safe cycle lanes. A volunteer urban designer created the visualisation below as one suggestion for how the space might be used. We would like Islington Borough to work with local residents and businesses towards the the creation of a final plan for the area, following site surveys and assessments from the transport engineering perspective.

The draft ideas below were also created as part of the 2018 Farringdon and Clerkenwell Public Realm Strategy.

And finally, to add some context, the City of London is working to transform Smithfield into a pedestrian-friendly destination. Hawkins\Brown is leading the design team for the public realm. Find out more.

Now we really want this to happen. Add your support by emailing me, Alice Roberts alice@cprelondon.org.uk. We are particularly keen to have the support of other organisations local to the area.